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In Dante’s Commedia, the poetical master-piece which ushered in the Golden Renais-sance, Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, is

consigned to the Ninth Circle of Inferno. He iscondemned by the Christian poet, not becausehe is considered a heretic, but because the reli-gious movement he inaugurated was consid-ered schismatic. Dante placed the Muslimphilosopher and scientist Ibn Sina in Limbo, inthe august company of Plato and Socrates, andSalah al-Din, the Muslim leader who recap-tured Jerusalem in 1187.

One of the most famous paintings of theearly Renaissance (c. 1340), by Francesco Trai-ni, depicts Saint Thomas Aquinas stomping afigure under his feet, as if it were a snakedepicting satan. The figure under his feet is theTwelfth-century Andalusian philosopher IbnRushd, known more commonly as Averroes,who was largely responsible for reintroducingAristotle into Europe. Was Aquinas, then, acrusader against the infidel Saracen? Or Cardi-nal Nicholas of Cusa, whose ecumenical effortsat the 1439 Council of Florence forged theunion of Christendom on the basis of an imageof man which was to spark the Renaissance?Cusa, whose Cribatio Alcoranus was a theologi-cal critique of Islam, was yet the same manwho defined the parameters for an ecumenical

Andalusia, Gateway to theG

by Muriel Mirak Weissbach

This sketch of Islamic culture’s influence on Europe inthe early part of the Second Millennium, is excerptedfrom a longer work on Islamic poetry, language-culture, and philosophy, which appeared in the ThirdQuarter 1994 issue of Ibykus, the German-languagesister publication of Fidelio.

Interior of the Great Mosque of Córdoba, built A.D. 786-787 by‘Abd al-Rahman I and enlarged three times by his successors.

The double-tiered arches (right) and cupola (above) gave birthto an utterly new, and seemingly limitless, concept of space.

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Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 10, Number 3, Fall 2001

© 2001 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited.

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Gateway to theGolden Renaissance

understanding among all faiths, includingIslam, in his De Pace Fidei.

Islam, for medieval Christian Europe, wasnot an abstract religious faith. It was thelifeblood of a vibrant culture which flourishedon European soil, in Al-Andalus, from thecoming of the Arabs to Spain in 711 until theirexpulsion under Ferdinand and Isabela in1492. Andalusia, particularly from the Ninth tothe Thirteenth centuries, was a beacon oflearning, in a Europe languishing, for the mostpart, in the shadows of ignorance and econom-ic-social backwardness. Islamic culture hadflourished as well in the teeming metropolisesof Baghdad, Damascus, Samarkand, Bukhara,and Cairo, but it was Moorish Spain whichmost affected Europe.

How Christian Europe was to relate to thisrelatively superior culture, would determinethe course of later human history. Contrary tothe myths associated with the Crusades, thosefew, most enlightened Christian leaders ofEurope, whose work was to be decisive forfuture events, did not respond with a hostilecommitment to wipe out that culture. Rather,they faced the challenge presented themmuch in the same way that a great musicalcomposer, such as Beethoven or Brahms,faced the challenge presented by the revolu-E

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tion in music effected by Haydn and Mozart: Theyinvestigated what had generated such cultural excel-lence, and developed it, in specifically Christian termsof reference, as the driving force for the Renaissance.Rather than insistently hammering out a contrarytheme, opposing Christian doctrine in a scholastic formto Islam, as their Aristotelian counterparts did, theysought out and identified the underlying universalstrains of the two traditions, and, often utilizing Islamicmotifs, further developed those strains, to assert theirteaching of Christianity.

Islamic-Arab civilization, as it developed on Europeansoil in Spain, provided the impetus for the GoldenRenaissance. It did this, not, as historical accounts arewont to assert, only by transmitting through Arabictranslations the works of the Greeks and Indians, but alsoby building a scientific, economic, and artistic culture ofunprecedented power. This culture surpassed that of theMerovingians and Carolingians, largely because of therevolution in language on which it was built. (Charle-magne’s great failure, in fact, was his adherence to theartificial Latin and his reluctance to elevate the vernacu-lar into a national language.) The Arabic language-cul-ture prompted the development, as in a dialogue, of thegreat poetical traditions of France, Spain, Italy, and Ger-many—all the illustrious vernaculars of Europe, whichwere the precondition for the later establishment ofnation-states.

Al-Andalus,‘Bright Jewel ofthe World’

As early as the Ninthcentury, Andalusia hadbecome one of the won-ders of the world. TheArabs, who arrived onSpanish shores in 711, setto the task, in the follow-ing century, of buildingan urban-based society,modelled on the exampleof Baghdad, the “city ofpeace,” which, built fromscratch in 762, was tobecome a thriving centerof industry, agriculture,trade, science, and thearts, whose influenceradiated out to the East as

far as India and China. Although at its inception,Andalusia was dependent on the Emir of North Africa,who appointed a governor with the approval of theCaliph Walid ibn ‘Abd al-Malik, of the Omayyad dynastyin Damascus, Arab Spain soon became independent. TheOmayyad ‘Abd al-Rahman fled Baghdad for Spain whenthe former came under the rule of the rival Abbasiddynasty, and in 756 proclaimed an independent emirate.It was under the rule of ‘Abd al-Rahman III (912-961),who declared himself Caliph of Spain in 929, thatAndalusia flourished as a nation, reaching its high pointunder his successor al-Hakem II (961-976) and his mili-tary leader Muhammed ibn Abi Amir, known as AlMansur.

The unity of the caliphate ended in 1031, but Andalu-sian culture continued to flourish, in some cases reachingnew achievements, under the “party kings” who ruledover the city-states of Seville, Almería, Badajoz, Granada,Toledo, Málaga, and Valencia. The break-up of thecaliphate weakened the city-states politically, however,leaving them vulnerable to the military pressures of Chris-tian rulers. Toledo fell in 1085 to Alfonso VI, and Valenciawas taken temporarily by the Cid in 1094. Berber Muslimtribesmen from North Africa halted the Christianonslaught and established the Almoravid dynasty (1095-1149) and the Almohad dynasty (1149-1248). In 1236, Fer-dinand III had taken Córdoba, the capital of Andalusia,and twelve years later, conquered Seville. In the latter halfof the Thirteenth century, Muslim rule was limited to the

Gibraltar

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kingdom of the Nasrids, which ruled over Granada,Almería, Málaga, and Algeciras.

