Islamic Traditions in Spain

This research examines Islamic traditions in Spain between about 732, the year that Charles Martel famously halted the Muslim invasion of Europe at Tours, and 1492, which marked the expulsion of Islamic political power from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. During the intervening centuries, Spain represented the western extent of Muslim rule of Spain and the last bastion of non-Christian independence in Europe. During this time, too, certain Islamic religious traditions and protocols were able to assert themselves in a way that distinguished Muslim political and cultural dominance from such dominance under Christianity.

Apart from the apparent ability of invading Muslim forces to impart administrative, and economic strength to a weak, factionalized, and demoralized late-Roman/Visigothic Spain, the Islamic tendency for tolerance of individual religious belief, though non-Muslims were given second-class civic status, is noteworthy. Not unrelated to the organizational competence of Islamic rule in Spain during the Middle Ages was the ability of the distinctive religious consciousness of Islam to contribute to the cultural and social identity of Spain and Europe. Yet the privileging of Islamic religious consciousness in Spain seems to have been far more benign than the dynamic of religious consciousness was when Christianity and Christendom reasserted control there.

The history of Islamic conquest and domination of the Iberian Peninsula, especially in Andalusia, or Al-Andalus, u

Related Essays

Islam & Islamic Culture .... end, both the Jews and the Muslims were driven out of Spain. .... of the world has moved on while much of Islamic culture has .... World Religions: Western Traditions. .... (770 3 )

The Maliki School & Its Contribution to Islamic Culture .... could be observed in places as distant as Spain. .... the severity of the Maliki school's orthodox traditions. .... Appearing at the time that Islamic culture was in .... (1363 5 )

Islamic States In the 12th, 13th & 14th Centuries .... superior force, Christian Spain eventually subdued Ummayad/Moorish Spain. .... a new type of Islamic civilization based .... Persian monarchical traditions were revived. .... (1678 7 )

Jihad of the Islamic Religion .... the Arab rulers had no administrative traditions of their .... was not without a price: Islamic Persia prospered .... into competing caliphates in Spain (the survivors .... (1589 6 )

US Economy. Industrial Revolution. Islamic Fundamentalism .... Islam made inroads in Sicily, Spain, Portugal and France .... campuses that encouraged discussion of new Islamic theorists in .... the Sunni and Shi'a traditions, and the .... (1537 6 )

battles for territorial control but also in a series of treaties and truces that seem to have been intended to accomplish the creation of a rational social order. Watt's analysis of that point is that the dominant dynamic of Islamist Spain was one of "symbiosis or cultural fusion," whereby Spanish Moors became the major vehicle for preserving, translating, and commenting on Greek philosophy for the West: There was no "iron curtain" between Christian Toledo and Islamic Cordova in the later twelfth century when Averroes was at the height of his power; and the thought of the great Aristotelian penetrated more easily into Christian Europe than into the Islamic heartlands, and constituted a large part of the stimulus which provoked the greatest intellectual achievement of medieval Christendom, the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The influence of Muslim religious consciousness on the overall development of medieval Spain in particular and Europe in general can be seen from the fact that at a time when high, literate culture was flowering in the "Golden Age" of Andalusia under Muslim rule, the rest of Western Europe was experiencing what is commonly called the Dark Ages. Watt even attributes the Christian conception of the Crus

Category: Foreign - I