The current Spanish language, which makes much use of both denominations, is forced to differentiate between them: “Al‐Andalus” and “Andalucia,” with the respective adjectives “andalusi” and “andaluz. This name is often used in French in the form of “Andalousie” (with its adjective “andalou”) which creates a confusion with the Spanish region of “Andalucia,”, which includes only the eight southern provinces of this country (Seville, Granada, Cordoba, Malaga, Jaén, Almeria, Cadiz and Huelva). Al‐Andalus, of Arab origin, is the historical name of the Iberian peninsula when it was under Muslim Arab political domination: it designated at that time the territory of pre‐Islamic “Hispania” (at present the nation‐states of Spain and Portugal). At the start, we must make a small philological and onomastic precision. They conclude by pointing out that because of that tolerance, Al‐Andalus has been very useful to the Spaniards as a broad platform for dialogue with the Arabs-and, in a more general way, with Muslims who (except for a few fundamentalists) no longer take into account the fact that it was Christian Spain which put an end to the reality of Al‐Andalus. In addition, the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula would, later on, in their own fashion, repeat this model of tolerance: some Muslims and some Jews did stay on in these regions, as second‐class subjects, with very heavy tax burdens, but with the possibility of preserving their religion, customs and laws. And we must recognize that in the Middle Ages this tolerance was in itself quite unusual. The authors point out, however, that the Al‐Andalus type of tolerance would be unacceptable today: Christians and Jews were in fact second‐class subjects in the Muslim kingdoms, burdened with very heavy taxes. A new facet of Al‐Andalus then became prominent: the symbol of tolerance, the original Islamic medieval paradigm. By 1992, the 500th anniversary of the end of Muslim political power with the Christian conquest, the fall of Granada, most Spaniards had come to proudly accept Al‐Andalus as part of their history-particularly important in Andalusia, the region that inherited the name of Al‐Andalus and its most important architectural works. These latter‐day “conservatives” have revived the skeleton of the Cid (as other right‐wing Europeans have made a symbol out of the battle of Poitiers). Their work provoked a reaction among right‐wing intellectuals-known as “the generation of 98”-against the “regenerationists” of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries who maintained that it was necessary to “lock with seven bolts the tomb of the Cid,” that is to say the tomb of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, the champion of the fight against the Arabs in the 11th century. Their task, not shared by other European Arabists, was to incorporate the (Arab) history of Al‐Andalus (which had hitherto been rejected as a foreign element) into Spanish history to change the “history of the Arabs in Spain” into “the Arabic history of Spain”. Spanish Arabists, equally influenced by Orientalist concerns, contributed to the rebuilding of the history of Al‐Andalus. This work attracted the attention of European orientalists, who discovered the forgotten history of that civilization, a history quickly expanded by studies of other Arab manuscripts. The myth's origins are literary and can be traced to the work of Al‐Maqqari of Tlemcen (1577–1632), a descendant of Muslims from Granada. The myth of Al‐Andalus, which has been revived in Spain, has had an ironic history.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |