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I've recently been enjoying 'Tales of the Alhambra' which are folk stories collated by the American writer, Washington Irving. He visited Andalusia and gathered stories from the citizens of the region which harken back to the time of the Al-Andalus.
I cannot recommend the book enough! The societies that he describes feel magical, enlightened, inspiring, thoughtful, advanced and romantic.
I often wonder, 'how inspirational was Al-Andalus for contemporary Europeans?' The discovery and founding of America by Europeans itself has many parallels to the much earlier establishment of Al-Andalus. It too was an idealistic colony. Coincidentally, the word California - which symbolically marks a 'boundary of the west' of sorts - has an Arabic root!
Irving is directly referenced and quoted multiple times in the article, and so is his "travel memoir" Tales of the Alhambra (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/49947/49947-h/49947-h.htm)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_Jewish_culture_i...
I have to find the letter (possibly a Jewish reader can dig it out?) but I remember reading and being amused by a letter penned by Maimonides to iirc Jews in Arabian peninsula. Apparently they had written to him having heard of the paradise of tolerance in Muslim Spain and his letter poo pooing it, telling them it’s no better than their locale. I always read that letter as a sort of rabbinical wisdom on his part: he knew they wouldn’t be able to get there so he painted a dismal picture.
Jewish historians today would support the dismal picture. There were indeed severe restrictions on Jews in Muslim-ruled Andalusia: they were forced to wear special clothing, to dwell in a mellah (a special neighbourhood), and were prevented from riding horses. Yes, Christian Europe imposed analogical restrictions, but Andalusia under Muslim rule could hardly be called tolerant.
I've not heard of this letter - and would also be curious to read it!
Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) is considered religiously tolerant by modern historians in the context of the experience of Jewish citizens, especially when compared to contemporary parts of Western Europe.
As an example, it seems there was an expulsion of around 100,000 Jews in Christian France in 1306 and in England in 1290 of several thousand. I've not come across any such comparable events in my readings of Al-Andalus.
As a direct point, if Maimonides thought that France and so on would have offered more freedom or a better quality of life, then he could have moved there when Cordoba was experiencing political turmoil. He instead migrated through the Maghreb, towards the Middle East - it seems he was employed by Saladin at some point.
Maimonides lived under a particularly harsh time, contemporaneous to the Al-Muwahidun (Almohads) overthrow of the dynasty of the Al-Murabitun (Almoravid). The Almohads were much less tolerant than the previous dynasties, though that intolerance waned with time.
Are you thinking of the Epistle to Yemen [1]?
No mention of the Toledo School of Translators, the equivalent to the Tizard mission of the 12th century.
That event along with similar events in Italy and elsewhere was what truly triggered the Renaissance but historians in the West won't ever acknowledge it using that phrasing.
Today, people are taught that Leonardo Da Vinci was hiding in a room somewhere and suddenly the Renaissance happened. That caliber of nonsense is necessary to explain the gap without recognizing the merit of other civilizations.
Then you read this and realize that everything you have been taught about medieval times are fake feel-good stories about how the West is the light
https://web.archive.org/web/20051210130856/http://umcc.ais.o... (book written in 1160 CE)
A brief extract:
> Now 'tis established in the exact Sciences by precise demonstration, that the Sun is a Spherical Body, and so is the Earth; and that the Sun is much greater than the Earth; and that part of the Earth which is at all times illuminated by the Sun is above half of it; and that in that half which is illuminated, the Light is most intense in the midst, both because that part is the most remote from Darkness, as also, because it offers a greater surface to the Sun; and that those parts which are nearer the Circumference of the Circle, have less Light; and so gradually, till the Circumference of the Circle, which encompasses the illuminated part of the Earth, ends in Darkness.
After the fall of Islamic civilization in the Iberian peninsula and the middle east, the world took many centuries to reach the same level of scientific progress from centuries earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell%27s_law
If the Mongols had not burned the Grand library of Baghdad you would be in a flying car right now talking with your friends on Mars.
Historically, Islamic philosophers (as they were then called) took works from the greek philosophers before them and expanded upon it. Then a few other philosphers who did not like people learning from non-muslims leaned hard into fundamentalism and you now have the kind of Islam (Salafist/Wahhabism) that exists today, e.g. Saudi Arabia
The Mongols opened the door to fundamentalism, but it didn't have to go that way. The sack of Baghdad is a simplification
Read up on Al Ghazali, it is eye-opening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ghazali
Yes. But we stopped studying the Greeks for a long time and had no paper. So we could not distribute copies of Greek works until paper was introduced here, and until we had those copies.
That trend, that lasted a long time, ended with the help of the Islamic civilization influence, with the arrival of paper and translated copies of the works you are talking about.
They were studying them. We were not. Our copies come from them, and the technology to distribute those copies also comes from them.
Our scientific tradition is a direct continuation of theirs, as they are the first advisors to the first doctors in the West.
