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The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain

The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Gushing and superficial...
Review: The book is long on promise: to explain to us how in el-Andalus, the people of the three monotheistic religions lived together in peace. The promise is not kept. What we have instead are fragments of some of the 'things' they did - translations, buildings, poetry - which all contain elements taken from the three cultures. Then 'events' happen from the outside. Intolerant Berbers and Christians intrude into this paradise of multiculturalism, and destroy it - or was it the Black Death? Or was it a case of contingent behaviour by a few great men and their advisors?
Ms Menocal starts out on the wrong foot - by positing that the people of Al-Andalus created 'a culture of tolerance'. I can suffer - or tolerate - a fool (more or less gladly) - but I am not about to engage him. Tolerance leads to uneasy separation, not intercourse and integration. The epitome of tolerance is the ghetto. Beyond the self-evident assertion that these peoples did live together in Al-Andalus Ms Menocal tells very little about how they managed. What laws and what customs made the end result possible? How did power flow through the formal and informal channels to achieve a stable social equilibrium? We learn that one vizier was a Jew. Was this a fluke, a shrewd policy to divide and rule by favouring harmless minorities (like the Janissars in the Ottoman Empire), or part of a policy of rotation among the best, or among religions? Who owned what; who did what; who married whom; and who lived where? We do not understand why the system works, or why it fails - as apparently it did in the 1066 anti-Jewish riots in Grenada.

Translation, of which Ms Menocal makes much, is placed centre stage. But translation is a trade, like making carpets. Who were the users of the translations, how did the ideas that became available through the translations shape the society and help it integrate? In short, how did the learned men and women of Al-Andalus engage each other, and what were the rules of engagement?

Whitman would have been a better quote than Fitzgerald in stating the obvious, namely that man can live with contradictions. But living with contradictions requires method, or we go mad. One method is to create open-ended hierarchical structures - as Bertrand Russell showed. Rules that apply within one system then do not apply to another. The human mind has created other than Euclidean geometries, each with a set of rules of its own. Just don't mix up the rules, or bring in extraneous elements like Godly revelations.

Science, poetry, and philosophy were such self-contained systems in which everyone in Al-Andalus did engage. The rules were those of logic and aesthetic, subject to discussion, challenge, and evolutionary convergence of opinion, rather than externally imposed dogma. Greek philosophy played here a central role. The Gods of the Greeks, numerous, jealous, fornicating, vindictive, cruel and often dumb, were in no shape to dictate an ethic for the humans. About at the same time as Buddha, the great philosophers of Greece created a 'secular' ethic, an ethic without Gods. This was the level playing field in which Muslims, Christians and Jews of Al-Andalus could meet, and engage, only to return to their respective private worlds of religion for prayers at the end of the day.

Why was this immensely creative game abandoned in the end? Were there inherent factors? Did anyone take home the 'secular' rules and defiled the house of prayer, triggering revulsion? The chapter on Judah Halevy hints that this might have been the case. Or did someone cheat and, rather than lose, imposed the rules that apply to the house of prayer to the playing field? Ideology is a way to arrest unwelcome change, as we know from the Counterreformation.

As for the external factors, my conjecture is - the needs of power. Al-Andalus had settled in to be the centre of the Muslim world, hence its claim on the Caliphate. Al-Andalus simply and starkly was. To power their armies of greedy conquest the upstarts from the South and North made recourse to ideology - religious ideology, awash with indisputable certainties. Conquest requires consolidation, and continued suppression of freedom through ideology. It is the tragedy of humankind that, in the battle between reason and passion, passion wins out at first.

Integration of cultures is possible, provided we can agree to keep our respective dogmas and our ideologies in check, confined to houses of prayer. This is more than mere tolerance - it is inner acceptance that, in a multi-dimensional world, no rule has universal validity. Integration of cultures is necessary, if we want to break through the stage of mere refinement to that of innovation. Just as in nature, where symbiosis is the basis of major evolutionary leaps that create new classes of beings, and evolutionary competition leads to declinations on a major theme. Al-Andalus is both vision and proof of what cultures can achieve through symbiosis. But how, Ms Menocal?

