Seville in the context of "High-speed rail in Spain"

A scroll (from the Old French escroe or escroue), also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing.

Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Europe and the fourth-most populous European Union (EU) member state. Spanning the majority of the Iberian Peninsula, its territory also includes the Canary Islands, in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean; the Balearic Islands, in the Western Mediterranean Sea; and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, in mainland Africa. Peninsular Spain is bordered to the north by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; to the east and south by the Mediterranean Sea and Gibraltar; and to the west by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Málaga, Murcia, and Palma de Mallorca.

In early antiquity, the Iberian Peninsula was inhabited by Celts, Iberians, and other pre-Roman peoples. The Roman conquest of the Iberian peninsula created the province of Hispania, which became deeply Romanised and later Christianised. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the peninsula was conquered by tribes from Central Europe, among them the Visigoths, who established the Visigothic Kingdom centred on Toledo. In the early 8th century, most of the peninsula was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate, with Al-Andalus centred on Córdoba. The northern Christian kingdoms of Iberia launched the so-called Reconquista, gradually repelling and ultimately expelling Islamic rule from the peninsula, culminating with the fall of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. The dynastic union of the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon in 1479 under the Catholic Monarchs is often seen as the de facto unification of Spain as a nation state.

Andalusia (UK: /ˌændəˈluːsiə, -ziə/ AN-də-LOO-see-ə, -⁠zee-ə, US: /-ʒ(i)ə, -ʃ(i)ə/ -⁠zh(ee-)ə, -⁠sh(ee-)ə; Spanish: Andalucía [andaluˈθi.a] , locally also [-ˈsi.a]) is the southernmost autonomous community in Peninsular Spain, located in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern Europe. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognized as a historical nationality and a national reality. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga, and Seville. Its capital city is Seville, while the seat of its High Court of Justice is the city of Granada.

Andalusia is immediately south of the autonomous communities of Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha; west of the autonomous community of Murcia and the Mediterranean Sea; east of Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean; and north of the Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar. The British Overseas Territory and city of Gibraltar, located at the eastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar, shares a 1.2 kilometres (3⁄4 mi) land border with the Andalusian province of Cádiz.

Science in the medieval Islamic world was the science developed and practised during the Islamic Golden Age under the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad, the Umayyads of Córdoba, the Abbadids of Seville, the Samanids, the Ziyarids and the Buyids in Persia and beyond, spanning the period roughly between 786 and 1258. Islamic scientific achievements encompassed a wide range of subject areas, especially astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. Other subjects of scientific inquiry included alchemy and chemistry, botany and agronomy, geography and cartography, ophthalmology, pharmacology, physics, and zoology.

Medieval Islamic science had practical purposes as well as the goal of understanding. For example, astronomy was useful for determining the Qibla, the direction in which to pray, botany had practical application in agriculture, as in the works of Ibn Bassal and Ibn al-'Awwam, and geography enabled Abu Zayd al-Balkhi to make accurate maps. Islamic mathematicians such as Al-Khwarizmi, Avicenna and Jamshīd al-Kāshī made advances in algebra, trigonometry, geometry and Arabic numerals. Islamic doctors described diseases like smallpox and measles, and challenged classical Greek medical theory. Al-Biruni, Avicenna and others described the preparation of hundreds of drugs made from medicinal plants and chemical compounds. Islamic physicists such as Ibn Al-Haytham, Al-Bīrūnī and others studied optics and mechanics as well as astronomy, and criticised Aristotle's view of motion.

Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer best known for planning and leading the 1519–22 Spanish expedition to the East Indies. During this expedition, he discovered the Strait of Magellan, performed the first European crossing of the Pacific Ocean, and made the first known European contact with the Philippines. Magellan himself was killed in battle in the Philippines in 1521, but his crew, commanded by Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, completed the return trip to Spain in 1522, achieving the first circumnavigation of Earth in history.

Born around 1480 into a family of minor Portuguese nobility, Magellan became a skilled sailor and naval officer in the service of the Portuguese Crown in Asia. However, King Manuel I refused to support Magellan's plan to reach the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, by sailing westwards around the American continent. Magellan then proposed the same plan to King Charles I of Spain, who approved it. In Seville, he married, fathered two children, and organized the expedition. In 1518, for his allegiance to the Hispanic monarchy, Magellan was appointed an admiral of the Spanish fleet and given command of the expedition—the five-ship "Armada of Molucca." He also was made a Commander of the Order of Santiago, one of the highest military ranks of the Spanish Empire.

The Province of Seville (Spanish: Sevilla) is a province of southern Spain, in the western part of the autonomous community of Andalusia. It borders the provinces of Málaga and Cádiz in the south, Huelva in the west, Badajoz in the north and Córdoba in the east. Seville is the province's as well as the Andalusian autonomous community's capital.

Abū Muḥammad Jābir ibn Aflaḥ (Arabic: أبو محمد جابر بن أفلح, Latin: Geber/Gebir; 1100–1150) was an Arab Muslim astronomer and mathematician from Seville, who was active in 12th century al-Andalus. His work Iṣlāḥ al-Majisṭi (Correction of the Almagest) influenced Islamic, Jewish, and Christian astronomers.