Maria Rosa Menocal
María Rosa Menocal's wafting, ineffably sad
The Ornament of the World tells of a time and place--from 786 to 1492, in Andalucía, Spain--that is largely and unjustly overshadowed in most historical chronicles. It was a time when three cultures--Judaic, Islamic, and Christian--forged a relatively stable (though occasionally contentious) coexistence. Such was this period that there remains in Toledo a church with an "homage to Arabic writing on its walls [and] a sumptuous 14th-century synagogue built to look like Granada's Alhambra." Long gone, however, is the Córdoba library--a thousand times larger than any other in Christian Europe. Menocal's history is one of palatine cities, of philosophers, of poets whose work inspired Chaucer and Boccaccio, of weeping fountains, breezy courtyards, and a long-running tolerance "profoundly rooted in the cultivation of the complexities, charms and challenges of contradictions," which ended with the repression of Judaism and Islam the same year Columbus sailed to the New World.
--H. O'Billovich
1 A dull read
Before buying this book I decided to go to the library and flip through it. Although I am interested in the subject I found the book terrible. I would call this book a historical novel(75% novel, 25% historic). The book begins with the words, "Once upon a time..." which made my stomach uneasy. I only read the first two chapters completely, chap. 1 Beginnings, chap. 2 a Brief History of a First-Rate Place; after those two I skimmed through the book. I was greatly disappointed because the book seems to speak alot about foreigners and foreign places. I didn't learn anything about Islamic Spain.
The book left out population figures for towns, cities, regions; not once did it attempt to figure out the population figure for any places during 711 and 1492. I have no idea what life was like for the average Jew, Muslim, or Christian anywhere during any of the period between 711 and 1492. The book focuses completely on intellectuals, and, even then it chooses to focus on certain individuals. There wasn't any discussion whatsoever on economy, political life, government structure, the military structure, or social life. I was disappointed because I wished to learn about life in Medieval Iberia as a commoner or even a person in the nobility and I didn't receive much.
My advice: do not buy this book. Instead go to your local library, or used bookstore or Borders/Barnes and Noble(whenever I go to those places I always seem to find this book on the shelf) sit down and flip through this book and see if you like it. I wouldn't suggest you buy this book without reading it.
2 Flat
For a period of time the city of Cordoba in Spain was one of the most enlightened cities in the world. The author's format is to tell the story of the rise and fall of Cordoba with vignette like short chapters, mini stories about people that reveal insight into the life cycle of that wonderful city. The first 50 pages are the best work here, before the short chapters start appearing. The first couple of the vignette chapters are so redundant to the first 50 pages you want to stop reading the book at that point. The vignettes in the book seem to spend too much trying to make unimportant points, or don't make the points well. The book becomes hard to read, you have to push yourself to get though it. What should have been interesting satisfying material comes off as clouded or uninteresting. Bottom line, not well written.
3 Historical Innacuracies
Anyone with the smallest knowledge of Spanish history will find some many innacuracies and basic mistakes that will leave the book after 30 pages. The worst of all mistakes, forgetting where el Cid was born: Vivar. Even small children in Spain now that the name of el Cid was "Rodrigro Diaz de Vivar".
4 Pleasant Tales for Little Folk
A book that purports to have some scholarly support, and that fails to list every single one of the major scholarly books on Islamic Spain -- especially failing to note the vast contributions of E. Levi-Provencal, and the less vast, but still important works of C.-E. Dufourcq, cannot be taken seriously.
The book begins, and ends, with romantic views which owe their origin to Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra and Chateaubriand's Les Derniers des Abencerage. The unpleasant facts about mass murders of Christians (as in Toledo) or Jews (as in Grenada) are omitted altogether; chapters are treacly divided, in this book fit for Oprah's Book Club, and the sentimental pieties of the age (yes, just why can't we all get along?). Not a hint of what it meant to be a non-Muslim under Islam. Instead, we have the same old standbys: you know, the "Abrahamic" faith we all share, and the wonders of translation that were performed (here Menocal gets confused, and wants to give Islamic Spain credit for translations performed by the conquered Christians and Jews in Baghdad, under Haroun al-Raschid, that big spender).
The book as history is worse than worthless. Its popularity, however, holds a certain sociological interest: it shows the desperate desire on the part of non-Muslims to want to believe, coute que coute, in the sheer possibility of "convivencia" in a once-wonderful civilization (fictive, but calming to the Infidel nerves), where Jews, Muslims, and Christians got along so splendidly.
Do yourself a favor. Learn French, and then read Levi-Provencal on Islamic Spain. Or Dufourcq. Forget about this "contribution" to scholarship by the Director of the Whitney Center for the Humanities at Yale -- but don't fail to ask yourself what that says about standards at Yale, and elsewhere.
5 Ornament of the World
The Ornament of the World is not only an excellent book, it should be required reading for anyone who is interested in history, religion, or world affairs. I say this because it is a relevant work in all three areas of study. While Ornament is not actually about world affairs today, it is relevant in that it reveals a good deal about the interactions between religions.
Menocal describes the interactions between Chrisians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval Spain. "In the sense of F. Scott Fitzgerald's wonderful formula...'the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time'". The purpose of Ornament is to explain the context in which this tolerance developed and analyze why such tolerance was sustained at this moment in history.
I have heard Menocal speak. She is extremely intelligent and an excellent speaker so I would also recommend hearing her lecture if you have the chance.
6 Find another book and leave this one on the virtual shelf
Ornament of the World is a perfect example of why historians do not always make good authors or storytellers. Maria Rosa Menocal had an interesting, judicious, and remarkable subject that could have been the rich historical narrative promised in the title of the book. Unfortunately, she entirely missed the mark with an incessant amount of winding run-on sentences that go no where and a completely bias point of view. I am someone facinated with the Muslim and Arab cultures and European history but I was very disappointed that Menocal chose to favor the Muslim account of history and devoted only a small fraction of the book to the other cultures. If you are still thinking of getting this book, just be forewarned - the cover may be pretty and the title may be enchanting but what you see isn't what you get. The only reason I gave this any stars at all is that I had to read it for my book club and it provoked some entertaining commentary from the group!
7 Monument to ideals on a flimsy foundation
Writing history raises an inevitable challenge: relate events as they were or portray selected elements to emphasize a theme. The former method is often ponderous, the latter often misleading. Menocal has opted for the second option. In her survey of Medieval Spain, she gives us an entertaining and informative look at expressions of the intellectual elite over seven centuries of Muslim rule.
