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

by Maria Rosa Menocal

Overview

This classic bestseller — the inspiration for the PBS series — is an "illuminating and even inspiring" portrait of medieval Spain that explores the golden age when Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance (Los Angeles Times). 

This enthralling history, widely hailed as a revelation of a "lost" golden age, brings to vivid life the rich and thriving culture of medieval Spain, where for more than seven centuries Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance, and where literature, science, and the arts flourished. 

"It is no exaggeration to say that what we presumptuously call 'Western' culture is owed in large measure to the Andalusian enlightenment...This book partly restores a world we have lost." —Christopher Hitchens, The Nation

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316168717
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	04/02/2003
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	184,290
Product dimensions:	5.46(w) x 8.22(h) x 0.93(d)

About the Author

Maria Rosa Menocal (1953-2012) was a Cuban-born scholar of medieval culture and history and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. Menocal earned a BA, MA, and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.

Tanya Eby has been a voice-over artist for over a decade. She is an Audie-nominated and AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. Besides narrating, Tanya spends her time teaching creative writing classes at the collegiate level, blogging, and working on her own novels.

Table of Contents

	List of Maps	xi
	Foreword	xiii
	A Note on Transliterations and Non-English Names	xvii
	Beginnings	3
	A Brief History of A First-Rate Place	15
	The Palaces of Memory	51
	The Mosque and the Palm Tree	53
	Cordoba, 786
	Mother Tongues	66
	Cordoba, 855
	A Grand Vizier, A Grand City	79
	Cordoba, 949
	The Gardens of Memory	91
	Madinat al-Zahra, South of Cordoba, 1009
	Victorious in Exile	101
	The Battlefield at Argona, Between Cordoba and Granada, 1041
	Love and Its Songs	112
	Niebla, Just West of Seville, on the Road to Huelva, August 1064
	Barbastro, in the Foothills of the Pyrenees, on the Road to Saragossa, August 1064
	The Church at the Top of the Hill	130
	Toledo, 1085
	An Andalusian in London	147
	Huesca, 1106
	Sailing Away, Riding Away	158
	Alexandria, 1140
	The Abbot and the Quran	174
	Cluny, 1142
	Gifts	189
	Sicily, 1236
	Cordoba, 1236
	Granada, 1236
	Banned in Paris	201
	Paris, 1277
	Visions of Other Worlds	216
	Avila, 1305
	Foreign Dignitaries at the Courts of Castile	229
	Seville, 1364
	Toledo, 1364
	In the Alhambra	244
	Granada, 1492
	Somewhere in La Mancha	253
	1605
	Epilogue: Andalusian Shards	266
	Postscript	282
	Other Readings	284
	Thanks	293
	Index	299

Editorial Reviews

"It is no exaggeration that what we presumptuously call 'Western' culture is owed in large measure to the Andalusian enlightenment...This book partly restores to us a world we have lost."—Christopher Hitchens, The Nation

"Engaging and accessible...This study of medieval Spain shows that a powerful Islamic society and its committed Christian opponents were once capable of contending in arms, for mastery of a rich territory, without losing their sense of mutual respect...It is a valuable contribution."—Stephen Schwartz, National Review

From the Publisher

...tells the story exceptionally well...a skillful history of...political history...

Miami Herald

...a lively read and gives us a fascination insight into the history of almost 800 years...

Wall Street Journal

...displays a lavish sense of place that should be the envy of many novelists...seductively written...

Booklist

...an affectin g portrait...a splendid account...the beauty lies in [Menocal's]...eye for the illuminating anectote...

Washington Post Book World

Menocal (R. Selden Rose Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and director of Special Programs in the Humanities, Yale Univ.) has previously published The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage, as well as other books on the role of the vernacular in medieval cultures. This book certainly reflects her deep scholarship. Menocal offers persuasive evidence that the Renaissance was strongly foreshadowed by the intellectual climate of Spain in the preceding centuries, starting in 783 with the founding of Andalusia by Abd al-Rahman, an Umayyad from Syria. The culture created was receptive to intellectual pursuits not allowed in the rest of Europe for several centuries, including the creation of impressive libraries and the study and translation of Classical authors. Menocal claims that this environment was largely a result of the tolerance shown by this ruler and his successors toward Christians and Jews and their cultures. Menocal has not given us a history book so much as a demonstration that puritanical cultures of any ilk are detrimental to the development of science, art, and literature. Her arguments are convincing even without the dark background of September 11. Recommended for all libraries.-Clay Williams, Hunter Coll. Lib., New York Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

A resonant and timely case study of a time when followers of the three monotheisms set aside their differences and tried to get along. Golden ages always turn out to have their rotten linings, but the centuries when a tolerant Muslim dynasty ruled over most of Spain were uncommonly free of nastiness. So writes historian Menocal (Humanities/Yale Univ.) in this unusually graceful study, a sturdy and eminently readable exploration of the "unknown depths of cultural tolerance and symbiosis in our heritage" that may help revise our view of the Middle Ages. Ruling from 756 until 1492, the Ummayads and their political descendants took a broad view of life, according equal status to their fellow "peoples of the Book," the Christians and the Jews of Spain. In time, these peoples blended and became nearly indistinguishable, a troubling matter to those powerful Christian regimes elsewhere in Europe who branded their Spanish brethren as Mozarabs, or, in Menocal's translation, "wanna-be Arabs." This equality, or dhimma, led to great things, including the flourishing of scholarship and the arts, to say nothing of "virtually unlimited opportunities in a booming commercial environment" brought on by the absence of ethnic strife. The era's monuments, the great towers and mosques of southern Spain, still endure, as does its great literary testament, Don Quixote, "a postscript to the history of a first-rate place." Alas, writes Menocal, this wonderland came crashing down with the late medieval clash of Inquisitorial Christian armies and fundamentalist Muslims, when purity of blood and of faith became the ideals of a Spain determined to root out its Islamic heritage, intolerant ideals that were soon to betransported to the New World. Contemporary Israeli poets and Arab intellectuals pine for the glories of al-Andalus, as did Federico Garcia Lorca and Antonio Machado. So, too, does Menocal.

Kirkus Reviews