Al-Andalus: Notes on a Hidden, Lustrous, Indispensable Era

IN THE ALBAYZÍN, we lived face-to-face with the Middle Ages. The Alhambra, soaring on its promontory, had its beginning in the early 1200s. And our whole barrio had kept, through its thriving and catastrophe, the basic street pattern of a medieval village.

Gabriella and I used to go whimsically about the lanes, sure that some of the ancient doors opened into another century. Sometimes we sat together before a wall of white plaster, where, as though watching a movie, we conjured the daily life of another epoch. Such fun gave us many laughs, as we rambled and whispered our way through the afternoon. But all these antics did not undo my wretched ignorance of the period.

Let us define what we mean by Al-Andalus: it is the period of history spanning almost eight hundred years, from 711 to 1492, on the Iberian peninsula, under the administration of either Islamic emirs or caliphs, or Christian kings and queens. Whatever the faith of the powerful in whatever region of Iberia, Al-Andalus is a distinctive cultural space. When we arrived in Spain, I had studied the reign of Ferdinand and Isabel, their triumphant unification of Spain, and the explorations of Columbus. But I knew little about the Islamic, Christian, and Jewish leaders and even less about the scholars of the period.

But the conjured movies and magic doors led me to shelves of books, and to the houses of our neighbors, and to the history of gardens and of our cherished neighborhood. And thence to the history of Al-Andalus.

Just as the Albayzín is a study in unlikelihood, so the history of Al-Andalus is itself improbable; so improbable that, until recently, it hardly existed at all. Most of us learn something about medieval European history, but in general, the material covers in more depth the history of countries other than Spain. There is a simple reason for this: to study Christian Europe of the Middle Ages, you needed, principally, Latin, probably Greek, and the vernacular language of the region you studied. To study Al-Andalus, you needed not only Latin and medieval Spanish, but a mastery of Hebrew and Arabic, plus a willingness to understand the contributions of Arabic and Jewish culture. But scholars with such a sweep of languages and interests were rarely to be found, except in concept, like the saber-toothed tiger.

There was another problem, an old-fashioned one: the venom of propaganda and the energy of hatred. Over hundreds of years, the influential medieval chronicles, in combination with religious prophecy, came potently together with political make-believe, military glamor, and righteous conviction, to ensure the virtual erasure of Al-Andalus. Literacy in Christian Spain was for centuries concentrated among the politically influential, and above all among the clergy, who were central and powerful political players.

A medieval chronicle is just an account of historical events, without any real effort to state the facts. It’s a wondrous form, full of ideological gusto and narrative invention, just because of the liberty of interpretation allowed. When we read them, we learn a lot about the writer, and about the power and politics of the time. But usually we learn almost nothing about what actually happened. So it was in Spain, where the chronicles tended to be traditional. That is, they took their origins to be the Chronicles of the Old Testament, and they sought to fit the events of their period into a Christian framework. So we get a lot of prophecy and apocalyptic obsessions, simmered with a desire to see their own faith triumphant in Spain and worldwide.

In Spanish chronicles, this desire heated into craving, and history is cooked up before our eyes. So we have, nine centuries after the death of Jesus, the story of James, his brother, bringing the faith to Spain. Of course, James was martyred in Jerusalem a few decades after Jesus, but no matter. The chroniclers whipped up another version, in which his corpse floated preposterously in a marble boat all the way to northern Iberia, then to be dragged onshore by divinely commanded wild bulls, only to be discovered later by one Pelayo, a peasant who saw the heavenly light streaming from a field. This wild version stood for a while. Then a later chronicle upped the ante by declaring boldly that it was Charlemagne himself (or rather, a comic-book fantasy of Charlemagne, fluent in Arabic) who had found the tomb of James. But that was not the end of it. This new version, penned by a mysterious cleric impersonating a French archbishop named Turpin, was itself modified by another cleric, one with more financial acumen. He added on his own admonitions, in which he was delighted to report that the world’s Christians were instructed to visit and to offer some portion of their wealth to the Cathedral of Santiago, the home of the cult of St. James. Thus the tale makes a neat compound of serial forgery in hot pursuit of power and money.

As if this were not enough, St. James soon metamorphosed into St. James the Moorslayer, who would on occasion gallop wildly down from the heavens on a white horse to fight for the armies of the True Faith.

It all worked marvelously. Based on such fluffy inventions, the town of Santiago de Compostela—heart of the cult of St. James—became then and has remained an important place of pilgrimage.

Yet the chronicles that created Santiago de Compostela made, as it turned out, relatively modest claims. Other, more far-reaching texts took on crucial weight in the centuries that preceded the fall of Granada. Many of these texts have a frothy mix of prophecy and apocalyptic fever, yet they provided a narrative foundation for the royal house of Ferdinand and Isabel, as they came to conquer and dominate Spain.

It was a foundation many hundreds of years in the making. It used chronicles, myths, hagiographic texts, political puff pieces, apocalyptic essays, and collected speculation from all over Europe, yet made a consistent, emotionally potent story all about Spain. Scholars have gotten to the heart of the story by sifting through the whole wilderness of texts and looking for the narrative core, which is extraordinary. We will sketch it in a few paragraphs, and it is my solemn duty to assure the reader that I am not making anything up.

Here we go: certain prophecies originally from a sibyl or from Merlin himself foretold the life of a king of Castile that would be called the Lion King, or the Hidden One, or the Bat. This king would conquer all of Spain, and his son would go on to conquer Africa, Asia, and Jerusalem. So would it be that the Lion King would bring all history home to Spain, because it was Spain, and no other country, that had been chosen by God to carry out His will. It was the Spanish Christians who were God’s chosen people, and they must take the leading roles in God’s drama on earth as he brought humankind to the end of time, with all its terror and salvation.

Why was a king of Spain right for this task? Because after the fall of Troy, Hercules had come to Spain, conquered the country, and ruled it as a great and just prince. Hercules made his nephew the first king of Spain, and all the royalty of Spain were of his blood. And it was blood of Biblical worth, since Hercules was himself descended from Noah. Not only that, but Isabel herself was of the line of the Old Testament King David, the family line from which, as everyone knew very well indeed, would come the Messiah. As to Ferdinand, he occasionally styled himself “King of Jerusalem.”

So there we have it: a Spanish King and Queen identified by God to lead their chosen people in the conquest of Spain, and destined to begin the final triumph of Christian culture with the capture of Jerusalem. These victories would commence a golden age, governed by Spanish royalty of messianic destiny. And so would all of human history come home to its fateful and blessed conclusion.

The Spanish pope of the day endorsed this rapt fantasy, writing after the fall of Granada about being in the eleventh hour, the approach to the last days. And of course this vision had little use for Jews or Muslims, who had both suffered the inevitable defeat of a debased, inferior culture and faith. The Christian church was declared to be the new Israel, and the Jewish Messiah was unmasked: he was the Antichrist. All this phantasmagoria and grandeur came together splendidly in the conquest of Granada: it was the decisive moment in which the future came into view, as Satan, the Jews, the Muslims, and the Antichrist all suffered a defeat that would lead history to its culmination. Ferdinand and Isabel were not just the saviors of Spain. They were the great-souled rulers, finally in place, who were fit to confront the fabulous days at the end of history.

In coordination with the story, the ignorant and bellicose Visigoths were recast as exalted ancestors, virile and fierce in spirit, who had established a Christian kingdom in Spain and then lost it to the infidel, only to wait eight hundred years for redemption.

It is not easy, so many centuries later, to credit this story that Spain told to itself, for itself, about itself. However feverish and ornate, to them it was more than a story. It was the wisdom of deeply spiritual men who looked into history and wanted to clarify for all the course of God’s work on earth and in their own time. In fact it proved to be the story whose power would all but erase from the narrative of Spanish history the accomplishments, the culture, the science, the music, and the literature of Al-Andalus. It was the Big Lie, in a medieval version breathtaking for its scope, ambition, and success. The effort stands, even today, as a classically obnoxious example of how religion and politics, in league together, can with consummate political artistry set out to replace real history with a new, fraudulent version. After the taking of Granada in 1492, the expulsion of the Jews, the punishments of the Inquisition, and the ethnic cleansing and final expulsion of the Moriscos, the history of the Middle Ages in Spain was reconceived as a vulgar martial and religious epic, an ancient and fateful holy work: the redemption of Iberia. Even through the twentieth century, we can follow the remarkable, feline activity of academics who have tried to keep in place a modest version of this historical fantasy, in which barbarous Muslims invaded Spain in 711 but did not alter its fundamental Catholic character and destiny, which came roaring back in 1492 to rightful prominence. In fact, with some few exceptions, some version of this story seems to have dominated teaching in Spain and held sway in the public imagination until the fall of Spanish fascism and the death of General Franco—he of the “National Catholicism”—in 1975. And beyond. As late as 2004, the prime minister of Spain, Jose Maria Aznar, could with a straight face declare how in the eighth century, “Spain was invaded by the Moors, and refused to become just another piece of the Islamic world.”

It is a stunning centuries-long run of contempt, and it means that most of what we know about Al-Andalus has become available only in the last several decades. Much more will be discovered, but we walked our barrio in thankfulness to the many scholars who have begun to teach us about this splendid period. Let us, together, pass through one of the strange doors in the Albayzín and look into another age.

And where might we look? Let us, to begin, visit a workshop in Toledo in the thirteenth century.

THE REBIRTH OF BOOKS IN THE CONVIVENCIA

The workshop is a room of stone provided by a Christian king, Alphonso X, known to history as Alphonso the Wise. At a large wood table piled with books sit two scholars, one of them reading aloud slowly from a text in Arabic, translating it as he speaks into Castilian; the other man listens and writes down his own translation, translating the Castilian into Latin. Aiding them in their task are editors and researchers, who come and go as needed. It is a slow process, and there are many pauses to clarify, to review, to dispute. Many of the terms in Arabic have no exact equivalent, and a new word must be coined for the translation. It is laborious, intelligent, patient work; slowly the translation takes form.

What books do they translate? In Toledo principally, but also among the cities in the region where good libraries and royal patronage are available, the books in the hands of these men span a phenomenal range of subjects. First among them we must list Euclid’s Elements, one of the key advances in human history, and one of the books in wide use in Al-Andalus. Euclid had been translated into Arabic in Baghdad by an assembly of scholars first organized by Haroun al-Rashid and carried on by his son, who created an academy called the House of Wisdom, a crucial source of books for Al-Andalus.

In the House of Wisdom worked Al-Khwarizimi, a ninth-century astronomer and mathematician who wrote his books principally in Baghdad. His name gives us the word algorithm, and he is honored as the father of algebra. Al-Khwarizimi’s work on astronomy centered on the refinement of astronomical tables used to calculate and understand the motions of the heavens. It was none other than Adelard of Bath, seeking “truth based on reasoning and not doctrine,” who translated into Latin the entirety of the tables, which were studied throughout Europe. But even more important was the book of Al-Khwarizimi’s called The Hindu Art of Reckoning; that is, what we know as Hindu-Arabic numerals. This book is a straightforward description of a place-value system of numbers, with the use of zero demonstrated, and calculations in arithmetic set forth. It is an intellectual thunderclap, and it was translated into Latin in Toledo. This book, along with others such as Abraham bar Hiyya’s Book of Geometry, which also taught arithmetic, would play a crucial role in bringing the Hindu-Arabic numbers into widespread use in Europe, and so transform the study of mathematics and astronomy throughout the continent.

And what about the extraordinary and anonymous Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, a mystical work meant to be a compilation of all knowledge, so as to bring the mind into the freedom of understanding, and so closer to the divine? This book dealt not just with math and logic, but with music and natural history, botany, geography, music, and psychology, all with the idea that we may be transformed by the harmony and beauty of the whole. The book was likely in Saragossa as early as the eleventh century, and at least two of the Epistles have anonymous Latin translations.