Menocal's approach aims to restore Spanish Islam's blemished reputation. Muslim Spain has endured a scathing censure imposed by "victorious" Christian Europe. In the Christian view, the Reconquista of Spain freed a population from a Muslim yoke. The European invasion of the Western Hemisphere carried that myth across the Atlantic while strengthening the crusading attitude of the conquistadores. Menocal uses romantic poetry, the advancement of selected scholars to high posts under the caliphate, and the literacy of the Muslim and Jewish communities as evidence of high, positive interaction. Even the Christians, normally disdainful of literacy, science and philosophy, joined the chorus of common interests.
Weaving her tale around the Cordovan Umayyad caliphs founded by exiled prince Abn al-Rahmad, she traces the building programs, internal disputes among the Islamic schisms arising along the Mediterranean, and the challenges posed by intruders from the north. For Menocal, the binding force across Islamic Spain was language. Arabic became a lingua franca with the power to transcend religious dogma and jurisdictional disputes. Jews and Christians alike became fluent in this imposed language due to its expressive power. Arabic was also used in the Eastern Mediterranean to recover and spread lost texts of the Greek scholars. Thus, often unattributed, the Muslims kept medicine, astronomy, philosophy and other disciplines alive. Christians would later adapt them joyfully, but the Dark Ages aren't misnamed for the rest of Western Europe.
Menocal might have produced a book of sweeping vision, restoring the image of Muslim Spain as one of civilisation's most noteworthy achievements. Instead, she sinks into a swamp of romantic fervour, highlighting erotic poetry and grandiose architecture. The farmers and small traders who were taxed to support these elitist endeavours likely had a different view. That is, when they weren't in hiding from the nearly continuous wars waged among the Muslims or between the Islamic invaders from the south or the Christian ones from across the Pyrenees.
As she skips over the centuries, Menocal introduces the rising tide of Christian aggressive attitudes culminating in the Jewish/Muslim expulsion. The French monastics at Cluny had adopted the liberal view of philosophy espoused by their Iberian neighbours. Deeper in Europe, however, the Cistercians, ardent crusaders, urged expunging Christianity of any Arabic taint. Viewpoints hardened, as Menocal recounts, through exchanges of essays and books. Menocal doesn't investigate whether these expressions reached the general populace, but the Church hierarchy system ensured local parish priests acted as mouthpieces of the regional bishops. The events of 1492 verified who had the louder voice.
Although tentatively concluding with the background of Columbus' departure, Menocal cannot resist extending her recital to the early 17th Century. How can one write on Spain without folding the La Manchan epic into the story? Finding Arabic roots in Cervantes is neither new nor difficult, but Menocal provides a new twist. Menocal suggests Don Quixote's worldview is that of any thinker of the Muslim period. Identity of any aspect of the world is muddled by a spread of conflicting, if not hostile, attitudes. La Mancha thus becomes the last gasp of an integrated Spanish society that is considered insane by the rigid-minded world that succeeded it.
Given the span of time and involvement of numerous articulate historical figures, one turns to the "Other Readings" at the back with high expectation. Turn the pages carefully, otherwise you'll miss it. Instead of a bibliography rich in selection, there are a few translations by Menocal's lady friends and a few, little known scholars of the subject. If Menocal lacked the ambition, time or knowledge to produce a proper reading list, she might have cited one or two good ones. Instead, there's a paucity of further reading. Except for the few maps, which mostly duplicate each other, the illustrations follow the pattern. A pity. Such an immense topic standing on so feeble a base makes this book good reading, but uninformative. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
8 Superbly unclassifiable
"The Ornament of the World" is an artistic and intellectual history of Islamic Spain. It's also a treatise on how a multi-cultural, tolerant society can not only flourish, but also serve as the incubator for world-wide advancement in the Arts, Mathematics, Philosophy, and Architecture. Maria Rosa Menocal's book provides a resonant political history of the region. It can serve as one the most unique travel guides to Southern Spain in the catalog. And, for better or worse, it has the now obligatory Harold Bloom Introduction.
Preparatory chapters review the region's history in fairly traditional fashion. Beginning in the year 711, Islamic armies from Northern Africa began a steady conquest of Spain that eventually reached the Pyrenees. Although achieved primarily through military means, the conquest ushered in an era of remarkable open-mindedness (measured against the standards of the day) that lasted until Ferdinand & Isabella completed the Catholic Reconquista in 1492 and immediately embarked on their own perversely-reciprocal campaign of unicultural dominance.
The book's core sections then deal with the intervening years, a period that the author describes as "the chapter of Europe's culture when Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived side by side ... and nourished a complex culture of tolerance." She tells not a political story, but instead employs a series of biographical vignettes that focus on the intellectual and cultural achievers of the era: thinkers and explorers such as Paul Alvarus (a Cordoban Christian), Ibn Khaldun (a Tunisian Muslim traveler to al-Andalus), and Maimonides (a Jewish refugee from Cordoba to Egypt). These profiles are ingeniously integrated to provide substance to Menocal's argument that this commingling of achievements reverberated far beyond medieval Iberia in space and time. Although the author certainly is most absorbed in those achievements, she also documents the injustices and displacements that flowed primarily from the cataclysmic battles for dominance among Muslim sects.
A truly admirable and evocative feature of "Ornament" is Menocal's language. She manages to be clear-sighted and precise, while yet achieving a subtle lyricism that mirrors the most beautiful of the region's creations.
There are three well-rendered maps, a decent although far from comprehensive bibliography, and a postscript written just after and reflecting on 9/11. The index is serviceable.
I finished "Ornament of the World" shortly after the good fortune of a vacation in southern Spain. Anyone who reads this book will want to make such a trip. Read the book, rent a house in Frigiliana, and make leisurely excursions to Grenada and Cordoba. You'll regret the loss of the culture Menocal describes, but the book and a visit to its remnants will still make you feel better about the world.
