Week 13
Al-Andalus was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula. The term is used by modern historians for the former Islamic states in modern Spain. At its greatest geographical extent, it occupied most of the peninsula under Umayyad rule. These boundaries changed constantly through a series of conquests Western historiography has traditionally characterized as the Reconquista eventually shrinking to the south and finally to the Emirate of Granada. Under the Caliphate of Córdoba, the city of Córdoba became one of the leading cultural and economic centres throughout the Mediterranean Basin, Europe, and the Islamic world. Achievements that advanced Islamic and Western science came from al-Andalus, including major advances in trigonometry (Jabir ibn Aflah), astronomy (Al-Zarqali), surgery (Al-Zahrawi), pharmacology (Ibn Zuhr), and agronomy (Ibn Bassal and Abū l-Khayr al-Ishbīlī). Al-Andalus became a conduit for cultural and scientific exchange between the Islamic and Christian worlds. For much of its history, al-Andalus existed in conflict with Christian kingdoms to the north. After the fall of the Umayyad caliphate, al-Andalus was fragmented into minor taifa states and principalities. Attacks from the Christians intensified, led by the Castilians under Alfonso VI, culminating with the capture of Toledo in 1085. The North African Almoravid empire intervened and repelled the Christian attacks on the region, then brought al-Andalus under direct Almoravid rule. For the next century and a half, al-Andalus became a province of the Muslim empires of the Almoravids and their successors, the Almohads, both based in Marrakesh, Morocco. Ultimately, the northern Christian kingdoms overpowered the Muslim states to the south. With the fall of Córdoba in 1236, most of the south quickly fell under Christian rule. In Spain, the Reconquista would continue until the late-15th century, leaving Granada as the last Muslim state on the Iberian Peninsula. On January 2, 1492, Emir Muhammad XII surrendered the Emirate of Granada to Queen Isabella I of Castile, completing the Christian Reconquista of Spain.
The name of al-Andalus is first attested by inscriptions on coins minted in 716 by the new Muslim government of Iberia. These coins, called dinars, were inscribed in both Latin and Arabic. The etymology of the name al-Andalus has traditionally been derived from the name of the Vandals (vándalos in Spanish). (Wikipedia)
REQUIRED READING
The Chris Lowney book will provide you with a text for this whole quarter.
A Vanished World: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain,
Oxford University Press (2006),
ISBN 0195311914
RECOMMENDED READING:
This is the best one-volume study of Christian-Islam relations in the Middle Ages and it is especially excellent on Spain. Disregard the bizarre user reviews on Amazon. Most of them seem to be motivated by contemporary politcal issues rather than Wheatcroft's excellent history.
Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam,
Random House paperback, 2003,
ISBN 0812972392
From Booklist
*Starred Review* In the roar of skyscrapers collapsing in New York and in the thunder of fusillades in Afghanistan and Iraq, a leading British historian hears echoes of battles fought centuries ago. This timely chronicle amplifies those echoes to show how much ancient animosities pervade the modern conflict between radical Islamic terrorist Osama bin Laden and America. Impelling the Muslim and Christian combatants who crossed swords at Jerusalem and Granada, at Lepanto, Constantinople, and Missolonghi, these ancient hatreds inspired daring innovations in military weaponry and tactics, as well as astonishing enlargements in both faiths' religious demonology. Wheatcroft recounts the clashes of arms--jihad and crusade--in narrative taut and memorable. With rare sophistication, he also traces the perplexing ways religious orthodoxy now reinforced, now checked the political and economic impulses shaping Europe and the Levant. But readers will praise Wheatcroft most for his acute psychological analysis of how Muslim and Christian leaders alike imbued their followers with hostility toward those who adhered to alien creeds. It is this analysis that lends force to the concluding commentary on how President Bush has unwittingly tapped into a very old reservoir of religious enmity with his absolutist rhetoric calling for a "crusade" against the terrorist evil. As a work that interprets today's headlines within a very long chronology, this book will attract a large audience. Bryce Christensen Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.