Other key philosophical texts were translated: Al-Farabi’s Classification of the Sciences, which set out the discipline of philosophy as a whole and organized scientific study into six branches, from the sciences of language through logic, math, and physics, on to metaphysics and law; and for each of these studies he proposed a method. This, from a man who wrote as well on politics, sociology, ethics, medicine, and music.

And most famously among translated texts: the work of the Córdoban scholar Averroes, who wrote three levels of commentaries on the whole of Aristotle as well as a translation of and commentary upon Plato’s Republic. All his books would be studied in Europe and kick off an intellectual revolution in philosophy, education, and theology. Even Dante in The Divine Comedy would find a place for the Muslim Averroes—in Limbo, where he mused alongside the pagans Socrates, Aristotle, Homer, and Euclid. It was a kind of All-Star team of indispensable men, curiously dispensed with by Dante into a kind of steamy vestibule of the Inferno.

In Limbo they had for company someone else translated in Toledo: the Persian genius Avicenna, whose Canon of Medicine was a work of genius that dominated medical practice and teaching for centuries in Europe and remains among the most illustrious texts in the whole history of medicine.

Scholars even translated the Koran, in a fit of curiosity about the culture politically dominant in Toledo for more than four hundred years.

These books are a small sample of the collection translated in Toledo, in Saragossa, and in other cities in Al-Andalus in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By these translations, much of the philosophy, science, and technology of the Greek world, and the advances and inventions of the Arab and Persian civilizations, were given to Europe. From the beginning of the twenty-first century, as we look back on the ecology of ideas as they moved from culture to culture, we stand in thankfulness and amazement at the effort. By their work, these men shared the best of the science and philosophy present in one of the most advanced cultures in the history of the Mediterranean: a recent evaluation among historians places Al-Andalus at its zenith no fewer than four centuries ahead of Latin Europe. The texts they translated are a crucial part of the foundation of the Renaissance. It is impossible to imagine the rapid development of the West in science, culture, and commerce without just this gift of knowledge. That it turned out to be a monumental and decisive transfer of power, as well, could not have been known to the translators.

Who were these men who labored in so concentrated a period in the history of Al-Andalus? They translated texts from Arabic, and their teams consisted of Arab and Jewish scholars, Spanish Christians, and a smattering of Slavs and Englishmen. Since they worked so beneficial a revolution in history, we might expect to recognize on sight so extraordinary a group. Let me recite at random the names of some of them: Hugo of Santalla, Hermann of Carinthia, Robert of Ketton, John of Seville, Daniel of Morley, Judah Mosca, Galippus, Guillen Arremon Daspa, Plato of Tivoli, Peter of Toledo, Gerbert of Aurilliac, Gerard of Cremona, Michael Scot, Abuteus Levita, bar Hiyya, Galip, Ibn Daud, Gundalissimus. So obscure a gathering of men! Many a common fungus is better known. Here are men who killed and tortured no one, made no practice of pomp or grandeur, nor promoted any hatred. Yet they played a pivotal role in human history, undertaking prodigious labors that uprooted prejudice and ignorance, concentrated twenty centuries of knowledge, and showed Europe a way forward based on reason, understanding, and calculation. Perhaps the day may come when these workers and their colleagues are those we name, recognize, and honor in place of the sordid lists of kings and soldiers that we suffer in book after book of history.

How was such a work possible, and why was it so splendidly done in Al-Andalus?

This is a question that begs a wildly complex explanation, so let us answer in one word: the convivencia.

In Al-Andalus, for eight centuries, communities of Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived side by side or intermingled the one with the other. There was no precedent for so extended an experiment in the history of Europe, and it has not been equaled since, for daring, brilliance, or productivity.

First, the religious background. As is well-known by now, Islam did not claim to bring a new faith. It claimed, rather, that Muhammad was the last of a series of prophets come to humankind with a revelation to speak to our hearts and awaken our souls. In the Koran we find Moses, Abraham, and Jesus honored and exalted. This sensible idea, of a continuity of knowledge through the ages, meant that Islam, especially in its early period, was predisposed to tolerance. This tolerance was a matter of religious principle, not political conniving; that is, it rested on Koranic teaching and the direct statements of Muhammad. To disclaim Jesus and Abraham would have been a blow to Islam itself, since these teachers featured prominently in the Koran. And not only did Christianity and Judaism have as founders authentic prophets, they had scriptures—they were “People of a Book.” As such, they merited protection and respect, and in the first several centuries of Al-Andalus, they had it. Each religious community had its own law courts and religious practice and custom, derived from Visigothic law in the case of the Christians and rabbinic law for the Jews. But the center point of this system of tolerance was simple: there were to be no forced conversions to Islam.

So it was that in this early period of Al-Andalus, from 711 to 1009, the three principal religious communities of the Mediterranean settled down to live together: to learn new languages, trade, start businesses, farm, travel, intermarry, and, slowly, learn from one another. The project had its difficulty, conflict, animosity, and spasmodic, wretched violence. At times brutish attacks and murders overcame the test and tradition of tolerance. But overall, during this early period, and in fact during the nearly eight hundred years of Al-Andalus, under Muslim emirs and caliphs and Christian kings, and with the assistance of an active and powerful Jewish community, the three great religions of the Mediterranean had their chance to settle down together and make a go of it.

What happens when, under conditions of relative safety, such a diversity of cultures has a chance at civility, at prosperity, at study, at shared labor? To walk through our beloved Albayzín is to move among the centuries of medieval Spain, to observe the texture and detail of the convivencia.

THE CONVIVENCIA IN STONE, WORSHIP, AND POLITICS

First, an architectural convivencia: in the Albayzín, the Alhambra, and throughout Spain, the form most identified with Al-Andalus is the horseshoe arch. We see this emblematic arch as a graceful entrance to houses, to courtyards, to palaces. In the famous Mosque of Córdoba, it defines the exterior of the whole building, and inside, double horseshoe arches lead our vision skyward, along with our meditations. It is a rare shape, and one that is literally uplifting, because of a simple trick in its design. The semicircle of the arch is extended, so that the ends of the arch fall below the center point of the circle that defines the arch. Because of this simple layout, the whole form seems to be rising: it’s a portrait in stone of sunrise. It gives the form a natural lightness and grace. And when the horseshoe arches are multiplied, as in the Mosque of Córdoba, we feel weightless in the force field of such strange beauty.

Universally, the design of these arches is identified with Islam and with Islamic Spain; but, curiously, in its origins it is not just Syrian, it is Visigothic. From this historical mix, Muslim architects and builders of Al-Andalus took up the design and brought it to full elaboration and prominence. The horseshoe arch is an architectural convivencia.

Yet even this plain fact makes us wonder: Who was a Muslim, and who a Christian or a Jew, and if we wanted to tell one from another, what might we look for?

When, in 711, the Iberian peninsula came under Islam, Muslims numbered in the hundreds, and only later in the thousands, and this among a Christian population of around seven or eight million and a Jewish population of several hundred thousand. A hundred years later, only about 10 percent of the population was Muslim; but as religious and cultural life became mingled, so the voluntary conversions increased slowly, so that after another two full centuries, Iberia had a population that was more than 70 percent Muslim. But as most of the converts had a long family history as Christians, there would have been an understanding of and natural insight into Christian doctrine and custom. It was, overall, so rich a mix that it called forth a whole new vocabulary: mozarabs were Christians under Islamic administration; mudejars, Muslims under Christian administration; muwallads, non-Arab converts to Islam; moriscos and conversos, the Muslims and Jews who had been baptized. The complexity increased with the centuries. Later, as power swung from Muslim to Christian hands, anti-Semitism increased, and the number of conversions from Judaism to Christianity rose, many of them forced on Jews with political pressure, threats, or violence. Or, in the same way, forced on Muslims who once were Christians. At the same time, some Muslims kept to their faith and were full participants in the culture. In addition, there were marriages between men and women of different faiths. All in all, the more we seek to understand the religions of the people of Al-Andalus, the more complex and bewildering it seems. The story is one of an iridescent and complex weaving and unweaving, all through the history of Al-Andalus. If we know anything about this tumultuous movement of faith and family in the communities of Al-Andalus over eight centuries, we know that the legacy of belief, ritual, bonds of friendship, family stories, religious feeling, and wealth all endured in one form or another, and wove into the life of the times myriad threads of sympathy and understanding.

The convivencia created one of the great cultures in the history of Europe, and in the history of the Mediterranean. In the far north of present-day Spain, as far from the power centers of Islamic Spain as one may get, in the settlement of Escalada, we found a tenth-century church, cold, austere. It was full of horseshoe arches, because it was built by monks who came from Córdoba. Even though it was built by Christians, in a place where they would not have been forced into any design, the builders were fully versed in decoration and construction in the style of the day, which was a collective creation.

All through Al-Andalus, we see these synthetic creations. In Toledo, the medieval synagogue of Samuel Halevi bears horseshoe arches, and everywhere arabesques and worked plaster similar to those that bejewel the walls of the Alhambra. Among the inscriptions in Hebrew are passages from the Book of Psalms and the Chronicles; but the inscriptions are not only in Hebrew—they are in Arabic, which most the Jewish population of Al-Andalus would have spoken fluently. And among the Arabic inscriptions, here in this Jewish holy place, astonishingly, are quotations from the Koran. What is more, we find incised in the stucco the coat of arms of Castile; so in addition to the Old Testament and the Koran, we have an explicit acknowledgment of close bonds with the Christian royal house. This place of worship shows us just how far the fusion of cultures proceeded. We stand within it and try the obvious thought experiments: Do we know a church with Jewish ornament and declarations from the Koran? Do we know a mosque with Christian painting and quotations in Hebrew from the Torah prominently displayed? It is easy to overlook the strangeness and hopefulness of the synagogue of Samuel Halevi. I hope we do not.

Not far from this famous synagogue—one of three remaining in Spain—is the mosque of Bab al-Mardum, also called Cristo de la Luz, which has an apse called the Church of Santa Cruz. It is packed with strange magic, like the cave of Ali Baba. Its façade is made of brickwork so delicate it looks sculpted, and exquisite small horseshoe arches, so evocative of Islam, are set along the upper story, as though trying to lift the whole edifice into the sky. This beautiful neighborhood mosque became later a chapel and oratory for the Knights of Saint John, and within it we see an octagonal ceiling like the inside of a jewel and a fresco of Jesus as the ruler of creation, surrounded by stars. It feels miraculous, this small chapel. It feels simultaneously Christian and Muslim, a place where we know Jesus to be an authentic prophet common to both faiths. It is a magnetic, complex treasure box of beauties.

What about the men and women of influence in Al-Andalus? Do we find, in their life and blood, the same deep envelopment in the convivencia?

One high point of the period is the early tenth century, that of the Caliph Abd Rahman III, whom we have met in our travels among the gardens of Spain. He is found in many history books as the exemplar of Islamic Spain, princely ally of the arts and sciences and relentless military genius who reigned for almost fifty years, built his incomparable palace, and presided over a time of increasing conversions to Islam. One thinks of a classically formed Arab prince, descended from the illustrious Abd al-Rahman I, another poet, lover of books, and devotee of gardens. But the caliph was hardly Arab at all. His mother was Basque, and his grandmother was from Navarre. Toda, queen mother of Navarre, was his great-aunt. He was blond and blue-eyed, stocky, and he governed with the help of Christians, who sought employment in his administration, and especially of Jews, among whom none was more powerful than Hasdai Shaprut. This learned man was master of Arabic, Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic. As if that were not enough to accomplish, he was physician, advisor, diplomat, financial manager, and confidant of the caliph. And Hasdai, at the center of power in Al-Andalus, was himself a friend and patron of the arts and sciences, and he gathered in the court astronomers, mathematicians, and musicians. Such was Hasdai’s love of language that he hired as his two personal secretaries poets of gifts so lustrous that we admire their work today, twelve centuries later. He was cofounder of a school in Córdoba for the study of the Talmud. At the same time, as an emissary from the Muslim caliph, this devout Jewish scholar traveled to Leon to propose medical treatments for the Christian King Sancho, who returned to Córdoba for his ministrations.

