However, another development jeopardized the breadth of vision of al-Andalus: the rise in power of the Christian kings of Aragon, Castile, and Leon, who nibbled ever more effectively at its territory, feeding the mistrust of the Andalusians towards their religious minorities.
The Jews were forced to apostasy. From then on, it was in Toledo, which became Castilian in , that the scholars of the three religions lived side by side in a model inspired by that of the Umayyads. A land of tolerance and opportunity, al-Andalus was also a melting pot of cultures where Jewish communities, cosmopolitan to a fault, were enriched by the contributions of the various traditions imported by their immigrant co-religionists and opened up to the intellectual effervescence of the Islamic civilization of the time.
Although few of them seem to have converted to Islam, the Jews adopted the language of the conquerors so well that by the end of the reign of Abd ar-Rahman II, even their religious texts were written in Arabic.
It was also in this language that they strengthened their ties with their eastern colleagues in the Talmudic academies of Babylon, which compiled Jewish law not far from Baghdad, under the equally tolerant reign of the Abbasids Their scholars studied the subtleties of Halakha, the very demanding Jewish Law, the exegesis of the Torah, the Hebrew language, but also, increasingly, philosophy, science, mathematics or literature and philology — under the influence, no doubt, of the fervent passion of the Arabs of al-Andalus for grammar.
The reign of the first Caliph of Cordoba also saw, at the same time, the beginning of the first great Golden Age of the Jews of al-Andalus , closely linked to the figure of one of the closest advisors of Abd ar-Rahman, Hasdai ibn Shaprut.
Initially introduced to the court as a physician, the man quickly gained the affection of the sovereign to the point of wearing several hats: appointed minister in charge of customs and international trade, he was also a diplomat and maintained an ongoing correspondence with the distant kingdom of Khazars, this steppe empire between the Volga and the Black Sea whose rulers and elites had converted to Judaism.
He also took advantage of his position to intercede on behalf of his co-religionists who were being persecuted elsewhere in the world; thus a letter he wrote with a certain aplomb to Byzantium to demand the protection of his brothers living in The Eastern Roman Empire, asserting that the very favorable terms granted to the Christians of al-Andalus were conditional on the good treatment of the Jews of Constantinople.
He was not just another civil servant:. Praise be to the Almighty, who thus grants me His mercy! No sooner have the kings of the world perceived the greatness of my monarch than they hasten to send him gifts in abundance; it is I who am charged with the reception of these gifts and the delivery of the rewards granted to them.
Under his leadership and thanks to his almost unlimited financial resources, the Jewish quarter of Cordoba experienced an unprecedented intellectual and cultural blossoming in this highly favorable environment for scholarly work. The intellectual influence of Andalusia did not dry up — on the contrary, it was at this time that two of its most famous figures, Ibn Rushd or Averroes and Ibn Arabi , were born.
The former was actively protected by the Almohad conqueror of al-Andalus, Abd-al-Mumin. A jurist committed against Malikite traditionalism, a medical scholar, a commentator on Aristotle, Ibn Rushd believed, like Ibn Tumart and, in his own way, Maimonides , in a search for God through reason, which led him to attack the Persian mystic al-Ghazali , author of a violent attack on philosophy in the previous century.
Ibn Arabi, for his part, followed the line advocated by al-Ghazali of the pursuit of an intuitive knowledge of God through asceticism and spiritual quest.
Considered as one of the main mystics of the Muslim world, his posterity is not comparable to that of Averroes, whose influence was mainly exerted on the Christian world of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
For, like Norman Sicily, the Christian kingdoms that occupied almost the entire Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 13 th century served as a bridge for European clerics who had already been interested in Arab translations and knowledge for a century and had come to seek in the ruins of al-Andalus the elements of an intellectual renaissance that was less well known but perhaps no less brilliant than that of the 15 th and 16 th centuries.
The contacts will continue more or less as long as the rump emirate of Granada, now vassal of the king of Castile, lasts. When the union of the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile allowed it to fall in , the Muslim parenthesis was closed with brutality — expulsion of the Jews, forced conversion of the Muslims, who would be expelled in turn, although Christianized, a century later.
