|
The Other 1492
Praise be to God, who ordered that
he who speaks with pride of Al-Andalus may do so without
fear and as boldly as he pleases, nor meet any that may
contradict him …
Al-Shaqundi, "Of the Excellence of Al-Andalus"
Written by Greg Noakes
Photographed by Tor Eigeland
 The
year 1492 has long been a historical touchstone. Europeans
and Americans recently marked the 500th anniversary of
Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of the New World, not
without protests from those who felt that the hemisphere's
gains from the event were far outweighed by its losses.
Spain was a focus of attention in the quincentennial year,
in part because it was Columbus's point of departure, and as
host of the universal exposition EXPO '92 in Seville and the
summer Olympic Games in Barcelona.
There was another 500th anniversary to be marked in 1992,
however, and it too involved Spain. While this event has
also had important repercussions in world history, and
remains the source of a lingering sense of loss, it has
attracted much less attention. The event was the fall of the
Muslim city of Granada (Gharna-tah in Arabic), on the second
day of 1492, to the forces of the Catholic kings of Castile,
ending nearly eight centuries of Muslim rule in the Iberian
Peninsula and closing one of the most turbulent and glorious
chapters in Islamic history.
As some historical accounts have it, Muslim armies first
arrived in the peninsula in AD 711 at the request of one
side of a civil war raging in Visigothic Spain. Muslim rule
was accepted voluntarily by many Spaniards, and numbers of
them accepted Islam. In 732, just 100 years after the death
of the Prophet, Muslim troops crossed the Pyrenees to make
their deepest advance into western Europe; they were checked
at Poitiers in a battle that has rung down the centuries in
Western legend, but which Muslim chroniclers record, if at
all, as a minor skirmish. The Muslims soon withdrew again
and set about establishing Islam in Spain, in the
territories they called Al-Andalus. The society they
developed was perhaps uniquely tolerant and heterogeneous,
with Arab and Amazigh (Berber) immigrants living side-by-side with
Spanish Muslims, Christians and Jews. Intermarriage was
fairly common.
Al-Andalus was ruled by the Umayyad caliphs in Damascus
until 750, when the Abbasid dynasty came to power in the
East. One Umayyad prince alone, Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiyah,
escaped and fled to Spain; there he established an
independent Umayyad state in 756. The Andalusian rulers,
sovereign politically, continued to regard the Abbasid
caliphs as the ultimate religious authority for almost 200
years, but the eighth ruler of the dynasty, 'Abd al-Rahman
III al-Nasir, claimed the caliphal title for himself and his
progeny in 929. The Andalusian Umayyad caliphate was the
golden age of Al-Andalus in terms of political power. The
southern two-thirds of the Iberian peninsula were united
under the caliph in Córdoba (in Arabic, Qurtubah), and he
was also an important player in North African affairs. It
was the Umayyads who, through skill, cleverness and
occasional ruthlessness, laid the foundation for the
splendor of Al-Andalus.
Between 1009 and 1031, however, a series of uprisings and a
succession of weak rulers together led to the dissolution of
the Umayyad state. Filling the vacuum, more than a score of
independent petty monarchs emerged, called "party kings" or
in Arabic mulukal-tawa'if, from the word ta'ifah (Spanish
taifa), meaning party or faction. Though these rival
kingdoms - some no more than city-stateswere much weaker
than the unitary Umayyad caliphate, the taifa period
witnessed a flourishing of arts and learning as each ruler
attempted to outdo the others in the prestige of his court.
As David Wasserstein points out in The Rise and Fall of the
Party Kings, the profusion of rulers also meant a profusion
of patrons, so artists, scholars and scientists could find
a sponsor, or even competing sponsors, with relative ease.
Nevertheless, weakened by chronic infighting, treacherous
double-dealing and internal decadence, the taifa kings gave
up considerable territory to the Christian kingdoms that
were reasserting themselves in the north of the peninsula.