We do well, in the context of the Middle Ages, to pause before such prospects, since they bespeak so rich and rare an interplay between men, faiths, languages, and cultures, all to the benefit of the people of the Iberian peninsula. And we may ask the same kind of obvious questions that arose in the synagogue of Samuel Halevi. Where are the Arab leaders with learned and powerful Jewish ministers, who sponsor Jewish scholarship in the country where they live? The question sounds absurd. But if it was possible in medieval Spain, over a thousand years ago, are we to think it will be impossible, forever, in the decades and centuries to come?

And Hasdai is far from being the only example of the powerful Jewish-Muslim political force field in Al-Andalus. Take the example, a century after Hasdai, of a man we have already met, Ismail ibn Naghrela. This is a man whose name will be more familiar every passing decade. Another leader of the Jewish community in Al-Andalus, he was a refugee from Córdoba and, by legend at least, a spice merchant and scribe in Málaga. One pictures him dusted in spices and working in language to find a way to marry sensual delight and spiritual certainty. Through his eloquence, derring-do, and literary abilities, he rose to the notice of the vizier of Málaga. Later, he made himself so indispensable to the king of Granada that he was appointed the king’s vizier and, astoundingly, the king’s chief military commander. Imagine this: a Jewish leader for the military forces of a Muslim head of state. As if this were not enough, he was a Biblical scholar and a world-class poet, even penning lines from the battlefield. His verse is metaphysical:

       Earth to man

       is a prison forever.

       These tidbits, then

       for fools:

       Run where you will

       Heaven surrounds you.

       Get out if you can.

Or it is practical:

       Luxuries ease, but when trouble comes

       people are plagued by the wealth they’ve accrued.

       The peacock’s tail is spectacular

       But it weighs him down on the day he’s pursued.

Or it is erotic:

       I’d give everything I had for that gazelle

       who, rising at night

       to his harp and flute

       saw a cup in my hand

       and said:

       “Drink your grape blood against my lips!”

It is easy to imagine Naghrela, in all his lucid, adventurous power, in his palace on the Sabika hill, where the Alhambra now stands, and looking over to the thriving Albayzín.

Hasdai and Naghrela are two of the preeminent figures of the Jewish culture of Al-Andalus—the resplendent centuries known to history as the Sepharad. It was a culture of preternatural brilliance, with its doctors and astronomers, poets and viziers, scholars, translators, poets, mystics, and mathematicians. To mention one of them, virtually at random: in medieval European philosophy, there is the influential Avicebron, whose philosophical work was taken up by Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Albertus Magnus, and who played a central role introducing Neoplatonism to the period. For centuries, no one knew precisely who this gentlemen was. A writer in Baghdad? A contemporary of Avicenna or Omar Khayyam? The best guess, for centuries, was that he was a Christian or Muslim philosopher. Then in 1846, a scholar working in the Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris noticed that the Latin translation of Avicebron’s most influential book, The Fountain of Life, was taken from a book written in Arabic—by the Jewish Solomon Ibn Gabirol, an Andalusian philosopher and poet from Málaga. Gabirol’s work includes Kingdom’s Crown, a long, transcendent, unforgettable prayer that figures prominently in the literature of Hebrew. Gabirol’s poetry remains part of Hebrew liturgy; and his challenging philosophy took on such core notions as divine essence and divine will, the creation of matter and form, universal soul, and the exact elements that compose the created order of the world. And so the philosopher Avicebron turned out to be a temperamental, independent genius, disfigured by a horrific skin disease, who lived much of his life wandering among the Jewish communities throughout Al-Andalus. He entered fully into his physical pain, and into his solitude and darkness, that we might have the good light and uncompromised power of his work.

To understand the convivencia, it is best to let the work of the period speak for itself: work on all fronts that took form brightly in this mixture of cultures, religions, and languages. I have been reading history for years, and I recall no astonishment so sharp as learning of the accomplishments of Al-Andalus.

THE NEW OLD WORLD OF POETRY AND STORIES

Since we have learned of the poetry of Ibn Gabirol and Ibn Neghrela, let us listen to other poets of the period. The verse is far-rambling and marvelous in scope, written not from ideas, but from the good ground of experience, even at its most metaphysical. There is nature poetry, verses of searching love and raucous consummation, transcendent appeals to the heavens, bitter laments and longing, taunts, jibes, seductions, and wholehearted thankfulness. It’s poetry meant to embrace the whole of life, to call the mind close to life.

As we named the translators who changed forever the course of European history, so let us name some of the Arabic and Jewish poets of Al-Andalus: Yehuda Halevi, Moshe Ibn Ezra, Wallada, Ibn Zaydun, Ibn Hazm, Ibn Khafaja, Al-Mutamid, Ibn Abd Rabbihi, Al-Ghazal, Ibn al-Quittiya, Avraham Ibn Hasdai, Yusef Ibn Zabara, Hafsa, Ibn Hani, Ibn Shuhayd al Andalusi, Yosef Qimhi, Avraham Ibn Ezra, Al-Sunawbri, Dunash.

Sound familiar? Before our move to Spain, I was wholly ignorant of nearly all of them. It is yet another example how work of merit rises slowly to prominence, dependent upon the whimsy of politics, of taste, of cultural ignorance or presumption, of the vagaries of accident, and of our willingness to look into the past with hope, goodwill, and resistance to political and aesthetic propaganda. The names of these poets are as familiar as would have been the names of, say, Vermeer in 1800, or Vivaldi in 1850, or Emily Dickinson in 1886—all three of them virtually unknown before, respectively, their painting, music, and poetry was rediscovered, understood, and cherished. I name these poets of Al-Andalus to honor them, and as part of the blessed rediscovery of them now underway at long last.

Here, to give you some savor of their work, is a sampling, what is called in Spanish a florilegio: a gathering of flowers:

From Ibn Hani in an amorous mood:

       Is it the darks of your eyes, or your father’s swords?

       Are these cups of wine, or your kissable lips . . .

       Your eyes are our rendezvous . . .

A generous verse of praise from Ibn Shuhayd:

       She’s played adulteress to her men,

       But what a lovely adulteress!

And from the same poet: he has grown old, he looks into the gathering darkness, yet is still possessed:

       But what is strange is that in my breast

       A love kindles, like flying sparks of embers.

       It moves me as death bores into my heart,

       Excites me as my soul hangs in my throat.

From Ibn Hazm, long gone in love, from a poem called “The Nature of the Beloved”:

       Do you belong to the world of angels

       Or that of men?

       Explain it to me . . .

       Blest be the One who . . .

       . . . arranged that you

       be marvelous natural light.

From the poet Ibn Khafaja, a lovely verse on longing:

       Your love is firm, but I am full of consternation

       At our ever fated separation

       As if we were on a revolving sphere,

       When I appear, you disappear.

And then the same poet, on a happier night:

       He almost drank my soul, I almost drank his cheek.

Nature poetry was so well developed in Al-Andalus that there were established genres for poems about spring, about gardens, and about flowers. There was even a tradition of minute description, that studied in language the most humble things, like a medieval version of Pablo Neruda’s witty Odas elementales. Take these lines, for instance, by Ibn Al-Quitiyya, about a walnut:

       Its covering is composed

       Of two halves so joined

       It’s a pleasure to see

       Like eyelids joined in sleep.

A simple, beautiful line from the nature poet Al-Sunawbri:

       The silence of gardens is speech.

Centuries before the Romantics of England, and yet more centuries before the powerful tradition of nature writing in North America, we have the poets of Al-Andalus in conversation with nature, seeking concord and hoping to attend, to learn, to understand. Here is Ibn Khafaja again, traveling through a mountain pass, and hearing the voice of the mountain itself:

       It blocked every which way

       The rushing winds and at night

       It shouldered the stars

       Arched over desert the mountain

       Like some thinker

       Weighing all the consequences

       Clouds like turbans, black, wrap him

       Lightning fringed them

       With tufts of crimson

       And mute as he was, languageless,

       On my night journey I heard him

       Speak to me of the mysteries . . .

We have been roaming among both Arab and Jewish poets, and it is worth knowing that the Jewish poets’ shining work has its roots in the same blessed phenomenon: the convivencia. For Arabic had strongly developed vernacular forms, and the Jewish poets of the period used them as their schoolhouse. As one of the earliest Jewish poets wrote: “Let Scripture be your Eden, and the Arabs’ books your paradise grove.”

And so the early Jewish poets made a deep study of Arabic prosody—the patterns of meter, intonation, rhythm, all the conventions of music and rhetoric present in the body of Arabic verse. They adapted those elements to Hebrew and made together a revolution. It is a period now called the Golden Age of Hebrew Poetry. It has also been called the Spanish Miracle. The best of these poets are now with us, thanks to the work of the poet, scholar, and translator Peter Cole. His beautiful collection, The Dream of the Poem, brings these poets into our hands and their light into our daily lives.

A few more offerings from Professor Cole’s translations. First, let us return to Ibn Neghrela, the vizier, scholar, and military leader of Granada. Listen to this fierce vow, as he leaves a city lost to anarchy:

       By God and God’s faithful—

       and I keep my oaths—

       I’ll climb cliffs

       And descend to the innermost pit,

       and sew the edge of desert to desert,

       And split the sea

       And every gorge,

       and sail in mountainous ascent,

       until the word “forever” makes sense to me.

And an offering from a man we’ve already met, Solomon Ibn Gibirol, or Avicebron, also a poem of departure and defiance, as he is leaving Saragossa:

       You who seek my peace, come near—

       and hear the roar of my heart like the sea.

       If your heart has grown hard it will soften

       faced with the hatred that faces me.

Here in Granada, in the eleventh century, lived the poet Moshe Ibn Ezra, ranked among the best of the epoch. His work ranges from this bedazzled piece, called “Weak with Wine”—

       We woke, weak with wine from the party,

       barely able to get up and walk

       to the meadow wafting its spices—

       the scents of cassia and cloves:

       and the sun had embroidered its surface with blossoms

       and across it spread a deep blue robe.

—to the poems of his years of exile from Granada, separated from his family and from an energetic and brilliant life in this beautiful city. It’s called “The Dove”:

       Why is that dove in the highest branches

       grieving now in the garden of spices?

       His summer streams won’t run dry,

       the palm trees shade will always shield him,

       and before him, in spring his fledglings sing

       all the melodies he has taught them.

       So cry, little bird, but cry for the man

       forced to wander. His sons are far.

       He cannot tend his young. He sees

       No one who sees them—and sorcerers alone

       Can he consult. Sigh for his wandering,

       but do not bring your song to him;

       Lend him your wings to fly to them

       and delight in the dust and stones of their land.

This man could be our neighbor. He could be showing us the agony of exile in our own times, as he talks directly and intimately to us, across nearly a millennium. In Moshe Ibn Ezra’s work, and throughout the work of the poets of Al-Andalus, we have their uncanny modernity, a clairvoyant engagement with the details of politics and daily life.

There is this rueful piece, from Avraham Ibn Ezra,

       The heavenly spheres and fortune’s stars

       veered off course the day I was born;

       If I were a seller of candles,

       the sun would never go down.

And from Yosef Qimhi, this bitterness, called “Love for the World”:

       Man in his love for the world is like

       a dog gnawing on bones;

       He sucks the blood between his lips

       and doesn’t know it’s his own.

From Avraham Ibn Hasdai, in a quatrain called “Wisdom’s Mantle,” taken from a longer piece called “Advice for a Future King”:

       As long as a man seeks out wisdom

       wisdom will have him hold sway over men;

       but once he thinks he’s wearing its mantle—

       know that it has just been taken from him.

The thirteenth-century poet Todros Abulafia has this playful erotic piece, called “The Day You Left”:

       The day you left was bitter and dark

       the finest thing, you—and when I think of it,

       it feels like there’s nothing left of my skin.

       Your feet, by far, were more beautiful,

       the day they mounted

       and wrapped my neck in a ring.