Oblivion sets in, for a while. The great mosque of Cordoba, built between the end of the eighth and the end of the tenth century, thus illustrates the affirmation of the new power and the formation of a cultural identity. In the middle of the ninth century, the case of the martyrs of Cordoba highlights the crisis caused by the Arabization and Islamization of Christians.
A century later, the figure of Hasdai ibn Shaprut, Jewish secretary to Abd ar-Rahman III, attests to the integration of the Jewish community of al-Andalus, and to the influence of the caliphate-he went on an embassy to the Byzantine emperor. At the same time, the construction of the palace of Madinat al-Zahra, destroyed by the Berbers during the troubles of , represented both a political manifesto and a cultural achievement that was truly Andalusian. Andalusia of the Taifas remained a fertile cultural ground in the 11 th century: Samuel ibn Nagrela, the Jewish vizier of the king of Granada, had for the first time the idea of composing poems in the sacred language, Hebrew.
The Normans who conquered Barbastro in and appropriated the music of the Arab notables transmitted this poetic sensitivity to the Latin world. In al-Andalus, the Arab culture became stronger, thanks to the debate of ideas that enriched the visions of everyone, and nuanced the convictions, making fanaticism recede.
Soon, Cordoba became the second city in the world after Baghdad, the place from which the light shone in Europe, and the obligatory crossroads of every great philosopher and scholar. Territory occupied by al-Andalus during the Nasrid Kingdom period Twitter Facebook Youtube. History of al-Andalus. Although the word al-Andalus acquires different nuances in Arab sources, the concept of al-Andalus refers to the territory of the Iberian Peninsula under the Muslim power, which spread over between and Depending on the moment, it occupied more or less extension in the Iberian Peninsula: in its beginnings, in the 8th century, it occupied a large part of the Peninsula, and even went beyond the Pyrenees before undergoing a progressive decrease, sometimes slowly, other times accelerated, until the end of the Nasrid emirate of Granada in The Umayyad Emirate and the Caliphate When the Islamic civilization arose, at the beginning of the 7th century, it extended both East and Westwards.
Art and Architecture. The Scientific and Cultural Legacy. Daily Life. Al-Andalus is especially significant because it brought an Islamic presence directly into Europe, which took over nearly all of Spain for a period of time, and spread far and wide through Europe.
It is both a rival caliphate, a center for Muslim life, a frontier with the non-Mulsim world, and in some senses part of the periphery. In this way it wears many hats and is a key node in understanding the diversity of Muslim culture through its archaeological record. They live in Tunisia but have visited Spain. For the Sanchou family, who claim descendancy not only from the Muslims driven out of Spain more than years ago but also from the original Arab occupiers of Iberia in the eighth century, the billboard seemed to celebrate a long-overdue homecoming.
Historians recorded that Sanchuelo, who died in Cordoba in , was the son of Mohammed ibn Abi Amr Al-Mansur, who served as the chancellor of the Umayyad caliphate of Cordoba in the 10th century and organized numerous attacks on the expanding Christian kingdoms to the north. Sanchou and her family, like those in many communities across North Africa, are in no doubt that they are among the last of the Andalusians, part of the great Muslim diaspora scattered to the winds in the centuries after the fall of Al-Andalus in Sanchou said her forebears arrived in Tunisia by boat after fleeing Spain in April and were given accommodation in a district already populated by refugees from Al-Andalus.
Although now a partial ruin, the house still belongs to her family, which has a copy of the original bill of sale. My family until my grandfather were all blond, very white-skinned and blue-eyed.
It is only for two generations that we have more of the features of North Africa because for centuries the Moors of Tunisia married their children to descendants of the Moors to preserve the genes. Such legends are evident, for example, in the keys that hang on the walls of homes in Rabat, Morocco, where many Andalusians settled after being driven out of Spain in the 17th century — a tradition echoed in more recent times by Palestinian families driven into exile in Other stories speak of mysterious remote villages in Spain where generations of Muslim families have lived for centuries, practicing their religion in secret for fear of reprisal and even now, long after the threat of persecution has passed, living clandestine lives of faith cut off from the outside world.
True or not, such tales speak at the very least of the survival of a great yearning for, and a strong sense of connection with, the lost Islamic kingdom of Al-Andalus. This was partly because, over the centuries, the descendants of the original Andalusians had practiced endogamy, the custom of marrying only within a specific cultural group. In , one house was opened in Granada that seemed to offer hope that such dreams might one day come true — a house of God.
