Al-Andalus Revisited

Emilio González Ferrín

AL-ANDALUS REVISITED
Emilio Gonzalez-Ferrin, PhD. University of Seville (SPAIN)

It was Gregory of Nisa who wrote –around sixteen centuries ago- that
History is a non-stop sequence of new beginnings. Nonetheless, we do not
usually feel it in the same way, tided-up -as we use to be- in the concept of
the so-called History of the decline, normally over-following the great work of
Edward Gibbon –History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire-. Thus, we
tend to feel History as a non-stop sequence of declines, searching for causes
just like a meteorologist designs the map of a long awaited storm. One of
these overwhelming storms seems to be the Middle Ages, or the Dark Ages, as
physicians of History use to refer, considering those times just like an
eventual illness lastly overcome in the genesical Renaissance.
History of dates and proper names, History of capital letters live on this
organic perception of time and Humanity. Because it –History- seems to be
the biography of the heroes, the times that flourished at their feet, the
territories that motherland gained by means of that flourishing, and the way
the world came down when those heroes passed away. At least, this was the
perception of Thomas Carlyle and his numerous crypto-followers.
But this kind of biological perception of History is guilty of incoherence.
In fact, it is the quoted Gregory of Nisa who writes closer to Biology, for it is
clear that life is not a downhill road to the end –thought a pesimist would sign
above this-. Life always spread, althought not necessarily in the way it was
expected. In fact, in life –and in History- everything is on the verge of
becoming something different, even something new, or so it seems if we point
at it from today, jumping to conclusions about a time cut-off from its recent
past. So to speak: we do not understand historical meanings if we select a
portion of past time and expose it out of context. Having said that –about the
unexpected aftermath of things- we may also point out the subsequent
truism: that everything was born from the previous one.

New beginnings and continuity. This is our vision of History just in

case we could be able to present it. For it is not so common to talk about
perceptions in a discipline so old and with methodologies so fixed. We
historians use to be more like scroll curators and file keepers, committed to
the slogan of Philologies: if it’s old and hard to translate, it is the truth.
Reluctants –at any case- to revisit certain inconvenient periods of time that –
in contrast- use to be overhauled by more impudent non specialists that –at
the very end- are the ones that shape the common understandings of the
periods aforementioned. One of these inconvenient periods is al-Andalus.
Because it refers to a past time in which we were differents, as well as refers
–at any case, in faulty perceptions- to a way of being different to-day.
Again: new beginnings and continuity. There are two axis crossed
between in the ways of tackling the subject of al-Andalus. First of all, to
move from creationism to evolutionism. It is worthless to maintain in History

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what has been disregarded in general science postulates: the old fashioned
tenet about things coming from nothing and at once. This History based upon
ideals fallen from above and absolute starting points by means of invasions
and amazing cavalries is no longer comprehensible. Everything flourish in a
context from which it emanates.
The second axis deals with our current vision of the world. Again, what
it was once disregarded as non scientifical –in this case, the phrenologic bust-
is the basis of our description of the world. An so, in our phrenologic globe
there are places out of time, others out of culture, a section out of religion,
another with an endemic proclivity to conflict, and so on. A complete
phrenologic description of the world with anachronic mixture and abiding
topics that points out every single tendency of a region and its historicist
background.

An so, we may ask ourselves: what is the current and political

versatility of al-Andalus in this context –the context of these two axis crossed
between: historical creationism and our phrenologic vision of the world-?.
Well, sometimes its revival in terms of orientalist stage machinery for a
certain operetta. Mythological nourishment in times of alleged esentialist
diatribe. In easy-going readings of al-Andalus, one may say ‘this is not me’
although belonging to the same land, and another one may say ‘this is me’ in
spite of belonging to a cultural tradition two or three continents far away.
Faulty background fitted for faulty senses of identity.
It is, indeed, a harassing sens of History, for nothing is allowed to
appear as it once really was, but as we need in our current fusses. Because we
use to apply our vision of today’s –we said- phrenologic distribution of the
world over different phases of the past. Based on a difficult concept if we
depart from a scientifical point of view: religions as subjects/starrings of
History, as well as the unique way of being someone. Religions as flags, as
teams with a collection of medals and cups gained in the past. Let us suppose
I am a muslim; an indonesian muslim –for instance-: do I –thus- inherit al-
Andalus simply because of my coincidence with its majority religion? Does a
man from Panama –for instance- inherit the cultural legacy of Byzantium just
because he follows the same religion?.