Under ‘Abd al-Rahman II (822-852), Andalusia hadgrown to support a population of 30 million, who lived inhundreds of cities, manufacturing centers where textileswere produced, and trade and education flourished. Thecapital city, Córdoba, was the largest city in the West, with130,000 households within its walls, 3,000 mosques, and28 suburbs, with villas, palaces, and splendid gardens.

Using the same technologies and applying the samefiscal and credit policies which had been introduced bythe Baghdad caliphate in Iraq, Andalusia built up anadvanced agricultural sector. Islamic legislation did notrecognize primogeniture, but favored family farming,facilitating the distribution of land to all offspring. Farm-ers who took advantage of irrigation techniques, financedthrough taxation, paid only 5 percent rather than 10 per-cent of their yield in taxes. Dams, irrigation canals, andpumps contributed to productivity levels which far out-stripped those in Northern Europe for centuries to come.The textile industry, which employed 13,000 persons outof the 130,000 households in Córdoba, produced cotton,linen, wool, and silk. State as well as private textile millswere equipped with spindles and horizontal looms.

In the Ninth century, Andalusia’s cities were the mar-vel of chroniclers: “One sings praises to the goldenthreaded silk of Almería, Málaga, and Murcia, whosefaultless quality arouses the delight even of Orientalobservers. In Abadilla they produce those rugs that bringsuch high prices in the Orient. Granada delivers the espe-cially gloriously colorful silk dresses, of the type knownas ‘velvet shimmer.’ . . . Murcia produces wonderfulinlaid bedsteads, marvelous fabrics, metal wares, likegoldplated knives and scissors . . . which reach NorthAfrica as frequent export articles. From Murcia,Almería, and Málaga come costly glass and gold porce-lain. Al-Andalus also knows the production of variouskinds of mosaics.”1

Education in IslamThe greatest wonder of Andalusia, however, was theadvancement of learning. None of its wealth in industryand trade would have been possible without a consciousstate policy promoting science, as the driving forcebehind technological progress and overall economicgrowth. As with the policy pursued under the Abbasidsin Baghdad, the Andalusian rulers promoted learningand patronized the arts as a means of raising the culturallevel of the population. ‘Abd al-Rahman I started build-ing the great mosque in 785, an immense public-worksproject, which established the religious and educational

center of the capital. It was enlarged and extended by hissuccessors ‘Abd al-Rahman II and ‘Abd al-Rahman III,and completed by al-Hakem II.

Since the time of Mohammed, the mosque had func-tioned as “the Islamic educational institution par excel-lence.” Mohammed was primarily a teacher, who gath-ered his followers into a circle (the halqah), to tell themabout the new faith. In the second and third centuriesafter Mohammed, as the mosque flourished as a school,other educational institutions were introduced: the kut-tab, for elementary education in reading, writing, arith-metic, and in the Koran, as well as some poetry and say-ings. Much stress was placed on developing the capacityfor memorization. In addition, the homes of learned men(’ulama) and of paper merchants (warraqun) were turnedinto school rooms.

In the Ninth-Tenth centuries, the mosque schoolsevolved into universities, the first in Europe, which flour-ished in every city, drawing Jewish, Christian, and Mus-lim scholars and students like magnets, from all over theworld. Finally, there were the academies, separate fromthe mosques, the most famous of which were the Houseof Wisdom (Dur al-Hikmah) and the House of Science(Dur al-’Ilm), which were libraries, translation centers,and astronomical observatories. In the Tenth andEleventh centuries, the madrasah, a state-sponsored edu-cational institution, appeared in Persia and Baghdad, aswell as in Andalusia.

Elementary education was generally organized as afamily matter, with the parents coming to some agree-ment with the teacher regarding payment.

Hakem II extended education to the needy, by building27 elementary schools in Córdoba for children of poor fam-ilies. Three of these were located near the great mosque,and the remaining 24 in the suburbs “to impart free educa-tion.” One chronicler reports that in Córdoba alone, therewere 800 schools. In addition, a large orphanage was builtin Córdoba, as in many other towns. Thus, “the majority ofMuslims could read and write.” The German philologistGustav Diercks remarked that “there were even in thesmallest villages, public schools and schools for the poor insuch numbers, that one has good reason to assume thatunder al-Hakem II, at least in the province of Córdoba, noone was ignorant of reading and writing.”

Al-Hakem was himself a scholar, who had read manyof the 400,000 books which filled his famous library, asindicated by his marginal notations. Books originallywritten in Persia and Syria, became known first inAndalusia. The city produced 60,000 books a year, facili-tated by the use of paper, an invention the Arabs had tak-en from the Chinese, and developed in factories in everymajor city. Córdoba, the pearl of Andalusia, was

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renowned throughout Europe. In her poem on the mar-tyrdom of Saint Pelagius, written in the Saxon cloister ofGandersheim, the Abbess Hroswitha had glowing wordsfor Córdoba, the “bright jewel of the world, the young,marvelous city, proud of her power of resistance, famousfor the delights which she embraces, beaming in full pos-session of all things.”

The Miracle of ArabicNorthern Europe gazed at the marvel of Al-Andalus inawe, not without a tinge of suspicion, wondering whatthe secret behind the brilliance of Arab Spain could be.Although some conjectured that sorcery was what wastaught in the halls of Toledo’s academies, the truth isthat Islamic Spain was a humanist culture which hadbeen founded on a crucial scientific discovery: the Arabiclanguage.

Mohammed, whom Muslims consider the last prophetin a series beginning with Abraham, was an illiterate, whoreceived the revelation, contained in the holy book of theKoran, with the injunction by God: “Read! Recite!” Themiracle which gave birth to the new religion was there-fore the miracle of language, whose appearance toMohammed echoed the act by which God had given thegift of speech to the first man, Adam. It was not languagein general, but the Arabic language, based on that spokenby the Quayrash clan in Arabia, but elevated through thepoetry of the Koran to a literary tongue. It was whatDante would later call an “illustrious vernacular,” a lan-guage spoken by the people, but forged through the trans-mission of universal ideas, in this case divine revelation,into a vehicle capable of transmitting the most profoundideas regarding man and the universe.