9 A Revelation
Many of the reviewers seem not to be familiar with the history of Christian intolerance -- to which the author of this book contrasts the comparative tolerance of medieval Spain. Even before Constantine, Christian bishops were setting their mobs on other Christians who did not agree with them. After they achieved political power with Constantine, Christians set themselves to destroy all they could of pagan culture, including the works of the classical authors such as Aristotle and Plato. For 500 years, Christians made murder an instrument of policy to force people to accept baptism. In the 11th century, the popes called for the Crusades, causing more bloodbaths, not only of Jews and Muslims, but also Christians. In the 14th century, the storm troops of the Inquisition caused the deaths of thousands and ruined European commerce. The bloody battles between Protestant and Catholics took no quarter and devastated Europe, killing half the population. The Spaniards invading South American in a hundred years killed 150 million natives and expropriated their lands. The Catholic Church's support of slavery and execution of heretics lasted right up to the 20th Century. These atrocities were not incidental. They were approved by the highest authorities of the Church, including Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and almost every pope who had the power. Muhammad instructed Muslims in the Quran to not only respect but also to protect the "Peoples of the Book," Christians and Jews who shared an ancestor in Abraham and believed in the same God. For the most part, Muslims carried out this command. Muhammad also prescribed rules of war, often causing Muslims to be shocked with the barbarities and atrocities of Christian armies. Enlightened Muslims who arrived in Spain in the 8th century took this tolerance as far as it could go. Unlike the Christians, they had embraced their pagan roots and were open to science, philosophy, and the learning of the Greeks and Romans--cultures that Christians had done everything to destroy. What had been the province of half-Christianized Visigoths and Jews living in abysmal slavery not only became a center of learning but the scene of a bold political experiment. Predating Adams, Jefferson, and Madison by a thousand years, they developed a secular space for science, philosophy, and politics in which Christians, Jews, and Muslims worked shoulder to shoulder. The Jews especially thrived in this atmosphere of toleration. Several of them became renowned scholars and ministers high in the Muslim government. The Jews today look back on that experiment in Spain and call it their Golden Time. They consider their expulsion by their Catholic Majesties Isabel and Ferdinand in 1492 as a catastrophe equalled only by the destruction of the Temple in the Jewish Wars. The "Ornament of the World" is mainly an intellectual history. Menocal is interested in showing how the dour world of Visigoth Christianity was no match for the wide and expansive world of Islam. In a couple hundred years, the Muslims transformed Spain from a backwater province to the center of the civilized world, dazzling visitors with architecture, science, and learning. Menocal tells us about those scholars in Medieval Spain who worked to restore to Latin Europe not only the corpus of Aristotle and a thousand years of commentaries but also a framework for reconciling the demands of faith and reason. It was a breathtaking achievement. I found this a breathtaking book.
10 THE BOOK OF HELL
This is by far the worst book i have ever read. I was forced to read it before i went to spain and i cant explain the agony i went through to read this piece. She goes back and forth on all of these tangents and you dont know what she will talk about next. It's HORRIBLE! Do not read this book, you will regret it , unless u are an extemely boring person and this interests you...to all you people who gave this book 5 stars, shame.
11 Well-written but romanticized praise for a golden age
Menocal uses slices of history to convey images of medieval life in Spain's Andalucia, where Arabs ruled over a mixed society of Muslims, Christians and Jews. For centuries, these people of the book managed to live and work together in an atmosphere of relative tolerance. Menocal emphasizes the intellectual and artistic achievements of that era, particularly the translations of Greek and Roman texts from Arabic into Latin and other European languages. Most of her writing is seductively accessible, notably in the earlier chapters. An atmosphere of tragedy seeps in later as Muslim and Christian puritans with little Andalucian experience disrupt the culture of tolerance. Menocal shows sympathy for sophisticated Arabs and scholarly Jews, but is less favorably inclined toward Christians, who are more likely to be portrayed as intolerant. While not an authoritative history, the book is worth reading.
12 Politically Correct-the Reader or Menocal?
A reader's own sense of polital correctness will more likely influence one's response to this book than any parochialism offered by Menocal. The first chapter gives the uninitiated reader a capsule summary of the 700-odd year history of Arabized Spain. The chapters that follow are almost historical mood pieces that focus on a particular influential person or intellectual movement or historical incident that occurred within the greater time period. We find Charlemagne in Spain allied in battle with one Muslim territory against another. We find 400,000 volumes in ONE library in Toledo at a time when the complete works of Aristotle were lost to Western Europe (including the Irish monks). Here are the Normans invading Northern Spain and arabized Sicily, and soon after occupation culturally acclimatizing to a very different and more advanced civilization than they found in England. Now the great movement of scientific, medical, philosophical, and political science into Western Europe as Catholic bishops set up translaltion centers in Spain and supply an information-starved North with the intellectual tools that fire the engine of Western Civilization just as the works of ancient Greece and Persia fired the civilization of an arabized Mediterranian basin in the years following the Arab conquests. Oh-and there is a lot of killing and backstabbing and decadence and decline at the same time there is wonderful culture and architecture. Almost all of Spain was Christian by the time the Alhambra is built-and the Granada area remained arabized until 1492 because the Muslim rulers had Christian allies until then. Of interest, only the postscript to the book was written after 9/11. In that postscript, Menocal asks the reader to take the information from her book to come to individual decisions about it's relevance to the present time-hardly the advice of someone with a biased PC ax to grind. Menocal is an expert in her field who deeply loves her subject. That love suffuses this book with a bittersweet mixture of awe, mystery, sorrow, and patience. That mood stays with me months after completing the book.
13 A scholarly yet readable account of Iberian history
I read this book while traveling through Spain and Portugal for six weeks and was deeply moved by the sensitive tone which the author keeps throughout the text and the accuracy of her descriptions. This is a book which provides a balanced and apolitical account of history. She embraces the common humanity of all three ethnic groups that created a remarkable mosaic of cultural influences -- the vestiges of which are still found in Spain. Contemporary Middle Eastern politicians have much to learn from this book. Academics also should strive to capture the essence of creative historiagraphy in the same way that Maria Rosa Menocal has achieved here.
14 A good partial history, a bit scattered and anecdotal
This book will definitely help you distinguish your Ummayyadd's from your Abbassids from your Fatimids. And you may not know your Almohads from your Almoravids by the end of it, but you'll definitely be able to distinguish them from everyone else, and that it seems is the important thing. It is shocking that Menocal gets the birthplace of El Cid wrong when it is apparently such a well known fact, as another reviewer points out, but I've noticed that Historians often make errors in dynastic minutia. This book is really about the establishment of cultures, their relationships to each other, and the place of the individuals within them, and Menocal focuses particularly on the development of religion AND the development of language. Castilian (Spanish) and Hebrew were both able to develop radically and to revitalize with the influence of a multicultural environment and Arabic poetic forms. Many of the individuals that Menocal focuses on are poets as well as actors in the Andalusian political scene, and many are Jewish. The focus on Jewish individuals makes a great deal of sense given that they were allowed a political importance in the Muslim scheme of things and later subjugated, first by the fundamentalist Muslim Berber lines, and then diasporized by Ferdinand and Isabella. This is an idealistic History of Tolerance, but it also paints a vivid picture of the limits of and conflicts within that tolerance. It was also interesting to be reminded that the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, whose Alhambra is now a World Heritage site, was the Last of the Muslim states in an otherwise thorougly Christianized Spain.
