Islamic Traditions in Spain

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

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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
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2066
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)