Publication
Back Bay Books (2003), Edition: Reprint, 315 pages
Original publication date
2002
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Undoing the familiar notion of the Middle Ages as a period of religious persecution and intellectual stagnation, Menocal brings us a portrait of a medieval culture where literature, science, and tolerance flourished for 500 years. The story begins as a young prince in exile--the last heir to an Islamic dynasty--founds a new kingdom on the Iberian peninsula: al-Andalus. Combining the best of what Muslim, Jewish, and Christian cultures had to offer, al-Andalus and its successors influenced the rest of Europe in dramatic ways, from the death of liturgical Latin and the spread of secular poetry, to remarkable feats in architecture, science, and technology. The glory of the Andalusian kingdoms endured until the Renaissance, when Christian monarchs forcibly converted, executed, or expelled non-Catholics from Spain.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member deliriumslibrarian
Jewish poets writing in Arabic. Christians learning from great Islamic scholars. Muslims commissioning Christian artists. Maria Menocal's book explores the world of the "convivencia," the great experiment in living together that was created by the Umayyad amirate in Cordoba, after the model of
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Damascus and Baghdad. Menocal carefully examines mythic historical figures from all three Abrahamic religions, and demonstrates the complex contributions of each faith to the world of Mozarabic Spain and the incredible cultural, scientific, architectural and political enrichment it brought to the fragmented, struggling continent on its borders. Europe, as Menocal argues, is profoundly the product of a diverse Islamic civilisation that created a Golden Age lasting over 2 centuries. Show Less
LibraryThing member brett_in_nyc
This book is another really great one. It is long and hard to read, and full of details of Kings and Moorish Knights wacking each other over centuries of Feudal life in Spain and Portugal. It does a wonderful wonderful job of painting a picture of how Spain blossomed after Rome fell apart, around
This is the best quote from the book, I will let you find it:
"He had a brilliant goldsmith make two rings identical to the first. All three sons thus inherited his divided kingdom, and thereafter no one was ever able to tell the original from the copies. The reader understands that Saladin's question itself springs from a universe used to the difficulty of such questions and not from any simpleminded or monochromatic orthodoxy."
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the dealings with manuscripts and books and translated them into all kinds of useful languages through teams of translators who worked together going from one text to another through a third intermediate language. Makes what seems like a hard and solitary job to be actually quite fun and interactive. Maybe it is like the baton passing to San Francisco, California in the 21st Century from a tired Atlantic Northeast or Rust Belt in the 19th/20th. Classical Italy fell apart and life really took off in Spain, driven by the Umayyad and Moorish kingdom established there when the Christians were still north of the Pyrenees. Italy blossomed again later in Florence and Venice for the Enlightenment as Spain went for a bit of a bad time (that just ended with the EU!). Toledo was the great place where all the classical and mystical manuscripts ended up from Alexandria and other places in Byzantium, Ottoman empire and Persia, and an idealized culture of Jews, Arabs and Christians worked together to translate things from Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic into languages for consumption in Europe up north. I love the story of the mysteries of the Astrolab, which comes straight out of Arabic/Persian knowledge that changed the world for Christians through all the translated books about it that ventured north where the dark ages were in full fury. Of course that would eventually lead to the kind of seafaring and colonizing those European Christians would become known for. The crusades were going on through all of this too, which made for some very tense moments in Spain since the Arabs, Moors, Jews and were all there too with invading Christian Goths, whose Kings were losing their confidence and increasingly zenophobic. It is a great great story, and lots of lessons for today, but I am sure not too many people are listening. Although not like everybody was hanging out at each other's houses and partying together. Despite all they achieved with their polyglot day jobs, they had real strict social divisions and didn't participate in each others' Weddings, Passover, Ramadan, or Easter feasts, that is for sure, although the music, architecture and fashion crossed over to create something very chic and unique for Europe at the time, not to mention books books glorious books. By the way, Castilian Spanish was invented at the time to unify the peninsula and it was forced on people (so Ladino, Arabic, Hebrew and many others like Basque, Catalan were suppressed as they remain to this day despite recent agitation since the Civil War). Someone invented the first grammar book for Spanish and royals would work hard to enforce that over time. It was the first moment of 'nation' building that would of course become modus operandi later on for more 'nations'. The story ends badly as we know and makes you kind of wonder how things can go so terribly wrong, but it must have something to do with economic and territorial panic, the Black Plaque, religious hysteria and propoganda turned into zenophobia. Jewish mysticism and kabbalah took off after that shock, along with conversions of Muslims and Jews and movement of 'Spanish and Portuguese Jews' to North Africa, Italy, Netherlands, and the Ottoman Empire. About 100 yrs later they turned up in Brazil, Curacao and New Amsterdam, where they flourish to this day. Spinoza came from them and the Netherlands golden age, the first republic in Europe, followed the end of the Spanish golden age, which became over stretched and underfunded despite Inca slaves in gold mines for 100 years! Sound familiar????This is the best quote from the book, I will let you find it:
"He had a brilliant goldsmith make two rings identical to the first. All three sons thus inherited his divided kingdom, and thereafter no one was ever able to tell the original from the copies. The reader understands that Saladin's question itself springs from a universe used to the difficulty of such questions and not from any simpleminded or monochromatic orthodoxy."