15 Relevant History for Our Time
Maria Rosa Menocal presents what today would be a 'radical' idea: people of different religions coexisting and even tolerating their differences while creating a vibrant and dynamic society. Yet, in medieval Spain ('al-Andalus' as the exiled Umayyad dynasty coined it) this kind of society was created and managed to exist for almost 600 years. The book is part narrative, part analysis of what made al-Andalus the creative center that transmitted both Arab and ancient Greek culture throughout the Western European world. The originator was Abd al-Rahman, the last of the Umayyad Muslims from Syria, whose family had been wiped out by political and religious rivals. As a young man, he is exiled to the Iberian peninsula, and begins to transform it into the 'real' caliphate, filled with new ideas; perhaps accidentally, he also creates a society where Jews and Christians can rise to high posts in the caliphate and transform their own cultures. Menocal provides portraits of individuals of all backgrounds who build a sometimes 'ideal' society; she also narrates those who, like Petrus Alfonsi (a convert from Judaism to Christianity), take these ideas to the rest of Europe (Petrus became famous and revered in England for what was 'common' knowledge in al-Andalus, which illustrates how ignorant much of Europe was -- Petrus was only 'average' in his homeland). The book ends with a bitter -- and, in the context of the book, surprising -- betrayal of tolerance by Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain in 1492: despite dressing like 'Arabs' at their ascension to a 'reconquered' Christian Spain, within three months, they banned (and pressured conversion) to the Jews (some of whom worked with these monarchs in positions of authority), and pressure Muslims to convert or leave. Although remnants of the 'golden' age of al-Andalus survive in buildings like the Alhambra palace, the Inquisition wipes out much of what flourished during the supposedly 'dark' age of Europe. One of the most insightful books I've read in months.
16 A Unique Time and Place
Menocal has written a scholarly but accessible account of the extraordinary medieval Iberian culture of tolerance, and its collapse under the assault from fundamentalism and bigotry. She tells the story in a series of vignettes centered on prominent people such as Abd al Rahman, Maimonides, and others, but they are vehicles for the larger story of a unique culture. It is far from a complete account--gaps are left between the chapters, which the reader will need to fill in with further reading--but that's not such a bad thing.
17 Innacuracies
I found it disturbing that this book contained several historical innacuracies. In my opinion, if Ms. Menocal could not accurately document simple historical events or she is ignorant of the facts, she does a great disservice to the contents of this book. She does a greater disservice to those readers who have a new found interest in Spanish medieval history. Ms. Menocal makes reference to several authors who are experts in Spanish medieval history such as Bernard F. Reilly and Richard Fletcher. Ms. Menocal makes references to these authors, however, it seems that she must not have read their books.
A blaring example of an historical innacuracy is located on page 98, when Ms.Menocal states that the town of Medinaceli is "famous and is remembered today as the hometown of the half-legendary warrior called the Cid". Any person with the most rudimentary knowledge of Spanish medieval history knows that the Cid was born in Vivar, located in the province of Burgos, as has been thoroughly researched and established by Spanish historians Gonzalo Martinez Diez, Ramon Menendez Pidal and the aforementioned authors. As a matter of fact, the Poema de Mio Cid, written in the early XIII century, refers to the Cid as Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar a countless number of times. DUH! I am amazed how she could have put that in her book. I challenge any reader of this book, should they ever take a trip to Spain, to boldly state to any Spaniard that the Cid's hometown is Medinaceli. You will be summarily laughed at.
An additional innacuracy within the book was located on page 145. Ms. Menocal states that king Alfonso VI had two children from his Moorish concubine Zaida. While it is true she did bear him his only son, Sancho, Zaida did not bear him a daughter Teresa, future queen of Portugal and mother of the first king of Portugal, Afonso Enriquez. Teresa was the offspring of the union of Alfonso VI with another concubine, Jimena Munoz, daughter of the magnate of Bierzo. It is thought that Zaida converted to Christianity, changed her name to Isabel and married king Alfonso VI. Her marriage to Alfonso VI and conversion to Christianity thus legitimized Sancho's future ascension to the throne; however, Sancho died fighting the Moors in the battle of Ucles in 1108.
The rock solid foundation to any good book on history is the accurate documentation of historical facts. If this is lacking, it is in indication that the author, for whatever reason, did a poor job of researching the accurate history of the time period in question. What if anything does it say about the contents of the rest of the book? If a building is constructed on a shaky foundation the rest of the building is in danger of collapse. In my opinion, if an author cannot accurately document historical facts, is ignorant of the facts or is attempting to revise history, this can only damage the contents of a book no matter how noble the purpose of the author in addressing a subject matter. Unfortunately, Ms. Menocal is guilty of at least poor research, which despite her noble purpose in addressing a very important aspect of Spanish medieval history damages the subject matter in her book. You are left wondering what other historical events she got wrong in her book rendering her work a piece of fiction. In conclusion, I am left questioning an author's motivation/purpose in writing a historically innacurate book.
18 This learned beginner was well rewarded
This book gives a rudimentary yet enriching knowledge of the history and key players of Al-Andalus, the Moorish emirate (and later caliphate) that, far from being a backwater frontier of the Islamic world, became a vibrant contender with Damascus and Baghdad for the cultural center of this great empire.
New and fascinating historical figures, including the last Umayyad prince and refugee Abd al-Rahman, appear and are wonderfully brought to life, and better known figures like Dante, El Cid (Al Sayeed), Chaucer and Cervantes suddenly appear and take their place in the story. I found it a fascinating and rewarding read and there were portions I would call genuine page-turners. I was also reminded that Islam has always had its cosmopolitans as well as its backward and violent zealots and that these two 'branches' have often been in mortal conflict, as they are again in our time. In fact, as the story unfolds, we learn that it was not Christians north of the Pyrenees who initiated the eventual destruction of this 'ornament of the world' but fundamentalist Berber Muslims from North Africa who could not bear the tolerance and forward thinking of their Iberian co-religionists.
19 first rate readings of Andalusian culture
This is an excellent evocation of the suppleness and creativity of a Muslim-Jewish-Christian Arab-European culture that persisted for centuries and had an enormous impact on Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
This isn't a history but rather a series of historical and literary vignettes of Andalusian life. It is in many ways an urgently needed humanities primer that replaces the traditional Judeo-Christian view of Western Civ with a richer and more accurate Judeo-Christian-Muslim one. This is a book that can help you read Song of Roland, El Cid, the poems of Shmuel Ha Nagid and the works of Ibn Rushid afresh.
It's very well written, thoughtful and insightful, particularly about the intellectual heritage. I'm puzzled by reviewers who complain that it's not a detailed history. It's not supposed to be. And yes, there are repetitions and some overgeneralizations. That's why I knocked off a star. The book is not without its flaws. But potential buyers should ignore a couple of the most hostile readers whose interest in attacking any nuanced treatment of any Islamic polity prevents them from engaging this book in a critical, intelligent fashion.
ORNAMENT OF THE WORLD is exactly what a trade book should be. It's accessible to the general reader but still smart. It's erudite without being obscure. And it inspires you to read further.
