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In Spanish history, Muslim domination was without a doubt, as important
to Spain as the discovery of America. Beatriz Luna Gijón writes
about the merger of the Christian and Arabic culture which has given
Andulucia its unique identity.
It is impossible to appreciate the significance of Muslim domination in
Spain until you realise that this was a time when a new monotheist faith
was emerging from the collapsed Roman Empire: Christianity.
On the shores of Africa, the Islamic religion, with its Prophet, Mohammed
sat opposite Europe, the new centre of the Christian world.
Followers of Islam believed in absolute submission to God’s will,
that Jesus was the greatest of all prophets, but not divine. They accepted
the Old but not the New Testament. Islam was mainly a missionary religion
that offered pagans a choice of conversion or death. But they tolerated
Christians and Jews and in most cases urged them to convert, but did not
force them.
In 710, Spain was under the rule of the Visigoths, a Christian Germanic
tribe. When the Arab Tariq arrived he speedily defeated the Visigothic
army and sent his men against the coastal area. Local people fled the
coast and searched for shelter in the mountains. Here they settled and
cultivated the surrounding fields for their survival. A good example of
these “new villages” is Comares, the highest village in the
Axarquia.
The history of Spain has always been greatly affected by its geography.
The weak flank through the Strait of Gibraltar caused an unstoppable flood
of Moorish incursions.
In 722, Pelayo became the leader of the remaining Christian areas and
defeated the Moors at Covadonga. This event was the beginning of an almost
eight hundred year holy war known as the Reconquest. The Arabs’
original proposal was to occupy all Europe, but the furthest they were
able to push to the North was crossing the Pyrenees and going into France,
where Charles Martel stopped them in Poitiers.
The disempowerment resulting from the loss of sovereignty to an alien
invader and the marginalization of their culture and religion were a gradual
process which began early, at the beginning of the 8th century with the
Latin being replaced by the Arab tongue, and the Christian by the Islamic
faith. It would be another seven centuries before the cycle would go full
circle and return to the Christian faith.
Yet the centuries of Muslim rule left indelible marks on the culture of
Spain; in its language, customs, cuisine, music, architecture, and arts…
Neither the Christians nor the Jews were forced by the Moors to convert
into Islam; they only tried to persuade them by means of rewards.
Yet it was very different if a muslim converted to Christianity, he would
have been punished by death. |
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In 755, a rebel of the
Umayyads dynasty called Abderraman, arrived in Almuñecar and settled
in the castle of Torrox. From here he organized the army which would conquer
Cordoba and founded the First Independent Caliphate, the Moorish centre
of power. Cordoba became the largest, wealthiest, most cultured city and
the scientific capital in Western Europe. The flourishing of the city
was due to an exceptional situation. The Moors absorbed and fused with
Jewish and Christian knowledge together with the Greek philosophy, Roman
law and government, and the Byzantine and Persian Art that the Umayyads,
the Royal dynasty, had taken into the peninsula from the vast Mediterranean
areas they had conquered and dominated.
During those long centuries of Arab predominance, the Christians almost
forgot their language. Someone wrote that “it was almost impossible
to find amongst a thousand people just one who could write in Latin free
from error. As for writing Arabic, a large number of Christians mastered
the language and possessed an elegant style writing poetry that at times
surpassed in quality that which was composed by the Arabs themselves”.
Even the Christian faith was weakening amongst them as a result of the
growing appeal of the Arabic language and Islam. |
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