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Andres Martinez
THRS 358
Fall 2014
M.R. Menocal. The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a
Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (New York: Little, Brown + Co., 2002) xvi and 315.

Beginnings Summary

Menocal begins this story in the mid-eighth century, introducing the reader to the ruling family
of Islam, the Umayyads, who were eradicated by the rival Abbasids in Syria. For a brief period,
the Abbasids had successfully taken over the House of Islam, and had moved it further east, to
Baghdad, away from old Umayyad links. The sole survivor of the Umayyad clan was a young
prince, Abd al-Rahman, who journeyed across the North African desert in search of refuge. His
mother was a Berber tribeswoman of todays Morocco, where he had direct ties with descendants
of the Prophet and his followers.
Beginning in 711, the Berbers who were led by the Syrians had pushed across the strait, which
separated Africa from Europe, into the once Roman-occupied territory of Iberia, known to the
new colonizers as al-Andalus in Arabic. Abd al-Rahman followed their trail and settled in their
new capital, an old city that the Visigoths had called Khordoba, pronounced Qurtuba, in Arabic.
Abd al-Rahman arrived in Qurtuba in 755 would cause some political turmoil, as threat to the
Abbasids and could claim survival of the House of Umayyads, he was offered protection by the
emir of al-Andalus as well as his daughters hand in marriage. In May 756, the young prince had
put together a loyal army and overthrew his would-be father-in-law, thus becoming ruler of the
city and turning it into a center of culture. In order to celebrate his victory in battle, Abd al-
Rahman built his new estate, Rusafa, which served as homage to his old family estate north of
Damascus, while simultaneously helped proclaim this would be the new home of the Umayyads.
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More than two centuries later, his descendants would declare that Cordoba was the legitimate
seat of the caliphate.
Menocal tells the reader this is the story of the Umayyad prince who set up a caliphate in Europe,
as well as the story of how the Abbasids made Baghdad a great empire of economic and cultural
wealth. The author wants us to understand, while the al-Andalus represent the presence of Islam
in Europe for hundreds of years, little is told of it through Muslim history. Because Islam
perished as one of the religions of Europe and the Moors and Jews were pushed out of Spain,
people today see al-Andalus as a failure. It is the populace, even some who are well educated,
who see the adjective medieval with intolerance and darkness. But it is merely an expression
of an era in the middle but Menocal reminds us this was indeed a golden age of Andalusian
culture that shaped history and civilization for centuries to come. In fact, this is a chapter of
Europes history where Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived side by side in tolerance, despite
differences at the time.