Revisiting al-Andalus with no revival purposes means another thing

quite different. It consist of admitting the role of movement in History and,
thus, designing the true path that once led to a european enlightment. In our
vision, al-Andalus develops itself as something out of that Punch & Judy Show
of History –so called clash of civilizations- and embodies a rare, fertile and
original european arabic portion of the Middle Ages. That time –the Middle
Ages- considered dark ones by the creationists of the Renaissance. No: to
some extent, the Middle Ages are not dark but hardly understood because are
written in arabic.
As we shall see, al-Andalus is not merely a past time. It is an
ingredient [...]. In fact, we think it is a component of Europe; the Europe

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that we take as matrix of the West and the one that in al-Andalus jumped
from the Middle Ages to live a first renaissance1. Following the new over-
arching interpretations in the origins of the european Renaissance2, we should
admit that the starting point of that flourishing new age includes a wide-
spread stream of orientalisation conducted mainly through four cannals: the
eastern commercial contacts of Venise, the midlands of Sicily –arabic culture
under normand dinasties with Frederik the Second Hohenstaufen-, the scape
to Italy of greek intellectuals after 1453 and the turkish –never arabic-
conquest of Byzantium, and last –but no least- the long and always changing
crossroad of al-Andalus.

This crossroad –al-Andalus, a quite atypical portion of Europe in arabic-

was created like a sediment, after a long and constant formation. It was
Hegel who talked about cualitative changes as an accumulation of
cuantitative incorporations. And so, al-Andalus shows itself as the final step
after a long series of eastern grafts, just like anywhere else all over the
Mediterranean. It is worthless to maintain the myth of an arab-islamic
conquest in 711, that creationist and genesic origin commonly admitted. This
is not exactly the place and time to study it in depth, but in 711 there were
no arabic culture or islamic civilisation able to spread out from a very limited
portion of the Middle East. Whatever happened in Hispania around 711, it
could never be labelled as arabic nor islamic: no written versions of the
Qur’an till –at least- 750-, no mentions to Muhammad the Prophet, no arabic
alphabet generally known, and so on.
Amongst several latin and greek related sources, we just need the
comparative reading of two authors contemporary to the first universal steps
of Islam: Saint John of Damascus –in the East, VIII century- and Eulogy of
Cordoba –in the West, almost one hundred years after-. Through their pages,
both of them shed light enough on the gradual formation of eastern Islam and
al-Andalus as well as a key concept in the origines of a wider cultural world:
at least during a century and a half, Islam was a hellenic culture. This will
change after the foundation of Bagdad –in 762-, itself a greek polis in its
planification, but in any case starting point of an esencialist feed-back in
arabic.

This hellenic origins can also be traced in two significant details in the
formation of al-Andalus. One is the name: al-Andalus as fonetic
transformation of the voice Atlantis. Located by Plato in the western lands
where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic ocean, between the IV and the VI
century were written several commentaries to Plato main books, generating

1
Emilio González Ferrín, General History of al-Andalus: Europe between East and West –in
spanish-. Cordoba: Almuzara, 2007 (second edition), page 11.
2
Jerry Brotons, The bazaar of the Renaissance. Juan Vernet, What Europe owes to the Islam
in Spain.

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that hellenic cultural movement called the neoplatonism, origine of the word-
homage Atlantis/adalandis/al-Andalus.
The second hellenic trace is paradoxically the first valuable arabic
source containing information about al-Andalus. It is the so called Akhbar
Majmua –Collected Chronicles-, responsible in part of the official version
insistently repeated till today. In this chronicle, is narrated the uprising of the
Omeyas related to the adventure of ten thousand soldiers commanded by a
general so called Balj. Their feat consists precisely on a defeat in north
Africa, followed by a tactic retreat that led them to streghten in al-Andalus
and become the principal party that supported the first emir of Cordoba. It is
interesting to stress that this is exactly the narrative plot of the Anabasis,
the greek chronicle of the ten thousand written by Jenofonte. The only
different os the context: Anabasis east-bourn (Persia), and Akhbar Majmua
west-bourn.