I would like, reader, to have you into our garden, and sit with you under the grapevine and beside the pomegranate tree, and read aloud with you a whole suite of selections of this poetry. I would wager that never, in the course of such a reading, would you say: how medieval! This is the poetry of men (and some women) who were centermost in the life of their times, plunged in the life of their times, with all its prosperity and learning, its beauty, irrepressible curiosities, songs and science and mathematical ingenuity, its religious exaltations, its stunning culture, and its spasms of violence. These poets offer us the very minutiae of their lives. Rather than the tedious religious dogma we find elsewhere in Europe, they work into the verses all they can of their days and nights, and nothing is off-limits. We can read poems of longing and praise addressed directly to God, and savory erotic speculations; subtle political advice and sage psychological observations; forlorn torments of despair and thanksgiving for a deliverance in love; the refusal to submit to fate and to bitterness, yet sometimes the anguished offerings of a learned man overtaken by events and trampled by sorrow.

In other words, these men and women write to us from their lives, which are our lives. Though they may have lived centuries ago, they are our neighbors. As we read, what grows in us is a feeling that is uncommon when we hold a book from the Middle Ages: a feeling that we are among friends.

Before we leave the literature of Al-Andalus, we should look together into a book of a man born near Granada at the beginning of the twelfth century, Ibn Tufayl. His profile is similar to many of the writers of this period—he had profoundly diverse interests and skills. He was a doctor of such renown that that he was court physician to a sultan of the period, Abu Yaqub, a lover of books who delighted in the company of men of learning. The sultan would spend hours musing with them about whether the world was eternal or created, about Aristotle and the Koran, about the source of the world’s order. In all this, Ibn Tufayl played a crucial role, bringing men of science and philosophy to the court. It was a place of robust and wide-ranging inquiry. Ibn Tufayl was even assigned the task of writing commentaries on the works of Aristotle. He steered the assignment to a young, luminous protégé—also a doctor and philosopher—Averroes.

Ibn Tufayl not only placed crucial work in brilliant hands, he wrote medical treatises, gathered important astronomers in the court and promoted their mathematical challenges to Ptolemy, and wrote poetry and a number of works on natural philosophy. But the book of his that is still with us, and still will stagger a reader, is his short account called The Journey of the Soul. It is, in modern translation, all of sixty pages. I do not recall, in a lifetime of reading, so piercing a surprise.

It is the story of man named Hai bin Yaqzan (which means Alive, son of Awake), who as a baby is marooned on an island. He is discovered by a doe, who suckles him and protects him. The boy thrives and grows, and his world changes when the doe perishes. Assaulted by sorrow, Hai begins to explore and to reason, and as we listen to his reflections, we are taken on his journey, on this island, by himself, with only his own experience to guide him. Hai muses his way straight to heaven. Let us follow along, as we can.

His journey begins when, in attempt to bring the maternal doe back to life, he finds her heart. He realizes that she will not return, that what was animating and vital had departed forever, and he learns from ravens that he must bury her remains. But from his discoveries he comes into a kinship with the life of the island, and from a flare-up in a thicket of cane, he discovers fire and then cooking. He takes up a life as an amateur scientist, and in hopes of understanding the life around him, he practices dissection. We should remember—it is difficult to do so—that this is a twelfth-century text.

His investigations center on the heart and brain:

It became clear to him that every animal, although apparently a multiplicity—if one considered in all its apparent organs, senses, and movements—was really a unity . . .

Each such organ has other organs serving it and no action takes place in any organ except from impulses of spirit conveyed along routes called nerves . . . These nerves channel the spirit from the depths of the brain but the brain, like all the other organs, receives its spirit from the heart.

From his discovery of the nerves and the living unity of the body, he next concludes that the hearts of animals of the same species are so alike, they could be said to share the same spirit, and make among themselves a concord of forms. From there, he see that all animals, however distinct their form, are so akin to one another that the likeness makes for a further unity, more enveloping and powerful.

He goes on to consider plants, stones, clay, water, and works out the difference between form and essence, cause and effect, mass and weight, then goes on to conclude calmly that the earth is round. In all this, we follow him and have the privilege to share in a journey of unabashed hopefulness: a man alone on earth, longing to understand, seeking order in the world, and full of thankfulness for the chance.

Later, as he comes to contemplate the stars, the world of his understanding comes into a more far-reaching unity.

. . . he realized that . . . all the bodies he had considered before, earth, air, fire, water, plants, animals, etc., were all within the firmament and not apart from it. In its entirety it was not unlike an animal organism, the luminous stars being the creature’s senses . . . He realized that the whole universe, when he applied to it the same outlook that he had applied to objects of the earth, had the nature of a single being.

From this exaltation he moves to matters of spirit—to the consideration of the source and origin of life. He decides that just as he is different from what he makes with the means and intelligence he has, so our created world must be made by a power different from the world. And such a formative power would not be physical, nor comely, perfect, good, and beautiful, but rather is the source of such qualities: the permanent reservoir of those qualities, from which they take form in the physical world. And in these deductions, he comes to his understanding of the divine, as Cause, Necessary Being, Creator. And sees that he could not have such a conception unless there was in him some essence, something that partakes of a permanent world.

Hai ibn Yaqzun sees that his task is to perform a great work—to develop the finer part of himself—so as to learn and to witness beauty, in hopes to understand the source of beauty. And just when you think the story is going to go off into the ethereal, Hai does something extraordinary: he turns with love and thankfulness to the physical world. He wants to learn, yet only in unity with creation. And as the animals had a divine creation, and he is partly an animal, he will imitate and care for animate creation. As stars are pure and illuminate the earth, he spins in imitation of the stars, so as to refine himself into a fateful purity. He hopes by his closeness and his care for creation to bring himself into harmony with the source of life.

He gives himself with kindness, in a spirit of service and of humility, in faith that he can witness the truth shown in the lovely details of creation. The narrative is practical and lovely, even when he is wondering how to eat:

he would select only those things whose destruction by him would offer least opposition to the intention of the Creator . . . for example ripe fruit whose seeds would still be available to reproduce their kind . . . or he would use vegetables which had not reached the limit of their growth . . . he would confine himself to those which were most abundant, and most capable of further reproduction and would be careful not to destroy their roots and seeds. He . . . would be careful never to wipe out a whole species.

. . . he imitated the heavenly bodies by imposing upon himself an obligation to help, whenever he was able, anything hurt or injured or in need; and to remove or reduce any impediment from which an animal or plant was suffering . . . If he saw a plant being weighed down by the growth of another plant, he would gently separate them . . . If he saw an animal suffering from hunger or thirst, he did all in his power to help.

When he spun rapidly enough all sensory things faded away . . . Awareness of his essence, which is innocent of the body, would then increase. From time to time he would be cleansed of all impurities . . .

It is strange reading: a mystical ecologist in a text of the twelfth century. He struggles, he works, he loves, he carries out his work of care. And one day he is called, and vanishes into the truth, and nothing of him remains but what is permanent.

Immersed in this state, he saw what eyes have not seen nor ears heard, neither has the human heart experienced.

It is his unity with the divine, beyond description and measure, “too fine to be clothed in letters or sound.” In sixty-odd pages, we go from an abandoned baby on an island to a man of revelation. It is a classic of Al-Andalus: the journey of life transformed by work and love into a homecoming of soul.

We have had altogether too brief a sojourn among the poets and storytellers of these centuries; but now that you know them, reader, you can take their work into your own hands and travel with them.

THE BLESSINGS OF REASON UNITED WITH THE LABORS OF FAITH

Let us turn to philosophy, for here too the labors of our compatriots in Al-Andalus helped to shape our minds, our books, our lives. The period has its logicians, its theologians and mystics, and we must choose among the riches offered.

We will visit Seville, in the year 1169, and attend to a judge at work in the city. Conflicts are presented to him; he questions, hears evidence, considers facts, offers judgment, often on cases of consequence. Some may involve debts between those of different faith, or the ownership of land or details of inheritance, or accusations of blasphemy or murder. He judges the most important cases, because he is the qadi—chief judge of this resplendent, powerful Andalusian city. All his life, he will be immersed in the daily life of the communities where he lives.

He is the young friend of Ibn Tufayl, and his name is Ibn Rushd; he will be called Averroes in the West. He has a long family history in Al-Andalus. Some generations back, his ancestors probably were Muwallads—Christians who had converted to Islam, becoming “protected ones.” Many of his predecessors were judges or legal scholars, and as a boy, he is trained in the Hadith (the verified statements of Muhammad while he lived) and in the Koran and in theology. But that is not all: he studies, as well, the law, philosophy, medicine, and what we may call Arabic belles lettres.

There are numerous contemporary accounts of Averroes, and one reads them and wants him for a neighbor. He is accounted as generous, humble, soul-searchingly fair. And he carries these qualities to the court of the sultan, as well as to the people on any street. Though his ideas were attacked, sometimes viciously, he was never accused of the least dishonor. More than one account mentions his frayed clothes.

Frayed clothes or not, his work was a gift to history, and to all of us. It is not easy to portray the scope of that work, since he was not only the chief judge of Seville and later of Córdoba; he was also a renowned physician, in fact physician to the sultan himself. All the while, he carried on with his legal scholarship and study of the sciences and then marshaled his knowledge to make himself the greatest philosopher of Al-Andalus. What he learned, he set forth in more than eighty books.

What are his books? He begins with introductory books on logic, physics, and psychology and then turns back to medicine, studying Galen and the great Avicenna and writing a commentary: the Kulliyat, a grand, useful synthesis of the medical understanding of the times. This he follows up with a treatise devoted wholly to antidotes against poisons. Afterward, he deepens his studies in the law, writing over the years about the philosophy of law and developing a way to compare different legal theories throughout the history of Islam; his summary book, the Bidyadat, has been called “a monument of logical explication of Muslim law.”

After being confirmed in 1180 as grand qadi of Córdoba, he took up the work that would become the basis for scholastic and theological study in Europe in the following centuries: the detailed commentaries on the entire work of Aristotle, and his separate commentary on Plato’s Republic. It was not just the texts themselves, and the incomparable riches of Greek philosophy that Averroes delivered to Europe. His commentary is shaped by his own values: above all, his devotion to reason and science, and his decisive turn away from fundamentalism in religious faith.

In his day, the Koran ruled Islam, just as the Bible ruled Christianity. If we grant that there is truth in scripture, how are we to evaluate the truth we are led to by reason? Averroes answered this question, and his answer forged a hinge in history that opened a door into a new world. Averroes taught that reason leads us to a truth that has equal standing with that of scripture, and that can always be reconciled with scripture. This sounds simple, but it is a momentous declaration of intellectual and spiritual liberty. For if the course of reason can lead us to truth, and we may follow that course wherever it may lead us, then the work of the mind may take up with fierce energy and freedom any subject at all in the world. We may follow a course of observation, and study, of logic and exploration. And we may do this in full faith and conscience, knowing that to seek the truth through reason is a blessed enterprise.

What if the truth we find by reason is in conflict with the truth we find in scripture? Averroes taught us the answer: if there is a conflict, then we must reexamine scripture and seek a new meaning in the text that will be in harmony with the truth of reason. It follows that the sacred texts must be open to interpretation as time passes, and as we investigate the world, examine nature, and test experience, then scripture will be made richer and more complete by our attempts to bring it into concord with the conclusions of reason.

To many of us, these ideas are familiar and straightforward, and it is easy to forget that someone, sometime, had to conceive them. Averroes did so, in Córdoba and Seville in the twelfth century, and sent history off on another course altogether. He offered more than a political declaration of independence. He proposed a declaration of independence for the mind itself. He taught that the world had a rational organization, and that it was our responsibility to understand it. It was more than our responsibility, it was a spiritual obligation, since we are endowed by the heavens with reason, and so must use our reason to light the torch of understanding and hold it high that all around may see.

And that was not all. Averroes wanted more for us than freedom. He wanted us to consider the consequences of freedom. Having brought reason and revelation into harmony by claiming equal status for reason and proposing a more fruitful and wide-ranging study of scripture, he asked us also to consider the use of reason: What, after all, is the point of philosophy? And he answered: it is to use the understanding we gain in service of the whole human community. In this way, as knowledge of the world is gained from personal and empirical studies, the benefit is to everyone, and the free practice of philosophy takes on a real, material beauty, because by its nature it must be shared.

