Ornament of the World
How Moslems, Jews, and Christians
Created the Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
By María Rosa Menocal
Reviewed by Arthur Benveniste
From HaLapid Winter 2005
Almost every day headlines announce another story of sectarian violence somewhere in the world. And in most cases radical Moslems are involved. Their advisories are Jews in Israel, Hindus in Kashmir, Christians in the former Yugoslavia and Christians and Animists in Sudan. Travel the world and you will find churches converted into mosques, or mosques and synagogues converted into churches. Our history books are filled with stories of “heretics” and “apostates” being forcibly converted, beheaded or burned at the stake. Always to the “glory of God.” It would seem that the various religions were doomed to challenge each other for all time.
I write these words shortly after hearing of another suicide bombing in the Middle East.
But Muslims, Christians and Jews once lived together in harmony and prosperity. It was in al-Andalus beginning in the Eighth century and lasting until religious fanaticism ended it in the Eleventh Century. This period of convivencia, or living together, was ushered into Moslem Spain by the Umayyad Dynasty and with it came one of the great Golden Ages of human history.
Today, in most of the industrialized world religious tolerance is the norm. And even in centuries past there were examples of enlightened regimes that protected the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. The level of tolerance of these governments may not reach the heights that we aspire to today, but compared to the standards of their day, they were indeed models of enlightenment.
One such society was that of the Ottoman Turks. Jews and Christians were classified as dhimmi or protected “People of the Book” who shared Abrahamic monotheism with Islam. Through the millet system members of the religious minorities were restricted in many aspects of government and a few other areas of life, but they were free to practice their own faith and, within limits, administered their own communities.
The Convivencia in Spain existed a half millennium before that of the Ottoman Turks. The religious tolerance of the time allowed a flowering of philosophy, theology, science and culture almost unknown at the time Indeed it was a Golden Age.
This period of convivencia is the subject of María Rosa Menocal’s book.
In the year 711, Moslem Berber tribesmen from North Africa crossed the Straits of Gibraltar into Spain. The Visagothic kingdoms of Spain had persecuted Jews since King Recaredo had become a Catholic almost two centuries earlier.
In 750, the moderate Umayyad dynasty in Damascus was overrun by the radical Abbasids. A massacre followed. Abd al-Rahman, the young sole survivor of the Umayyad monarchy set out with his followers, across the desert toward the Maghreb, the West. In five years, he arrived in southern Spain, Al Andalus. Soon the Califate of Cordoba is established and the Golden Age followed.
In Ornament of the World, María Rosa Menocal, takes the reader through this golden age.
Here the Jewish community rose from the ashes of an abysmal existence under the Visigoths to the point that the emir who proclaimed himself caliph in the tenth century had a Jew as his foreign minister. Fruitful intermarriage among the various cultures and the quality of cultural relations with the dhimmi were vital aspects of Andalusian identity as it was cultivated over these first centuries.
Menocal describes how the Arabs reintroduced Greek philosophy to a Europe which had lost it. How the Jews were instrumental in the dialogue between the Moslem and Christian worlds. How the magnificent Arabic literature and poetry influenced both Jews and Mozarabs (Arabic speaking Christians) into producing their own magnificent literature. How Maimonides and Averroes tried to reconcile religion and rationalism and influenced later movements towards reform in the Catholic Church and helped bring on the Renaissance and Age or Reason. How Jewish philosophy, theology and literature blossomed to produce the works of Judah Halevi, Hasdai ibn Shaprut, Samuel the Nagid, Isaac Abravanel and Nachmanides.
Monocal then shows how a golden age can decline into centuries of intolerance, persecution and finally Christian extremism culminating with the Edict of Expulsion and forced conversions under Ferdinand and Isabella.
In 1031, the Umayyad Caliphate (or the Caliphate of Córdova) shattered into fifteen independent dynasties, or Taifas. The convivencia unraveled and the Christian kingdoms of the north found it easier to expand into Al Andalus.
In 1086, the fundamentalist Almoravids of North Africa crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to help the Taifas fight the Christians. By 1091, the Almoravids controled almost all of Al Andalus. By 1150, the Almoravids were succeeded by the even more fundamentalist Almohad Dynasty which was dedicated to strict enforcement of Islamic rules and customs.
It was Maimonides misfortune to have lived his early life in the Córdova of Almohad fanaticism. His family was forced to adopt Islam. After moving to Fez in Morocco then to Cairo, Egypt he returned to the open practice of Judaism.
In time the Christian kingdoms advanced, pushing the Moslem states back to North Africa. In 1492, all of Iberia came under Christian rule. Soon all Jews and Moslems were forced to convert or leave. Apostates faced the Inquisition. But there was another Inquisition, an “Inquisition of the Books.” It is described by Cervantes in Don Quixote. Writes Monocal:
It was not just the books, of course, but the knowledge of the languages of those books, Arabic and Hebrew that had disappeared in Cervantes’ time – the very skills that had once made knowledge and the transmission of knowledge and learning possible …