20 Superb History
An outstanding history of Medieval Spain when Christians, Jews and Moors lived in peace, tolerance and mutual respect. Anyone who has visted or palnning to visit Andalusia MUST read this book. It will make sight seeing in Cordoba, Seville and Granada a much richer and fullfilling adventure.
21 Superb History
An outstanding history of Medieval Spain when Christians, Jews and Moors lived in peace, tolerance and mutual respect. Anyone who has visted or palnning to visit Andalusia MUST read this book. It will make sight seeing in Cordoba, Seville and Granada a much richer and fullfilling adventure.
22 Gushing and superficial...
The book is long on promise: to explain to us how in el-Andalus, the people of the three monotheistic religions lived together in peace. The promise is not kept. What we have instead are fragments of some of the `things' they did - translations, buildings, poetry - which all contain elements taken from the three cultures. Then `events' happen from the outside. Intolerant Berbers and Christians intrude into this paradise of multiculturalism, and destroy it - or was it the Black Death? Or was it a case of contingent behaviour by a few great men and their advisors?
Ms Menocal starts out on the wrong foot - by positing that the people of Al-Andalus created `a culture of tolerance'. I can suffer - or tolerate - a fool (more or less gladly) - but I am not about to engage him. Tolerance leads to uneasy separation, not intercourse and integration. The epitome of tolerance is the ghetto. Beyond the self-evident assertion that these peoples did live together in Al-Andalus Ms Menocal tells very little about how they managed. What laws and what customs made the end result possible? How did power flow through the formal and informal channels to achieve a stable social equilibrium? We learn that one vizier was a Jew. Was this a fluke, a shrewd policy to divide and rule by favouring harmless minorities (like the Janissars in the Ottoman Empire), or part of a policy of rotation among the best, or among religions? Who owned what; who did what; who married whom; and who lived where? We do not understand why the system works, or why it fails - as apparently it did in the 1066 anti-Jewish riots in Grenada.
Translation, of which Ms Menocal makes much, is placed centre stage. But translation is a trade, like making carpets. Who were the users of the translations, how did the ideas that became available through the translations shape the society and help it integrate? In short, how did the learned men and women of Al-Andalus engage each other, and what were the rules of engagement?
Whitman would have been a better quote than Fitzgerald in stating the obvious, namely that man can live with contradictions. But living with contradictions requires method, or we go mad. One method is to create open-ended hierarchical structures - as Bertrand Russell showed. Rules that apply within one system then do not apply to another. The human mind has created other than Euclidean geometries, each with a set of rules of its own. Just don't mix up the rules, or bring in extraneous elements like Godly revelations.
Science, poetry, and philosophy were such self-contained systems in which everyone in Al-Andalus did engage. The rules were those of logic and aesthetic, subject to discussion, challenge, and evolutionary convergence of opinion, rather than externally imposed dogma. Greek philosophy played here a central role. The Gods of the Greeks, numerous, jealous, fornicating, vindictive, cruel and often dumb, were in no shape to dictate an ethic for the humans. About at the same time as Buddha, the great philosophers of Greece created a `secular' ethic, an ethic without Gods. This was the level playing field in which Muslims, Christians and Jews of Al-Andalus could meet, and engage, only to return to their respective private worlds of religion for prayers at the end of the day.
Why was this immensely creative game abandoned in the end? Were there inherent factors? Did anyone take home the `secular' rules and defiled the house of prayer, triggering revulsion? The chapter on Judah Halevy hints that this might have been the case. Or did someone cheat and, rather than lose, imposed the rules that apply to the house of prayer to the playing field? Ideology is a way to arrest unwelcome change, as we know from the Counterreformation.
As for the external factors, my conjecture is - the needs of power. Al-Andalus had settled in to be the centre of the Muslim world, hence its claim on the Caliphate. Al-Andalus simply and starkly was. To power their armies of greedy conquest the upstarts from the South and North made recourse to ideology - religious ideology, awash with indisputable certainties. Conquest requires consolidation, and continued suppression of freedom through ideology. It is the tragedy of humankind that, in the battle between reason and passion, passion wins out at first.
Integration of cultures is possible, provided we can agree to keep our respective dogmas and our ideologies in check, confined to houses of prayer. This is more than mere tolerance - it is inner acceptance that, in a multi-dimensional world, no rule has universal validity. Integration of cultures is necessary, if we want to break through the stage of mere refinement to that of innovation. Just as in nature, where symbiosis is the basis of major evolutionary leaps that create new classes of beings, and evolutionary competition leads to declinations on a major theme. Al-Andalus is both vision and proof of what cultures can achieve through symbiosis. But how, Ms Menocal?
Anyone who can write: "...was sitting amid the golden horde of hard science and Aristotelian splendor beginning to pour out of Toledo." might profit from the services of a good editor. A `memory palace' is a mnemonic device developed in the Middle Ages to remember what you didn't have at hand - libraries, gardens and palaces are just the opposite. Boccaccio, who stood laughing at the inception of the Italian renaissance - one of the greatest achievements of mankind's capacity for synthesis - hardly saw the `world of contradictions' about to perish in the plague. Ms Senocal waxes lyrical when she should be analytic (see the chapter on Cervantes), defines terms time and again, and resorts all too often to superlatives or clichŽs, or gives platitudinous answers to rhetorical questions. And, finally, she has the disconcerting habit of jumping within the same paragraph (or sentence) from one subject, topic or region to another, so that time and again one has to stop and disentangle the skein.
23 Good Subject, Bad Writing
I lived in Andalucia for 3 years, finding the Moorish history and influence very interesting. Thus, I hoped to add to my meager knowledge of the period.
Professor Menocal, while a good historian, is a terrible writer. Her sentence and paragraph structure at best is confusing. She should have asked for editorial review from an English Comp teaching fellow.
I finished the book, partly because of my fascination with Iberia and this phase of its history. It also helped that I was on long intercontinental flights with no other reading material.
24 Interesting vignettes hampered by poorly articulated thesis
Not a history in the traditional sense, "The Ornament of the World" presents a number of biographical vignettes displaying the richness of literature, art, science, and philosophy in both al-Andalus and Christian Spain and how this intellectual renaissance resulted from the blending of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian heritages. The stories are valuable and fascinating because they rescue an important legacy from the oblivion of the ill-named "Dark Ages." Unfortunately, this rescue mission is hindered by an ill-conceived and even more poorly executed thesis.