Chapter 1 Summary

The journey of Europes transformation begins with the death of the Prophet, Muhammad; he
had died in Medina in 632 without appointing a successor. He had created a community, empire
in the making, which was already military and political but no instructions on how it should be
organized. The question of who would succeed the Prophet had led to political instability and
violence within Islam. The Umayyads then came to power and moved the capital from Medina to
Damascus, from the Arabian Peninsula into Syria, which had an established mixed culture and
important distinction from Arabs and Islam. They began building the Great Mosque of Damascus
from decaying pieces of a Christian church, and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem where
Abraham would sacrifice his son his God; this was the Umayyads belief that Muslims were now
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Children of Abraham and in the Quran rule that there is only One God. The borders of the
Islamic empire spread across Europe, surrounding the Mediterranean, much left by the Roman
Empire.
The Arab-Islamic civilization was recognized for assimilating and even reviving traditions from
indigenous cultures. The Umayyads began to redefine their version of Islam as one that
embraced languages, culture, and people. They did not live long to see their own growth; the
Abbasids, who claimed to be direct descendants of the Prophet by way of his uncle Abbas,
overthrew the Umayyads in Damascus in 750. The Abbasids moved the capital to Iraq, more
specifically Baghdad, where they had centered their armies.
Menocal reminds us of post-Roman Europes becoming a distant memory and of its demise at
the hands of the Germanic tribes, more notoriously the Visigoths, during the third and fourth
centuries C.E. The Visigoths had adopted Christianity, from a Catholic perspective, in 589. A
churchman by the name of Isidore of Seville attempted to communicate Christian order into the
void left by the collapse of Rome, with his work In Praise of Spain, trying to get the Visigoths to
see their history as a continuance of Rome. Believing the future seemed uncertain, again he
attempted to salvage the last remains of the knowledge of ancient Rome with his masterpiece, the
Etymologies, the Visigoths ignored him and were in-turn conquered after the eight century. All
the years of civil discontinuity: political instability, religiously fragmented, and being culturally
weak had allowed Hispania to be easily overran and settled by the Muslims. By the time Abd al-
Rahman had resurfaced, fifty years after the first Muslim armies ventured across this land, he
saw an opportunity to make this desolate land flourish.
Long reigns after Abd al-Rahman had brought growth to the economy and the population; trade
routes had also helped maintain cultural contacts and prosperity. A number of factors had
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allowed Al-Andalus to form a unique identity. Much like Abd al-Rahman, the first generation of
settlers and conquest were already an ethnic mix, original armies had brought over settlers who
had their own languages, traditions and religions. Through intermarriage and intermixed cultural
origins, a huge rate of conversion to Islam had made the Andalusian Muslim community
immensely large; they had also had encouraged conversion by a number of civil advantages.
Which brings Menocal to her point, many of the ancestors of Muslims from Cordoba were as
likely to be Hispano-Roman as Berber, many of the direct descendants of Abd al-Rahman were
half Berber and half Syrian, once born of Christian mothers and had pale skin and blue eyes. On
the other hand, to be Arab did not necessarily mean to be Islamic. The Arabic language had
made its way through Jews and Christians and offered them protection under Quran mandate of
dhimmi, Peoples of the Book, requiring all Muslims not to harm the dhimmi. This had begun a
memorable interfaith relationship that would last for centuries.
Menocal brings the reader to Cordoba, in the tenth century, the nun Hroswitha eloquently
described it as The brilliant ornament of the world shone in the west, a noble city newly known
for the military prowess that its Hispanic colonizers had brought, Cordoba was its name and it
was wealthy and famous and known for its pleasures and resplendent in all things, and especially
for its seven streams of wisdom and as much as its constant victories (33). Menocal reminds the
reader that in the end it is not the material wealth but the intellectual prowess of al-Andalus that
made it the ornament of the world. Cordoba had the largest library in Europe; these were a
monument of culture. Also symbolizing a perfect combination of the material and intellectual, it
would start to reach the corners and outskirts about what life could be and a culture could
achieve.

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Civil wars among rival Muslims had begun in 1009, slowly tearing al-Andalus apart. This time it
was not being brought down from outside the gates but from within its own borders and within
Islam. There was a violent destruction of Madinat al-Zahra, in Cordoba, in 1009, marking the
end of the political well being of Islam in medieval Europe. In the aftermath, individual cities
became independent and struggled to gain authority that once belonged to the capital. In the early
years, there were as many as sixty states of differing political provenances.
The turbulent religious climate in al-Andalus changed the composition of Muslim cities. The
dhimmi, Jews and Christians who were part of the cultural mix, had begun. A new Muslim
Berber regime, the Almohads, had brought a brand of religiously intolerant Islam, putting it at
odds with Andalusian tradition. Alas, they were not able to achieve any sort of political unity
they were hoping for among Muslims. Pope Innocent III reined Europe, 1198 to 1216, making
al-Andalus a target of the Crusades. Innocent ruled with an iron fist, he had immense political
influence and provoked many radical changes in European culture and ideology. Cities had
started falling to the Christians one by one: Cordoba in 1236, Valencia in 1238 and Seville.
Seville was taken over by Ferdinand III of Castile. Ferdinand III had created Granada as the last
Islamic state, giving it to Ibn Ahmar, of the Nasr family; he became a keeper of the memory of
al-Andalus. Almost 250 years later, descendants of Ahmar built the Alhambra, ornamented with
memories. The last of the Nasrids, Muhammad XII had passed the keys to the descendant of
Ferdinand III and Alfonso, Queen Isabella of Castile, and her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon.
Chapter 2
Back in Cordoba, 786, Abd al-Rahman was now an old man of fifty. A lifetime had passed since
his exile in al-Adanlus, he wanted to make sure the memory of the Umayyads and Damascus
would not be lost, for thirty years began building a new Umayyad state. He was haunted by
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memories of his old family life, he was the founding father of the Umayyads but nonetheless a
man exiled from his home, with his new wealth he showered himself with personal nostalgia and
tradition.
Despite having hundreds of successes: military, political, artistic, etc. and despite Cordoba being
prosperous and stable, Abd al-Rahman waited until nearly the end of his life to begin a very
important project that would represent what he stood for: a mosque worthy of his family and his
heritage. He began building a Friday mosque for his prosperous capital, where the Islamic
community would pray on Fridays. The aesthetics of the mosque was Andalusian: partly
vernacular and part homage to Umayyad Syria, to express hereditary legitimacy. The building
would continued to be built and added to for more than 200 years, but the main features of the
look, were established from the beginning. Afraid he would die far from his homeland, Abd al-
Rahman wrote a poem in ode to a palm tree. Love of the language was part of pre-Islamic culture
that shaped the new religion desert warriors were great poets, therefore its not surprising to find a
great warrior and religious head like Abd al-Rahman, writing a poem. He would build his new
Rusafa palace with a botanical garden, to collect and grow living things that were the center of
beauty and delight, he would often visit his garden and admire palm trees of his native land. Abd
al-Rahman died there in 788, among the palm trees from his native home he loved.