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LibraryThing member Dalya
A Yale scholar's in depth study of the Golden Age in Spain that began with the sole survivor of the Ummayids arrival on the Iberian peninsula. This read is delightful as the information feeds the author's insights and takes the reader along with her. The religious tollerance and sharing of culture
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and language brought about an amazing wealth. A stunning case is made that it is this very wealth that was essential for the enlightenment of the Western World. Show Less
LibraryThing member tronella
I'm not usually into history books, but this one worked pretty well for me. It covers the history of medieval Andalusia, from when the Abd al-Rahman became governor of Córdoba in the eighth century until the Catholic Monarchs expelled Jews and Muslims from Spain in the fifteenth, and focuses on
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cultural changes (poetry, religion, architecture, translation) occuring in this period. While the writing is a little repetitive in places and I could have done without the names being anglicised everywhere, the book does a great job of conveying the mood and multiculturalism of a time-period usually thought of as being pretty backward. Show Less
LibraryThing member bunwat
Well I tried, but in the end it had to go back to the library before I was done. And I am quite interested in the subject of al Andalus and the Muslim presence in medieval Spain. Maybe it was bad timing or maybe this book just wasn't the right fit at this point.
Its a series of vignettes about
Maybe if I was more familiar with the history to begin with I would have been less confused and more able to connect with the story. Or maybe it was the holidays and I was just too distracted. I might come back to this another time.
Its a series of vignettes about
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various different figures from 1009 to 1492 - well written vignettes, but for me it was too much hopping about from one person in one part of the territory for twenty pages and then another person living 50 or 100 years later and several hundred miles away for the next thirty pages. I kept getting lost - who is this? how is he related to the previous person? where are we? Maybe if I was more familiar with the history to begin with I would have been less confused and more able to connect with the story. Or maybe it was the holidays and I was just too distracted. I might come back to this another time.
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LibraryThing member kukulaj
This is a delightful romp through almost a thousand years of the Spanish history. It doesn't attempt to be comprehensive, but instead is a series of snapshots, with enough connections sketched in to keep the story coherent. The main theme is the notion of a first-class mind, from F. Scott
I've seen references to the richness of Andalusian culture. This was a splendid way to dive in a little deeper. It leaves me with too many threads to follow! Never to be bored!
It was a strange enough coincidence that this book was written just before the attacks of 9/11/2001. That we seem to be getting trapped more tightly in battles over ideological purity is really sad.
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Fitzgerald, applied here to cultures. There are four streams entangled - the three Abrahamic faiths along with the Greeks, mostly Aristotle. I've seen references to the richness of Andalusian culture. This was a splendid way to dive in a little deeper. It leaves me with too many threads to follow! Never to be bored!
It was a strange enough coincidence that this book was written just before the attacks of 9/11/2001. That we seem to be getting trapped more tightly in battles over ideological purity is really sad.
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LibraryThing member belgrade18
A well-written and interesting history of Spain from the eighth to the seventeenth century with a focus on the multi-ethnic, multi-faith states in the Iberian peninsula under Muslim (and Christian) rule. After a concise, detailed history of the Caliphate and Visigothic Spain, she gives a sort of
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chronological episodic history of the next seven centuries, often focusing on particular individuals and their works. While these episodes feature an individual or two, she uses them to give a snapshot of the history and culture at that particular moment, with examples of philosophy, Kaballah, poetry, and music. At times I felt that she was being hagiographic, playing up the talents of specific men and the tolerance of a particular ruler or era, downplaying some of the intolerance that was going on, sometimes only making passing references to things like anti-Jewish rioting that resulted in massacres. I still appreciate her arguments that this was an extraordinary period with a confluence of circumstances, personalities, geography, and religious cultures. Highly recommended for those with an interest in the history of Islam, Christianity, the Middle Ages, and Spain (in fact, now I want to go back to Spain and see these Alhambras, cathedrals, and tombs!). Show Less
LibraryThing member revliz
It's a pretty good. As this is something I know about, I got impatient with the fuzziness of the overview, and returned it to the library. But it's a nice intro for someone curious about Al-Andalus
LibraryThing member mumoftheanimals
Never realised that the Moors in Spain were so long settled. I assumed it was just prior to the First Crusade, but it’s more 8th century until 15th century. But at the time of the Vikings, their culture was rich, inclusive and tolerant. The book is interesting with new information and its
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treatise is that it was wiped out by fractions within Islam as well as by the increasing dogmatism of the Christian world. Show Less
LibraryThing member rivkat
History of a period/place I knew little about. The tolerance was reasonably patchy and more of the form “we mostly went to war against coreligionists/alliances were not divided on religious lines,” but it was still interesting.
Language
Original language
English
ISBN
0316168718 / 9780316168717
Physical description
315 p.; 5.5 inches
Pages
315