One of the major problems with Menocal's work is that she never tells us what she means by "a culture of tolerance." It is an odd and ambiguous phrase containing two very loaded words. Does "culture" refer to artistic and intellectual life, or to the religious, political, and social climate, or to the entire civilization and its customs and mores? Does "tolerance" merely mean mutual influence (in literature and art) or, more broadly, social acceptance (in everyday life)? On the one hand, the phrase "culture of tolerance" could signify the artistic and intellectual life created by the mixture of three religious heritages. On the other hand, it could mean a climate of economic acceptance and social open-mindedness. Or it could mean something in between: that the fusion of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions resulted from (or perhaps resulted in) a more "tolerant" society.
That the Iberian peninsula experienced an unprecedented tri-cultural fusion during the medieval period is nearly incontrovertible. Al-Andalus (as well as parts of Christian Spain) enjoyed a unique flowering of philosophical, architectural, and literary pursuits underscored by multilingual translation activities. Whether that indicates "tolerance" is another matter. Menocal is a professor of literature and language; as a result, her book focuses on literary and artistic achievements, but she ignores social, urban, economic, religious, and comparative history to the peril of her thesis. In the epilogue, Menocal herself acknowledges that "even when political and ideological circumstances are characterized by strife, artistic and intellectual life prospers" (Germany in the 1920s comes to mind). The simple fact that the Christian kings spoke Arabic and read Muslim translations and adapted Moorish architectural motifs does not mean they were "tolerant." When confronted with evidence that certain poets and intellectuals were in fact not tolerated (i.e., they were exiled or executed), she still tries to shoehorn their achievements into her nebulous thesis of "tolerance."
A case could be made that, relatively speaking, medieval Spain did boast a culture or even climate of tolerance, but Menocal's survey is not broad enough to prove this thesis. She acknowledges in her post -September 11 postscript that "the forces of intolerance were always present and ultimately triumphed" in medieval Spain. Nevertheless, her book highlights the cultural achievements of a few literate, upper-class aesthetes and glosses over pogroms, exiles, persecutions, daily harassment, poll taxes, and slavery--not to mention the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim ghettoes. The result is a worthwhile glimpse of a nearly forgotten intellectual tradition but a lopsided view of medieval Spanish "culture."
Finally, Menocal's presentation is hardly improved by her prose style. She persistently and unnecessarily uses the passive voice, she strings together barely related modifiers and clauses to create unreadable run-on sentences, she has a tic of using the word "But" to begin hundreds (no exaggeration) of her sentences, and she is fond of using repeatedly the same cliches and anachronisms ("the center did not hold," "bestseller," "realpolitik") and creating new ones ("memory palaces"). These faults hamper the telling of some otherwise very interesting stories.
25 Reviewers wrong
A very good book, well researched and interesting.
Historically very accurate although some of the reviewers here, such as Raymond Toal seem to want to excuse the actions that destroyed this tolerant society and would like to paint the extremist so called "Catholic" King in a positive light. Dismissing massacres and forcible conversions as "Christian reaction" is quite shameful
The forcible conversions and massacres cannot be excused.
26 different planets, same world
After reading Paul Fregosi's important Crusade Against Science, and Simon Willougby's Bloody Inquistion, I felt nonetheless the need to find some additional perspective in the elusive chase after the Christian enigma. This work appeared like an apparition and foots the dialectical bill. Telling the tale of the Christian Spaniards almost peaceful coexistence with Islam during the flowering of a great Islamic culture, this work shows the complexity of the Christian phenomenon, and is a reminder that we might judge Christianity not so much by modern standards, though we must, as by the standards of social chaos to which it was sometimes able, as here, to contribute some stability, advancement, and culture. Indeed, one would never anticipate from this book the bloody wave of genocide and slavery that the descendents of these peaceful Christians would one day bring to the Carribean and South America. Especially when contrasted with this age of tolerance.
27 Timely and Revelatory
I found The Ornament of the World to be both revelatory and timely reading with many cautionary analogies to our own time.
It gives an overview of civilization on the Iberian peninsula in the 8th-15th century with primary emphasis on the cultural achievements of its Muslim, Jewish, and Christian inhabitants. Maria Rosa Menocal describes the rise, decline and disappearance of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society where competing religious beliefs seemed to nurture rather than inhibit learning and the arts. Harold Bloom, certainly no avatar of modern multi-culturalism, wrote the introduction.
Menocal's tone is elgaic in describing the early (8th-10th century) period of Muslim control when al-Andalus and its capital, Cordoba, flourished. One is reminded of Camelot's "one brief shining moment". It even had its Arthur in Abd al Rahman, a half-Berber grandson of the last Umayyad Caliph of Damascus, who made a five-year trek across North Africa to Iberia after the Abbasids massacred the rest of his clan. Over the next thirty years he:
1. United the peninsula into a state that endured for 200 years and in which Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived side by side in "a complex culture of tolerance".
2. Improved agriculture by introducing new crops and irrigation from the middle east.
3. Built architectural masterpieces like the great mosque of Cordoba.
4. Fought Charlemagne to a standstill.
5. Wrote wistful poetry about his former homeland.
Under Abd al-Rahman and his descendants al-Andalus achieved great material and intellectual wealth. The 10th century Caliph's library at Cordoba may had had as many as 400,000 volumes at a time when no library in the rest of Europe had more than 500. It included troves of pre-Muslim Arabic poetry and Arabic translations of Greek literature, philosophy and science unknown in Christian Europe.
The Umayyads were overthrown by an army of north African Berbers who sacked Cordoba, but in time adapted to the unique culture of al-Andalus. In the 11th-12th centuries, city states (taifas) ruled by Muslims in the south and by Christians in the north replaced the centralized government of the Umayyads. Elements of the "complex culture" persisted. Granada's Muslim ruler chose a Jewish poet to command his army as Vizier. Rodrigo Diaz, the El Cid of the troubadours, fought for the Muslim king of Seville as well as for the Christian kigs of Castile. Toledo became the most important center for translating the riches of the Arabic libraries into Latin and the venacular for the rest of Europe.
Menocal says that the last shards of Andalusian religious tolerance were lost in the clash of increasingly rigid Muslim and Christian zealotry. Its origins were extrinsic to the culture that had evolved on the Iberian peninsula. The Almohads, Islamic fundamentalists arrived from North Africa and the Inquisition came over the Pyrenees from Rome.
The criticism of other Amazon reviewers strikes me as small-minded. Ornament of the World was not written for specialists in Medieval Spanish history, but, like the books of Stephen Ambrose, for general readers of history. Ms Menocal breaks new ground in tracing threads of intellectual influence from pre-Muslim Arabia, Palestine and Greece that passed through medieval Spain and into the works of writers like Chaucer, Dante, Bocaccio, Bacon, Halevi, Abelard and Cervantes. She is occasionally repetitious, I think, out of a desire to emphasize her points. Other reviewers accuse Menocal of understating the degree of repression and discrimination in the Muslim era. My question for them is: where else in crusader Europe did minority religions fare better? And, for that matter, are the 21st century societies in Northern Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Israel or Kashmir any more tolerant than that of al-Andalus?
