Al-Andalus, Sepharad and Medieval Iberia

296 Pages·2011·17.8 MB·English

Al-Andalus, Sepharad and Medieval Iberia

Al-Andalus, Sepharad and
Medieval Iberia
Cultural Contact and Diff usion
Ivy A. Corfi s
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Madison, WI, USA
Leiden • Boston
2009
Th is book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Corfi s, Ivy A.
Al-Andalus, Sepharad, and medieval Iberia : cultural contact and diff usion / Ivy Corfi s.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-17919-6 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Acculturation—Spain—Andalusia—
History—To 1500. 2. Acculturation—Spain—History—To 1500. 3. Culture
diff usion—Spain—Andalusia—History—To 1500. 4. Culture diff usion—Spain—
History—To 1500. 5. Andalusia (Spain)—Ethnic relations. 6. Spain—Ethnic relations.
7. Iberian Peninsula—Ethnic relations. 8. Andalusia (Spain)—Civilization. 9. Spain—
Civilization. 10. Iberian Peninsula—Civilization. I. Title.
DP302.A468C67 2009
946’.02—dc22
2009031414
ISBN-13 978 90 04 17919 6
Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Th e Netherlands
All rights reserved. No part of this publicaton may be reproduced, translated, stored in a
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Printed in the Netherlands
CONTENTS
Special Issue: Al-Andalus, Sepharad and Medieval Iberia: Cultural
Contact and Diff usion
Acknowledgements ....................................................................... i
Introduction:
Ivy A. Corfis, Th ree Cultures, One World .............................. iii
Articles
I. Contact through Art and Learning
Bernard R. Goldstein, Astronomy as a “Neutral Zone”:
Interreligious Cooperation in Medieval Spain .......................... 3
Maribel Fierro, Alfonso X “Th e Wise”:
Th e Last Almohad Caliph? ....................................................... 19
Harvey J. Hames, It Takes Th ree to Tango: Ramon Llull, Solomon
ibn Adret and Alfonso of Valladolid Debate the Trinity ............ 43
Richard C. Taylor, Ibn Rushd/Averroes and “Islamic”
Rationalism .............................................................................. 69
Dwight F. Reynolds, Music in Medieval Iberia: Contact,
Infl uence and Hybridization .................................................... 80
II. Contact through Society
Francisco J. Hernández, Th e Jews and the Origins of Romance
Script in Castile: A New Paradigm ........................................... 103
Ross Brann, Th e Moors? ............................................................. 151
Th e page numbers in the above Table of contents and in the Index refer
to the bracketed page numbers in this volume.
vi Contents
María Jesús Fuente, Christian, Muslim and Jewish Women
in Late Medieval Iberia ............................................................. 163
III. Contact through Conflict
Russell Hopley, Th e Ransoming of Prisoners in Medieval North
Africa and Andalusia: An Analysis of the Legal Framework ...... 181
Justin Stearns, Representing and Remembering al-Andalus:
Some Historical Considerations Regarding the End of Time
and the Making of Nostalgia .................................................... 199
Denise K. Filios, Legends of the Fall: Conde Julián in Medieval
Arabic and Hispano-Latin Historiography ............................... 219
Danya Crites, Churches Made Fit for a King: Alfonso X and
Meaning in the Religious Architecture of Post-Conquest
Seville ....................................................................................... 235
Index ................................................................................................. i
Medieval
Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture
Encounters
in Confluence and Dialogue
Medieval Encounters 15 (2009) i-ii brill.nl/me
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Program for Cul-
tural Cooperation Between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and the United
States Universities, as well as the Nave Fund of the Latin American, Carib-
bean and Iberian Studies Program for assistance with the conference and
the production costs of this volume. I would also like to thank the Anony-
mous Fund of the College of Letters of Science, the Lubar Institute for the
Study of the Abrahamic Religions, the Ettinger Family Foundation, as well
as the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese, African Languages and
Literatures, Art History, Hebrew and Semitic Studies, the Center for Euro-
pean Studies, and the Medieval Studies Program of the University of Wis-
consin-Madison for their support of the 2007 Conference, which was the
impetus for this volume. Special thanks as well to Esperanza Alfonso (Uni-
versidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain), whose recent book is a milestone
in the fi eld and whose participation in the conference was fundamental; to
the Organizing Committee (Ray Harris-Northall, Th omas E. A. Dale and
Michael H. Shank) for their help in organizing and planning the confer-
ence; to the Advisory Committee (Pablo Ancos, Steven Hutchinson,
Charles Cohen, Paul Rowe, Jacques Lezra, David Morgan, Dustin Cowell,
Uli Schamiloglu, Christopher Kleinhenz and Esperanza Alfonso) for their
guidance; as well as to the program assistants: Stacy Bryant, William M.
Rueter, Jason Doroga and Courtney Lanz. Th anks also go to Cynthia Rob-
inson for her excellent supervision in the publication of the volume, and
special thanks to the Editorial Advisory Committee (Th omas E. A. Dale,
Michael H. Shank, David Morgan and Ray Harris-Northall), and addi-
tionally and particularly to Pablo Ancos and Ray Harris for always being
ready to listen, read and give suggestions for the improvement of this Spe-
cial Issue of Medieval Encounters. Last, I would like to thank the following
for permission to reproduce images from their holdings: the Archivo
