"The Ornament of the World"
May. 13th, 2004 07:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowIt's nasty and wet tonight. There've been intermittent thunderstorms, bad enough to disrupt the satellite dish. Fortunately, there's nothing I normally watch on Thursdays, though I may take a look at the Frasier finale. It's been quite a few years since I watched it, but what the heck - if the weather permits, it might be worth it.
Anyway. I finished reading The Ornament of the World, by Maria Menocal, yesterday. I found it quite interesting. It's not a history per se; Menocal instead gives brief vignettes, focusing on specific people and events over a period of some seven centuries. We see warriors and statesmen, philosophers and theologians, poets and mystics: `Abd ar-Rahman I, Samuel the Nagid, El Cid, Peter the Venerable, Pedro the Cruel, Maimonides, Moses of Leon, ibn Khaldun, and Cervantes (in a wistful and thought-provoking coda) cross the stage, along with many others. Enough detail is given for a picture of the broad sweep of the history of Muslim Spain: the unification of the peninsula by `Abd ar-Rahman I, the declaration of the caliphate by `Abd ar-Rahman III, the collapse of the caliphate into the taifa city-states, their destruction under pressure from the Christian kingdoms of the North and the Almoravid and Almohad fundamentalists invading from across the straits, and the final surrender of Boabdil to Ferdinand and Isabella. It's a sad story overall; the culture of tolerance shared by the taifas and the contemporary Christian states was probably doomed from the outset, but it shone so brightly for a few centuries...
An interesting what-if occurs to me. In the 11th century, Alfonso VI was on his way towards unifying Spain under Christian rule when the Almoravids invaded and drove him back. They saved the Muslim states from being overrun, but in their zeal crushed the mixed culture that had arisen in the taifas. When Spain was finally united, four centuries later, it was the intolerant Ferdinand and Isabella who did so, rather than the more moderate Alfonso. What impact might it have had on Western (and Muslim!) civilization had Alfonso succeeded?
Anyway. I finished reading The Ornament of the World, by Maria Menocal, yesterday. I found it quite interesting. It's not a history per se; Menocal instead gives brief vignettes, focusing on specific people and events over a period of some seven centuries. We see warriors and statesmen, philosophers and theologians, poets and mystics: `Abd ar-Rahman I, Samuel the Nagid, El Cid, Peter the Venerable, Pedro the Cruel, Maimonides, Moses of Leon, ibn Khaldun, and Cervantes (in a wistful and thought-provoking coda) cross the stage, along with many others. Enough detail is given for a picture of the broad sweep of the history of Muslim Spain: the unification of the peninsula by `Abd ar-Rahman I, the declaration of the caliphate by `Abd ar-Rahman III, the collapse of the caliphate into the taifa city-states, their destruction under pressure from the Christian kingdoms of the North and the Almoravid and Almohad fundamentalists invading from across the straits, and the final surrender of Boabdil to Ferdinand and Isabella. It's a sad story overall; the culture of tolerance shared by the taifas and the contemporary Christian states was probably doomed from the outset, but it shone so brightly for a few centuries...
An interesting what-if occurs to me. In the 11th century, Alfonso VI was on his way towards unifying Spain under Christian rule when the Almoravids invaded and drove him back. They saved the Muslim states from being overrun, but in their zeal crushed the mixed culture that had arisen in the taifas. When Spain was finally united, four centuries later, it was the intolerant Ferdinand and Isabella who did so, rather than the more moderate Alfonso. What impact might it have had on Western (and Muslim!) civilization had Alfonso succeeded?