This emphasis on the written word, on the power oflanguage, which comes directly from the religious world-view embodied in the Koran, was crucial to developingthe society of Andalusia. Ironically, this same society didnot succeed in developing a nation-state at that time(although there are Arab and Islamic nation-states today,created through a different process). It did not succeed inelaborating those institutions which would create a nationaround this language-culture, for reasons which have todo with the relationship between the idea of the commu-nity of believers (Umma) and the nation, as it evolved geo-graphically and historically. And, in a sense, the tension inArab and Islamic societies between the Umma and thenation, has continued to the present day.

The Koran itself is considered by Muslims to be whatone might call a unique experiment; although the validityof the ideas it contains is to be taken on faith and is sus-ceptible to rigorous proof by Reason, yet an oft-cited test

of its validity is in the very form of its expression. Thismeans, that were one to attempt to express the samethought contained in any of the Koran’s verses, in anoth-er form, it would be impossible. Thus the poetical textstands for Muslims as a scientific proof.

The role that the language has come to play in everyfacet of Arab culture is unique. Since it is incumbent onMuslims to read and recite the Koran in Arabic in dailyprayers, believers who were won over to the faith had tolearn to speak, read, and write the language of the Koran.Its expansion was tantamount to a literacy campaign. AsIslam spread like wildfire through non-Arab popula-tions, to the East through Persia and India up to Chinaand southeast Asia, as well as westward across NorthAfrica and into Spain, care had to be taken to maintainthe purity of the language, easily corrupted by non-nativespeakers. Thus, the first improvements introduced by theearly Caliph ’Uthman included revising the script so as tofix the values of sounds.

The systematic treatment of word-formation was cru-cial to the monumental translation efforts, begun underthe Abbasids in Baghdad, and continued throughout theArab world, notably in Córdoba and Toledo in Spain.

Entrance to the Great Mosque of Córdoba.

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To render ideas expressed in Greek philosophy and sci-ence, new Arabic terms had to be coined, and the lan-guage grew through this process into an extraordinarilyflexible vehicle of expression. Arabic translations weregiven highest priority by the Caliph Harun al-Rashid(764?-809) in Baghdad, who, embodying the oft-citedMuslim maxim, “Seek knowledge even if it were in Chi-na,” would send emissaries to Byzantium and other partsof the world in search of ancient manuscripts, to betranslated, with the help of Syrian Christians at his court,into Syriac, and thence into Arabic, or directly into Ara-bic. Under Caliph al-Mamun (813-833), translation workwas transformed into a highly organized activity, in theHouse of Wisdom, a complex which became a transla-tion center, an academy, an astronomical observatory,and one of the richest libraries in the world. Directing ateam of ninety translators was the Nestorian ChristianHunayn ibn-Ishaq (809-877), who introduced themethod of conceptual rather than literal translation. Allthe works of Classical Greece which could be foundwere rendered into Arabic, from the medical works ofHippocrates and Galen, to the philosophy of Plato and

Aristotle, to the science and geometry of Ptolemy,Euclid, and Archimedes. An effort of the same magni-tude was undertaken in Muslim Spain, where institu-tions modelled on the House of Wisdom grew up inCórdoba and Seville.

The fact that Hunayn ibn-Ishaq would receive foreach book translated, its weight in gold, testifies to thevalue placed on knowledge—and the diffusion ofknowledge—in Muslim culture. As Ibn ‘Abd Rabbihiwrote in the Tenth century, knowledge and its spreadthrough education are “the pillars upon which rests theaxis of religion and the world. They distinguish manfrom the beast, and the rational from the irrationalbeing.” The Andalusian poet and philosopher Ibn Hazm(d. 1064) exalted the role of knowledge in developingvirtue, and condemned those who were greedy withtheir knowledge. The best means for disseminatinglearning, said Ibn Hazm, was through books, the posses-sion of which in private libraries became the hallmark ofthe learned man.

Such attitudes reflect a love of knowledge which isfundamental to Islam. Among the prophetic traditionsincluded by Ibn Khayr in his Farasah, are the following:

There is nothing greater in the eye of God than a man wholearned a science and who taught it to people.

A Muslim cannot bestow on his brother a better gift than aword of wisdom. If the brother hears, grasps, then trans-mits it, God will guide him, and divert him from evil, sincethe word of wisdom leads to the uplifting of the soul.

Scholars and teachers are partners in reward, and there areno better people than they.

The knowledge that is not used is like a treasure fromwhich nothing is spent. Its possessors labored in collectingit, but never benefitted from it.

And God directs you to one single man [who is learned], itis better for you than the whole world and all in it.

Such was the spirit that pervaded Andalusia. “In nocountry and in no other cultural epoch was the drive forsuch extensive scientific travel so widespread, as in Mus-lim Spain, from the Tenth century on. It was perfectlycommonplace for inhabitants of the peninsula to maketheir way across the monstrous stretch on the NorthAfrican coast, to Egypt, and from there to Bukhara orSamarkand, in order to hear the lectures of a famousscholar.”2 This was the spirit that gave rise to publicschools for needy children, as well as splendid publiclibraries, seventy of which were still open in the Thir-teenth century, and to such high literacy rates that“almost everyone could read and write, whereas this wasa privilege restricted to the clergy in northern Europe.”3

Interior courtyard of the Alhambra in Granada, built in theThirteenth and Fourteenth centuries.

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The Poetry of the Koran

The driving force behind the quest for knowledge,through translations, books, and education, was theKoran, a poetical text which urged the believer toincrease his knowledge as a means of praising theAlmighty. The Koran stood as the cornerstone for fur-ther edification of the language-culture. Although pre-Islamic poetry flourished in Arabia, it was the birth ofIslam that gave the poetry its greatest impetus.

