The Fantasy of Al Andalus

[Menydh]

La Fantasía de Al Andalus
by Stanley G. Payne
El Mundo, 30 November, 2004

The research started during the XIXth century on the Moslem medieval society known as Al-Andalus has been enormously elaborated in such a way that perhaps now historians know more of Al-Andalus than of any other Moslem society prior to those in modern times.

In the peak of its power, in the Xth century, Al-Andalus was the equivalent to what we would call today a world power, with a rising economy and a brilliant high culture. Like all other societies of the Classic Arabic time, it maintained a system of discriminatory tolerance which allowed Jews and Christians to keep practising their religions wich much discretion and prudence[1], although never with the same rights that Moslems enjoyed.

Al-Andalus also engaged systematically in military jihads against its neighbours, gave voide to the new Islamic extremist groups and was unable to reach any other social structure other than despotism. They didn't know about decentralized rights and laws nor constitutional laws. In the long run, its system crumbled into pieces and fell into a chaos followed by 250 years marked by the interventions of violent jihadists arrived from Morocco.

Beyond the society researched by historians, some liberals of the XIXth century in Spain discovered and conceived their own fantasy of Al-Andalus. This land of fantasy which they invented to suit their own taste was a society of pure tolerance and brotherhood, of a utopian cohabitation as it would be later on described, which had the most advanced culture of the entire world. The jihad was unknown to them, since culture and tolerance were the only noticeable values of its citizens. At the end of the XIXth century and into the XXth, some Spanish leftists went as far as to suggesting that Al-Andalus had to offer the best model for the Peninsula, in opposition to the militant and intolerant Castile.

These fantasizers, needless to say, ignore that Al-Andalus lived in a militarist despotism and that all the high Arabic culture of the Classic period turned out to be a blind alley. In the end, the main cultureal heir of what once was a sofisticated society has been Morocco, though the inheritance doesn't seem to have profited them much. If after some historical disaster Al-Andalus had conquered its Christian neighbours, in the long run the Iberian Peninsula would have ended up being some kind of Northern Morocco. In this case today the immigrants wouldn't be crossing in great numbers from Morocco to Spain, but they would also abandon Spain to look for work in Europe.

In the XXth century, with the establishing of a small Spanish protectorate in the territory of Morocco, in some political and cultural circles a more pragmatic concept of the affinity of Spain with the Arab world was developed. After the horrors of the pacification during the 20s in the XXth century, the Spanish administrators kept clever relations with the Moroccan elites, and even took steps to allow certain Islamic religious practices.
[...]


[1] It must be reminded that the so-called "Moslem invasion" was not a massive migration, but it resulted in the submission and conversion of a large number of the population to Islam, included much of the Visigothic nobility and part of the Hispano-Roman aristocracy. Thus, the population of Al-Andalus was formed at large by native Hispanii coverted to Islam (the Muladi, often called Moors) and the also native Hispanii who remained faithful to Chrisitianism but tributaries to Islam (the Mosarabs, often called Moors too by their northern neighbours since their fashion in dressing and habits was influenced by Islam).
Therefore, the authorities of Al-Andalus had to permit velis nolis the existance and practices of the Christians, who formed a large part of the population.


[article previously posted on this other thread]