This is the new world sketched for us by a judge in frayed clothing in Al-Andalus. He worked to honor an idea about why we are created: we are created to know, to learn, to observe and study, to attend carefully to the reality shown to us in the workings of nature and of society. And he taught that our reason, working openly and in liberty, can lead us to truth that benefits humankind and works in concord with spiritual understanding.

The ideas of Averroes shook the world. He addressed a key juncture in human experience, and he gave us his answers. Suddenly, humankind had a chance and a work that had been always present, but never set forth so clearly by someone of his religious authority. The challenge he set forth riled Islam and Christianity, since it sets aside the infernal habit of fundamentalism everywhere: a fixed, literal-minded reading of scripture. Averroes addressed directly the fundamentalists of any religion: they were encouraged to study and obliged to read their sacred texts anew, with a flexibility of mind and an openness to the world around them, so as to explore how they might align their holy books with the open conclusions of science and study. We have been, in the ensuing centuries and in the present day, treated often to the horror visited upon societies when this teaching of Averroes is forgotten. He foresaw a plague of ignorance and barbarity, and he worked for a world in which clarity and freedom coexist with religious practice, for the benefit of all.

The day would come when the books of Averroes would be burnt by his fellow Muslims. But that is another story.

MAKING NUMBERS, UNDERSTANDING THE STARS

Given such engagement with the power of reason, what progress was made in Al-Andalus in science and mathematics?

It was a period of rambunctious investigation. We take for granted the use of Hindu-Arabic numbers, whose ease of calculation made possible the tremendous advancement in science and technology in the last many centuries. But that system came to Europe from the Near East. As the system was tried out in the Arab world in the seventh and eighth centuries, the forms and names of the numbers evolved by fits and starts, as books were written to try to codify the rules of this new method of making quantitative sense of the world. As these texts were translated in Al-Andalus, the system was used, discussed, studied, and developed. And as we work every day with numbers, in whatever walk of life, we would do well to remember the prodigious labor of translation and calculation in Al-Andalus. We are all in their debt; in fact, the numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 0 all took on their final form, the one we use today, in the books of Al-Andalus.

Once again, we are indebted to the indefatigable translators of Alphonso the Wise, who turned the essential Arabic texts into Latin, allowing for their rapid spread through Europe. Not that it was easy: the numbers took on the name Toledan numbers, and they were popularly regarded as strange and potent, the medium for magical powers. We need only consider the story of Gerbert of Aurillac, a French Christian who became Pope Sylvester II. He learned his Hindu-Arabic numbers early, in Catalonia in the tenth century, and his knowledge so flummoxed his compatriots that he was thought to have sold his soul to the devil. In the bargain, he learned his math, and, as a bonus, the ability to fly through the air. He also, by popular repute, constructed a talking head that he kept on his desk. The head could prophesy and, happily, solve mathematical problems. These labors he undertook when he was not with his mistress, a witch. Reading such accounts, we sense how one could go far in the Middle Ages, once in possession of basic numerical prowess.

Leonardo of Pisa, known to many as Fibonacci, is the man usually credited with the most thorough introduction of Hindu-Arabic numbers to the West. Yet he took much of his work from Abraham Bar Hiyya, a twelfth-century Jewish mathematician of Al-Andalus who wrote on arithmetic, ratio, proportion, and geometry and their use in commerce and surveying.

Once in use, how was the new number system put to work in Al-Andalus? With curiosity, with élan, with aggressive experimental devotions. In astronomy, scientists began refining devices to assist in the study and measurement of the heavens, chief among them the astrolabe. These lovely instruments have been handed down to us: built of brass, they are early and efficient examples of a working analog computer. They were understood and improved in Toledo, in Seville, and in Granada, where there was active interest in astronomy and astrology, and they were used for calculation of latitudes and longitudes of the sun. You can calculate the times of sunrise and sunset and determine the position of stars on any date and time of the year, as well as the altitude of the sun on a given date and time. All this nicety of calculation can of course be related to the signs of the zodiac and positions of the moon and planets. So the astrolabe could be used in a host of ways—to navigate, to set the times for prayer, to cast a horoscope, and the like. All in all, not bad for a medieval computer, all of six and a half inches in diameter. They are beautiful and useful, and even Geoffrey Chaucer felt moved to write a treatise on them, for his young son Louis.

One of the major contributions of Al-Andalus was the so-called universal plate, whose addition meant the astrolabe could be used at any latitude. It is pictured in the Book of Astronomical Knowledge, which came, once again, from the school of translators of Alphonso the Wise. From his court, as well, came the famous astronomical tables that revolutionized the study of the subject in Europe when they were translated by Gerard of Cremona at the end of the twelfth century. They were a synthesis of tables taken from the work of Arabic astronomers working principally in Baghdad. But the astronomers of Al-Andalus added corrections, editing and polishing, all due to their scientific practice. Ibn Al-Zaqullah, a brilliant instrument maker and astronomer, studied and measured the position of the moon for thirty-seven years and the sun for twenty-five years. The tables themselves permit calculation and prediction of planetary motions, eclipses, conjunctions of the planets, meridians, and with one in hand an ephemeris could be written out, setting out the positions at any time of a given heavenly object. The original tables were compiled in the twelfth century and continuously sharpened with additional observation. For three centuries, this work was the foundation for astronomical study in Europe. Even Copernicus had a copy on his shelf. They show us a moving example of the convivencia of Al-Andalus: the work of Arabic astronomers, with the ardent sponsorship of a Christian king, refined and extended by two Jewish scholars, whose work in 1483 gave to the world the final version of centuries of collaborative labor.

The Alfonsine tables were not the only showing of mathematical expertise. Another astronomer, Ibn Mu’adh, wrote the first book in the West on spherical trigonometry. In Saragossa in the eleventh century, Arab scientists assembled a wonderfully complete library of classical work on mathematics, from Euclid forward, as well as the texts of the great Arab mathematicians like al-Kwarizimi. With these achievements in hand, they carried on their own studies on conic sections, the ideas of ratio and proportion, and number theory. All this work, in part or in whole, directly or by quotation and summary, found its way to Western Europe and had a most salutary effect on studies there for the ensuing centuries.

What is enlivening is the close bond throughout the period of scientific study and public service, for these were practical men and women. They wanted not just to think things. They wanted to do things, to invent, to serve, sometimes with outlandish derring-do. Take, for example, the ninth-century poet Abbas Ibn Firnas, who climbed a building in the beloved Rusafa, the country palace and botanical garden built by Abd Rahman I. Once at the top, Firnas donned a silk suit with feathered wings and jumped off, one of the first known efforts to fly. Alas, he had forgotten to stitch on a tail, and his weight was a bit much for the lift given him by the frantic beating of his wings. The injuries he suffered, however, did not deter him. He went on to build a clepsydra—a water clock—for timing the hour of prayer. He turned one room of his house into a planetarium and perfected a method of cutting quartz. I regret to report that the poetry of this enterprising gentleman has not come to light. But one never knows what surprises the libraries of the world might yield. I live in hope.

WATER, A BOUNTY OF FOOD, ORANGE BLOSSOMS, AND ROSE OIL

Abbas Ibn Firnas was not the only venturesome inventor. Rusafa, with its early collections of plants from the Middle East, gave rise to centuries of botanical study and experiment. This work looked into the qualities of a wide variety of plant species and explored as well the nature of given regions—what we would call bioregions—in order to discern the best methods of cultivation. These studies invigorated the agriculture of Al-Andalus. And as one or another approach was tried, the results led to more experiment and understanding, in a rich and vigorous exchange of experience, observation, and analysis.

Let’s see how this worked: take, for example, a book given by the Byzantine emperor to the Andalusian caliph, Abd Rahman III, who ruled with the crucial help of his scholarly Jewish prime minister, Hasdai Ibn Shaprut. The book is the Materia Medica of Dioscorides, a first-century physician who wrote up the first great manual of medicines derived from plants. An Arabic version was already available, but the naturalists and linguists of the court wanted to reconfirm their knowledge and extend their range of language, and they promptly requested a Greek scholar from Byzantium. So arrived the monk Nicholas, who joined a group whose work was to synthesize, extend, and adapt the material to the Iberian peninsula. It is yet another instance where, by the energies and openness of the age, the doors of understanding swung wide; for from that original group of workers, and their students and collaborators, we see the vigorous development of agriculture, botany, pharmacology, and medicine.

In agriculture, what moves us is the sheer collaborative zeal over the years of the people of Al-Andalus. For a given bioregion, agronomists would plant botanical gardens in order to study the qualities and composition of the soil. They assessed the water available and pressed into action technologies adapted from Roman agriculture, combining them with ideas brought to Spain from Syria and arid North Africa. To bring new land into cultivation, they needed to distribute water more widely and efficiently. They built the great noria—large water wheels—in fast-flowing streams. The wheel was fixed with clay pots, which filled with water as the current turned the wheel; the water was then spilled by gravity into troughs, which carried it away for irrigation. Or they used the qanat, a method developed originally in Iran, which allowed for the delivery of water to cropland without any pumping. First, they would locate an upland aquifer, which was tapped by means of a horizontal tunnel through which water would flow into channels connected to cropland. In addition, a series of vertical wells were dug that ran downhill from the high end of the tunnel at the main water source. These secondary wells allowed access to the tunnel and provided air for those who cleaned and maintained it. Once in place, the qanat would deliver cool water reliably year round. It was a nice piece of civil engineering—cooperative, durable, simple, but requiring close study and careful labor.

Even today, many melodious terms still in use in modern Spanish agriculture come straight from Arabic; among them are acena or noria (water mill), acequia (irrigation ditch), zubia (small channel), almunia (farm), almazara (oil mill), azahar (orange blossom), aljibe (cistern), azud (waterwheel), and a host of others.

Such botanical study and practical engineering gave rise to the robust and diverse cultivation of Al-Andalus. The period is full of small landholders who often owned adjacent land in family groups, each of whom had its specialty and its customs. But with the use of soil science and botanical study, the understanding of crop rotation and fallowing land, the southern half of the Iberian peninsula enjoyed centuries of extraordinary fertility and diverse production. The production is so various and adventurous that reading about it makes one want to go to the kitchen and cook. Of course they grew grains, wheat and barley for bread. But they also cultivated spices and exotic aromatics—mint, cumin, licorice, marjoram, dill, caraway, saffron, garlic. There was a plentitude of fruits in production beyond our beloved pomegranate: the fig and date, lime, orange, lemon, pear, and grapefruit. And, by the recipes we have, some excellent watermelon. And I am happy to report they did not neglect the legumes, including french beans, chick peas, and lentils. As if this were not enough, near cities and in kitchen gardens they grew cucumbers, carrots, leeks, and eggplant. And of course we have already seen the heartfelt interest in ornamental plants for the family gardens, the roses and water lilies, violets and chrysanthemums.

As all this exuberant agriculture went forth, the scientists studied the initiatives, the experiments, and the techniques and tried to summarize their learning in handbooks, manuals, and compendiums. One of these is by Al-Tighnari, a poet with an interest in linguistics who, naturally enough, embarked on a series of agricultural experiments and joined forces with the agronomists and botanists who had gathered in Seville in the late eleventh century. His book, wonderfully entitled Splendor of the Garden and Recreation of the Mind, is dedicated to the governor of Granada, where recreation of the mind is carried on to this day. Another strange and splendid book is the Calendar of Córdoba, which shows us the work of the land according to the Christian calendar of months (with the Syriac and Coptic names of each). We have shared part of it with you in our look into the history of our garden. It’s a wonderful read. Not only do we have details on the times of sunrise and sunset, the constellations and even the length of twilight, we have a most delicious and persuasive description of the life on the land. Let us look into, say, April, in the tenth century:

The month when . . . rose water, rose oil, rose syrup and rose preserves are made; violets are picked for the making of syrup and oil; or they are pickled; syrup is made from rue-herb; there are cucumbers. The palms are artificially pollinated and the palm leaves are cut. The early grapes begin to form, the olive trees blossom, and the figs come out; the Valencian falcons hatch out their young ones; it takes thirty days for them to grow their feathers. The fawns are born. Supports are made for the lemon trees and jasmine cuttings are planted in the ground. The wild carrots are ripe and harvested for the making of jam; and then there are poppies, pomegranates, ox-tongues and the leaves and petals of the dyer’s weed from which juice is extracted. It is also the month when henna, basil, cauliflower, rice and beans are sown; the green gourds and aubergines are dug out of their forcing beds; small melons are sown, and also cucumber. Peafowl, storks and many other birds lay their eggs and begin to brood.

