The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise

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The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise by Dario Fernandez- Morera

This is a detailed, well-supported and highly engaging book. The thesis of the author, Dario Fernandez- Morera, is that Spain prior to the Muslim conquest was a civilized society that was conquered by barbarians, who thereafter usurped the benefits of the higher civilization and impressed their own repressive social structure on the survivors. Fernandez-Morera contends that there was no tolerant Muslim civilization in Spain, and that this idea, and the name Andalusia, was concocted by scholars in the 20th century. In his epilogue, Morera writes:

“But a basic fact is lost in discussions and arguments about the details of the life of the Christian dhimmis of Spain, the so-called Mozarabs, and about how much or how little they benefited from Islamic “toleration”— namely, that they were by definition a subaltern group, a fourth- or fifth-class marginalized people in a hierarchical society, and that they were the victims of an extortion system, the dhimma, that gave them the choice that gangsters give to their victims: pay to be protected, or else. Therefore, saying that the Christians might be “content” with their status in Spain, Greece, or elsewhere under medieval Islamic rule is even more preposterous than saying that American blacks might be “content” with their second-class citizenship under the tolerant white hegemony in certain areas of the United States prior to the twentieth-century civil rights movement, or perhaps even with their treatment by slave owners in the American South before the War of Secession, who often “made them part of the family.” 10 In fact, as the nomenclature described by the historian Ibn Hayyan of Córdoba indicated, Christians were at the bottom of a stratified Islamic world, where Arabs occupied the top, followed by Berbers, then by freed Muslim white slaves, and finally by muladis (converts), who were further divided into first-generation converts and the rest. 11 And of course Christians, again by definition, were not part of the Islamic umma but were merely tolerated and “protected” (a word with ominous meaning for anyone familiar with “protection” rackets) as long as they humbly kept their place and paid for said “protection”— in a hegemonic tactic also used by the Muslim Turks during their four-hundred-year subjugation of Christian Greece.

Morera's book is therefore intended as revisionist history, and Morera knows that he is attacking a position that has become hallowed by multicultural piety and the sense that there is something amiss in Western culture. One of the engaging features of Morera's writing is that he introduces his chapters with quotations from leading scholars that attest to the myth of Andalusian tolerance, and then he proceeds to dismantle these fatuous quotes bit by bit with citations and facts.

There is an interesting feature in Morera's sources. He seems to rely on quite a bit of Spanish sources. My sense was that most of the “Andalusian paradise” advocates don't read Spanish and aren't aware of recent research by Spanish historians. In addition, I suspect that Morera's opponents are indoctrinated in the various “Black Legends” that depict Spain as perennially backwards and barbaric.

Morera's first bit of correction is to destroy the idea that everyone referred to Spain under the Muslims as “Andalusia.” The Christian inhabitants referred to the regions occupied by the Muslims as “Spain” and even the Muslims used the term Spain (and not Iberia.)

Morera also takes on the modern apologetic that “jihad” does not mean “military conquest.” The conquest of Spain was religiously motivated as part of the concept of jihad. Modern apologists might downplay the idea of jihad as religious war, but the Muslims involved in the conquest and subjugation of Spain were clear:

“Likewise, the legal manual Suma de los principales mandamientos y devedamientos de la ley y çunna, por don Içe de Gebir, alfaquí mayor y muftí de la aljama de Segovia, written in 1492 in aljamiado— Spanish written with Arabic signs used by many of the Muslims under Spanish Christian domination— examines jihad (al-chihed) only as Holy War and as obligatory for the believer (35). The same is true of the legal manual Leyes de moros, written in Spanish and possibly dating from the fourteenth century (see the allusion to jihad in 250). The persistence of the understanding of jihad only as Holy War in these works is quite telling because they were written for the use of Muslims already under Christian rule (mudéjares). 26 The Suma makes clear that waging jihad is obligatory for all free Muslim males and that before fighting the infidels one must ask them first either to submit to Islam and pay the jizya or to convert to Islam (chapter 35).”

