The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain

This "culture of tolerance" as Menocal calls it was perhaps not as tolerant as she likes to make out and, of course, it ultimately implodes as Christians and Muslims fight for possession of the country. Still, much of the literature, science and philosophy produced of that time remains influential and many of the beautiful places remain to be see by visitors to the area. Anyone traveling to the country would be amiss if he or she did not take a look at this book and get a feel for the achievement of medieval Spain.

Understand that this book is a completely optimistic account of the period and ignores most of the tragedies of the time. Still, in our time of insecurity, it is nice to read something positive. It is beautiful to see what can be achieved when three powerful cultures work together instead of try to destroy each other.


Menocal deserves a Pulitzer   May 20, 2002
48 out of 71 found this review helpful

Occasionally an author/philosopher appears who is able to transcend contemporary groupthink and present a logical, rational, orderly, new vision of history. Alvin Tofler, whose analogy of the three waves of civilization presented an ordered view of human progress outside the usual names/dates/nation pedagogy, comes immediately to mind. Robin McNeil, in the Story of English, likewise showed how the democraticization of language, and the free "immigration" of words from other languages, made English the natural choice to become the international language. Maria Rosa Menocal presents a similar fresh approach to Western / Mediterranean / North African history by forcefully presenting Arabic as the primary language of cultural preservation and progress during the 7th through 13th centuries. While Hebrew and Latin were important clerical languages, Arabic was both clerical and the language of poetry and prose. Many of the scholars translating original Greek books were Jews - privileged members of Muslim courts - who were fluent in Arabic, the predominant Mediterranean language of commerce of the era. I never knew that. In my three years of studying Latin, I believed that Latin was the language of the middle ages, carefully preserved by hermetic monks laboriously copying parchment manuscripts. Menocal reveals the startling fact -to me,at least- that the califal library in Islamic Cordoba alone held 4000 books -the librarian's catalog held information on some 600,000 volumes - while the largest library in Christian Europe at the time was some 400 books!

I saw the book review in the Wall Street Journal and took the book on a just-finished trip to Spain. No one I talked to had any knowledge of the magnificent contriburtions of the Muslim and Jewish cultures beyond the architectural remnants. In fact, in Mallorca, the festival of the defeat of the Muslim pirates was the big event of the month. My Spanish friend, who tends to always apologize for her country, had no idea of the preeminence of Andalusian culture. Or that, as Menocal shows, in Toledo, in the mid thirteenth century, the first modern vernacular language, Castlian, appeared to supplant Latin as the language of learning in Christian Spain. Modern Spanish, long derided as the "easy choice" in high school, was actually the language of scholars.

Having personally met several Holocaust survivors, with real tatoos, I was overwhelmed by the last chapter of this book. My thanks to Maria Rosa Menocal for masking history come alive. Those who forget the lessons of history.....


An invented interfaith utopia   July 15, 2002
Andrew G. Bostom (Chepachet, RI USA)
46 out of 66 found this review helpful

Ms. Menocal's idyllic view of Muslim Spain misrepresents the dhimmis (i.e., non-Muslim vanquished peoples) existence. She maintains, "The new Islamic polity not only allowed Jews and Christians to survive, but following Quranic mandate, by and large protected them..". The laws of dhimmitude, as opposed to flimsy notions of "tolerance" and "protection" determined the actual sociopolitical, and economic status of Christians and Jews conquered by jihad wars. Unfortunately, the so-called "tolerance" and "protection" she describes was afforded only upon submission to Islamic domination by a "Pact" - or Dhimma - which imposed degrading and discriminatory regulations. The main principles of dhimmitude were (and continue to be) : (i) the inequality of rights in all domains between Muslims and dhimmis; (ii) the social and economic discrimination against the dhimmis; (iii) the humiliation and vulnerability of the dhimmis. Moreover, Ms. Menocal seems to be unaware of the dire consequences for infidel dhimmis who in fact rebelled against the repressive Dhimma: slaughter of the rebels, and enslavement of their women and children.