This is poetry, pressed into action as an agricultural manual. The description of each month is so detailed and affectionate, and so full of a sense of wonder, that one wants to take the whole text and read it aloud, month by month, to friends. It makes one want to keep bees and make wine, watch falcons and gather rose petals. It is yet another example of the practical labors of the period, where the result was a book people could love and use in their daily life on the land.

Just such enlivening engagement is seen throughout the agricultural enterprise. What impresses is the willingness to try things out, to sift through results, to carry on for years in search of the best solution. And then to summarize the results so that other people could use them. And so we have attempts not just to list plants, but to classify them into varieties and families, and note their preferred climate and characteristics. There were detailed descriptions of a whole set of agricultural tools, sixty in all; they even used the astrolabe to level land in preparation for planting. They used their botanical learning as well, to enrich their crops, showing for instance the most detailed knowledge of grafting, which is an art, as anyone who has tried it will know. But it is essential to master it if one is to breed hardy, consistent varieties of fruit trees. In grafting, one takes the scion wood—a cutting from the tree whose qualities you want—and joins it to existing stock. One can splice the scion in, or insert it into a cut directly in the trunk, which is called wedge grafting. This art was practiced all over Al-Andalus, deftly, and with care and cumulative refinement of technique. It’s one small bit of agricultural practice, but evocative of the devotions of the period.

It is this spirit of sustained experimentation that we find everywhere. In this way, a science could be refined, transformed, and integrated into the life of the times. Take, for instance, the coming of Dioscorides’ Material Medica, where more than one thousand kinds of medicines are discussed, most of them derived from plants. We saw how this work led to the importation of monk Nicholas, for the teaching of Greek. But the book gave rise to study of plants and herbal remedies throughout Iberia. As decades passed, more and more plants were collected and studied. Remember this line from the Calendar of Córdoba: “. . . juice is extracted from two different kinds of pomegranate and mixed with fennel water to make a thick ointment for the treatment and prevention of cataracts and other diseases of the eye.” Now, I have not tried this, but the description makes me want to, especially because we can go out every year into the garden together to harvest pomegranates. Be that as it may, over time the scope of herbal treatments branched out, plants were collected, medicines made, illnesses studied. By the mid-thirteenth century, one Ibn Al-Baytar put together an up-to-date list of plants for use in the healing arts: more than three thousand of them, with his comments and recommendations. And this effort was just one of the period’s devotions to pharmacology and the practice of medicine.

THE STUDY OF HEALTH, A HERITAGE OF HEALING

The art and practice of medicine was a telling part of the repertoire of many a polymath of Al-Andalus, from Hasdai Ibn Shaprut to Averroes. Such work was linked with chemistry, the kindred study of alchemy, just as astronomy was the kindred study of astrology. In the preparation of medicine, Andalusian physicians were building on the work of Persian polymath Avicenna, whose magisterial works on medicine were well-known, and the work of Al-Kindi, a ninth-century Arab genius who wrote on philosophy, mathematics, and physics, in addition to medicine. His best-known utterance is as close as we have to the spirit of Al-Andalus, at its best: “We must not hesitate to recognize truth and assimilate it, even though it may come from earlier generations or foreign peoples. For the seeker after truth there is nothing of more value than truth itself . . .”

Al-Kindi brought together mathematics and chemistry to produce a set of principles meant to guide the making of medicines. It was a complex business but a remarkable advance in pharmacology. It meant that in the preparation of medicine, physicians could calculate exactly the quantity of each element in a mixture, so as to give the dosage proper to the malady being treated. A Christian physician from Valencia, known as Arnald of Vilanova (who had a reputation as an alchemist and magician), translated many of these Arabic texts and combined them with Latin teachings and his own experience into a book meant to be a textbook of pharmacology. Arnald taught at the School of Medicine in Montpellier, in Barcelona and Paris, in addition to other adventures and shenanigans. He served as physician to popes and kings, and he wrote the first widely circulated book about the art and medicinal benefits of drinking wine. He seems to be the one who first proposed that before tasting wine, one should have a few pieces of bread; though, curiously, he thought such tastings should occur in the morning. He also recommended wine as a good treatment for dementia. We hope and pray it may be so.

But for originality, we must deliver the palm to Abu al-Qasim Khalaf bin Abbas Al-Zahrawi, known in Europe as Abulcasis. He was born in a village near Córdoba in 936, and so would have had access to that city at a time of such prosperity and learning that, all the way from Germany, the Benedictine nun Hroswitha, a poet and a dramatist, called the city “the ornament of the world.” Of the details of the life of Abulcasis we know little, except for the most important particular: he gave fifty years of his life to learning and practicing medicine, with the aim of gaining a comprehensive knowledge of the field, so that he might share it. And so he did, in a book called The Method of Medicine, all thirty volumes of it.

It is a remarkable presentation. He touches on his experience as a physician, discusses physiology, and demands that doctors have a sound knowledge of the whole human body, “the uses, forms, and constitutions of the parts . . . the bones, nerves, muscles, their numbers and origins; and also the blood vessels, body arteries, and veins, with the locations of their sources . . . for he who is not skilled in as much anatomy as we have mentioned is bound to fall into error that is destructive of life.” He follows all this up with clinical descriptions of various maladies, the whole gamut of them, from melancholy to apoplexy and convulsions, to arrow wounds and compound fractures, and all this along with resoundingly sane advice to question, observe, and contemplate the patient seeking care, “since many patients cannot express their troubles.”

His treatments are of striking detail. For nervous convulsions in children, as an example, the doctor has some soothing ideas: “. . . grease his body with milk together with sesame oil or oil of violet . . . give him four portions of she-ass milk daily with almond oil and sugar . . . the nutrition of the patient must include barley, sugar, and almond oil. Also, chopped white meat, tender and fresh, is given together with honey.” For the common cold, he recommends a concoction he made of camphor, musk, and honey. I have no idea of the efficacy of such ministrations, though the cold remedy sounds to me like a sure thing. But I have little doubt about the care and thoughtfulness of the doctor.

But the doctor is not through with his exposition. For there in Córdoba, in the tenth century, Abulcasis, in the last book of his treatise, writes the chapter that has dazzled doctors and medical historians for the last millennium. It is the first detailed treatise on surgery, and the medical zeal and the scope of procedures discussed is extraordinary. He discusses how to clean and treat a wound and cauterize it to stop bleeding and prevent the spread of infection. He would cut away dead or unhealthy tissue to promote healing (what is today called debridement) and then stitch the wound up with catgut, wool, or silk. To protect the sutures, he binds up the wound in cotton. He writes about repairing damage to bones and joints, shows us his best method to restore a dislocated shoulder or to set a broken bone in a cast. He would operate on the spinal cord. He figures out a way to dissolve bladder and kidney stones, and he describes tonsillectomy and tracheotomy, and a way to extract a rotten tooth or excise a growth from within the respiratory system with a special hook. He did eye surgery, making delicate incisions in order to repair exotic malformations called entropion and ectropion, in which one or another eyelid is turned inward or outward unnaturally, interfering with vision and causing constant irritation. And he tried to work out a way to remove cataracts.

To do all this complex and dangerous work, he used a host of surgical instruments, many of which he invented himself. In histories of medicine, one may find iconic drawings of the tools he used. Looking over a page of them, one wants, of course, to run for the hills. But in fact the illustrations mark a turning point in the history of medicine, and we can see there many familiar tools. We see surgical needles and scalpels, forceps and tooth extractors, catheters, curettes (a sharp-edged spoon for taking out a growth or other tissue from a body cavity), and retractors (to hold back the edges of a surgical incision). Here is a small sample.

The work of Abulcasis was translated into Latin five times and spread throughout Europe, serving as an essential reference text for the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. There is some competition for the title of “the Father of Surgery,” but the title seems to have settled on this one busy physician of Córdoba.

One more curiosity on this, which any of us feel when looking upon the surgical tools of Abulcasis: What about the need for anesthesia? No one seems to know for sure what techniques were used, but they would have been essential to the success of these surgical interventions. There are clues which tantalize: Avicenna, whose medical texts were studied throughout Al-Andalus, used such plants as mandragora, cannabis, nightshade, henbane, and opium. All these plants have powerful and dangerous effects if the dosage is not controlled. But Abulcasis had strong and exacting pharmacological standards, to judge by his careful clinical observations. Surely he had learned from Avicenna, and from his fellow practitioners, and experimented with various mixtures, depending on the patient and the malady. And though we do not know exactly which compounds he settled on, the most common anesthesia he mentioned used inhalants from sponges, the so-called spongia somnifera, to relieve the suffering of his patient. Dried ingredients from narcotic plants were dusted over the sponge to the dosage required, and it was then moistened and held for the patient to inhale. I would certainly have been wary, but I certainly would have been willing as Abulcasis came near with his assortment of scalpels and scrapers, his probes and tissue clippers, ready to begin his incisions.

To Abulcasis is credited one other tradition, and it is the one that always comes to mind when trying to understand his life and practice: the tradition of taking flowers in hand to those in sickness. It is a simple gesture, but in it we feel the graceful and generous spirit of this good doctor.

WHERE SONG WILL LEAD

A recovering patient, in a surround of flowers, might well have hastened her recovery by listening to the musicians of Al-Andalus. It is an extraordinary period for music. And it is music that has proven its worth by the vigor of its survival. One superb scholar of this music, Dwight Reynolds, tells us that “the Arab-Andalusian musical legacy . . . ranks as one of the oldest continuously performed art music traditions in the world.” And no one writes about it without a focus upon the grand, outlandish figure of the African singer Ziryab (which means blackbird), who arrived in Al-Andalus in the year 822 like a cultural thunderclap. He was tall and lean, with dark olive skin and considerable grace. No one seems to know the real story of his background in Baghdad, in the magnificence of the Abbasid court. But there are common themes in the wild tales: he was so gifted a musician that he offended his own teacher by surpassing him with ease and élan in performance, or that he gave offense by his ideas or conduct to potentates in one or another court. One has the sense of a man overflowing with musical genius and myriad opinions.

When he arrived at the court of Abd al-Rahman II, he set about remaking court society, as if he were some cyclonic force of fashion come to a new and rustic culture. It is almost comical, twelve centuries later, to read about it, for it seems he hypnotized the whole society. He introduced bleach and instructed all and sundry how to vary the color and style of their clothing to accord with the four seasons. He brought recipes and the idea of serving food in courses and using tablecloths and glasses, and such is his influence that he is even given credit for introducing exotic foods, such as asparagus. Lest he be associated only with asparagus for all of history, he promoted bathing in the morning and the use of toothpaste and deodorant. If this were not enough, he even founded a school of cosmetology and was a cheerleader for short hair and shaving.

All this was in his spare moments. For his central work was always music. He had a repertory of more than ten thousand songs, which drew upon poetry and history and the deep musical traditions of the Middle East, in which he had such intensive training. He concentrated his knowledge in a school of music he founded, where he invented new methods for training the voice and which was full of students he taught himself, including all ten of his children, eight boys and two girls. One of the instruments they played was the ‘ud, which became the lute of the Renaissance. It was Ziryab who is credited with a redesign of the lute, using thinner and finer woods, distinct materials for different strings (from lion’s gut to silk), and the addition of a fifth string, to represent the soul, even as the standard four strings represented the four humors natural to the body. This fifth string, alas, was discarded by later musicians, who brought their own souls.