Morera also undermines the popular notion that the Visigothic kingdom was destined to fall. In fact, the Visigothic kingdom, according to Morera, was a “nascent civilization” that could count social and engineering achievements among its accomplishments. It did not fall because it was a moribund civilization, but because it was attacked by a powerful outside source at a time when it was beset with its own internal conflicts. Among its accomplishments was its legal code:

“Overlooked, too, is that the Visigothic Code of Law was, for its time, an impressive document that combined Visigoth practices with Roman law and Christian principles, and that evidences a guiding desire to limit the power of government many centuries before Magna Carta. (The following headings in title 1 of book 2 give an idea of this concern with freedom from tyrannical rule: “II. The Royal Power, as well as the Entire Body of the People, should be Subject to the Majesty of the Law. III. It is Permitted to No One to be Ignorant of the Law.... V. How the Avarice of the King should be Restrained.”) “

Visigothic Spain was filled with substantial works of public construction that relied on engineering skills retained from Rome. Likewise, Spain was developing its own musical style. Islamic Spain took over these skills.

After laying the foundations, Morera addresses the myth of toleration. The true story of Islamic Spain is anything but toleration. While I was listening to the stories of beheadings and impalements and persecution of Christians and heterodox Muslims, I was caused to reflect on ISIS in Syra and Iraq, and ponder how there could be such similar activities separated by a millennium of time and a continent. Morera points out that the situation of women in Islamic Spain was far more oppressive than found in Christian Spain. Christian women could work and leave their homes, and there were female monarchs. Not so in Islamic Spain, where women were either sex slaves or confined to their homes as wives or daughters. Likewise, while the condition of Jews may have been better in Islamic Spain than Christian Spain, that was due to the traditional tactic of conquerors who support a minority against the larger population. Course, this preferential treatment created resentment among Muslims and curtailment of preferential treatment.

In terms of tolerance, one of the signal facts is simply that Christianity was exterminated in the southern, Muslim lands by the time of the Reconquest. Dhimmi Christians were induced to convert by the constant state of humiliation imposed on them, by the mass beheadings and deportations and by the emigration to the Christian kingdoms of the north. Morera writes

“By the end of the twelfth century, as a result of flight (or “migration”) to Christian lands, expulsions to North Africa, executions, and conversions, the Christian dhimmi population had largely disappeared from al-Andalus. 9 When Christians entered Granada in 1492, there were no Christian dhimmis in the city.

And:

“Never mind the lowly status Christian dhimmis and even muladis occupied in Islamic society; the harsh restrictions they lived under; the extortion and humiliation they suffered through their special “taxes” (the jizya); the destruction of their ancient churches, as recorded by the monks Eulogius and Alvarus (testimonies either ignored by scholars or dismissed as the exaggerations of fanatics); 106 or the even harsher punishments Christians faced for violating Islamic laws. Those punishments included drastic measures such as ethnic cleansing: Christian dhimmis were expelled to North Africa repeatedly— from Malaga in 1106, Granada in 1126, and various parts of Islamic Spain in 1138 and 1170.107 The punishments also included, as we have seen repeatedly, executions of the most painful and public forms. Such was the spirit of Islamic Spain's “convivencia,” which Norman Roth hails as “one of the many things that made Spain great, and which the rest of Europe could have learned from it to its profit.”

Moreras arguments are backed up with impressive citations to authorities. His writing is very engaging. If you like seeing the fatuous nonsense and academic pieties flayed with intelligence and scholarship, this is your book.

The book certainly felt like an unbalanced polemic more often than not, and many of the arguments were not really connected to the stated thesis of the book. I gave this book a three because its discussions on the practice of Islamic schools of jurisprudence in Umayyad Spain was interesting, and some of the controversial claims and arguments in the book sparked thinking on my part as to what it means exactly to be a tolerant society. Is a tolerant society the same as an equal society? By definition, the answer is no, not necessarily. To call Islamic Spain tolerant is to do so only by historical context and should not be conflated with being a just or equal society. By today's standards, Andalucía would not reach the standards for religious freedom met by all but the harshest regimes at the present time. With these qualifications in mind however, it is still possible to recognize the special achievements of Islam in Spain in the areas where other religions and cultures coexisted, influenced one another, and left behind intellectual and cultural achievements that continue to impress today.