Our scientific tradition is a direct continuation of theirs
A big influence for sure, but that claim is a stretch.
Look at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boethius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_books#Middle_Ages
Not a stretch. Follow the chain of doctoral advisors.
"Kingdoms of Faith" by Brian Catlos is an excellent book about Al Andalus, from the Arab invasion to the fall of Granada (the aftermath is not covered extensively).
I got interested in Al-Andalus when I visited Tarragona, where the Moors pushed out the Visigoths and ruled for 400 years. A short book I recommend is Moorish Spain by Richard Fletcher (https://www.amazon.com/Moorish-Spain-Richard-Fletcher/dp/052...). It's a quick and engaging read covering the conquest and slow rollback of Muslim rule.
A podcaster I listen to said something that stuck with me. He doesn’t care who invented the light bulb. That would’ve happened anyway.
What’s way more interesting is events that could’ve completely changed human history. Like if Julius Caesar lost in Gaul or the Persians had defeated the Greeks or the Mongols had invaded Europe.
On that list had to be what if Islam had spread throughout Europe? It very much could’ve at different points. Not just the Moors but later the Ottomans.
> what if Islam had spread throughout Europe?
For much of Europe, it did. If you take a look at the maps of various Islamic empires, there remains a fairly small part of Europe that was never ruled by them. Practically speaking, what is called 'Europe' today are just the parts that were never conquered, or were later retaken. The rest we call e.g. Turkey.
I believe that Henry the Eighth was talking with some of the Muslim calliphates in Northern Africa around the time he broke from Rome. He could have gone Islamic but decided to set up his own church instead. Who knows how it would have worked out if he chose differently.
Is that podcaster Dan Carlin of Hardcore History? I recall him saying something similar, about the Great Man theory of history.
Ah yes the beautiful myth of the Andalusian Paradise. Turns out it's probably just a myth. For a different historic take I recommend https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Andalusian-Paradise-Christians-M...
That book is likely to be correct that it is a myth that "al-Andalus" was "a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in harmony" and that in reality being a non-Muslim must have caused many disadvantages.
Nevertheless, even without examining any evidence from that book, it is beyond any reasonable doubt that the non-Muslims had been much better treated under the Arab rulers than the non-Christians were treated after the territory had been reconquered by the Spanish kings.
For this, no other evidence is necessary beyond the fact that even if the non-Muslims might have not "lived in harmony", they certainly had lived there in great numbers, while soon after the reconquest the non-Christians no longer lived there (this is especially obvious from the large number of Sephardim who had to live in other countries after that).
Another thing that is true beyond any reasonable doubt is what is said in the parent article, i.e. that regardless whether the Arab conquest was good or bad for the local people, for Europe as a whole the Arab presence in Spain has been extremely useful, both as the source of improved knowledge in chemistry, mathematics and astronomy, due to their own research of various Arab and Muslim authors, and as the source of many ancient Latin and Greek works that had been lost in Europe.
> it is beyond any reasonable doubt that the non-Muslims had been much better treated under the Arab rulers than the non-Christians were treated after the territory had been reconquered by the Spanish kings.
Yeah, Spain the kingdom didn't really treat Muslims all that great, one just have to look at the "Expulsion of the Moriscos" in 1609 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Moriscos). Hard to beat that when it comes to treatment of entire populations.
Why would it be symmetric? This is like if North American natives had successfully expelled the Europeans after some amount of time, and then saying that the natives were meaner to the Europeans than vice versa. Wouldn’t expulsion be justified from the North American native’s perspective?
Note that there was about 9 centuries between the Umayyad conquest of Iberia (8th century) and the explulsion of Moriscos (17th century). So the analogy with North American natives would be something like - if somehow the Native Americans win political/military control in the 23th century (9 centuries after the arrival of the Europeans) and then decide that all non-native Americans will have to leave the country to wherever their ancestors came from - do you feel that would be justified?
From the native perspective that would absolutely be justified. At the same time from the European perspective they should resist being expelled (just as the equivalent people in Spain should have and probably did resist being expelled in their time).
As a side note, I feel a lot of people have a hard time processing conflicting perspectives and instead project their own moral views as a uniform perspective onto everyone at once, which does not produce a useable model of reality IMO.
> I feel a lot of people have a hard time processing conflicting perspectives and instead project their own moral views as a uniform perspective onto everyone at once
Thanks for putting into words something I've been feeling for a long time! It's like people think that conflict is unnatural, when really it is one of the most fundamental aspects of nature.
Read the book. Preservation of knowledge was done by the Byzantine empire not the Arabs.
A part of the ancient Latin and Greek literature has been preserved by the Byzantine Empire and another part by the Arabs.
The Arabs actually had much more interactions with the Western Europeans than the latter had with the Byzantines, so much more old books have reached Europe through the Arabs. Most Byzantine books have reached Europe only after the Fall of Constantinople and the invention of the movable-type printing press, when their importance has soon become more historical than practical, due to the rapid advances that have started at that time.
