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How Spain Appropriated and Transformed Its Medieval History The Past and Present of Convivencia: How Spain Appropriated and Transformed its Medieval History Zachary Brandon Strauss A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Honors International and Global Studies Program Middlebury College Middlebury, Vermont 05753 January 29, 2015 Approved by: ___________________________________ Ph.D., Thesis Adviser 1 HONOR CODE PLEDGE I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this assignment. Zachary Brandon Strauss The Middlebury College Undergraduate Honor Code was written for students, by students, in 1965. As noted in the Preamble to its constitution, “The students of Middlebury College believe that individual undergraduates must assume responsibility for their own integrity on all assigned academic work. This constitution has been written and implemented by students in a community of individuals that values academic integrity as a way of life. The Middlebury student body, then, declares its commitment to an honor system that fosters moral growth and to a code that will not tolerate academic dishonesty in the College community.” 2 Table of Contents Introduction 5 Chapter One: Historiography 13 Chapter Two: The Interreligious Culture of Convivencia 21 Chapter Three: Inquisition, Expulsion, and Diaspora 59 Chapter Four: The Romanticization of a Forgotten Past 67 Chapter Five: The Contemporary Relevance of Medieval History 77 Conclusion 85 Personal Epilogue 89 Acknowledgements 95 Bibliography 97 Appendices 101 3 4 Introduction At the beginning of the tenth century, Cordoba, the capital of the caliphate of al-Andalus, was an astonishing place. Neither medieval nor later historians could catalogue the wonders of the urban locale. The Andalusian caliphs garnered unimaginable wealth, and they utilized their riches to build and ornament their city.1 Certain historians suggest that Cordoba, a modern and innovative metropolis for its era, was home to approximately nine hundred baths, thousands of shops, hundreds of mosques, and aqueducts that provided running water, as well as paved, well- lit streets.2 Given the large Jewish and Christian communities that inhabited the religiously tolerant city, many synagogues and churches dotted the cityscape as well. Cordoba was far more advanced than the Christian kingdoms of northern Iberia, as they had not progressed materially or culturally beyond where they began in the eighth century. Tenth-century nun Hroswitha served as a diplomat within the Ottonian court in Germany, and based upon her conversations with caliph Abd al-Rahman’s emissaries, she scripted a glowing rendition of the Andalusian city, its culture, and its people. In 955 she wrote, “the brilliant ornament of the world shone in the west, a noble city newly known for the military prowess that its Hispanic colonizers had brought, Cordoba was its name and it was wealthy and famous and known for its pleasure and resplendent in all things…” While Hroswtiha provides a positive review of the Andalusian capital, it must be understood that she never physically visited Cordoba and her laudatory remarks were in reaction 1 María Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2002) 32-33. 2 Carmen Pereira-Muro, Culturas de España (Boston: Heinle Cengage Learning, 2003) 48-50. Andalusian cities were very modern in comparison to those of European Christendom. As opposed to destroying the preexisting Roman infrastructure they found in Iberia, the triumphant Muslims claimed the imperial roads and aqueducts as their own. 5 to mere hearsay. Ultimately, it was Andalusia’s vast intellectual and academic capital, inseparable from its material wealth, which made it the medieval “ornament of the world.”3 There was no better example of al-Andalus’s intellectual extravagance than the capital’s central library. Cordoba’s main library was only one of seventy that served the city’s population. In the mid-tenth century, the building housed some 4000 volumes of written works at a time when the largest library in European Christendom boasted merely 400 manuscripts. A team of calligraphers was maintained in Cordoba for the rapid multiplication of new acquisitions to the library, and copies were sold in the capital’s renowned book market.4 Many of the works available may have only appealed to Muslims or Arabophiles, as manuscripts on Islamic religion and Arabic language played a dominant role in Cordoba’s library. However, thanks to the Andalusian connection with Abbasid Baghdad, a city that made Arabic translation of Greek writings a prized project, the caliphate’s many libraries accumulated Greco-Roman works once lost to the Latin West. These libraries served as monuments to an Iberian culture that treasured the