Poetry was the heart of Andalusian culture. Ananthology of Andalusian poetry from the Tenth centurycompiled by Ibn Ferradsch, The Garden, had two hun-dred chapters, and each of them a hundred double verses.Poetry was a part of life. Not only were statesmen citedfor their poetical productions, but “every peasant wasobsessed by the gift of improvisation, and even thefarmer behind the plough, would make verses about anysubject whatsoever.”4 Chronicles report that poetry wasan indispensable tool for every aspect of social and politi-cal life. “Poems, which wound around columns andwalls, in various intertwinings, constituted a major deco-ration in the palaces, and even in the government chan-celleries, the art of poetry played a role. . . . Men from thehumblest condition rose to the highest, honored posi-tions, to royal consideration, solely through their poeticaltalent; verses gave the signal for bloody combat and dis-armed again as well the rage of the victor; poetry had tolay its weight in the balance, in order to lend more energyto diplomatic negotiations; and a happy improvisationoften broke open the jail gates for a prisoner or saved thelife of one condemned to death.”5

The poet held a position at court as cherished as thatof the translator and the teacher, and as richly rewarded.When in 822 ‘Abd al-Rahman II ceremoniously wel-comed the famous poet Ali ibn Nafi, known as Zirjab ofBaghdad, to his court in Córdoba, he offered him 200gold pieces per month, abundant goods in kind, 2,000gold pieces in gifts per year, and the use of various hous-es, fields, and gardens worth 14,000 gold pieces. Zirjabbrought with him from Baghdad the wealth of Orientalcustoms, dress, and culture, above all poetry and music.Zirjab knew 20,000 songs by heart, and would call inwomen of the court, themselves accomplished musicians,to take down in writing the songs he had composed inthe night. Zirjab brought with him as well the knowl-edge of musical instruments and theory current in theEast, and introduced an innovation to the lute (from theArabic al ’ud) by adding a fifth string. In the years there-after, Seville would become the renowned center of pro-duction of musical instruments, from lutes and guitars, toflutes, copper trumpets, tambourines, and others.

Zirjab was not only a practical musician and poet, but alearned man, who spent hours conversing with ‘Abd al-Rahman about poetry, history, astronomy, science, and art.

Poets at court were an institution from the earliestcaliphs in Spain. The poet Yahja, nicknamed “al Gazal”(the gazelle) because of his good looks, served his caliph,‘Abd al-Rahman II, well, as a virtual ambassador, whooverwhelmed the Emperor in Constantinople with hisimprovised verses celebrating the beauty of the empress.The poets Ibn ‘Abd Rebbihi and Mondhir Ibn Said at thecourt of ‘Abd al-Rahman III became legendary figures,thanks to the power of their poetry.

The European VernacularsWhat kind of poetry did these masters sing? In additionto the classical poetical form known as the qasida, a longcomposition with a single rhyme and quantitative stresswhich Islamic Spain inherited from the Arabs in theEast, a new poetical form was born in Andalusia whichwas to have the most profound effects on the successivecourse of European culture. This was the song known asthe muwashsha, invented in the Ninth century. It was astrophic poem, the predecessor of the canzone, a strophicpoem whose poetic form is shown in Figure 1. The formof the stanza is organized as follows. It begins with twolines which rhyme: “ahd— ar, tazhar.” Then, three lines witha different rhyme: “gamalu, digalu, simalu.” And last, afinal line, which rhymes with the opening lines:“yanawwar.” The Arabic names for the parts of the stan-za are: first, markaz; second, gusn; and last, simt.

Figure 2 shows an example of a muwashsha in Arabicscript, transliterated into the Roman alphabet, and trans-lated into English.

The muwashsha form was a new development in thehistory of the Arabic language. Classical Arabic poetry hada continuous rhyme, without this internal division, this

FIGURE 2. Arabic poem in muwashsha form by the Eleventh-century A

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organization into thought-objects, so to speak. This revo-lution was introduced into the Arabic language in Spainand in Arabia more or less at the same time, in the Ninthcentury. From there, it spread like wildfire throughout thecourts of Europe, through the troubadours, through theGerman minstrels (Minnesänger), and so on.

Figure 3 shows some examples of the muwashsha formin the languages which were emerging as vernaculars inEurope at that time, including Spanish, Italian,Provençal, and German.

In the Spanish poem beginning “Vivo ledo con razon,”for example, you can see that the stanza is organized intothe same parts, with Spanish names for the correspond-ing Arabic ones.

The Italian example, which begins “Morte villana, dipietà nemica,” comes from Dante’s Vita Nuova. This isexactly a muwashsha stanza, the exactly same form thatyou find in the Arabic. It demonstrates that Dante knewthe Arabic muwashsha form directly.

Most of the poems in Andalusia, in this tradition, werepoems of courtly love. They were poems that praised thequalities of the damsel, of the lady, the beloved. Some ofthem, however, were ironical; some of them were social-critical, polemical; and some of them were epigrammatic.For example, from the Thirteenth century, the followingpoem by Ibn al-Khabazza is called “The King Who DiedYoung”:

Your life was of the order trueOf Arab eloquence:The tale was brief, the words were few;The meaning was immense.6

Another, called “Mutability,” is by one of the greatestpoets in Andalusia, Ibn Hazm, who lived in the late-Tenth and early-Eleventh centuries:

Let not my jealous foesExult in my disgrace;For Fortune comes and goesNor tarries in one place.

A free man is like goldNow cast for hammering,But presently, behold!A crown upon a king.

Among the religious poets, who were a large number inAndalusia, the mystics in Islam, there was a poetical formthat developed, which was a form of a dialogue betweenthe believer and God. And the idea behind this poetry wasto try to reach oneness—unity—with God. This is thepoetry that particularly influenced Ramon Llull(Raimundus Lullus) (c.1235-1316), who in fact wrote anentire series of poems based on this model, called The Bookof the Friend and the Beloved, in which he develops what hecalls spiritual metaphors—365, one for each day of theyear—between himself, the friend, and the beloved, God.

FIGURE 1. Poetic form of the Arabic muwashsha.

– – – – – – – amarkaz

– – – – – – – a

– – – – – – – b– – – – – – – b gusn– – – – – – – b

– – – – – – – a simt

– – – – – – – c– – – – – – – c gusn– – – – – – – c

– – – – – – – a simt

etc.

Andalusian poet Ibn Guzman.

The earth spreads out a green carpet,The daisies open up and the world blossoms:

Speak of the white lily and praise its beauty,And forget not the magnificence of the rose,And place the narcissus on the left.

And mention not the jasmine, until it blooms.