28 ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
If you have trouble with Insomnia, this is a good remedy. Boring, boring and boring. If you must read this, stop after the flyleaf. Most of it is repetitive and uninteresting.
29 An invented interfaith utopia
Ms. Menocal's idyllic view of Muslim Spain misrepresents the dhimmis (i.e., non-Muslim vanquished peoples) existence. She maintains, "The new Islamic polity not only allowed Jews and Christians to survive, but following Quranic mandate, by and large protected them..". The laws of dhimmitude, as opposed to flimsy notions of "tolerance" and "protection" determined the actual sociopolitical, and economic status of Christians and Jews conquered by jihad wars. Unfortunately, the so-called "tolerance" and "protection" she describes was afforded only upon submission to Islamic domination by a "Pact" - or Dhimma - which imposed degrading and discriminatory regulations. The main principles of dhimmitude were (and continue to be) : (i) the inequality of rights in all domains between Muslims and dhimmis; (ii) the social and economic discrimination against the dhimmis; (iii) the humiliation and vulnerability of the dhimmis. Moreover, Ms. Menocal seems to be unaware of the dire consequences for infidel dhimmis who in fact rebelled against the repressive Dhimma: slaughter of the rebels, and enslavement of their women and children.
In reality, Muslim Spain was a country of constant jihad ruled under Maliki jurisdiction, which offered one of the most severe, repressive interpretations of Islamic law. Muslim Spain was populated by tens of thousands of Christian slaves, and humiliated and oppressed Christian dhimmis, in addition to a small minority of privileged Christian notables. The muwallads (neo-converts to Islam) were in nearly perpetual revolt against the Arab immigrants who had claimed large estates for themselves, farmed by Christian serfs or slaves. Expropriations and fiscal extortions ignited the flames of continual rebellion by both muwallads and mozarabs (Christian dhimmis) throughout the Iberian peninsula. Leaders of these rebellions were crucified, and their insurgent followers were put to the sword. These bloody conflicts, which occurred throughout the Hispano-Umayyad emirate until the tenth century, fueled endemic religious hatred. An 828 letter from Louis the Pious to the Christians of Merida summarized their plight under Abd al-Rahman II, and during the preceding reign: confiscation of their property, unfair increase of their exacted tribute, removal of their freedom (probably meaning slavery), and oppression by excessive taxes. The leader of the muwallad rebellion in southern Andalusia (near Ronda), Ibn Hafsun (d. 918), roused the peasants against the Muslim government which he accused of confiscating their property, and subjecting them to heavy tribute, and against the Arabs who were crushing them with humiliations, while treating them as slaves. In Grenada, the Jewish viziers Samuel Ibn Naghrela, and his son Joseph, who protected a once flourishing Jewish community, were both assassinated between 1056 to 1066, followed by the annihilation of the Jewish population by the local Muslim community (at least three thousand Jews perished in an uprising surrounding the 1066 assasination, alone). Finally, although Maimonides is frequently referred to by Menocal as a paragon of Jewish achievement facilitated by the enlightened rule of Muslim Spain, his own words debunk Menocal's utopian view of Islamic treatment of Jews: "..the Arabs have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us•À?Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they.."
For those not enamored of utopianism, a more accurate assessment of interfaith relationships in Muslim Spain can be found in Richard Fletcher's very engaging "Moorish Spain". Mr. Fletcher offers these unromantic, but unassailable observations: "The simple and verifiable historical truth is that Moorish Spain was more often a land of turmoil than it was of tranquility•À?But in the cultural conditions that prevail in the west today the past has to be marketed, and to be successfully marketed it has to be attractively packaged. Medieval Spain in a state of nature lacks wide appeal. Self-indulgent fantasies of glamour..do wonders for sharpening up its image.".
Following the cataclysmic events of September 11, 2001 there has been a decided tendency to recall nebulous "Golden Ages" of idyllic multireligious societies, invented so effectively (as in "The Ornament of the World", for example) that today one feels defenseless and disoriented, when brought face-to-face with the conflicts from another age, deliberately erased from history. We must forego this whitewashing and opt instead for a shared, candid reflection on the painful living legacy of dhimmitude to unite us in a joint effort for peace and mutual respect.
30 Good travel guide, misleading historical context
Menocal gives the impression that a great and tolerant culture existed in Spain from the time of the moorish conquest in the seventh century until the expulsion of the Jews by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492.Actually, this grand epoch lasted from about 900 to 1150.It was destroyed by waves of Islamic Fundamentalism and the Christian reaction thereto,culminating in the fall of Granada to Christian forces in 1492 and the expulsion of the Jews in the same year.Understandably,with the Mediterranian sea being a muslim lake and large Muslin armies located just across the straits of gibraltar,the Christians feared a counteract and wanted to guard against possible 5th columns.This was the rational behind the expulsion of the Jews and the outlawing of Islam.
Interestingly,at the time of the expulsion, there were approximately 400,000 Jews in Spain. Approximately 100,000 had already converted to Christianity.Of the remaining, only about 40,000 actually left.Most went all the way to neighboring Portugal.A large number went to the Papal states in southern Italy and some to the Ottoman lands in the Balkans where they acted as Ottoman functionaries, extorting wealth from the sultans Christian subjects.
31 Excellent Start For Beginners
Some reviewers understandably felt this book was too light based on their own prior exposure to this period. For people with a strong background in this era, this will be more of an adjunct-history book than anything new or in depth. For others, such as myself, who have a strong history background in other areas but not in this particular time or place, it is a lovely, lyrical and enchanting tapestry of intersecting faiths, arts, literature, languages and personalities that shaped not only Andalusian Spain but much of the early Renaissance of western Europe. I found it neither chaotic nor badly written--quite the contrary. This may be a matter of style preference: if you are the kind of reader who enjoyed PBS's "Connections" you will love this book. I found it easy to read and most importantly, I learned a lot.
Why not 5 stars? I would've have wished for a time line, an index of key characters with their dates of birth and death, and more maps since the place, period and persons are new to me. Maybe the publisher will consider that for the next edition.
32 This 'Ornament' More Romantic Than True; Better Alternatives
My wife and I have a home in Andalusia. We also are enthusiastic but 'minor' league students of Moorish & Jewish history in Spain. So I bought this book as a easy-to-please, generalist and wanna-be fan.
Unfortunately, this book comes up light on two levels. It provides few new relevations about the role of Moors and Jews in Medieval Spain. It also lacks good story telling on the major figures and thought leaders of this 700-year period. I found Menocal's analysis sharp and able, but sometimes overdone. And like too many academics, Menocal is neither a good storyteller nor writer. In summary, the lack of new insights and sharp writing spoils the book for me.