world and its intellectual wonders, and as result of Andalusian admiration for books and knowledge, many forgotten canonical classical works were reintroduced to the European literary tradition. Wielding both material and intellectual power as well as supporting a religiously diverse community of innovators, the Iberian Umayyads were unembarrassed to claim their rightful place as the center of the world.5 Islam and the Quran explicitly recognize Christians and Jews as the “Peoples of the Book.” While Muslims treated pagans poorly and forcibly converted them to Islam as they expanded their empire, they granted the Jews and Christians of al-Andalus special socio- 3 Menocal, Ornament of the World, 32-35. Pereira-Muro 49-50. 4 Peter Cole ed., The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain 950-1492 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007) 3. 5 Menocal, Ornament of the World, 32-35. Pereira-Muro 50. 6 religious status.6 Their religious rights were protected under a Dhimma, a covenant between the ruling Muslim population and other “book communities” living under Islamic rule. The dhimmi, as Jews and Christians were denoted, were allowed to practice their religion freely so long as they paid a special tax known as the jizya to their Muslim authorities.7 However, Jews and Christians also had to abide by a series of restrictive regulations if they wished to maintain their rights: they were prohibited from proselytizing to Muslims, building new places of worship, displaying crosses, or ringing bells.8 In reality, the Umayyads, whose culture and aesthetics served as the foundation for al-Andalusian society, were extraordinarily liberal in their reading of the Dhimma. In general, the Umayyads’ inclusive social policies and open-minded mentality created a society in which the “book communities” could and did thrive.9 Once treated as slaves by their Visigoth rulers, the Iberian Jews rose to prominence in Andalusian society as result of their newfound religious freedom.10 In contrast, the socio- political status of Spanish Christians declined. As members of the former dominant faith, they had been demoted to a majority governed by a foreign minority, one whose influence continued to wane as large numbers of Christians converted to Islam.11 However, Muslim hegemony did grant political and juridical autonomy to the Christians of al-Andalus, and Islamic governance provided them a separate civic authority as well a judicial system in which only Christians held power. While both Arabized Christians and Jews were subordinate to their Muslim counterparts, 6 Menocal, Ornament of the World, 72. 7 Abigail Krasner Balbale, D. Jerrilyn Dodds, and María Rosa Menocal, The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008) 17. 8 Menocal, Ornament of the World, 73. 9 Menocal, Ornament of the World, 73. 10 Cole 4. Unlike that of the Iberian Christians, the percentage of Andalusian Jews who converted to Islam during the first several centuries of Muslim rule was relatively low. 11 Menocal, Ornament of the World, 74. 7 enjoyable living and worship conditions allowed for assimilation to reign over rebellion.12 Shortly after the Muslim invasion of Iberia (711), Christians and Jews became socially accepted Arabic speakers, successfully assimilating into the culture of al-Andalus and actively participating in its economy.13 Throughout the first century of Umayyad rule (756-856), al-Andalus witnessed a staggering expansion in its Muslim population, stemming from both North African immigration and Christian conversion to Islam. Converting by the hundreds, Christians turned away from their original religion and towards the Muslim faith, enticed by its poetic language, culture, and intellectual drive. Intermarriage was the source of great loss for the Andalusian Christian community. While the children of mixed Christian and Muslim marriages may have spoken Iberian Romance as their mother tongue, they were undoubtedly raised as Muslims.14 In the mid- ninth century, Cordoba native and Christian cleric Paul Alvarus lamented that Spanish Christians had “forgotten their own language,” and favored Arabic over Latin as their primary means of communication.15 Commenting on the Arabization of Latin Christianity in al-Andalus, he claimed “for every one who can write a letter in Latin to a friend, there are thousands who can express themselves in Arabic with elegance.”16 The majority of Andalusian Christians, more commonly known as Mozarabs, did not perceive their cultural Arabization or use of Arabic as a betrayal of their faith. Initially a derogatory term, Mozarab became the fixed and socially acceptable denotation for any Christian living in an Islamic Andalusian polity. These Arabized 12 Balbale, et al.,
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