Yet music had its performers even before Ziryab, and centuries afterward. I mean the widespread and well-documented qiyan, who were highly trained professional female singers, often referred to in histories, curiously, as singing girls, as though they were the warm-up act at a local school. They were not. They were the main event. We even know the names of some of them, so let us use them, since we want to honor these extraordinary figures. Qumar was a young woman trained in Baghdad, and three others—Fadl, ‘Alam, and Qalam—were trained in Medina. All these singers performed in Al-Andalus, and the story of Qalam is emblematic of the times. For she is not Arab at all, but from northern Spain, either Basque or Navarrese. She was taken in a military raid at a young age, enslaved, and then packed off all the way across the Mediterranean to Medina, where she was pressed into a course of studies in Arabic poetry, singing, dancing, and calligraphy. From there, she returned to perform in Al-Andalus as a much-praised favorite in Córdoba in the courts and country houses of Abd Rahman II. All these improbable arduous journeys, and her star turns in Andalus, were in the ninth century.

These gifted women, young and mature, turn up everywhere as musical performance and training developed in Al-Andalus, which offered a regime of studies of real rigor and scope. A girl would learn as many as five hundred examples of a complex form called the nawba, which moves in rhythm from languorous to swift and has four movements altogether. She learned to play a whole set of instruments, and the skills in song and movement that fit the piece and the performance. She learned the arts of improvisation, to the extent that one singer is credited with a two-hours-long outpouring of variations on one line of one song. She even learned shadow puppetry, and at graduation—there were certificates that described her attainments—she was a fully formed artist. When she was sold, she brought the sweep of her talents to the life of a court or to a wealthy family. These remarkable women were so valuable that their possession, whether by capture or purchase or trade, was a natural part of military and political maneuvering. It is among the ways that medieval warfare in Al-Andalus differs from modern warfare: nations at present do not attack a rival in hopes of winning a retinue of singing girls for their own country. If only the prizes of war could offer such joy and such beauty, we might see that it would be better to stay home with such women, and learn from them, and not go to war at all. Better yet, given the way these women had demonstrated their dedication, discipline, stamina, and learning on so many fronts, they might be excellent candidates for heads of state.

Most histories of European poetry feature the troubadours, the famous first singers of vernacular poetry in Europe, a poetry whose influence was of the most remarkable power and consequence. That influence reached throughout Europe, and later to America. The troubadours have fascinated everyone from Dante to Ezra Pound. The man often named as the first such poet, William IX of Aquitaine, grew up in a court in Southern France—an area heavily influenced by Al-Andalus—in the company of hundreds of these highly trained young women. Their music, their Arabic poetry, court songs and street songs, all the emblematic and sensuous poetry enlivened by the convivencia, must have had (one can only imagine) the most vivid and seductive influence on this capable and intelligent young man. Later in life, he would join the first Crusade, stay on in the Holy Land, and by all accounts deepen his knowledge of Arabic culture. Later, back in his court in Europe, he would manage to be excommunicated twice and to write the first lyric poems in European history, so decisive in the history of verse. I hear singing girls in them.

And to speak of singing: we cannot leave the music of Al-Andalus without visiting the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the uncanny collection of songs produced in the reign of Alphonso the Wise, who, as we recall, was otherwise busy, not just with his kingship, but with his school of translation; that is, busy with some of the most consequential work in recorded history. The Cantigas comprise more than four hundred songs with Mary as their protagonist and tell stories that show her on earth, at work, intervening hither and yon in human affairs, with power and meticulous judgment and unexpected whimsy. I urge the reader to seek out recordings of this music. And we should here dip into the stories, for they give a savor of the era, its religion, imagination, and art.

Let us begin with Mary’s miracles, for she swoops in miraculously for all manner of interventions. In many of the songs she brings the dead to life, especially dead children and occasionally stillborn babies. As if that were not enough, she can revive dead horses, even mules. She’ll even return lost hunting falcons for those who favor her with their worship. In one transport of scholarly zeal, she brings back to life a sick boy, and he straightaway begins quoting scripture and reading Latin. She even zips over to a battle in Constantinople, sinks the ships of the Moorish navy, and saves the city.

My favorite is her sojourn in Sicily, where the volcano is erupting. Mary approaches some worthy fellow and suggests he compose a song in her honor. Happily, he was able to produce an acceptable rhyming ditty, and, satisfied, she obligingly turns and quiets the volcano. These are not powers usually associated with bursts of lyrical poetry. But perhaps, learning from the Cantigas, we should reform our ideas.

Then there is Mary’s formidable and surprising powers of forgiveness. In one song, a beautiful nun (these nuns figure frequently in the Cantigas) is courted by a rich and virtuous man. She decides to go off with him and says a final prayer to the statue of Mary, who promptly steps off her pedestal and blocks the way from the chapel. This happens a second time. The third time, the supple young nun dodges around the Virgin, goes off with her beau, and with him lives happily and deliciously, bearing many children who, sure enough, are also beautiful. The family is rich, and her husband makes her independently wealthy, just as he had promised. Mary bides her time but eventually comes to remind the former nun of her convent, to which she returns. Her husband then repairs, obligingly enough, to an abbey himself. We pray it was one nearby.

Then there is the practical Mary, ready to help. She’s especially ready to help a sinner who will honor her with prayers, vigils, devotions, songs, or whatever. She redeems thieves, gamblers, rapists, and other criminals, who are cleansed of their infamies. There seems to be no one beyond forgiveness: in one remarkable song, a beautiful noble woman sleeps with her godfather and bears him three children, all of whom she murders. Then, in despair, she stabs herself, but misses the mark. She next swallows spiders, trying to die. Finally dying, she repents and asks the Virgin for forgiveness. Mary comes posthaste, saves her, and then, astonishingly, makes her more beautiful and fit than ever. And straight to the convent she goes. There is no further word of the amorous godfather.

And this is not the only instance of her sympathy for infanticidal women. In one song, a Roman woman whose husband had died goes to bed with her son, becomes pregnant, and kills the child when it is born. A devil masquerading as a diviner tells the emperor, who summons her and attempts to find out the truth. The incestuous murderess prays straightway to Mary, who confounds the devil, leaving the emperor without proof and the woman exonerated. It is a most remarkable tale, and the message seems to be: whatever you have done, no matter how abominable, call on Mary.

She is also the one to call for a cure. She cures the paralyzed, lepers, the lame and halt, the disfigured, the crippled. She restores sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the mute, and she’s especially good on the removal of kidney stones, reported to be the size of hen’s eggs. She will even remake eyes that have been gouged out and heal the wounds suffered by a knight who fought a dragon. For the most arduous of these cures, she has a magic potion: the milk of her breasts. It is a half-naked Mary who comes to the rescue of the most needy cases, for with her most exalted potion she can remedy any malady, any at all. I do not know of any other song sequence where mother’s milk is so often pressed, literally, into action. All this surprising worship culminates in a song about John of Chrysostom, who is blind, lost, and has fallen into a patch of briars. He takes the occasion to ask Mary, who has come to cure him, what Jesus loved most on earth. Mary goes away, and John continues suffering but has a vision in which Mary comes to show him just what Jesus loved most: her breasts. John, of course, is then cured and heads off for heaven not long after.

Yet Mary has her vengeful side. Woe betide those who will not do her bidding, or those who make her jealous. A priest who steals silver from a cross, gives it to a woman, and then lies about it is blinded, and his nose is made to grow all over his face. And we will not even discuss the fate of the priest who stole some fancy altar cloth to make himself underpants. Consider, instead, the fate of the young man who puts a ring on the hand of a statue of the Virgin and pledges fidelity to her. Her hand closes over the ring. Later, he marries, and Mary, having none of it, gets right into bed with the couple, lying between the bride and bridegroom, disrupting the wedding night and rebuking the young man for abandoning her. He realizes immediately that having the Mother of God in bed with you and your bride is not a propitious sign that consummation will be yours. He goes off to the wilderness and ends up a hermit in a pine grove. It is but one example of the sexual mischief of Mary. The songs are replete with lustful priests and knights. Many a concubine or nun is left behind for the greater glory of the Virgin. One sorry knight prays to Mary for help in controlling his lust, which has led him as much into bed as onto the field of battle. Mary summarily makes him impotent. And in one barbaric song, yet another beautiful nun—has ever a country had more beautiful nuns?—is about to run off with a gallant and handsome knight and is saying a last prayer in the chapel. The statue of the Virgin begins to weep, and Jesus, next to her on the cross, wrenches a hand free and slaps the nun. And she loses her beauty, because Jesus’s hand carried its nail with it for the slap.

Such agonies are rare, what with the cures, miracles, and mercy. And the occasional sweetness. One song relates how a monk sat down in a lovely garden by a fountain and asked Mary to give him a foretaste of paradise. A bird began to sing with such finesse and power that the priest listened and listened . . . for three hundred years.

And another tale relates how an archdeacon was composing a song for the Virgin and had it complete except for one crucial rhyme. He prays to her, the perfect rhyme is delivered, and the statue of Mary leans forward to thank him. And that is why that statue leans to this day. It is a story to give hope to minstrels and sonneteers everywhere.

Accompanying many editions of the Cantigas are beautiful illustrations of the musicians who performed these songs. They show us so much about daily life in the thirteenth century that whole books have been written using those images as reference. In them we are reminded of just what instruments were played. Just as in agriculture, in administration, and in science and mathematics, fields which have many Spanish and English words of Arabic origin, so in music many common instruments have the same origins. We have seen how the lute, indispensable to Renaissance music making, derives from the ‘ud; so the rebec, from Arabic rabab, offered a way of using the bow that led to the emergence of the viol family, whose instruments are fretted in a way similar to lutes. And there are a host of other examples, all together making up a healthy portion of musical instruments of Europe. What calls our attention, then, in the images, is the very familiarity with those instruments. They were part of life in a way that was open, intimate, prolonged, and cherished. The Christian cultures knew these instruments because they were so often in their hands.

WE HAVE BEEN traveling among the regions of Al-Andalus, and through its history, visiting provinces of mind and experience: the poetry, the science and mathematics, philosophy, agriculture and botany, medicine and music. It is an extraordinary picture, a joy to study, and it leaves us with awakened admiration for the men and women of medieval Spain, who ventured so far in their investigations. When we first moved to the Albayzín, I had never heard of many of the people I write of now, such was my ignorance of the period. But we had the simple need to understand where we lived, and what I expected to be a sojourn among some few books turned out to offer long, fascinated journeys with brilliant companions into just-discovered country. This recent work by many scholars—Spanish, European, and American—on medieval Spain is called the “historiographical revolution,” which is a long name for beginning to get it right at last.

THE ARTS OF LOVE

Among these many surprising and useful books, none has been more stunning than a scholarly and comprehensive study of a manuscript called G-S2, found in an obscure set of codices (folios 75v–104v) in the Library of the Royal Academy of the History of Madrid. The book is by the esteemed scholar Luce López-Baralt and is titled A Spanish Kama Sutra. The manuscript she studies, written in 1609, is a treatise on the arts of love.

We recall the startlingly erotic poetry of the period, written not only by men, but also by some women, who set down poems of open sensuality and independence. It makes us wonder about the sexual practices of Al-Andalus, and of course we can never know. But we have this one manuscript, and it is full of details and ideas, suggestions and guidance. It is a book of erotic counsel, theology, and poetry, all at once. There is absolutely nothing like it, nothing at all, in Spain, or in Europe of the period. And so in keeping with our theme of convivencia, as we come to the end of our look into Al-Andalus, it is fitting that we address the most ardent convivencia of all: that of a couple in love, in one another’s embraces.

