A Short History of Spain- Part 4: The Caliphate that Saved the World
The world before 1492....
As we move through history, we get closer and closer to the year that would change Spain forever: 1492. It was in this year that the final Muslim state on the Peninsula, Granada, would fall to the armies of the Catholic Monarchs Fernando and Isabela. It was in this year that Christopher Columbus would kneel on the beach in what is now one of the Bahamian islands claiming a new world for those same Catholic Kings. It was that same year in which unconverted Jews were expelled from the Peninsula hastening an intellectual decline that would be paradoxical to the rise in Spain’s imperial fortunes. It was 1492 that saw the publication of the first book of Castilian grammar, the linguistic battering ram that would be used to convert new worlds to the Christian faith. All of these things happened as the reconquest of Spain was made complete, and it is for this reason that we tend to lavish all of our attention on this period of time. (The book to read is 1492: The Year the World Began.) The myths and truths that emerged from Spain’s Christian reconquest are felt today in politics, culture, and language.
None of this drama would have occurred however, had the Muslims not conquered the Peninsula in the first place. Furthermore, long before the heady days of the Catholic Kings, Muslim Spain enjoyed the status of an international nexus of intellectual excellence; a status that Spain would never again enjoy. This is the story that I want to briefly tell today; the story that is lost to the excitement of 1492. And it’s the story of how (just maybe) Spain saved the world.
Al-Andalus under the Caliphate
The story begins with a blitzkrieg, a remarkable 110-year expansion that began in Mecca with a single remarkable prophet in 622 CE and ended in France in 732 at the Battle of Tours. The Umayyad Caliphate took much of what belonged to the Byzantine Empire, all the way to modern Morocco, crossed the straights of Gibraltar into modern day Spain in 711, subdued the Visigoths, crossed the Pyrenees, and might have conquered all of Europe had it not been for Charles Martel. It was quite the land grab. After retreating to Spain, the Muslim chieftains established their rule in the portion of the Peninsula known as Al-Andalus. While its cultural heart rested in the southern part of Spain, today known as Andalucía, it occupied 80% of the Peninsula, with the only exception being the mountains of the north. (We’ll give them a pass on that since, as we remember from a previous post, Augustus himself was not able to make progress there.)
One of the many fountains of Arabic (Moorish) origins on the streets of Cordoba
What catapulted Spain into the center of the world however was another event. As opposed to early and medieval Christianity which subjugated knowledge and reason as impediments to faith, Islamic traditions, driven by the Quran itself, placed a high value on knowledge and intellect. Muslims valued intellectual curiosity and actively patronized science, taking pride in their libraries and centers of learning. As classical wisdom was slowly lost in the West, Islamic scholars were busy translating Aristotle, Archimedes, Galen and other great thinkers into Arabic. In medicine, astronomy and mathematics, the Arabs made great strides as medieval Europe declined into poverty and ignorance. Much of this early progress took place in Baghdad. However, in the year 750 CE, a revolt took place that ended the great Umayyad Caliphate. The only surviving prince of the Umayyads, Abd al-Raḥmān fled Damascus and found refuge in Spain, where he would establish the new Umayyad Caliphate.
The Interior of Cordoba's beautiful Masque-Cathedral
Abd al-Raḥmān’s Spain, often referred to as the Caliphate of Cordoba, was one of remarkable accommodation. With limited exceptions, both Christians and Jews were free to practice their faiths. Religious tolerance and the value placed upon learning, brought scholars of all faiths to Al-Andalus, and Cordoba eventually eclipsed Baghdad as the world’s foremost center of science and philosophy. (The book to read is The Ornament of the World.) Arabic became the vernacular in much of Spain, and today’s peninsular Latin-based romance languages such as Castilian, Catalan, and Portuguese are permeated with Arabisms. From meatball (albondiga), to chess (Ajedrez), and Algebra, Spain’s Arab past is brought to life daily in its language. The Cordoba Caliphate would eventually splinter into independent Muslim principalities known as taifas. Nevertheless, the spirit of accommodation and tolerance continued to be present in many parts of the Peninsula.
In 1035, Alfonso VI and his Christian forces captured the Muslim city of Toledo, another great center of Islamic learning on the Peninsula. Alfonso was the right conqueror at the right time. Rather than dismantling the intellectual infrastructure, he encouraged collaboration with the resident Jewish and Islamic scholars. (Keep in mind, as I will discuss further in my next post, that the Christian re-conquest, while religious in legend, was mainly political in practice.) This window of peaceful coexistence allowed scholars from the Latinized north of Spain to gain access to the libraries of the Arabized south. For the first time in almost a millennium, classical knowledge would again be made accessible to at least the literate minority (the clergy) in Western Europe. The early Renaissance and the later more accelerated transition away from medieval ignorance was dependent on these translations, with the Arabs offering a bridge to the West’s heritage. It is in this preservation of ancient knowledge that Islam, and specifically the Islamic intellectual community in Spain, facilitated the development of the world we now live in.
One of the Alhambra's many beautiful green spaces
As Christian power was consolidated, and religious dogma became politically expedient, Spain itself would be gutted intellectually, but that’s a story we will get to in the next post. The Islamic past is not present today through language alone. It’s in the palaces and the masques. It’s in the details of the windows and the doorways, in the pools of the Alhambra, and the iconic Giralda tower in Sevilla. That Arabs (or Moors as they are referred to today) had an infatuation with water is not surprising. Their green spaces, and hydraulic engineering can still be experienced in many Spanish cities. My two favorite Islamic places in Spain are the Masque-Cathedral in Cordoba and the Alhambra in Granada where the US Minister to Spain, Washington Irving, penned his famous Tales. For a remarkable first-hand experience, visitors today can stay on the grounds of the Alhambra itself in the Parador de Granada. It’s a quiet place where you can enjoy the sound of running water and appreciate the echoes of another Spain.