Al-ard—u qad maddat bisat—an ahd—arWa Úl-aqh—uwan yaftah—, wa Úd-dunya tazhar:

H— addat¿ an as-susan wÚamdah gamaluWa al-ward la tansah wÚamdah digaluWa galas an-nargas ala simalu

Wa Úgğfil ani Úl-yasmın h—atta yanawwar!

Transliteration: English translation:

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FIGURE 3. Arabic muwashsha poetic form, as used in early European vernaculars.

Middle High German(Minnesänger)

Got hat wunders vil gewundertmanich tusent manich hunderteynes han ich uz gesundertdas is wunderbare.

God hast wrought full many wondersMany thousand many hundredOne alone from these I’ve chosenWho is wonderful.

Provençal(Troubadour)

Farai chansoneta nueveans que vent ni gel ni plueva;ma dona m’assai’ e.m pruevaquossi de qual guiza l’am;e ja per plag que m’an muevano.m solvera de son liam.

Thou wilt fashion a new songBefore the cold and rain arrive;I am put to such great testsThe sparks fly from my soul;Despite the pain that moves meThese bonds will not dissolve.

Italian(from Dante’s Vita Nuova; first stanza only)

Morte villana, di pietà nemica,di dolor madre antica,guidicio incontestabile gravoso,poi che hai data matera al cor dogliosoond’io vado pensoso,di te blasmar la lingua s’affatica.

Villainous Death, enemy to pity,ancient mother of pain,incontestable grave judgment,since thou hast given substance to the grieved

heartwhich is why I am engulfed in thought,my tongue grows weary of censuring thee.

Patre beato, per tua caritade,Ensegnaci a fare la tua bontade.

Benigno Patre, per tuo gran dolcezza,Contra li vizii danne fortezza,Che nostra carne per suo fragilezza

Sempre ne cessa da tua amistade.

Spesso superbia a noi abbonda,Che ne fa perder tuo grazia gicconda.Dolce Signore, nostra menta fonda

Sempre in perfetta umilitade.

Vivo ledo con razon estribillo

Amigoes, toda sazon.

Vivo ledo e sin pesar,pues amor me fizo amar mudanzasa la que podré llamar

mas bella de cuantas son. vuelta

Vivo ledo e vevirépues que de amor alcancé mudanzasque servire’ a la que sé

que me dara galardón. vuelta

I live in joy for a reason,friends, every moment.

I am gay and without sorrow,for love has made me loveher whom I would call

the loveliest of them all.

Happy I am, and shall be,for love has granted meto love her who I know

shall requite me.

Blessed Father, for thy charityTeach us to do thy good.

Benevolent Father, for thy sweetness,Against vices, give us strength,As our flesh, being weak

Always ceases with thy friendship.

Often pride abounds in us,Which makes us lose thy lovely grace.Sweet Lord, thrust our spirit

Always in perfect humility.

Spanish

Italian

Christian Princes and Arab Culture

Two courts of Christian princes are exemplary of the richdialogue that ensued with Islamic Spain, those of Alfonsothe Wise, and Frederick II Hohenstaufen of Palermo. InNinth-century Andalusia, Arabic was the universal lan-guage, also among the Christians. Thus, when Christianforces took Toledo in 1085, the culture remained Arab.The kings of Castille and Aragon took Arab women fortheir wives, among them Alfonso IV, Alfonso VII, andAlfonso the Wise (1221-1284). Arabic works were rapidlyrendered into Latin in the translation schools, like that ofArchbishop Raymond in Toledo, and not only GreekClassics, but also the Koran, were translated. UnderAlfonso, translations were done into Lengua Romana7

and French, as well as Latin. It was largely theMozaraber—Christians who had lived under Arabrule—and the Morisken, or Mudejaren—Muslims livingunder Christian rule—who mediated the language andthe culture to the new Christian leaders. Alfonso set up aschool where the Arab philosopher Muhamed al-Riqutiwas to teach Arabs, Christians, and Jews. He also found-ed a “general school of Arabic and Latin” in Seville,where Christians and Muslims taught science and philos-ophy. Alfonso commissioned Arab navigators andastronomers to work with him on compiling the “Astro-nomical Tables,” and authored a history of Spain. HisCantigas de Santa María also shows the strong Arab influ-ence [SEE Box, page 32].

Then there was Hohenstaufen Sicily, a Christian Arabculture. From the conquest of the Normans in 1091,through the reign of the Hohenstaufen, everything wasassimilated from the previous Muslim rulers, from thelanguage, to the architecture, music, poetry, and science,to the habits of dress. Roger of Sicily by 1140 had intro-duced strict legislation controlling the certification of doc-tors, along the lines of what Baghdad had done. FrederickII (1215-1250), who grew up with Arabic as his native lan-guage, called Baghdad scientists to his court, along withmusicians and poets. He was so thoroughly Arabized (hewas even buried in Arab dress), that Pope Innocent IVaccused him of being a crypto-Muslim. Both Frederickand Roger II (1101-1154) came to be known as the “bap-tized sultans of Sicily.” His “crusade” to Jerusalem partic-ularly outraged the Papacy, because, instead of wagingwar to regain territories, Frederick negotiated with theMuslims, and dedicated his time to philosophical discus-sions with their scholars. Later, Frederick addressed aseries of questions regarding the nature of God to theAndalusian philosopher Ibn Sabin, whose answers werepublished as the “Sicilian Questions.” He founded theUniversity of Naples in 1224, on the model of the Andalu-

sian centers of study. Enjoying a royal charter, the univer-sity offered a program in Oriental studies, one whichThomas Aquinas, among others, took advantage of. Sig-nificantly, Frederick II also continued the Muslim fiscalsystem, which the Normans before him had adopted.Frederick’s son Manfred, who was an accomplishedgeometer, continued his father’s policies. His liberalapproach to Muslims who filled his court earned him andhis brother Conrad a Papal condemnation.

Thus, at the same time the Aristotelean Averroes pro-ject was being implemented in Paris and Venice, the jew-els of Arab culture were being admired and polished inToledo, Seville, and Palermo, to be passed on to thosewho would lay the groundwork for the FlorentineRenaissance. The two most significant influences in thisprocess were Ramon Llull and Dante Alighieri. Bothrejected Islam, but assimilated the Arab culture it hadengendered.

