It's the internet. "I didn't know it, therefore nobody knows it, and I can write clickbait about it."

Didn't read it - but the title made me think of True Romance:

True Romance - The Sicilian Scene in HD

It's only secret outside Europe. It's probably my favorite when being a turista in Spain.

I didn't think this was a secret, even to Americans.

Secret? I thought this was just history.

Really? We needed 4 (now 5) comments on the title?

A title that probably wasn't even written by the article author, but an editor or social media guy who is charged with creating a title that will bring in clicks from social media sites who use the open graph data like we do to auto-populate our content sharing features.

Yeah.

What's annoying is that the actual title that you see at the top of the article when you visit the page is "The Story of Europe's First Muslim Ruler", a perfectly reasonable, informative article title. The "Secret History" clickbait title is just metadata bullshit that shows up when you share the article on social media (and here, obviously.) That's something I've noticed a lot lately; I'll post something here and it'll have a different title than the one on the article I just read. Sometimes there's even three titles: one on the page, a different one when I share the article, and a third variation on the browser tab itself.

Just pick a goddamn title, you fucks!

Yeah, friggin BBC of all places does that sometime.

I thought it was a reference to The Secret History of the Mongols, a genuinely secret history (written only to be read by a select few) that sets out the Empire building of the other big Muslim empire that reached into Europe.

I can't believe it's a secret though! That title is crazzzzzy! Btw, you won't believe what happens when you upmod this commen! Karma whores hate it!

Isn't there even a thing, not Spain, but Italy, where they call southern Italians "arabs" referring to that crusade?

Knumb- so, ya. Thx. :)