Chapter 3
Menocal takes us back to Cordoba in 855; Paul Alvarus was a respected Christian figure of
Cordoba, in the mid-ninth century. Alvarus observed how Cordobas people, language, and
culture were changing amid the landscape. There was an expansion of the Muslim community;
immigrants and converts, there were also many more mosques than churches. Alvarus wrote
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they have forgotten their own language (68). Alvarus remarks how Christians found in Arabic,
a satisfaction of language that their own religion does not provide. Arabic allowed them to
express all the things they need to say, read, write from all sorts of subject even outside of
religion.
In 855, a number of opponents of the conversion of their Christian world sought martyrdom. The
publicly declared the deceits of Islam and the Prophet, while Islam was tolerant in their doctrine
they had none for criticism of their Prophet. These attacks continued and the offending
Christians were beheaded in public. These people became known as the Mozarab martyrs,
ironically remembered by the name that described the opposite of what they were, they became
symbols of a cause of resisting forced conversion. They were known to be followers of Alvarus,
who wrote of lament of loss of Christian independence.
Islam recognized its relationship with Judaism and Christianity since the early years. For
Muhammad, the Quran was the ultimate miracle; Moses and Jesus were both given books, which
became the foundation of their communities. Thus the expression dhimmi, or Peoples of the
Book, was used for Jews and Christians. This allowed them religious freedom, and to be treated
under a pact between ruling Muslims and other book communities under their sovereignty. In
return for this freedom, People of the Book were required to pay a special tax, and were
restricted public displays of their religious rituals. More and more people were eager to convert
and the Muslim community grew faster.
We call languages we grow up speaking mother tongues because we learn them from the society
of women who raise us. Latin had become a strange language, what would had been an empire
united by Latin, now had local differences in the way people spoke. What was once a great
instrument of Romes poets, historians, orators was now a memory.
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Chapter 4
A prominent mid-tenth-century Cordoban by the name of Hasdai was vizier, right hand man to
Abd al-Rahman III. As Hasdai had indicated in the text, the name of the homeland was Sefarad
in Hebrew and al-Andalus in Arabic. Because of his eloquence with Arabic, the caliph promoted
Hasdai throughout the years, also the vizier had profound cultural and political knowledge of
Islam and al-Andalus, which were necessary for the caliph. It would seem astonishing that one of
the public faces of Islam during this time was a devout Jew.
By 909 Baghdad began to fall apart, the political and military center had lost its hold, at the turn
of the tenth century the Shiites had taken control in North African Abbasid territory, challenging
their claim of legitimacy and succession. Abd al-Rahman III was eighteen at the time of these
events and three years later he assumed power. He would establish a sort of political unity across
Islam, although it was broken down and separated into too many different states.
Hasdai ibn Shaprut was born in 915 in Cordoba, in 949 he was at the head of the delegation
representing the caliphate of Cordoba in foreign negotiations; they were looking for a strategic
alliance with the emperor in Constantinople, as they were both enemies of the Abbasids in
Baghdad.

Chapter 5
Abd al-Rahman III had built Madinat al-Zahra as part of his declaration as caliphate. Far beyond
military and political successes, it was cultural achievement that made a place the center of the
universe. During the latter part of his reign he devoted his time to the intellectual and aesthetic
show of his kingdoms accomplishments. Construction had begun in 936, and he remained
obsessed with it. Menocal might suggest he was trying to turn attention from Andalusian politics,
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which was the Achilles heel of the whole city. After 50 years, his son Al-Hakam inherited both
the title of caliph and achievements that came with it, he took over construction of Madinat al-
Zahra.