Today is
the anniversary of the fall of Moorish Spain. Was it really such a wonderful
place?
First
Published In: The Telegraph
Date
Published: January 2, 2014
On the 2nd
of January 1492, a 40-year-old Italian sailor stood amid the fluttering banners
outside the fabled walls of Granada, and watched as Muhammad XII handed the
city’s keys over to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain.
On
Muhammad’s ignominious ride south, as he looked back from a mountain peak now
known as el ultimo suspiro del moro (the moor’s last sigh), he wept for the
781-year old Islamic state he had lost forever.
Al-Andalus
was no Muslim outpost. The Spanish Islamic society had been a quintessential
part of the European continent for almost 800 years. In an English context, it
was there from the time of the Venerable Bede and King Alfred, all the way
through to William the Conqueror, the great medieval kings, the universities
and gothic cathedrals, the guilds and ships, printed books, and finally up to
Tudor England.
Muslim
forces had first landed in southern Spain in AD 711 when the Berber general
Tariq ibn Ziyad led his armies north from Morocco. Western history may have
largely forgotten him, but he survives in the place-name Gibraltar, from Jebel
Tariq (Tariq’s rock), the staging ground where he massed his invasion force.
Memories of
the Islamic state of al-Andalus are a highly emotional topic, still remembered
keenly, and with polarised sentiments. In Spain, on the 2nd of January, they
celebrate 1492 and the definitive completion of the Reconquista. Across the
water in Morocco, the people remember the same event by flying black flags of
mourning, and descendants of the inhabitants of Granada who left with Muhammad
XII bring out keys to the properties they were forced to abandon.
The legacy
of al-Andalus is hard to judge objectively.
Islamic rule
in the early 700s revolutionized Visigothic Spain, bringing with it
unprecedented prosperity in agriculture and mining. Commerce with North Africa
and the Levant boomed. Luxuries such as silk-worms were introduced, along with
never-before-seen crops like apricots, almonds, rice, and sugarcane.
The new
wealth it all generated allowed the creation of some of the most striking
buildings of medieval Europe.
The Alhambra
in Granada is widely recognised as one of the planet’s most beautiful palaces –
a collection of serene galleries, courtyards, fountains, and decorated rooms
that are largely unrivalled for pure sensual aesthetics. And 80 miles to the
north west, the forest of iconic red and white voussoirs of the mosque at
Cordoba is among the world’s most photographed religious architecture.
Grandeur was
everywhere. The now-destroyed Madinat az-Zahra palace outside Cordoba was
sumptuous beyond description. Abd al-Rahman III used to enjoy welcoming
visitors to its great darkened throne room, where he would spin a vast bowl of
mercury on a central pedestal, while small apertures were opened in the windows
to allow choreographed sunbeams to hit the mercury. The result, it is said, was
like watching lightning flashing around the dark hall.
But the
legacy of Moorish Spain can be measured in more than bricks, tiles, and disco
balls.
Seven
hundred and eighty one years is a long time — more than three times longer, for
example, than the United States of America has existed.
In those
eight centuries, many words seeped into European languages from Arabic, with a
strong showing in science, the military, and foods — admiral, alcohol, apricot,
arsenal, calipers, candy, chemistry, coffee, guitar, jar, jumper, lemon,
magazine, mummy, sequin, sofa, spinach, sugar, talisman, and zero. Not to
mention the most Spanish of all exclamations: Olé!
But
al-Andalus’s largest and most lasting contribution to the world was undoubtedly
in the sciences and logic.
The medieval
Muslims mapped the sky, leaving our modern museums with hundreds of beautiful
and intricately built astrolabes — many signed by their makers in recognition
of their skill and status. They also wrote the language of the stars, naming
hundreds of heavenly bodies — most famously Betelgeuse, (at least, famous to
readers of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy).
The
influence of al-Andalus on western European learning was seismic. And
undoubtedly the most impact was felt in the gift of Aristotle.