By 1085 the Castilians had taken the crucial city of Toledo,
and the petty kings asked the new Almoravid ruler in
Morocco, Yusuf ibn Tashufin, to intervene. The Almoravids
(in Arabic, al-Murabitun, "The Garrisoned Ones") were a
puritanical dynasty that had arisen among the Amazighs (Berbers) of far
southern Morocco, and for a time they were content to
assist the taifa kings militarily - but in 1090 Yusuf
decided that his erstwhile hosts had to go, and the petty
kings were swept aside. The Almoravids at first imposed
their puritanism and rigid religious orthodoxy, visible even
in their art, on Spain, but in the end, though their faith
remained pure, they themselves succumbed to the luxury and
ease of Al-Andalus.
 The
Almoravids' faltering strength provided the Christian
kingdoms with opportunities for reconquest, and by 1145
Almoravid Spain was reeling. The Muslim population rose in
revolt and a new group of taifa monarchs asked the Almohads
(in Arabic, al-Muwahhidun, "Those Who Profess God's Unity")
- another puritanical movement from southern Morocco, which
supplanted the Almoravids in North Africa - to intervene.
The Almohads willingly obliged, and for a time the new North
African rulers enjoyed some success in Spain. But the tide
turned in favor of the Christians in 1212 at the Battle of
al-'Iqab, called in Spanish Las Navas de Tolosa, and within
decades the Almohads had retreated back across the Strait of
Gibraltar. Muslim cities fell one after another until 1260,
when only the kingdom of Granada remained.
Precariously balanced between hostile Christian powers to
the north and rival Muslim rulers in Morocco to the south,
Granada survived for almost two centuries more. Although
they gradually ceded territory to the Spanish Christian
forces, the Nasrid rulers of Granada, afraid of being
swallowed by their rescuers, refused to turn to the
Moroccans for assistance. Isolated politically, the
Granadines lived on, on borrowed time.
Yet, architectural historian John Brooks notes, "despite the
general winding down of the organized political and
military state during the last period of Muslim rule in
Spain, this strikingly rich and original culture was still
evolving." Indeed, many of the most lavish and famous
examples of Andalusian art and architecture date from this
period (See Aramco World, September-October 1992). Within
its slowly shrinking enclave, Granada flourished
magnificently, both artistically and culturally, until the
end of the 15th century, when Catholic Spain overcame
political division and the effects of the Black Death and
the final stage of the reconquista began in earnest.
By the end of 1491 the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella were
at the gates of Granada itself. There remained only one
final act to be played out, a knell whose sorrow was to
reverberate across the Muslim world and become legend.
Granada's ruler, [Muhammad XII Abu 'Abd Allah, known in the
West las Boabdil, secretly agreed to hand over the city to
{the Christians in return for his safe passage out of Spain.
As he left the city, Boabdil paused to look [back at the
Alhambra palace, the Generalife gardens and the rest of
Granada. Stanley Lane-Poole relates Boabdil's reaction in
his classic 1887 work The Muslims in Spain:
"Allahu akbar!" he said, "God is
most great," as he burst into tears. His mother Ayesha
stood beside him: "You may well weep like a woman," she
said, "for what you could not defend like a man." The
spot whence Boabdil took his sad farewell look at his
city from which he was banished for ever, bears to this
day the name of el ultimo sospiro del Moro, "the last
sigh of the Moor."
Thus, on January 2, 1492, Muslim
political sovereignty in Spain came to an end.
Muslims and people of Muslim origin had lived relatively
unmolested in Christian areas before the fall of Granada and
continued to do so immediately after; the city's inhabitants
received generous terms of submission and a large degree of
religious freedom. In 1499, however, the Catholic monarchs'
guarantees were broken, and forced conversion of the Muslims
was introduced. The Muslim population rebelled, but the
revolt was quickly suppressed. In 1500 Spanish Muslims were
presented with a stark choice: Convert to Catholicism or be
expelled from Spain. While some Muslims did convert, others
continued to practice their faith in secret, and the rest
chose exile, principally across the Mediterranean in North
Africa.