Faith Based on ReasonRamon Llull was born in Majorca in 1232, just after ithad been conquered by the Christians, and grew up in athoroughly Arab culture. After a personal crisis, he aban-doned family and position to dedicate his life to mission-ary work, specifically to converting the Muslims to Chris-tianity. His mentor, the Dominican Raymond Penyfort inBarcelona, dissuaded him from studying in Paris, tellinghim that Paris could not provide him the knowledge herequired for the task. Llull did go to Paris later to take aprominent role in the anti-Averroes fight, but in 1265 hefollowed Penyfort’s recommendation and secluded him-self for ten years in Majorca, with a tutor, an Arab freedslave. Llull mastered Arabic and plunged into study ofthe Greek philosophers, particularly Plato, and the neo-Platonists (from both the Christian and Muslim tradi-tions), in particular Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. He also readthe works of the Andalusian mystics, like Ibn Hazm ofCórdoba, Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240), and Ibn Sa’bin of Murcia(d. 1269/71).

Although thoroughly steeped in the teachings of theChurch fathers, Llull placed special emphasis on acquiringIslamic science, which he deemed necessary to the task hehad set for himself: to convert the Muslims, by showingthem what he believed to be the superiority of Christianityin their own terms. In an anecdote related several times indifferent works by Llull, he tells the story of the Sultan ofTunis, who was being asked to convert to Christianity. TheSultan asked the learned Christian who had introducedhim to the faith, why he should believe in Christianityrather than in Islam. When the Christian replied, that itwas a question of “faith,” the Sultan retorted: “Why should

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Alfonso the Wise: ‘King of the Three Religions’

Alfonso X, el Sabio (the Wise) (1221-1284) wasKing of Castille and León from 1252 to 1282.

Like his uncle, Frederick II Hohenstaufen, who ruledin Sicily, and all of Christian Europe, as Holy RomanEmperor from 1220 to 1250, Alfonso was among thepolitical rulers of his age who took the first steps toestablish sovereign nation-states in Europe. And, likehis uncle Frederick II’s Palermo, Alfonso’s Spainexperienced an ecumenical flowering of scientific andartistic development, based on the cross-fertilization ofMuslim, Christian, and Jewish communities livingunder its protection.

Alfonso’s central project of government was tomake the Iberian peninsula—at the time, only par-tially reconquered from Islam—a unified kingdom,and its inhabitants a literate and cultured citizenry.He sought to create a nation-state (Spain) by creatinga national language (Castilian), where neither yetexisted. His Cantigas de Santa María song-poemswere the first literary works in the Iberian peninsulato be written in the vernacular Castilian. His SietePartidas, also in the vernacular, was Spain’s first legalcode for the kingdom as a whole, establishing anational system of law where only local “fueros”(statutory rights) had held force previously. And,Alfonso authored the first general history of Spain,the Crónica General de España, before Spain as sucheven existed as a nation.

To accomplish these tasks, Alfonso sponsored amajor scientific and translation center in the city ofToledo, building on the Twelfth-century achieve-ments of Bishop Don Raimundo of Toledo, and Bish-op Don Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada. Toledo becamethe world’s most important crossroad of the threegreat monotheistic religions: Islam, Christianity, andJudaism. Not only did they live in peace under Alfon-so, but he set each to cooperate with the others aroundtheir common humanist heritage, in an exemplaryecumenical alliance—even at the height of the Christ-ian Reconquest of Spain from the Moors, a centuries-long war in which Alfonso personally participated as ayouth. It was this outlook that caused Alfonso to dubhimself the “King of the Three Religions.”

All major translations at the Toledo School were exe-cuted by teams of two scholars working simultaneous-ly—one whose mother tongue was the language of thedocument to be translated; the other being a native speak-

er of the target-language into which it was to be rendered.One of the earliest Toledo translations was of the Koraninto Castilian, done by teams consisting of an Arab and aChristian. The same was done with the Hebrew Talmud.

At its height, Alfonso’s Toledo School of Transla-tion had an incredible 12,000 students learning fromthe masters of European culture. One of the most dis-tinguished Italian visiting professors, for example,was Brunetto Latini—the later teacher and mentor ofDante Alighieri.

The Common GoodThe kind of kingdom Alfonso wished to make ofSpain is best reflected in his famous legal code, theSiete Partidas, issued over the period 1251-1265, butnot actually implemented until almost a century later.The stated objective of the Siete Partidas was to orga-nize society not for the benefit of the few, but for thecommon good—a revolutionary proposal at the time:“The Law-Maker should love God and keep Himbefore his eyes when he makes the laws, in order thatthey may be just and perfect. He should moreoverlove justice and the common benefit of all.”

Alfonso emphasized the connection between suchjustice, and scientific knowledge: “He should belearned, in order to know how to distinguish rightfrom wrong, and he should not be ashamed to changeand amend his laws.” As opposed to such a just ruler,tyrants “prefer to act for their own advantage, althoughit may result in injury to the country, rather than for thecommon benefit of all.”

Presaging later developments in the emergence ofthe nation-state, Alfonso proclaimed that the onlytrue authority to govern comes from the ruler’s dedi-cation to the common good: “If [the ruler] shouldmake a bad use of his power . . . people can denouncehim as a tyrant, and his government which was law-ful, will become wrongful.” In the midst of stratifiedEuropean feudal society, Alfonso el Sabio explainedwhat he meant by “the people”: “The union of allmen together, those of superior, middle, and inferiorrank, was called the people; for all are necessary, andnone can be excepted for the reason that they areobliged to assist one another in order to live properlyand be protected and supported.”

—Dennis Small

I give up my belief for another, on grounds of faith—credere pro credere? No,” he said, “I shall believe only thatwhich Reason tells me—credere pro vero intelligere.”

Llull relates the anecdote time and again. Rejectingoutright any notion of forced conversion, he started fromthe assumption that the individual human mindendowed with reason, upon being presented intelligiblythe superiority of Christian teaching, could and would,through an act of love, make the sovereign decision toembrace the faith. Thus he sought out and addressed themost learned among the Muslims as his interlocutors. Hisway of bringing them the Christian message was to argueit philosophically, as opposed to the scholastics, withoutreference to “authorities.” He argued according to whathe termed “necessary reason” or “right reason,” devel-oped in terms of the cultural matrix of his listener. Thereason why he believed mastery of Arabic and the Mus-lim philosophers to be crucial, was that he intended tomake his God intelligible to them by adopting the philo-sophical method which they acknowledged to be themeans of seeking truth. Only in so proceeding, hethought, would a convert be a true believer.