In reality, Muslim Spain was a country of constant jihad ruled under Maliki jurisdiction, which offered one of the most severe, repressive interpretations of Islamic law. Muslim Spain was populated by tens of thousands of Christian slaves, and humiliated and oppressed Christian dhimmis, in addition to a small minority of privileged Christian notables. The muwallads (neo-converts to Islam) were in nearly perpetual revolt against the Arab immigrants who had claimed large estates for themselves, farmed by Christian serfs or slaves. Expropriations and fiscal extortions ignited the flames of continual rebellion by both muwallads and mozarabs (Christian dhimmis) throughout the Iberian peninsula. Leaders of these rebellions were crucified, and their insurgent followers were put to the sword. These bloody conflicts, which occurred throughout the Hispano-Umayyad emirate until the tenth century, fueled endemic religious hatred. An 828 letter from Louis the Pious to the Christians of Merida summarized their plight under Abd al-Rahman II, and during the preceding reign: confiscation of their property, unfair increase of their exacted tribute, removal of their freedom (probably meaning slavery), and oppression by excessive taxes. The leader of the muwallad rebellion in southern Andalusia (near Ronda), Ibn Hafsun (d. 918), roused the peasants against the Muslim government which he accused of confiscating their property, and subjecting them to heavy tribute, and against the Arabs who were crushing them with humiliations, while treating them as slaves. In Grenada, the Jewish viziers Samuel Ibn Naghrela, and his son Joseph, who protected a once flourishing Jewish community, were both assassinated between 1056 to 1066, followed by the annihilation of the Jewish population by the local Muslim community (at least three thousand Jews perished in an uprising surrounding the 1066 assasination, alone). Finally, although Maimonides is frequently referred to by Menocal as a paragon of Jewish achievement facilitated by the enlightened rule of Muslim Spain, his own words debunk Menocal's utopian view of Islamic treatment of Jews: "..the Arabs have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against usyNever did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they.."

For those not enamored of utopianism, a more accurate assessment of interfaith relationships in Muslim Spain can be found in Richard Fletcher's very engaging "Moorish Spain". Mr. Fletcher offers these unromantic, but unassailable observations: "The simple and verifiable historical truth is that Moorish Spain was more often a land of turmoil than it was of tranquilityyBut in the cultural conditions that prevail in the west today the past has to be marketed, and to be successfully marketed it has to be attractively packaged. Medieval Spain in a state of nature lacks wide appeal. Self-indulgent fantasies of glamour..do wonders for sharpening up its image.".

Following the cataclysmic events of September 11, 2001 there has been a decided tendency to recall nebulous "Golden Ages" of idyllic multireligious societies, invented so effectively (as in "The Ornament of the World", for example) that today one feels defenseless and disoriented, when brought face-to-face with the conflicts from another age, deliberately erased from history. We must forego this whitewashing and opt instead for a shared, candid reflection on the painful living legacy of dhimmitude to unite us in a joint effort for peace and mutual respect.


Same planet, different worlds   May 10, 2002
John Landon (NYC, NY United States)
32 out of 62 found this review helpful

After reading Paul Fregosi's important Jihad I felt nonetheless the need to find some additional perspective in the elusive chase after the Islamic enigma. This work appeared like an apparition and foots the dialectical bill. Telling the tale of the last successor of the Ommayeds traveling to Andalusia in the coming of the Abassids, there to initiate a period of the flowering of a great Islamic culture, this work shows the complexity of the Islamic phenomenon, and is a reminder that we might judge Islam not so much by modern standards, though we must, as by the standards of social chaos to which it was sometimes able, as here, to bring some stability, advancement, and culture. And an age of poets. The author recounts the story of the impact of Arabic and its poetic vivacity on the newly forming Romance languages in the passing away of Latin. Somewhere, just here, the troubadours emerge, and we have the lore of Provencal poetry,and the signature of the invisible stream of cultural diffusion at the deep core of European civilization. Fascinating tale, with a curious hint that we fail to see the later Inquisition as it regresses to uproot the Arabized Christians produced by this age of tolerance.