Anyone who can write: "...was sitting amid the golden horde of hard science and Aristotelian splendor beginning to pour out of Toledo." might profit from the services of a good editor. A 'memory palace' is a mnemonic device developed in the Middle Ages to remember what you didn't have at hand - libraries, gardens and palaces are just the opposite. Boccaccio, who stood laughing at the inception of the Italian renaissance - one of the greatest achievements of mankind's capacity for synthesis - hardly saw the 'world of contradictions' about to perish in the plague. Ms Senocal waxes lyrical when she should be analytic (see the chapter on Cervantes), defines terms time and again, and resorts all too often to superlatives or clichés, or gives platitudinous answers to rhetorical questions. And, finally, she has the disconcerting habit of jumping within the same paragraph (or sentence) from one subject, topic or region to another, so that time and again one has to stop and disentangle the skein.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Ornament of the World
Review: The Ornament of the World is not only an excellent book, it should be required reading for anyone who is interested in history, religion, or world affairs. I say this because it is a relevant work in all three areas of study. While Ornament is not actually about world affairs today, it is relevant in that it reveals a good deal about the interactions between religions.

Menocal describes the interactions between Chrisians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval Spain. "In the sense of F. Scott Fitzgerald's wonderful formula...'the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time'". The purpose of Ornament is to explain the context in which this tolerance developed and analyze why such tolerance was sustained at this moment in history.

I have heard Menocal speak. She is extremely intelligent and an excellent speaker so I would also recommend hearing her lecture if you have the chance.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: This learned beginner was well rewarded
Review: This book gives a rudimentary yet enriching knowledge of the history and key players of Al-Andalus, the Moorish emirate (and later caliphate) that, far from being a backwater frontier of the Islamic world, became a vibrant contender with Damascus and Baghdad for the cultural center of this great empire.

New and fascinating historical figures, including the last Umayyad prince and refugee Abd al-Rahman, appear and are wonderfully brought to life, and better known figures like Dante, El Cid (Al Sayeed), Chaucer and Cervantes suddenly appear and take their place in the story. I found it a fascinating and rewarding read and there were portions I would call genuine page-turners. I was also reminded that Islam has always had its cosmopolitans as well as its backward and violent zealots and that these two 'branches' have often been in mortal conflict, as they are again in our time. In fact, as the story unfolds, we learn that it was not Christians north of the Pyrenees who initiated the eventual destruction of this 'ornament of the world' but fundamentalist Berber Muslims from North Africa who could not bear the tolerance and forward thinking of their Iberian co-religionists.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Another rewriting of history
Review: This book is historically inaccurate and does not bear a resemblance to original texts from the period and subsequent, properly documented, works. It seems the author is an apologist and revisionist and a persecutor, certainly not an objective historian.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A good partial history, a bit scattered and anecdotal
Review: This book will definitely help you distinguish your Ummayyadd's from your Abbassids from your Fatimids. And you may not know your Almohads from your Almoravids by the end of it, but you'll definitely be able to distinguish them from everyone else, and that it seems is the important thing. It is shocking that Menocal gets the birthplace of El Cid wrong when it is apparently such a well known fact, as another reviewer points out, but I've noticed that Historians often make errors in dynastic minutia. This book is really about the establishment of cultures, their relationships to each other, and the place of the individuals within them, and Menocal focuses particularly on the development of religion AND the development of language. Castilian (Spanish) and Hebrew were both able to develop radically and to revitalize with the influence of a multicultural environment and Arabic poetic forms. Many of the individuals that Menocal focuses on are poets as well as actors in the Andalusian political scene, and many are Jewish. The focus on Jewish individuals makes a great deal of sense given that they were allowed a political importance in the Muslim scheme of things and later subjugated, first by the fundamentalist Muslim Berber lines, and then diasporized by Ferdinand and Isabella. This is an idealistic History of Tolerance, but it also paints a vivid picture of the limits of and conflicts within that tolerance. It was also interesting to be reminded that the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, whose Alhambra is now a World Heritage site, was the Last of the Muslim states in an otherwise thorougly Christianized Spain.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: first rate readings of Andalusian culture
Review: This is an excellent evocation of the suppleness and creativity of a Muslim-Jewish-Christian Arab-European culture that persisted for centuries and had an enormous impact on Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

This isn't a history but rather a series of historical and literary vignettes of Andalusian life. It is in many ways an urgently needed humanities primer that replaces the traditional Judeo-Christian view of Western Civ with a richer and more accurate Judeo-Christian-Muslim one. This is a book that can help you read Song of Roland, El Cid, the poems of Shmuel Ha Nagid and the works of Ibn Rushid afresh.