That Llull failed in the task as he had defined it—thathe did not convert masses to Christianity despite hisrepeated missions to Muslim lands and died a bitterman—does not detract from the magnitude of his accom-plishment. For, by seeking to supercede Islamic thinkingfrom a Platonic Christian standpoint, so to speak, “fromwithin” the matrix of the most advanced contributionsmade by the Arabs, he succeeded in elaborating a newphilosophical method which was to bear its fruits in thework of Cusa and, later, Leibniz. Dialogue, in Llull’s expe-rience, was not the exchange of positions and the ascertain-ment of similarities and differences; it was the process ofepistemological confrontation, through which epoch-mak-ing progress in knowledge is achieved. The work in whichhe developed the ecumenical dialogue most brilliantly wasThe Three Sages and the Pagan (1274-76), known to Cusa(whose library in Bernkastel-Kues still contains the largestsingle collection of Llull’s works).

Llull’s influence on ecumenicism was profound. Mostimmediately, owing to his efforts, the Catalan king estab-lished a school for the training of missionaries in Majorca,called Miramare, which embodied Llull’s approach. Rununder the auspices of the Franciscans and endorsed byPope John XXI in 1276 (the same who ordered the refuta-tions of Averroes in Paris), it was the first school to offermissionaries studies in the languages of the other reli-gions, who then would be “entering into union with andgetting to know strangers and friends.” Llull campaignedfor other such schools, through petitions to the Popes andto the Vienne Council of 1311; the canons of the council

welcomed his proposals, and deliberated to establish fiveschools: in Rome, Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Salamanca(which were founded only centuries later). These schoolswere to teach Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Greek. It wasdue to such efforts that not only the philosophical worksof the Arabs, but also the Koran itself, were actually read,and eventually translated, so that Christians as well asJews could find out what Islam was.

As a Catalan Christian, Llull recognized the need toforge a Catalan language of the same power as Arabic,and did so, largely by using Arabic syntax and morpholo-gy to shape the new vernacular as a literary tool.

Dante’s Debt to IslamThe greatest achievement in this regard, however, wasDante’s, and it came as a direct result of the work done inSeville and Palermo. In his De Vulgari Eloquentia, hisseminal work on the vernaculars, Dante lamented thefact that there were other vernaculars superior to Italian;although he does not identify them, the only ones current

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The Thirteenth-century Catalan philosopher Ramon Llull (1232-1315) established a dialogue based on reason between Christianityand Islam.

in Europe were Hebrew and Arabic, and Arabic wasoverwhelmingly more widespread. In seeking the rawmaterial out of which to shape Italian as a national lan-guage, he pointed to the Sicilian dialect, and to Freder-ick’s Palermo, as the birthplace of the Italian language.At the same time, Dante identified the Spanish poets andthe Provençal troubadours, their literary relatives, as thecouriers of a new poetry and language, which had beenshaped on the Arabic poetic models. Dante’s teacher,Brunetto Latini, as he relates in the Commedia, was theFlorentine ambassador to the court of Alfonso, who, afterspending time in his rich library full of Arabic works,composed the Tesoro, a work that, for Dante, representedthe summary of scientific knowledge.

What was Dante’s relationship to Islam? The muchmaligned Spanish Christian priest-scholar Miguel AsínPalacios did groundbreaking work in the early years ofthe Twentieth century on the influence of Islam, as medi-ated through Moorish Andalusia, on Dante. His workprovoked turmoil in the ranks of the “Dantisti” inEurope, who slandered it as an attempt to “de-Christian-ize” Dante, until further serious scholarship finally had toadmit that he was right. Palacios showed that the leitmotif of the Commedia, the ascension of man (Dante thepilgrim) to Paradise, springs from an episode in the life ofMohammed, barely sketched in the Koran, which wasthe subject of several lengthy Arabic poems. The episodein Arabic literature is known as the Mi’raj, which relatesthe ascent of Mohammed from Jerusalem to Paradise, anepisode well known in Spain (translated by Alfonso) andItaly of the Thirteenth century, and recounted by Brunet-to Latini in his Tesoro.

That Dante was conversant with Arab philosophy isamply documented in his own works, whether in theConvivio or the Commedia itself; Dante’s depiction ofMohammed, consigned to the circle of the schismatics, hasa wealth of detail regarding the internal factional strugglein early Islam that no one otherwise in Europe was awareof. Furthermore, Dante explicitly acknowledges his debtto great Muslim philosophers like Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi,Ibn Sina, Al-Fragani, Ibn ‘Arabi, and many others in hisprose works. It is largely through the Arabs that Dantehad access to the Platonic science of Greece.

What is important in Dante’s relation to Islam is notthe “literary motifs” or “influences,” but the approach thepoet took to Islamic-Arab culture, an approach similar to,but more enlightened than, that of Llull, whose worksDante also knew.

One should view the Commedia as Dante’s dialogue-response to Islam. If one thinks of the extent to whichMuslim-Arab culture had penetrated Europe in the Thir-teenth century when Dante was writing—whether nega-tively in the fight around Averroism in Paris, or positively

in the enviable achievements of Andalusia and Palermo—one sees that Dante consciously wrote the Commedia as aresponse, so to speak, to Islam. Here was a culture, a Mus-lim culture, which had reached extraordinary social andcultural excellence in Spain and southern Italy, which hadbeen shaped by a religious worldview transmittedthrough the Koran, a poem in the Arabic vernacularaccessible to, indeed memorized by, most Muslims. Dante,in his De Vulgari Eloquentia, makes clear his intent tocompose a poetical masterpiece forging an Italian vernac-ular which will constitute the epistemological, moral, andreligious basis for an Italian nation-state. What bettermeans, then, than to “quote” a motif from the Koran,elaborated in Muslim literature, depicting Mohammed’sascension, and transform it into the ascension of theChristian pilgrim Dante, to Paradise? This is Dante’s wayof demonstrating his notion of the superiority of theChristian worldview in terms comprehensible to thoseshaped by the hegemonic Arab culture.