Most of us are familiar with the history of misogyny worldwide, a calamity which has infected philosophy and theology, with heartbreaking results for women, denying them education, liberty, and the chance to develop their minds, their gifts, and their art. Even today in much of the world these attitudes persist, a plague and a disgrace to humankind. In the West, in particular, that misogyny was bound up with female sexuality, and Professor López-Baralt sets out for us the conceptions of women that dominated thinking in the West since Aristotle. I will follow her summary.

Aristotle thought that a woman is a defective man, a kind of failure of nature. She cannot produce semen, and therefore needs a man, the more authentic human, to produce a child. This inferiority is part of a natural incapacity in practical and spiritual matters. And when we add to this rank idiocy of Aristotle the Old Testament story of Genesis, in which Eve is responsible for Original Sin, and that sin is associated with sexuality, we have the makings of a theological disaster.

Make it they did: beginning with Saint Paul, the fathers of the church addressed sexuality with consistent attitudes that moved within a restricted range: from suspicion to condemnation to repugnance, for sexual love in general and women in particular. It is a remarkable spectacle, one that has been studied in detail by many scholars; yet their analyses and summaries sustain the most lively incredulity as we read our way through the original texts of such influential and learned theologians. How could they have believed what they wrote, when their ideas are so at variance with the experience of so many men and women alike? How could they refer to women with such scornful contempt? How could they deny the joy and the hopefulness that comes to any of us who give ourselves to the prolonged and various pleasures of the one we love?

Deny it they did. Better than to summarize their attitudes is to let them speak for themselves. Saint Paul famously said that it was “better to marry than burn.” Marriage, in this view, is an inferior state for a man, since the practices of sexual love distract him from service to God. And so from the beginning, the body is distinct from the soul and is a source of weakness and dissolution. Gregory of Nisa thought marriage a “dismal tragedy,” and Jerome wrote, “The truth is that, in view of the purity of the body of Christ, all sexual intercourse is unclean.” Tertullian, for his part, saw no intrinsic difference between fornication and sex within marriage, since intercourse was essentially shameful. Combined with the ascetic and ferocious solitude of the desert fathers, these early thinkers set down a foundation of ideas: that virginity is superior to marriage, that celibacy is required for service of God, and that sex is contaminated with sin. The Christian preacher and philosopher Origen, in the early third century, thought that sexual love stilled the spirit and that the embraces of the beloved were a pathetic substitute for the only embrace that counted, the embrace of the soul by Jesus. Origen himself, rather than suffer such temptations, went to be castrated. In the late fourth century, Ambrose, not to be outdone, wrote that marriage made women filthy and that a wife was like a prostitute of one man. If a married couple yielded to sexual desire, then it was of the utmost importance that their coupling be so strict and mechanical that it held no pleasure whatsoever.

All this leads to Augustine, the most influential of thinkers in this field. The ideas of Augustine about love and sex have been the subject of countless books and commentaries, and rightly so, since upon the foundation given him he constructed a house of ideas. The house has stood and weathered a thousand assaults through the centuries, and in orthodox Christianity at least it still is a formidable presence.

Augustine associated sexuality directly with original sin. The shame of sexual love, by his reasoning, derives from the fateful disobedience in Genesis, after which Adam and Eve had the first sexual desire (there having been none, according to Augustine, in Eden). Sexual desire, after the Fall, was no longer a matter of will; it was spontaneous and uncontrollable. All this being the case, every child is conceived in sin and is in some way marked at conception, since every man carries the contaminated seed of Adam. We should recall that this corruption, expressed in the flesh of every one of us simply by our being born, has an easily identifiable cause: the yielding of Eve to the temptations of the Devil in the Garden of Eden.

We can see from this very brief sketch of Christian teaching how such ideas led naturally to the beliefs and practices we would expect: the requirement of celibacy for priests; the insistence upon the shame, if not depravity, of sex within marriage; the counsel against sexual pleasure, which alienates us from God; the natural inferiority of women; and the exaltation of virginity.

I trouble to sketch these ideas, since they would have been fully in play in the early seventeenth-century Spain, in which there lived a young man—we do not know his name—who attended Catholic church, but, as well, practiced in secret the rites and offered the prayers of Islam in company with other Muslims. And this, in Inquisitorial Spain. These men learned Arabic and parts of the Koran. They lived in constant threat of arrest, torture, and execution.

This young man read the literature of the day—Cervantes, Garcilaso, Góngora, Fernando de Rojas, and first, and most, Lope de Vega. He loved the work of Lope and memorized a host of his sonnets, as well as passages in Spanish of most of the other writers he held dear. In 1609, when Philip II expelled by proclamation the remaining Moriscos in Spain, he was among the miserable and despised exiles. Eventually he would find his way to Tunis, and there settle. And come to write, in Spanish, a treatise on marriage and sexual love that stands as the most astonishing and beautiful in the history of the language of the times. Though it is written in Tunis, it is, like its author, so casually mystical that it draws directly from the work of Sufis who had written on sexuality; and it is so incorrigibly Spanish that it is laced with sonnets from . . . Lope de Vega!

However remarkable its content, it is a patient exercise in explication. The writer reviews the characteristics of a man who should marry. He should be someone concerned about virtue, secure enough in his work to be able to support and care for a wife, and he should be amorously inclined. This last qualification alerts us immediately that we are not reading a lecture from, say, Thomas Aquinas. Our Spaniard goes on to review the qualities such a man should seek in a wife, such as physical and moral beauty, piety, modesty in public, and capacity to bear children. He even has explicit recommendations for the marriage celebration, which, poignantly, follow in many details what we know of such ceremonies in the Morisco communities of Al-Andalus. And then, to the obligations of marriage, in which the evocative and passionate ideas of our author begin to take shape: for he offers his arguments on behalf of the sexual rights of a woman, her rightful claim on the amorous energies of her husband, and her presumptive liberty to explore with him the whole combustible range of her pleasures. There is even a passage of advice for a woman whose husband is neglectful, because he is too often consumed in prayer and contemplation. She has a right to the physical love of her husband, and her right is founded not merely in the fact of marriage; rather, his amorous devotions are a spiritual necessity, a gentle directive from heaven, a duty to God.

We are taking leave, we sense, of Augustine. Our Spaniard has not the least hesitation to head off into erotic detail. His theme is consistent. A husband must recognize that a wife has the same sexual rights and privileges in the nuptial bed as he does himself. His counsel is clear: a husband must in his erotic offerings show a considerate, knowledgeable attention to his wife, so that trust and pleasure can live together. Imaginative adoption of a host of sexual positions is recommended, though a husband must never ask his wife to take up a position uncomfortable to her. He must in his loving of her bring her to full, intense, transformative satisfactions, and he must make sure that her climax occurs at the same time as his, or if not, that her climax always precedes his. Wholehearted exploration in bed, the slow, attentive use of hands and mouth, all the fine variety of embraces, the transports of playfulness, the most candent and conscious devotion: all this is, by the good lights of our Spaniard, natural to marriage. It is celebratory, tender, reverential treatment of sexual love, and as we come to know the book, what grows in us is a wonder it exists at all. And as if all these surprising and delicious offerings were not enough, our Andalusian has yet more suggestive counsel to offer.

The first sentence in Professor Luce Lopez-Baralt’s five-hundred-page study of the Kama Sutra Español says it best: “Nunca lo habíamos oído en literatura española: el sexo nos lleva a Dios”: we have never heard it before in Spanish literature: sex bears us to God. Our Spaniard, writing in Tunis, makes just such a claim. When a couple gives themselves to their mutual delectations, when their envelopment in the pleasures of one another is unreserved and trusting, what they feel is far more than pleasure. Their devotion does more than burnish the body. It awakens the soul. The sensual, with such radiance and unity in bed, is more than sensual: it is transcendental. The experience is a special dispensation of God, and it means that sexual love might be understood as an ecstatic and initiatory prayer. It gives us directly and unmistakably a foretaste of paradise. We move outside of time, in a benediction of flesh that is natural to human life. Alone among the human appetites, erotic love, rightly practiced, can bring us spiritual refinement, and our shared pleasures are both joyful and sacramental.

It is one vision of life, of marriage, of sex, written by a Spaniard in exile in Tunis early in the seventeenth century. It is a vision of unusual gentleness, sustained beauty, and devotional heat. It brings together desire and knowledge, sense and spirit, sex and soul; and instead of shame, we have his song in favor of erotic life that is a flourishing and deliverance.

The Alhambra at twilight, with the famous Torre de Comares in the foreground and the Sierra Nevada along the horizon. © ROBERT BLESSE

The Alhambra aglow, as seen each night from the Albayzín. © STEVEN NIGHTINGALE

A closeup of the whirling, sidereal muqarnas of the ceiling of the Sala de las Dos Hermanas in the Alhambra. Titus Burckhardt calls them “a honeycomb whose honey consisted of light itself.” © JOSE VAL BAL

The Albayzín as seen from the Sabika Hill, high in the Darro Canyon, east of the Alhambra. © ROBERT BLESSE

A closeup of the center of the Albayzín, with its complexity of terraces, balconies, windows, and flowers. © JOSE VAL BAL

The hill of the Sacromonte above the Albayzín, where the famous lead tablets were found bearing the Seal of Solomon. © STEVEN NIGHTINGALE

The church of San Pedro at the base of the Albayzín, with the Alhambra soaring above. © JOSE VAL BAL

The Albayzín at night, with its illuminated windows and mystery. © JOSE VAL BAL

The Church of Saint John, in the lower Albayzín, with its fine Almohad tower. The church has been recently restored. © JOSE VAL BAL

The thriving Calderería Nueva in the Albayzín, where Arab merchants from north Africa sell goods from around the world. © JOSE VAL BAL

A street near our carmen in the Albayzín, with its vines, cobblestones, and come-hither narrow passageway. © STEVEN NIGHTINGALE

A beautiful terrace in the Albayzín. It has the traditional offerings: grapevine, flowers, railing, woodwork and open sitting area. © STEVEN NIGHTINGALE

The entrance to a typical carmen, with fountain, alberca, flowers, lanterns, brickwork, grapevine, and dappled light. The Alcazar of the Alhambra rises in the distance. © STEVEN NIGHTINGALE

A watercolor of a beautiful and historic carmen in the Albayzín, recently restored. © RICARDO BELLIDO CEBALLOS

A watercolor of the Darro canyon at the base of the Albayzín, showing early fall colors and one of the low bridges. © RICARDO BELLIDO CEBALLOS

A classic torreón of a lovely carmen, with sitting area, flowers, and irresistible hammock. © STEVEN NIGHTINGALE

Tile work over the entranceway to a house in the center of the Albayzín. We came to think of our neighborhood as a barrio of stars. © STEVEN NIGHTINGALE

A street in the Albayzín engulfed by bougainvillea. © STEVEN NIGHTINGALE

In a small garden in the Albayzín, a young fig tree growing aside a flourishing mock orange. © STEVEN NIGHTINGALE

In the Albayzín, wherever there is support, roses will climb and bloom and, given the chance, grow over the roof and onto the street. © STEVEN NIGHTINGALE

Windows of colored glass found now and again in the Albayzín. The morning meant green and blue streaming light in the room. © STEVEN NIGHTINGALE

Lemons and oranges growing over a wall in the afternoon light of the Albayzín. © JOSE VAL BAL

An olambrilla—an example of the small painted tiles often inset into terra cotta floors in the Albayzín—this one of a pomegranate. © STEVEN NIGHTINGALE

The legendary double arches of the Mezquita in Cordoba. Standing among them for any length of time can give rise to a feeling of weightlessness.

The poster advertising the Concurso de Cante Jondo—Contest of Deep Song—organized by García Lorca and Manuel Falla in 1922. It was planned for the Placeta de San Nicolás in the Albayzin, but the big crowds obliged a move to the terrace of the Alhambra.

A wall of tiles in the Torre de Comares. The whole pattern here, in relation to its history and design, is discussed in depth in the chapter entitled “A Few Notions of Geometry and Revelation.” The tile work is meant to offer us the chance to understand patterns of conception and creation, refine our perceptions, and develop new capacities of mind. © STEVEN NIGHTINGALE