It's very well written, thoughtful and insightful, particularly about the intellectual heritage. I'm puzzled by reviewers who complain that it's not a detailed history. It's not supposed to be. And yes, there are repetitions and some overgeneralizations. That's why I knocked off a star. The book is not without its flaws. But potential buyers should ignore a couple of the most hostile readers whose interest in attacking any nuanced treatment of any Islamic polity prevents them from engaging this book in a critical, intelligent fashion.

ORNAMENT OF THE WORLD is exactly what a trade book should be. It's accessible to the general reader but still smart. It's erudite without being obscure. And it inspires you to read further.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: THE BOOK OF HELL
Review: This is by far the worst book i have ever read. I was forced to read it before i went to spain and i cant explain the agony i went through to read this piece. She goes back and forth on all of these tangents and you dont know what she will talk about next. It's HORRIBLE! Do not read this book, you will regret it , unless u are an extemely boring person and this interests you...to all you people who gave this book 5 stars, shame.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: THE BOOK OF HELL
Review: This is by far the worst book i have ever read. I was forced to read it before i went to spain and i cant explain the agony i went through to read this piece. She goes back and forth on all of these tangents and you dont know what she will talk about next. It's HORRIBLE! Do not read this book, you will regret it , unless u are an extemely boring person and this interests you...to all you people who gave this book 5 stars, shame.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Monument to ideals on a flimsy foundation
Review: Writing history raises an inevitable challenge: relate events as they were or portray selected elements to emphasize a theme. The former method is often ponderous, the latter often misleading. Menocal has opted for the second option. In her survey of Medieval Spain, she gives us an entertaining and informative look at expressions of the intellectual elite over seven centuries of Muslim rule.

Menocal's approach aims to restore Spanish Islam's blemished reputation. Muslim Spain has endured a scathing censure imposed by "victorious" Christian Europe. In the Christian view, the Reconquista of Spain freed a population from a Muslim yoke. The European invasion of the Western Hemisphere carried that myth across the Atlantic while strengthening the crusading attitude of the conquistadores. Menocal uses romantic poetry, the advancement of selected scholars to high posts under the caliphate, and the literacy of the Muslim and Jewish communities as evidence of high, positive interaction. Even the Christians, normally disdainful of literacy, science and philosophy, joined the chorus of common interests.

Weaving her tale around the Cordovan Umayyad caliphs founded by exiled prince Abn al-Rahmad, she traces the building programs, internal disputes among the Islamic schisms arising along the Mediterranean, and the challenges posed by intruders from the north. For Menocal, the binding force across Islamic Spain was language. Arabic became a lingua franca with the power to transcend religious dogma and jurisdictional disputes. Jews and Christians alike became fluent in this imposed language due to its expressive power. Arabic was also used in the Eastern Mediterranean to recover and spread lost texts of the Greek scholars. Thus, often unattributed, the Muslims kept medicine, astronomy, philosophy and other disciplines alive. Christians would later adapt them joyfully, but the Dark Ages aren't misnamed for the rest of Western Europe.

Menocal might have produced a book of sweeping vision, restoring the image of Muslim Spain as one of civilisation's most noteworthy achievements. Instead, she sinks into a swamp of romantic fervour, highlighting erotic poetry and grandiose architecture. The farmers and small traders who were taxed to support these elitist endeavours likely had a different view. That is, when they weren't in hiding from the nearly continuous wars waged among the Muslims or between the Islamic invaders from the south or the Christian ones from across the Pyrenees.

As she skips over the centuries, Menocal introduces the rising tide of Christian aggressive attitudes culminating in the Jewish/Muslim expulsion. The French monastics at Cluny had adopted the liberal view of philosophy espoused by their Iberian neighbours. Deeper in Europe, however, the Cistercians, ardent crusaders, urged expunging Christianity of any Arabic taint. Viewpoints hardened, as Menocal recounts, through exchanges of essays and books. Menocal doesn't investigate whether these expressions reached the general populace, but the Church hierarchy system ensured local parish priests acted as mouthpieces of the regional bishops. The events of 1492 verified who had the louder voice.

Although tentatively concluding with the background of Columbus' departure, Menocal cannot resist extending her recital to the early 17th Century. How can one write on Spain without folding the La Manchan epic into the story? Finding Arabic roots in Cervantes is neither new nor difficult, but Menocal provides a new twist. Menocal suggests Don Quixote's worldview is that of any thinker of the Muslim period. Identity of any aspect of the world is muddled by a spread of conflicting, if not hostile, attitudes. La Mancha thus becomes the last gasp of an integrated Spanish society that is considered insane by the rigid-minded world that succeeded it.