The central theme of the Commedia is the Trinity, theconcept which separates Christianity from Islam. Notonly is the entire poem trinitarian in form, but theprocess through which the pilgrim Dante (and thus thereader) progresses from the intellectual-moral parame-ters of Hell, through Purgatory, into Paradise, is the“proof” of the Trinity. It is through the pilgrim Dante’sself-perfection process, his successive acquiring of thelaws of God’s universe, that he gains access to the realmof science which is Paradise. Earthly Paradise (which canbe seen as the paradise of the Koran) is shown to be achimera, at the end of the book of Purgatory, and, inpolemical opposition to this, true Paradise unfolds as theprogress of the individual mind in comprehension of thelaws of God’s universe, as science. It is through thisprocess, whereby the human mind progressivelyapproaches the laws of universal creation, through pro-gressive, scientific discoveries, that man proves the coher-ence between the mind of man and the divine ordering ofcreation. Dante’s poem is the ultimate proof in Christianterms of imago viva Dei and of the Trinity, which is thefinal vision of the last canto.

The Council of FlorenceDante’s poem had the single most important impact on theRenaissance prior to Nicolaus of Cusa’s convening of theCouncil of Florence in 1437-39. Even at the Council, whichwas held in the church of S. Maria del Fiore, a paintingdepicting the Commedia was on the wall for all to see. Sig-nificantly, Dante’s poem furnished the poetical vehiclethrough which the Italian population not only became liter-ate, but was educated in the fundamental concepts ofChristianity. It should not be overlooked that at the time of

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Dante, the Bible was not accessible to the population atlarge; yet the Commedia became the text which was recitedand commented upon in the churches of Fourteenth- andFifteenth-century Florence—in strikingly similar fashionto the manner in which the Koran was recited and com-mented upon among the Muslims at the same time in otherparts of Europe. Brunelleschi had the Commedia on hisbedside table. Leonardo knew it by heart. Dante’s Comme-dia embodied and transmitted the entirety of Arab science(as he himself acknowledged) either directly, or throughthe work of Christian Arabists like Roger Bacon and oth-ers, in perspective, physics, poetry, and music. But it did soin such a way as to celebrate the power of Christian man,made in the image of God, to acquire such knowledge.Dante’s poem is also an implicit response to the works ofleading Muslim mystics like Ibn Hazm and Ibn ‘Arabi,whom Dante knew and whose works he reflected in theCommedia. Whereas they had shown the pathway to Godthrough direct meditation, Dante demonstrated that onlythe individual mind, retracing and experiencing break-throughs in scientific discovery, can reach the final vision oflight which is God.

It is this emphasis on the concrete, discrete individualas the particular image of the universal God, which per-vades the explosion of creative activity in the ItalianRenaissance. Here, too, it is not adventurous to hypothe-size that the creative excellence particularly in the figura-tive arts, represented an indirect response to Islam.Although the science of perspective, as Dante amongmany others attests, was mediated and further developedby the Arabs to Europe, yet it was the Platonic Christian

Renaissance which applied that science of perspective toexalt the position of the human being in universal space.Islam had privileged the spoken word in poetry andsong, and architecture, but had not developed pictorialart. The visual representation of the notion of imago vivaDei is what Christian Renaissance art seized on (which isutterly lacking in previous Byzantine art, even though itformally depicts the human figure), to render the idea ofthe universal through the individual.

Thus, the process which unfolds from Ramon Llulland Dante, onward into the Fifteenth-century Renais-sance, can well be viewed as a grand dialogue, a “GreatFugue,” in which the theme of the relationship betweenman and God is developed, contrapuntally, by the Pla-tonists of the European Islamic heritage, and their Chris-tian humanist interlocutors. Such should be the spirit ofecumenical dialogue today.

NOTES

1. Quoted in Franz Wördemann, Die Beute gehört Allah: DieGeschichte der Araber in Spanien (Munich: Piper, 1985). The authordoes not give the source of this contemporary chronicle.

2. Adolf Friedrich Graf von Schack, Poesie und Kunst der Araber inSpanien und Sicilien (Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1877).

3. André Clot, Harun al-Raschid: Kalif von Baghdad, quoted in theBook of Taxes.

4. Schack, op cit.5. Ibid.6. English translations from A.J. Arberry, Moorish Poetry: A transla-

tion of The Pennants, an Anthology compiled in 1243 by the Andalu-sian Ibn Sa‘id (London: Cambridge University Press, 1953).

7. The dialect spoken by the Roman soldiers, which became the basisfor the various vernaculars of Europe: Italian, French, Spanish,Portuguese.

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ENGLISH-LANGUAGE BIBLIOGRAPHYPrimary SourcesIbn Khaldun, The Muqaddinah, An Introduction to History

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Bonner (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).StudiesA.J. Arberry, Aspects of Islamic Civilization: The Moslem World

Depicted Through Its Literature (Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan, 1971).

Anwar G. Chejne, Muslim Spain: Its History and Culture (Min-neapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1947).

__________ , The Arabic Language: Its Role in History (Min-neapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1969).

Thomas F. Glick, Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970).

L.P. Harvey, Islamic Spain 1250-1500 (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1990).

Philip K. Hitti, The Arabs, A Short History (Washington, D.C.:Regnery Publishing, 1996; 1943).

A.H. Hourani and M.S. Stern, The Islamic City (London:Oxford University Press, 1970).

James Kritzeck, Anthology of Islamic Literature, From the Riseof Islam to Modern Times (New York: Holt, Rinehart &Winston, 1964).

A. Lane, Early Islamic Poetry (London: 1942).Maria Rosa Menocal, The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary His-

tory: A Forgotten Heritage (Philadelphia: University of Penn-sylvania Press, 1987).

Hisham Nashabe, Muslim Educational Institutions (Beirut:Libraire du Liban, 1989).

A.R. Nykl, Hispano-Arabic Poetry and Its Relations with the OldProvençal Toubadors (Baltimore: J.H. Furst Co., 1946).

W. Montgomery Watt, A History of Islamic Spain (Edinburgh:University of Edinburgh Press, 1965).

__________ , The Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe (Edin-burgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1972).

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