Although Muslim rule in Spain had ended, the rich cultural
and intellectual legacy of Al-Andalus survived, both in the
Iberian Peninsula and throughout the world. Elements of the
Islamic heritage can be found throughout Spain, and in
recent years modern Spain has become more aware, and more
proud, of the glories of this period of its history. Many
place names, such as those of the port city of Algeciras
(from al-Jazirah al-Khadra', green island), the Guadalquivir
River (from al-Wadi al-Kabir, great river), and the southern
region of Andalusia itself, all come from the Arabic used in
Al-Andalus. The Spanish language itself has been greatly
influenced by Arabic, particularly in terms of vocabulary,
and many terms of Arabic origin passed on from Spanish into
English in the New World.
 Some
of Spain's most famous architectural monuments, including
Córdoba's Great Mosque, Seville's Giralda and Granada's
Alhambra, date from the Muslim period; architecture in
southern Spain and Latin America borrows a great deal from
Muslim builders, both in terms of materials used -tile,
stucco - and design elements like central courtyards,
abstract ornamentation, and creative use of water and
fountains. The artisans and craftsmen of Spain after the
reconquista remained largely Muslim, and they often
received commissions from Spanish nobility; their work can
easily be seen today throughout Andalusia - in the royal
residence of Seville, the Alcázar (from the Arabic al-Qasr,
meaning the palace), for example.
The instruments, rhythmic patterns, vocal conventions and
overall structure and organization of Andalusian music,
derived directly from Arab precursors, have also had their
effect on Spanish - and, by extension, Latin American -
music. In some cases even the Andalusian melodies have been
passed down intact.
The works of many of the most prominent thinkers and
practitioners of Al-Andalus, along with writings from the
eastern Muslim world, were translated from Arabic into Latin
by Spaniards (See Aramco World, May-June 1992). Through
these translations, philosophical and scientific thought
from the Greek and Roman worlds, preserved and expanded upon
by Muslim scholars, passed into European consciousness to
fuel both the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment.
Nevertheless, it was back in the Arab and Muslim worlds that
Andalusian culture and society had their greatest impact,
even before 1492. Many important contributors in Islamic
intellectual history came from or worked in Islamic Spain: No
account of the development of philosophy in Islam is
complete without a discussion of Ibn Tufayl, who died in
1185, and of his pupil Ibn Rushd, who was born in Córdoba,
became chief qadi, or judge, of Seville, and died in 1198.
Ibn Rushd, known in the West as Averroes, made his most
important contributions in his commentary on Aristotle, his
refutation of al-Ghazali's critique of philosophy, and his
examination of the relationship between reason and religion.
Much of Ibn Rushd's thought prefigured the work of Thomas
Aquinas.
 In
medicine, Al-Andalus produced scholars like al-Zahrawi (died
ca. 1013), who wrote extensively on surgery, pharmacology,
medical ethics and the doctor-patient relationship. Ibn Zuhr
(known in the West as Avenzoar), a century and a half later
was an advocate of clinical research and practical
experimentation.
In literature, Ibn Hazm (died 1064) expanded traditional
romantic poetry with his "Tawq al-Hamamah" ("Dove's
Necklace"), which expounds on the various forms of chivalric
love and the joys and sorrows it produces. The courtly
muwashshah form of poetry passed from Al-Andalus into North
Africa, and influenced the development of both literature
and music in the Maghrib. The classical music of North
Africa, which remains popular, is still known as "Andalusi
music."
The most immediate effects of the events of 1492 to 1500
were felt in the great cities of North Africa, where most of
the Andalusian refugees fled after their expulsion.
Residents of each Spanish city tended to migrate to a
particular Maghribi city, so that many exiles from Valencia
ended up in Tunis, those from Córdoba in Tlemcen, refugees
from Seville in Fez, and so on. Andalusian scholars,
merchants and artisans in many ways revitalized North
African society, enriching Maghribi culture and adding a
fresh influence to the existing Arabo-Amazigh (Berber) traditions.
This influence continued for some 200 years, until the
Andalusian heritage had been completely integrated into
North African life. Nonetheless, many present-day Moroccans,
Algerians and Tunisians can still trace their lineage back
to a specific city of Al-Andalus (See Aramco World,
July-August 1991).