Besides the ancient Latin and Greek books, the Arabs have also passed knowledge that had come from India and Persia and also the results of original research that went beyond what had been transmitted from others, especially in chemistry and mathematics, hence words like alchemy and algebra.
Muslims, not Arabs. Also you are mistaken about Arabs passing Persian knowledge. Initially invading Arabs were given to destroying books. It was Muslim Persians who did most of the translation, and subsequently elaboration of the ancient world’s thinking into the Muslim civilization and from there to Europe. And yes, they wrote in Arabic just like Isaac Newton wrote Principia in Latin. And most of us now write in English, but are we Anglos?
p.s. important to amend this here to note that certainly, Muslim civilization had many towering Arab (and non-Persian non-Arab) intellects as well. In my personal opinion, the correct terminology would be Muslim and Islamic (since it certainly was that) instead of Arab or Arabic. The latter apparently is favored by European “Orientalists” but it is both incorrect and further it is divisive.
I agree than many of the most important scientific advances in the Muslim world were due to Persians, like the classification of the chemical substances made by Avicenna, who has written in Arabic, as you say.
However, the works of Avicenna and others like him have reached Europe through Arabs, frequently through Spain.
If you know of another path to Europe for the Persian Arabic works, I am curious to hear which is it.
Lot's of non-Muslim non-Arabs were part of this Islamic golden age as well.
> words like alchemy and algebra
And “algorithm” too, named after the scientist Al-Khwarizmi
What US state takes its name from the Arabic title for a ruler?
Alabama?
Good guess, but no, it's California from Khalifa.
This book was published by Regnery in their ISI Books line and if you look at the rest of their catalog (https://www.regnery.com/books/isi-books/) there's a certain theme that's overwhelming. To be slightly more explicit, when so many of their other books are so obviously by and for right wing culture warriors, why would they have published this one if it was not?
(And if you look outside that particular imprint the publisher's politics become even more obvious)
If you check the bibliography of this article's author, his latest book seems to be a wistful longing for Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution.
The greatest "myth" I'm seeing in this thread is the idea of objective pop history writers (or readers). All of these works are goods being sold to a consumer audience. Perhaps in decades past, many consumers favored works that expanded or challenged their worldviews. But in today's zeitgeist, most consumers want to read things that reinforce how they view the world already.
Without knowing the content of those books, it's hard to judge if that's true.
Or you'll have to explain why this is obvious.
I knew nothing about ISI but after skimming through the book list at the bottom of the page, I mean that's pretty obvious…
Not to me. There are some conservative books there, but also general topics too.
> There are some conservative books there, but also general topics too.
And that's exactly what to expect from a conservative library! There's no left-wing book, at all, in the shelves and that's a pretty clear sign.
We can't know for sure if the “general topics” are themselves conservative, but the complete lack of left-wing PoV in collection, that doesn't bode well.
It turns out that the page I linked to has more than just pictures of the covers, and if you click thru you can find the publisher's blurbs which are brief descriptions of the contents spun in a way favorable to them.
As an example, there's this biography of William F. Buckley Jr :https://www.regnery.com/9781610171557/william-f-buckley-jr/ whose blurb reads in part "William F. Buckley Jr.: The Maker of a Movement tells the incredible story of a man who could have been a playboy, sailing his yacht and skiing in Switzerland, but who chose to be the St. Paul of the conservative movement, carrying the message far and wide." (and makes it sound more more like a hagiography, but let's leave that aside).
Then there's https://www.regnery.com/9781610171458/just-right/ with this excerpt from the blurb: "This memoir is full of colorful stories from a man who has been present at nearly every major event of the modern conservative movement and has done it all in a remarkable, multifaceted career."
Also in the same imprint is Rick Santorum: https://www.regnery.com/9781932236835/it-takes-a-family/ about whom I don't think I need to say much more.
I said "obvious" regarding the publisher overall, not just their imprint. You'll notice they have a "Political Books" category (https://www.regnery.com/books/political-books/) in which you might find that their 'Featured Books' include "Unwoke: How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America" (by Ted Cruz, and please refer back to my comment re: Santorum), "Hide Your Children: Exposing the Marxists Behind the Attack on America's Kids" , "When China Attacks: A Warning to America", "The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy has Destroyed Us", and "Domestic Extremest: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War".
If that's not enough for you, then please consider the publisher's own words: "Want to read conservative books that drive headlines, start debates, and change the course of history? That’s what Regnery books have been doing since 1947." which doesn't leave much room for ambiguity.
> which doesn't leave much room for ambiguity
specialising in conservative books isn't the same thing as catering primarily to "right wing culture warriors", in the sense that any book from their collection can be assumed as biased.
I think you're conflating 'primarily' and 'exclusively'. Furthermore if you consider their 'general topics' books and check up on their authors you might notice a certain theme.
And if you look at the reviewers on the Amazon blurb, that theme is quite also quite evident.