Aristotle:
an unexpected gift from the Moors
The West had
lost almost all copies of the works of the Greek philosopher, but the Arabs had
not. The leading Muslim scholar of al-Andalus, Averroës (1126–98), pored over
Aristotle’s writing line by line, commenting on it in detail, and extracting
its relevance for modern analytical thought. In no time, Christian scholars
piled into the intellectual hothouse of southern Spain, eager to translate
Aristotle into Latin.
Aristotle
may sound largely irrelevant today. But to 12th-century Europeans, he was the
most exciting thing to hit their scriptorium desks for centuries. He described
ways of thinking and reasoning that were radical and revolutionary. He was a
mesmerising drug that young scholars and theologians scrambled to take
intravenously.
The
“discovery” of so many works of Aristotle shook Christendom. The cathedral
schools and emerging universities of Europe fell madly in love with the pagan
philosopher, bent on using his systematic tools of logic and philosophy to
reinvent and reinvigourate theology, science, and all existing learning.
So far so
good – al-Andalus was a funnel through which knowledge poured one way, adding
untold richness to Europe’s largely moribund intellectual life.
But what of
the reality of day to day life in southern Spain?
For the last
hundred years, there has been a tendency to see al-Andalus as an exotic casket
filled with sugar-dusted Turkish Delight. Victorian-era writers and thinkers,
most notably Washington Irving, rhapsodized it as a beacon of beauty, learning,
and tolerance – a golden age of harmony and civilisation.
Well. No.
The reality was more prosaic.
It is true
that the scholarship of al-Andalus was unprecedented, and contributed massively
to the 12th-century renaissance and the development of Europe. But in
al-Andalus, it probably did not exist outside small circles.
Nor was it
free of strife. The initial invasion in 711 had been violent, as successful
invasions usually are. The conquered people, Christians and Jews, became
second-class citizens. They were largely well treated, but not always. For
instance, in the early 1000s, the anarchy of the fitnah caused untold suffering
for the people across al-Andalus. In 1066, a large number of Jews of Granada
were massacred. In 1126, great numbers of Christians were deported by force to
Morocco as slaves. And so on. No one should be surprised. This is a similar
picture to that of life anywhere in Christendom or the Near-East in the period.
Al-Andalus was no more or no less tolerant than a hundred other places.
Cordoba: a
great mosque rapidly turned into a cathedral
For most of
the period 711–1492, the three faiths rubbed shoulders, but they did not really
come to understand each other any better. Perhaps this is nowhere symbolised
better than in the sixteenth-century renaissance cathedral crudely hacked into
a space smashed right out of the middle of the unending mathematical forest of
columns making up the original great mosque at Cordoba. When Emperor Charles V
saw the carnage, he emotionally rebuked all concerned: “You have built here
what you, or anyone, could have built anywhere. To do so, you have destroyed
what was unique in the world.”
The triumph
of al-Andalus is that it was not some piece of the Islamic world tacked onto a
fully formed and functioning Europe. The knowledge bubbling out of Islamic
Spain in science, medicine, mathematics, and logic was a key driving force in
shaping a Europe still emerging from the intellectual torpor of post-Roman
tribal society. Without the scholarship al-Andalus pumped across the Pyrenees,
there would have been no renaissance, no alchemy, no science, no Isaac Newton,
no Christopher Wren, no Royal Society.
But the
tragedy of al-Andalus is that, when all is said and done, the three cultures
largely failed to grow in understanding or appreciation of each other. None
seemed interested in looking beyond its own internal concerns.
As the
40-year-old Italian sailor standing watching the handover of Granada in 1492
walked away and into history, I wonder what he was thinking.
His name was
Christopher Columbus, and later the same year he set out west on his first
voyage.
As the old
world of al-Andalus died, and as he weighed anchor to catch the wind for the
new world, I like to think that perhaps he hoped we would all do a little
better next time.
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