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

Thank you Prof. Menocal for your book that should have been written by a Muslim! One previous reviewer of this book has mentioned that intolerance far outweighed the tolerance shown by the three religious groups sharing the Iberian Peninsula a thousand years ago. Does anyone really deny that? And where, by the way, was tolerance of religious minorities evident in any other culture of the 10th century CE? What we need to focus on is the legacy of convivencia so eloquently presented in this book and say in unison (as Christians, Jews and Muslims) "never again" to the religious intolerance of the past. Only then can we truly progress as a human species in this already too turbulent 21st century.

A reader's own sense of polital correctness will more likely influence one's response to this book than any parochialism offered by Menocal. The first chapter gives the uninitiated reader a capsule summary of the 700-odd year history of Arabized Spain. The chapters that follow are almost historical mood pieces that focus on a particular influential person or intellectual movement or historical incident that occurred within the greater time period. We find Charlemagne in Spain allied in battle with one Muslim territory against another. We find 400,000 volumes in ONE library in Toledo at a time when the complete works of Aristotle were lost to Western Europe (including the Irish monks). Here are the Normans invading Northern Spain and arabized Sicily, and soon after occupation culturally acclimatizing to a very different and more advanced civilization than they found in England. Now the great movement of scientific, medical, philosophical, and political science into Western Europe as Catholic bishops set up translaltion centers in Spain and supply an information-starved North with the intellectual tools that fire the engine of Western Civilization just as the works of ancient Greece and Persia fired the civilization of an arabized Mediterranian basin in the years following the Arab conquests. Oh-and there is a lot of killing and backstabbing and decadence and decline at the same time there is wonderful culture and architecture. Almost all of Spain was Christian by the time the Alhambra is built-and the Granada area remained arabized until 1492 because the Muslim rulers had Christian allies until then. Of interest, only the postscript to the book was written after 9/11. In that postscript, Menocal asks the reader to take the information from her book to come to individual decisions about it's relevance to the present time-hardly the advice of someone with a biased PC ax to grind. Menocal is an expert in her field who deeply loves her subject. That love suffuses this book with a bittersweet mixture of awe, mystery, sorrow, and patience. That mood stays with me months after completing the book.

I have been fortunate enough to travel to Spain three times now. Two of my trips have taken me through the southern parts of the country--Andalusia (al-Andalus) and its environs--that make up the setting for much of this story. It is a beautiful part of the world and Menocal has provided us with a wonderful history of the area during the time of its greatest glory: the Middle Ages. From 711 until 1492, the Iberian Peninsula was the home of three different cultures--Jewish, Christian and Muslim--that were often able to co-exist in relative peace. While doing so, they were each able to contribute to a cosmopolitan and melded culture that for a long stretch was the most advanced culture in Western civilization, producing things that remain unique to this day.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.

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.....