Abd ar-Rahman is very tolerant of non-Muslims, and Jews and Christians both are treated fairly.

European nations send emissaries such as those from Otto I of Germany, and the emperor in Constantinople.

He is a patron of arts, especially architecture.

A third of his revenue suffices for the ordinary expenses of government, a third is hoarded, and a third is spent on buildings.

He has renovated and added to the Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba.

After declaring the caliphate, he had had a massive palace complex, known as the Medina Azahara, built some five kilometers north of Córdoba.

Modeled after the old Umayyad palace in Damascus, the Medina Azahara serves as a symbolic tie between the new caliph and his ancestors.

It is said that Cordoba contained three thousand mosques and one hundred thousand shops and homes during his reign, during which Córdoba has become the most important intellectual center of Western Europe.

He has expanded the city's library, which will be further enriched by his successors.

I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies.

Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity.

In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to Fourteen: - O man! place not thy confidence in this present world!

He has also reinforced the Iberian fleet, which has become the most powerful in Mediterranean Europe.

Iberian raiders move up to Galicia, Asturias, and North Africa.

The colonizers of Fraxinetum had come from al-Andalus as well.

Due to his consolidation of power, Muslim Iberia becomes a power for a few centuries.

It also brings prosperity, and with this he has created mints where pure gold and silver coins are created.

Abd-ar-Rahman has spent the rest of his years in his new palace outside Córdoba.

He is accused of having sunk in his later years into the self-indulgent habits of the harem.

He is known to have openly kept a male as well as a female harem.

This likely influenced the polemical story of his falling in love with a thirteen-year-old boy (later enshrined as a Christian martyr and canonized as Saint Pelagius of Córdoba) who refused the Caliph's advances.

The love story may have been a construct on top of an original tale, however, in which he ordered the boy-slave to convert to Islam.

Either way, enraged, he had the boy tortured and dismembered, thus serving as Christian polemic demonizing Muslims.

He dies in October 961 and is succeeded by his son al-Hakam II.