More broadly, the fundamental premise of the book: That Arabs, Jews and Christians lived peacefully under Moorish rule, is more romantic than true. Except for a very brief period of 50 or so years around 900 AD, there was more persecution than tolerance over the 700 year Moorish period. Ask the Jews of Granada that were slaughered in 1066, or the thousands of Christians who were deported by the Almoravid dynasty to Morocco as slaves in 1126. During the same period, it is well known the Berbers of Northern Africa would frequently pillage Spain, robbing Andalusian Arabs and Christians alike. Later, of course, a united Christian Spain would deport the heavily taxed and persecuted Moors in 1492; some authorities report Muslims were forced to leave their children behind as slaves for the Christian Monarchs to work in various trades.
I believe the book's only bright light is an interesting and original tale about how the enlightened Arabs and Jews of the period translated and preserved some of the world's best literature and science thought lost after the fall of Rome and Greece. The works of Aristotle, for example, were translated from Greek to Arab, then several hundred years later by the Christian clergy from Arab to Latin and other romance languages.
An alternative book about Islamic and Jewish influences in Andalusia is Richard Fletcher's "Moorish Spain." Fletcher is considered by some authorities to be the Bernard Lewis of Islamic Spain and his well-written 1990 book remains the one of best efforts covering that period. Another well-written book, but more detailed effort, is L.P. Harvey's "Islamic Spain 1250-1500." A third book, a superior piece of modern travel writing, rich in Moorish and Jewish history, is Gees Nooteboom's "Roads to Santiago."
All three of books are widely available, offer an unvarnished overview of Moorish & Sefardic Spain, and are worth consideration for people seeking a non-academic overview of this classic period.
Good luck and good reading!
33 Another professor publishes their lectures
As a enthusiast and traveler of Spain for over 20 years, I looked forward to some unique and revealing insight in this publication. Instead what I received was more a kin to the compilation of the lectures I might get by attending Dr. Menocal's classes.
The information is relatively well known and the presentation and chronology is caotic. Dr. Menocal recounts the history and personalities of the Iberian pennisula but to no purpose other than to say that it shows that different cultures tolerated each other, which is historically obvious.
I rated it 2 stars only because it would serve as a good text book for a novice course on Spanish History.
34 Optimistic History
I have been fortunate enough to travel to Spain three times now. Two of my trips have taken me through the southern parts of the country--Andalusia (al-Andalus) and its environs--that make up the setting for much of this story. It is a beautiful part of the world and Menocal has provided us with a wonderful history of the area during the time of its greatest glory: the Middle Ages. From 711 until 1492, the Iberian Peninsula was the home of three different cultures--Jewish, Christian and Muslim--that were often able to co-exist in relative peace. While doing so, they were each able to contribute to a cosmopolitan and melded culture that for a long stretch was the most advanced culture in Western civilization, producing things that remain unique to this day.
This "culture of tolerance" as Menocal calls it was perhaps not as tolerant as she likes to make out and, of course, it ultimately implodes as Christians and Muslims fight for possession of the country. Still, much of the literature, science and philosophy produced of that time remains influential and many of the beautiful places remain to be see by visitors to the area. Anyone traveling to the country would be amiss if he or she did not take a look at this book and get a feel for the achievement of medieval Spain.
Understand that this book is a completely optimistic account of the period and ignores most of the tragedies of the time. Still, in our time of insecurity, it is nice to read something positive. It is beautiful to see what can be achieved when three powerful cultures work together instead of try to destroy each other.
35 Menocal deserves a Pulitzer
Occasionally an author/philosopher appears who is able to transcend contemporary groupthink and present a logical, rational, orderly, new vision of history. Alvin Tofler, whose analogy of the three waves of civilization presented an ordered view of human progress outside the usual names/dates/nation pedagogy, comes immediately to mind. Robin McNeil, in the Story of English, likewise showed how the democraticization of language, and the free "immigration" of words from other languages, made English the natural choice to become the international language. Maria Rosa Menocal presents a similar fresh approach to Western / Mediterranean / North African history by forcefully presenting Arabic as the primary language of cultural preservation and progress during the 7th through 13th centuries. While Hebrew and Latin were important clerical languages, Arabic was both clerical and the language of poetry and prose. Many of the scholars translating original Greek books were Jews - privileged members of Muslim courts - who were fluent in Arabic, the predominant Mediterranean language of commerce of the era. I never knew that. In my three years of studying Latin, I believed that Latin was the language of the middle ages, carefully preserved by hermetic monks laboriously copying parchment manuscripts. Menocal reveals the startling fact -to me,at least- that the califal library in Islamic Cordoba alone held 4000 books -the librarian's catalog held information on some 600,000 volumes - while the largest library in Christian Europe at the time was some 400 books!
I saw the book review in the Wall Street Journal and took the book on a just-finished trip to Spain. No one I talked to had any knowledge of the magnificent contriburtions of the Muslim and Jewish cultures beyond the architectural remnants. In fact, in Mallorca, the festival of the defeat of the Muslim pirates was the big event of the month. My Spanish friend, who tends to always apologize for her country, had no idea of the preeminence of Andalusian culture. Or that, as Menocal shows, in Toledo, in the mid thirteenth century, the first modern vernacular language, Castlian, appeared to supplant Latin as the language of learning in Christian Spain. Modern Spanish, long derided as the "easy choice" in high school, was actually the language of scholars.
Having personally met several Holocaust survivors, with real tatoos, I was overwhelmed by the last chapter of this book. My thanks to Maria Rosa Menocal for masking history come alive. Those who forget the lessons of history.....
36 Same planet, different worlds
After reading Paul Fregosi's important Jihad I felt nonetheless the need to find some additional perspective in the elusive chase after the Islamic enigma. This work appeared like an apparition and foots the dialectical bill. Telling the tale of the last successor of the Ommayeds traveling to Andalusia in the coming of the Abassids, there to initiate a period of the flowering of a great Islamic culture, this work shows the complexity of the Islamic phenomenon, and is a reminder that we might judge Islam not so much by modern standards, though we must, as by the standards of social chaos to which it was sometimes able, as here, to bring some stability, advancement, and culture. And an age of poets. The author recounts the story of the impact of Arabic and its poetic vivacity on the newly forming Romance languages in the passing away of Latin. Somewhere, just here, the troubadours emerge, and we have the lore of Provencal poetry,and the signature of the invisible stream of cultural diffusion at the deep core of European civilization. Fascinating tale, with a curious hint that we fail to see the later Inquisition as it regresses to uproot the Arabized Christians produced by this age of tolerance.
