How Muslims , Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain. 28/10/23
The author is a professor of Spanish and Portuguese literature.
750 AD The book begins in Damascus and ends in Granada 1472 Abd el Rahman abandoned his home in Damascus when the ruling Umayyads who had first led the Muslims out of Arabia and were eradicated by the Abbasids who seized control. His mother had been a Berber tribeswomen from Morocco and he was in his early 20s. He fled to the Maghrib(West) then crossed to Gibraltar to the el Adaluz in 785. With the support of the Berbers and Syrians , he the son of a Caliph the successor to Mohammad..
756 He formed an army and won the battle. Abd al Rahman became the governor of this Islamic outpost. He now became the legitimate home of the Umayyads with Cordoba the seat of the capital.
Back in Damascus the Abbasids moved their capital to Bagdad away from the Umayyad legitimacy.
In el Andelus - Christians , Jews, Moslems lived side by side and nourished a complex culture of tolerance with religious freedom comparable to the modern "tolerant" state. Arabized Jews rediscovered and reinvented Hebrew. Christian embraced Arabic style philosophy and architecture. Even the Moorish style of some NY synagogues comes from that.
410 the Visigoths a Germanic tribe had sacked Rome. Rome had governed Spain from 200 till the Visigoths took over .and in 580 the Visigoths joined the Universal Catholic Church..
622 the most powerful Arabs in the dessert were the Bedouin. The Islamic calander hinges on the hegira when Mohammad and he followers moved their capital from Mecca to Medina.
623 Mohammed died without leaving a successor.
661 In the bloody Kalifate that followed. Ali who was married the prophets daughter was assassinated. From Medina the capital was moved to Damascus.
The Dome of the Rock was build by the Umayyads on the sight of t he Temple representing Islam as the Children of Abraham.
711 The Islamic Empire continued to spread to areas that had been parts of the Roman Empire and to the Berbers of the Maghrib.
Abd al Rahman was the only Umayyad survivor of the massacre of Rasufa and he went west. He arrived with in 50 years of the Muslims arriving in Europe and could not return to his Damascus home. He now returned political, and cultural order. With stability and long reigns of orderly succession with sons and grandsons who often had Christian mothers taking over the economy revived and the population increased.
Arabs were the ultimate class of distinction, while Jews and Christians were protected by Qur'anic mandate. Now Jews rose from the abysmal ciaos, Greek philosophy was translated into Arabic.
In Tunis the descendants of Ali and his wife Fatima pretenders took over. These Fatimids regenerated a dangerous rival for the Andalusians.
Cordoba had 900 baths thousands of Mosques with running water from aqueducts and paved, well lit streets and libraries . They had a vigorous trading economy. Near Valencia a big paper industry was set up and paper was cheap.
1009 Bitter wars began between the Islamic rival factions, the destruction was by Berbers who brought in as mercenaries. the keep the peace. This resulted in the destruction of the gardens and palace of Madinat al Zahra.
1031 The Cordovan` Califate collapsed. A whole sector of the well educated Jewish population left the former capital Cordoba. Rodrigo Diaz known as El Cid fought for both Moslems as well as the Christian leaders.
With the Collapse of the Califate, Moslems found themselves living in Christian cities. Mozarabs were Arabized Christians living in Islamic areas. You also had Spanish speaking Christian moving south with the mingling of the languages and religion.
Sicily had been Islamic since the 8th Century you now had Christian Normans encountering Moslems there.
1072 After 34 years Palermo became capital of a Norman kingdom.
1095 Pope Urban II called for a Crusade to conquer the Holy Land.
1085 Alfonso VI made Toledo his capital.
1086 the Almoravids a fundamental Muslims sect were brought in to help the Calif to defeat the Christians and defeated Alfonso IV. In Cordoba the Almoravids burned books and the works of the philosopher al Ghazali as their form of Islam was violent Jihad.
1248 Seville was taken over by Ferdinand III of Castile . The great Mosque of Seville had be reconstructed as a splendid cathedral of the Castilian Capital. Alfonso IV had been buried there and on tomb in it with 3 languages on it Spanish ,Arabic and Hebrew.
In the second half of the12 Century you had Latin Christian crusading forces and equally fanatic Berber Almohad's
1348 The Bubonic plague killed 20% of the population and this was documented in the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio..
1391The old Jewish prosperity of Spain ended in a annus terribilus. The Spanish Inquisition was set up to rid Spain of 800 years of ills and tradition.
By the 13Century Arabic Stories in Latin and vernacular languages become best sellers of Europe and influenced European literature.
1492 After the Reconquest the Jews are expelled from Spain, by Ferdinand and Isabella in the Alhambra Decrees.
1497 King Manual I expels Jews from Portugal.
Note this book explains a lot of the great literature during the el Andalus period
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