Histórico Nacional (Madrid, Spain), Biblioteca Nacional de España
(Madrid, Spain), the library of the Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid,
Spain), Museo Arqueológico y Etnológico (Córdoba, Spain), and the
library of the University of California at Berkeley (Berkeley, CA, USA).
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009
ii Acknowledgements / Medieval Encounters 15 (2009) i-ii
Without the help of many people, programs and foundations, too many to
list here individually, the conference and this volume would not have been
possible.
Ivy A. Corfi s
Medieval
Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture
Encounters
in Confluence and Dialogue
Medieval Encounters 15 (2009) iii-xiv brill.nl/me
Th ree Cultures, One World
Ivy A. Corfi s
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Today, as in the past, al-Andalus evokes a wide variety of images and reac-
tions. One need only “google” the term al-Andalus to see more than two
million entries, ranging from art to dance, contemporary music and hotels
to study-abroad programs; from festivals and blogs on history and culture
to calls to jihād. Idealization of and a renewed interest in al-Andalus, espe-
cially vis-à-vis its linkage to modern political events, is evinced even
through television programming: e.g., the Public Broadcasting Service’s
airing of the 2007 documentary Cities of Light: Th e Rise and Fall of Islamic
Spain. All these recent views of al-Andalus and medieval Iberia remind us
how very diff erent yet how very similar 711 is to 9/11 and 3/11.
In any period, in any cultural confi guration, there are boundaries,
whether permeable or not, visible or not: boundaries of belief, language
boundaries, social boundaries of culture and religion, boundaries of gov-
ernment and political rule. Boundaries are clearly mutable as they shift and
change; and boundaries—either by crossing or respecting them—bring
about contact of one sort or another: contact of resistance or tolerance, of
reaching across or of staying within borders. Cultures meet without neces-
sarily accepting or rejecting one another. Boundaries and their crossing
need not bring about infl uence or contention, simply contact.
In medieval Iberia, contact is usually discussed within the context of
the three cultures: Christian, Jewish and Islamic. Al-Andalus, past and
present, may evoke nostalgia for a lost paradise or golden age, but the exact
dating, or even existence, of such a “golden age” is not universally accepted.
Most scholars will agree that, if it did exisit, it included and centered
around the Umayyads of Córdoba and the caliphate that ended in 1031.
Th e “peaceful” co-existence of the three cultures, even within a golden age,
is also subject to interpretation. In general, one can identify two major
critical stances regarding cultural contact in Iberia. On the one hand, some
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009
iv I. A. Corfi s / Medieval Encounters 15 (2009) iii-xiv
scholars, such as María Rosa Menocal, maintain that tolerance was woven
into the structure of Andalusian society, where the dhimmī (‘People of the
Book’; that is, Jews and Christians), were protected under the Islamic rule
of the caliphate, albeit with certain social restrictions (see, for example,
Menocal 29-30, 72-73). It can be argued, then, that in al-Andalus Jews in
particular lived with more freedom to participate in the political and social
spheres than they did in Christian Europe. However, scholars such as Ber-
nard Lewis and Mark Cohen argue that a golden age of tolerance is not
based in historical fact but is rather a myth propagated as part of an ideo-
logical struggle fostered by scholars in the late nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries, as a reaction to the oppression of Jews in Eastern Europe
and the Zionist movement.
In al-Andalus, under Islam, the Jews prospered in some contexts, for
example, under the reigns of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III (r. 912-961) and al-
Ḥakam II (until 976), in the service of the caliphate, but the pogroms
against the Jews in Córdoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066 deny a gen-
eralized pacifi c co-existence. With the Almoravids in the Peninsula, toler-
ance became even more problematic, with moments of some exception,
such as the rule of ‘Ali III of Morocco (r. 1106-1142), who was defeated by
Alfonso VII, Emperor of Spain, in 1138 and by Afonso I of Portugal a year
later. Under the Almohads the fate of the Jews was sealed; they were forced
to convert to Islam or fl ee, and synagogues were destroyed. Both Jews and
Christians fl ed to the north. “As a result of the Jewish (and Christian) exo-
dus, the cultural and linguistic boundaries were renegotiated. Th e status of
Arabic, as well as that of Hebrew, would be brought to the foreground not
just in the period that followed the North African invasions and during the
subsequent process of adaptation to the new Christian setting, but over the
course of the next three hundred years” (Alfonso 17). Th us the shift in
tolerance redrew the boundaries of politics, culture and language.
Th e same can be said for the Christians. Th e Visigoths and their heirs,
upon the rapid conquest by the Islamic forces, experienced periods of tol-
erance and intolerance as borders were redrawn. Indeed, tolerance toward
the Christians may have been nothing more than a political strategy result-
ing from liberal surrender treaties off ered to and negotiated by the Chris-
tian rulers (Lowney 38).
Th e extent of tolerance, then, is diffi cult to determine. How is tolerance
defi ned and measured? How tolerant was the tolerance? With the Chris-
tian movement into Islamic territories, the debate continues, albeit in a
diff erent vein. Clearly Christian political rule over Jews and Muslims