Given the span of time and involvement of numerous articulate historical figures, one turns to the "Other Readings" at the back with high expectation. Turn the pages carefully, otherwise you'll miss it. Instead of a bibliography rich in selection, there are a few translations by Menocal's lady friends and a few, little known scholars of the subject. If Menocal lacked the ambition, time or knowledge to produce a proper reading list, she might have cited one or two good ones. Instead, there's a paucity of further reading. Except for the few maps, which mostly duplicate each other, the illustrations follow the pattern. A pity. Such an immense topic standing on so feeble a base makes this book good reading, but uninformative. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Monument to ideals on a flimsy foundation
Review: Writing history raises an inevitable challenge: relate events as they were or portray selected elements to emphasize a theme. The former method is often ponderous, the latter often misleading. Menocal has opted for the second option. In her survey of Medieval Spain, she gives us an entertaining and informative look at expressions of the intellectual elite over seven centuries of Muslim rule.

Menocal's approach aims to restore Spanish Islam's blemished reputation. Muslim Spain has endured a scathing censure imposed by "victorious" Christian Europe. In the Christian view, the Reconquista of Spain freed a population from a Muslim yoke. The European invasion of the Western Hemisphere carried that myth across the Atlantic while strengthening the crusading attitude of the conquistadores. Menocal uses romantic poetry, the advancement of selected scholars to high posts under the caliphate, and the literacy of the Muslim and Jewish communities as evidence of high, positive interaction. Even the Christians, normally disdainful of literacy, science and philosophy, joined the chorus of common interests.

Weaving her tale around the Cordovan Umayyad caliphs founded by exiled prince Abn al-Rahmad, she traces the building programs, internal disputes among the Islamic schisms arising along the Mediterranean, and the challenges posed by intruders from the north. For Menocal, the binding force across Islamic Spain was language. Arabic became a lingua franca with the power to transcend religious dogma and jurisdictional disputes. Jews and Christians alike became fluent in this imposed language due to its expressive power. Arabic was also used in the Eastern Mediterranean to recover and spread lost texts of the Greek scholars. Thus, often unattributed, the Muslims kept medicine, astronomy, philosophy and other disciplines alive. Christians would later adapt them joyfully, but the Dark Ages aren't misnamed for the rest of Western Europe.

Menocal might have produced a book of sweeping vision, restoring the image of Muslim Spain as one of civilisation's most noteworthy achievements. Instead, she sinks into a swamp of romantic fervour, highlighting erotic poetry and grandiose architecture. The farmers and small traders who were taxed to support these elitist endeavours likely had a different view. That is, when they weren't in hiding from the nearly continuous wars waged among the Muslims or between the Islamic invaders from the south or the Christian ones from across the Pyrenees.

As she skips over the centuries, Menocal introduces the rising tide of Christian aggressive attitudes culminating in the Jewish/Muslim expulsion. The French monastics at Cluny had adopted the liberal view of philosophy espoused by their Iberian neighbours. Deeper in Europe, however, the Cistercians, ardent crusaders, urged expunging Christianity of any Arabic taint. Viewpoints hardened, as Menocal recounts, through exchanges of essays and books. Menocal doesn't investigate whether these expressions reached the general populace, but the Church hierarchy system ensured local parish priests acted as mouthpieces of the regional bishops. The events of 1492 verified who had the louder voice.

Although tentatively concluding with the background of Columbus' departure, Menocal cannot resist extending her recital to the early 17th Century. How can one write on Spain without folding the La Manchan epic into the story? Finding Arabic roots in Cervantes is neither new nor difficult, but Menocal provides a new twist. Menocal suggests Don Quixote's worldview is that of any thinker of the Muslim period. Identity of any aspect of the world is muddled by a spread of conflicting, if not hostile, attitudes. La Mancha thus becomes the last gasp of an integrated Spanish society that is considered insane by the rigid-minded world that succeeded it.

Given the span of time and involvement of numerous articulate historical figures, one turns to the "Other Readings" at the back with high expectation. Turn the pages carefully, otherwise you'll miss it. Instead of a bibliography rich in selection, there are a few translations by Menocal's lady friends and a few, little known scholars of the subject. If Menocal lacked the ambition, time or knowledge to produce a proper reading list, she might have cited one or two good ones. Instead, there's a paucity of further reading. Except for the few maps, which mostly duplicate each other, the illustrations follow the pattern. A pity. Such an immense topic standing on so feeble a base makes this book good reading, but uninformative. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]


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