As time went by, following the thesis of Hegel, the addition of

cuantitative changes provoked a cualitative one. Hispania became al-Andalus
after a long struggle of different heretical trends, substantive problems in the
transition of the visigothic kingdom, a long peripherical questioning of the
late roman centralism, the beginnings of a new concept in Europe with
Charles the Great, and so on. Hispania was not at all the empty or
uncultivated land that appears in the arabic chronicles –written, let us have it
in mind, at least a century and a half after the presumed conquest-: the
background of the encyclopedical writings of Isidoro de Sevilla indicates
cultural heights that the next iberian phase -al-Andalus- not only knew but
took precise advantage of it. Isidoro and latin-visigothic legacy of Hispania
fertilized the science produced long after in arabic in the same lands. Once
again: new beginnings and continuity; evolutionism.
This new beginning grew in keeping with a similar evolution in the rest
of south and east Mediterranean. It was the unexpected continuation of the
Roman culture and not its decline and fall. Although it did not follow exactly
the latin one –western mediterranean- but the east greek version, the much
more illustrated one at that time, centered in Byzantium and its fusion by
confusion in Bagdad with the Sasanid persian Empire. But the gap between
these two different roman worlds –East and West, Constantinopla and Rome-
provoked a definitive european disconnexion. Hispania, on the verge of
becoming al-Andalus, aligned itself with the rest of the mediterranean south
and east, suffering a cut off from its closest rest of Europe; this one aligned in
turn with a future configuration: the above mentioned Carolingian project.

This Carolingian state played the lead of a certain cannonical definition

of Europe: disregarding the existence of a living Roman Empire in the East, a
new emperor claimed for himself the role of a restoration in the beginnings
of the IX century. And so, it seemed that Rome tended to resume in the West
bypassing the way of being roman in the rest of the mediterranean basin; in
fact, a very orientalized way. That carolingian assumed restoration bypassed

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also the iberian peninsula, and eventually minted a key concept in european
historiography: the aforementioned idea of restoration, instead of an
admitted –and more credible- evolution and graft.
The point is that every restoration presumes to reject the past from
which it emanates at any case. It will be accomplished in that carolingian
restorarion, as well as the reconquest to come in the iberian peninsula, or
even in the Renaissance itself. In the future, every single great project in
Europe will have to be anchored in an assumed golden distant past, thus
marking a distance from the previous one just to validate the old theory of
Mircea Eliade concerning the myth of the eternal return.

By dint of arabization –the cornerstone of the andalusian miracle,

and not at all the mythical invasive cavalry- al-Andalus became a substantial
part of what we may call the heights of the time. Dimitri Gutas has shown the
connexions between creating the greek small letters and the spreading out of
all the hellenic cultural heritage: it seems that by the time of the foundation
of Bagdad as arabic economic and cultural fortress, the greeks in Byzantium
created this practical small letter to make the most of time copying
manuscripts in order to sell them to the bagdadis translators into arabic3.
The arabized populations of the Middle East –in the future, the arabs,
and even the muslims to a certaint extent- were translating cannons of
science and thought not inspired by a sudden love for letters, but because
they needed them in order to apply the knowledge. The success of a
civilization always comes from the more practical. And the spin-effect of the
Mediterranean worked once again delivering formation all over a world
already in arabic and master of commercial routes –silk, slaves, gold, paper,
spices- with a compulsory stop in al-Andalus. The Dar al-Islam; the territories
with a common civilized structure, was a network of cities and routes. Never
a unique empire, and always bedouin just in terms of fashion and implant of
colective memory. Belonging to it, to the Dar al-Islam, it was once just like
belonging today to the West –for instance- in terms of technological or
economic heights.

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This Dar al-Islam as civilized network used to have a pluralist system of

laws derived from the roman and persian laws. In general, this previous
dichotomy always persisted: the so-called sunni islam comes from Byzantium,
as well as the so-called chii islam comes from the persian and zoroastrian
background, in spite of the fairy tale tradition of familiar disputes.
At any case, al-Andalus became a very active part of this network with
cultural connexion but no political dependency with the East. As a matter of
fact, the unique andalusian dependency was from north Africa and only after
mid-XI century with the overwhelming murabit preeminence, not very
different from the north-iberian dependency from the cluny french
preeminence. At the very end, the torn between these two similar pressures

3
Dimitri Gutas, Greek Philosophy and Arabic Culture.

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will produce a particular andalusian spin-effect that will in fact deliver a

whole heritage all over Europe.

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But perhaps we are trying to build up the house starting by the roof.
Before that, before the need to deliver in order to survive, al-Andalus reached
the necessary level to have a proper historical meaning. Around 850 we may
already talk about a specific arabic culture called andalusian, and from then
on began to spread out a young and formative vision of the world that we may
recognize as part of a pre-renaissance, in part provoked by ocassional political
incertitude. As a matter of fact, the two-times motor of al-Andalus was the
alternance of centralisation/non-centralisation focussed in a modern capital
of its times –Cordoba- till a morning in which the system broke down.
It was 1031, the beginning of an age always disregarded with scorn in
the manuals that in fact consist on the core of andalusian identity: the city-
states of Taifas. Cordoba, the ancient capital of sciences, poetry and
functionary-jungle did not disappear but –on the contrary- was clonated into
one thousand and one small cordobas whose rivalry and competition in-
between contributed to raise the level of the whole al-Andalus.

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Just like the italian city-states that preluded the Renaissance, the city-
states of Taifas in al-Andalus generated the enough creative political crisis in
order to stimulate culture. Against the common-places regarding islamic
culture as a whole, in al-Andalus –Taifas and after- were born several books
that let us start thinking of antropocentrism and other typically european
themes. Such as The Self-Taught Philosopher by Ibn Tufayl –whose translation
into english preluded the genre of the utopia and the beau savage. Or like The
Necklace of the Dove, the treatise of love and lovers by Ibn Hazm. Or the
aftermath on courtier letters such as the writings of Ibn al-Khatib.
Experimentalism also spread out during the Taifas due to the
competition between the mini-courts, living the golden age of european
astronomy and medicine before the Ilustration as well as other genres. For
instance, the post-taifa period could be considered the road that led to
Averroes, the european comentator of Aristotle. That philosopher from
Cordoba reached such a level of predicament in Europe that his translations
were forbidden in Paris –XIV century- under the accusation of free-thinking. In
our opinion, all those writings and works should be considered as part of the
european Renaissance, because that would be the case if they had been
created in languages different from the arabic.

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But it is the time to recognize the diversity of european cultural

roots. Because Europe was the final destination of andalusian cultural items
and devises: if Averroes was prohibited in Paris, that was because they were
reading his writings there, and not necessarily in other parts of the
Mediterranean. And if Colombus reached America, it was in part because an

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andalusian astronomer called Azarquiel created mobil instruments permitting

a type of shipping far from the coastal one. For, at any case, the science is to
the needed one, and al-Andalus had been, long time ago, setting course for
the Renaissance, in that universal game of taking over.
Besides this, the wealth of southern Taifa small states started to pay
for peace: introducing a special tax called parias, the Taifa kings used to pay
to the north forming states –Leon, Castilla and Aragon, mainly- in order to
contain expansive whims and to maintain and support the statu-quo. The
money from al-Andalus financed the building up of northern cathedrals,
and in its crypts were buried the kings and courtesans dressed-up in the silk
produced and bought in al-Andalus. This circulation of money and goods
created a really atypical mutual prosperity that came down with the final
eclipse of the arab world due to another new beginning: the european
renaissance in itself, as well as the invented feed-back of religious rivalry.

14

Torn between christian and muslim exclusive identities after the

terrible year 1000 –mainly, Cluny from the north and Murabit from the south,
as we said-, al-Andalus began to filter and seep through three important
different ways: first, the translations around Toledo and other centers of
competitive scientific formation; second, the Sefarad tragedy by which
thousands of andalusian jews had to escape from those two different
fundamentalisms –at the very end, only one: the national-catholicism- and
carrying al-Andalus in their saddlebags. And third, al-Andalus filtered through
several converted –jews and muslims- that succeeded in colouring the cultural
life of an already sadly closed Spain.
Indeed, this original Third Spain –neither inquisitorial, or expelled-
made possible some cornerstones of our literary spanish Golden Age by
surreptitious influences in movements like the so called erasmism and a lot of
heterodox cultural and religious trends. In fact, if we were able in Spain to
inhabit our History –just like Americo Castro claimed-, we could understand
precious social keys left in masterpieces of our literature such as Don
Quixote, that unrivalled arm against the oblivion. In its pages, we may find
missing moriscos, serious essays to open up the religion in order to cover the
mistreated converted, as well as an enlightened fool that shouts ‘I know who I
am’ in a forgetful land. The forgetfulness of having been something more,
something else.

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