Its intellectual, cultural and esthetic contributions
aside, however, Al-Andalus left a bittersweet emotional
legacy to the Arab and Muslim worlds. Though the sense of
loss is most pronounced in descendants of the Andalusian
exiles, the memory of Al-Andalus retains its emotive power
throughout the Islamic world
The 20th-century Iraqi writer Daisy Al Amir, for example,
takes contemporary England as the setting for her
allegorical story "An Andalusian Tale," about an Arab
student who meets "a Spaniard who recognized his Arab
ancestry" and is proud of his Andalusian heritage. Tunisian
film director Nacer Khemir borrows his title and his
melancholy subject matter from Ibn Hazm in the 1990 film Le
colier perdu du colombe (The Dove's Lost Necklace). Khemir's
fanciful costumes, dream-like architecture, shimmering
colors and stunning cinematography give life to the esthetic
ideal of Al-Andalus (See Aramco World, January-February
1992).
In the Islamic world today, Islamic Spain is invoked on two
levels. First there is the memory of the land itself: the
flowing rivers and green fields of southern Spain, the
magnificent mosques and palaces, the flourishing culture.
This is the land that Andalusian exiles refer to still as
al-firdaws al-mafijud - paradise lost - and whose passing
the Valencian exile Ibn Amira mourned in his Epistola a un
amic:
An ocean of sadness raged inside
us,
Our hearts, desperate, burn witheternal flame...
The city was so beautiful with itsgarden and rivers,
The night were imbued with the sweet fragrance of
narcissus.
Al-Andalus is remembered on another
level as the one area that was once - but is no longer -
part of the Muslim world. Until the middle of this century,
Muslims have withstood Mongols, Crusaders, empire-builders
and settlers and still emerged with their Islamic identity
intact - except in Spain. Even the Communist regimes of
present-day China and the former Soviet Union failed to root
out Islam, failed to deracinate their Muslim populations,
despite vast expenditures of time, of treasure and of blood
in attempts to build "the new socialist man" (See Aramco
World, January-February 1990). The fact that the rest of the
Muslim world has retained its religious identity over some
fourteen centuries rife with political, social, cultural and
technological change makes the exception of Spain that much
more painful to Muslims.
It is nonetheless a pain that lies well beneath the surface.
Contemporary Muslims are less likely to think of Spain as a
historic enemy, or still less a territory to be reclaimed,
than as an important trading partner, a fellow member of
the family of nations, and - especially for North Africans -
a, and - especially for North Africans - a source of
expatriate employment. Muslim countries maintain cordial
relations with Madrid and a number of them opened pavilions
at EXPO '92 in Seville and sent teams to Barcelona.
 And
though, over the years, lost Islamic Spain has been much
idealized in the Islamic world, there remains an
appreciation of the factors behind its downfall. Some of
these were external, such as the unification and expansion
of the Christian kingdoms of Spain and the geographic and
political isolation of Al-Andalus from the rest of the
Muslim world. There were also internal factors that
contributed to the decline of Al-Andalus, particularly the
rivalries that weakened and divided Islamic Spain, the greed
and self-indulgence that gripped its elites, and the loss of
a unifying religious vision.
On the other hand, Islamic Spain was an immensely fertile
ground for learning, producing a long series of
intellectual, esthetic and scientific advances attributable
to Muslim, Christian and Jewish thinkers and the atmosphere
they created. This blossoming was due in part to the spirit
of tolerance that prevailed for much, though not all, of the
history of Al-Andalus - a tolerance extended not only just
to other religious groups but operative within Muslim
society as well.
Despite the passage of 500 years, Al-Andalus continues to
cast its spell. As the birthplace of some of the world's
outstanding scholars and artisans, home of dazzling
architectural masterpieces, and setting of a brilliant
society notable for both the height of its achievements and
the depths of its decadence, Al-Andalus retains its
emotional impact and its privileged place in Muslim
historical memory.
Back to
Top |