On Thursday, July 10, , a muezzin called the faithful to prayer for the first time at the Grand Mosque of Granada, the first to be built in the city since the fall of Al-Andalus. We visited Ibrahim Perez, a first-generation Spanish Muslim convert, at the Grand Mosque in Granada, where he spoke about its place in the community.
Not everyone welcomed the construction of the Grand Mosque, which was not quite as grand as it might have been. During the two-decade struggle to persuade city authorities to approve its construction, its designers were obliged to reduce the height of the minaret so it did not stand taller than the tower of the nearby Catholic Church of Saint Nicholas. It is true that they tried to impose a single religion, with only one skin color, and that is why they persecuted Jews and Muslims, gypsies and blacks, and it is true that many fled to save themselves from this human and cultural extermination.
Hundreds of words and customs are Andalusian. These Moorish and Andalusian footprints have shaped the identity of Andalusia and demonstrate on their own that the expulsion has failed, that the attempt at cultural homogenization has failed, and that the Spanish identity forged on the extermination of the different has failed. The window for applications closed on Oct.
We want to receive the same treatment and recognition by Spain as the Sephardic Jews. Maybe we will get there or maybe our children will, but we will continue to seek justice. Amal Correon, right, travels to Hornachos from Rabat every year. Here he is with Mayor Francisco Buenavista. Overlooking the town are the remains of a castle built by Arabs in the 11th century to mark the boundary between the Muslim taifas of Badajoz and Toledo.
His ancestors were among 3, or more Muslims who were taken to the port of Seville and put on ships bound for the Moroccan coast. Amal Correon has a document from showing the name of his ancestor, Garcia Correon, who took charge of widows and their children. Ever since, said Correon, the Hornacheros have not stopped looking back over their shoulders. Pieces of his family history then began to fall into place. One day, he was teaching his brother how to perform ablution and the movement of salat while his Christian mother watched from a distance.
She thought it was a danger for her granddaughter to know these things and that with time, when she was older, she would know. In , at the invitation of Dr. They remained in Saudi Arabia for 12 years before returning to Granada.
He began to study his family history and found that they had originated from a Yemeni tribe called the Banu Qasem, who had migrated to Al-Andalus via Madinah.
Abd Samad Romero tells the story of how he converted to Islam, spent time studying in Saudi Arabia and traced his roots to a tribe that migrated to Al-Andalus via Madinah. In Spain, the Junta Islamica Islamic Board has spent years lobbying the government to offer naturalization to the descendants of Muslims evicted from the country after the fall of Al-Andalus.
At the time, the association, based in Rabat, claimed that as many as families in Morocco alone today could trace their origins to Al-Andalus.
There is, he said, no reason why members of the Muslim diaspora from Spain should not be able to demonstrate their entitlement to Spanish citizenship in the same way that Jews have done. Nisba, adjectival family names indicating a place of origin and often handed down over centuries, can also offer clues, and such names can be found in Rabat — including Al-Andalusi, Al-Ghranati, Al-Cortobi — that indicate a historical link with Al-Andalus.
The Andalusian heritage of Moors who once lived in the Iberian Peninsula and who subsequently migrated, throughout the Middle Ages and up to the 17th century, to North Africa, can also be demonstrated by the study of customs that have been handed down over generations. Both Jews and Muslims have left their mark on the genetic composition of the modern-day Spanish population.
In a study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics in , researchers from Spain, France and Israel analyzed the genetic makeup of 1, males from Spain and the Balearic Islands and discovered a high average proportion of Andalusians, said Daniel Valdivieso Ramos of Cordoba, find themselves to a certain extent lost between two cultures.
Nevertheless, Jose Miguel Puerta Vilchez, author, Arabist and professor of Islamic art and Andalusian history at the University of Granada, believes that awareness of, and pride in, the achievements and impact of Al-Andalus is growing ever stronger in Spain. Awareness of the legacy of Al-Andalus grows ever stronger in Spain, as exemplified in the work of artists such as Eduardo Gorlat, pictured here.
For Dr. Skip to main content. Never was the annihilation of a people more complete than that of the Morisco-Spaniards.
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