"The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain" is bookended by two events. The first event marks the beginning of the period, in the early 700s CE, when a stranger named Abd Al-Rahman arrives in southern Spain from across the Strait of Gibraltar. His story is like a dark fairy tale: he's a refugee who has travelled all the way from Syria, the lone survivor of the leaders of the Umayyad caliphate, who have been slaughtered by the rival Abbasids. His arrival and subsequent conquests are the inciting events that lead to a new culture on the Iberian peninsula, not a Muslim culture, but a rare blend of Muslims, Jews and Christians living together, governed from the city of Córdoba. This is more than mere coexistence or mutual tolerance: it's Arabian culture elevating all of the inhabitants of al-Andalus (as Andalusia is then called) to a level of civilization then unheard of anywhere in Europe.
The second event, in 1492, is the end of this multicultural society, when the last vestige of that culture is destroyed by "Los Reyes Católicos" (The Christian Monarchs), who force the last stronghold of Arab presence in Spain, the city of Granada, to capitulate. The capitulation agreement claims that Jews and Muslims can continue to live in Spain if they convert to Christianity. But within a few years, Spain kicks out or kills any "New Christians" (that is, Jews or Muslims who converted) on the flimsy claim that their conversion wasn't genuine.
In the 700 years between these two events, the region has many ups and downs. At its peak, it's a melting pot unlike any I've read about before. Christians and Muslims fight alongside each other in wars against other Christians or Muslims. Jews are viziers (both counselors and military leaders) under Muslim rule. Jews and Christians speak Arabic fluently and write poetry in that language. Christians hold mass in Arabic. The area is the scientific capital of Europe. And the city of Toledo becomes a hub of translators, who work in teams to oversee the translation of massive amounts of Greek and Arabian manuscripts into Latin, Hebrew and Castilian.
It's hard to put into words how much more advanced and well-read al-Andalus is compared to the rest of Europe, but the story of Petrus Alfonsi helps to explain it. Alfonsi is a Spanish Jew who converts to Christianity and is baptized as an adult. He travels to London in the early 1100s. As Andalusian scholars go, he is not particularly well-educated or knowledgeable. But in London, in a turn of events not unlike the plot of the movie Idiocracy, he is hailed as a genius whose deep knowledge makes him a celebrity in the scientific community and the personal physician of King Henry I.
At the same time, this melting pot is under constant threat from all sides. Throughout the 700-year period, various groups of Muslims from Morocco, brought to the European continent to help out in a war, try to impose a stricter, less tolerant form of Islam, persecuting Jews and Christians, and often succeed. The once-unified region splits up into smaller taifas, small kingdoms or city-states constantly at odds with each other. Later, Christian forces arrive from southern France and force the Christian population to hold their mass in Latin, not Arabic, as was the practice. And eventually, the whole project comes crashing to the ground when an extreme form of Christianity washes over the entire peninsula and destroys the Jewish and Muslim presence, burning countless books and people in a brutal form of ethnic cleansing.
Despite all that, the takeaway of "The Ornament of the World" is not that we should lament the fall of al-Andalus, but rather celebrate its successes. For hundreds of years, it managed to establish a true multiculturalism, rare not only for its time, but also for our time. Who today can imagine any place in the world in which members of the three Abrahamic religions can do more than peacefully coexist, but actually cooperate, learn from each other and improve each other? This book proves that such a place can exist, and that the reality we see today is not set in stone.
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