Author: Christopher Howse
Publication: The Telegraph. UK
Date: April 30, 2007
URL: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/ukcorrespondents/christopherhowse/apr2007/themuslimruleofspain.htm
Miss Armstrong can look after herself in her
row with the critic of Islam, Robert Spencer.
But I must say I was annoyed by another claim
she made in her review of Spencer's book. This is something one hears all
the time. "In Muslim Spain," she wrote, "relations between
the three religions of Abraham were uniquely harmonious in medieval Europe."
This is simply not true. The centuries between the Muslim invasion of Spain
in 711 and the reconquest of their last enclave in 1492 were characterised
by warfare, double-dealing, opportunist alliances, expropriation, punitive
taxation and persecution.
The nearest that Islamic Spain got to a peace-loving
polity was the Caliphate of Cordoba, which existed between 929 and 1031, just
over 100 years out of more than 700 years of occupation.
Its political status rested on dubious ground,
for its founder claimed to be Caliph of the whole world from his stronghold
in Spain, when there was already a Caliph in Baghdad. The Fatimids in North
Africa also claimed the Caliphate in rivalry to Cordoba.
The mosque at Cordoba, that great beauty of world architecture, was built
on the site of the church of St Vincent, demolished to make way for it. In
the early years after the Muslim invasion, Christians had been allowed to
worship in part of the cathedral site, all their other churches having been
demolished at the conquest. But under the Ummayyads, the founders of the Caliphate
of Cordoba, the Christians had to relinquish their part of St Vincent's.
Under the Caliphate of Cordoba, it was not
just the Christians of northern Spain who fought to gain territory. The 10th-century
de facto ruler of the caliphate, al-Mansur, fought expansionist wars, sacking
Barcelona in 985 and Santiago in 997. He had already defeated his father-in-law
in battle, with Muslims and Christians fighting on both sides. That is unique
harmony of a sort.
After the collapse of the Caliphate in civil
war, things got no better. There is a statue in Cordoba to Moses Maimonides,
the great Jewish philosopher. But Maimonides and his family had to flee Spain
to escape persecution by the ruling Muslim dynasty.
The 12th-century Muslim thinker, Ibn-Rushd,
known as Averroes to Christian philosophers, who took him very seriously,
was also banished from the Spanish peninsula by the intolerant Almohad rulers.
I suppose if you had to choose which Muslim
regime to live under in the Middle Ages, the Caliphate of Cordoba would be
a good choice, but let's not pretend it was a secular liberal state.
