The headline above is the title of a book by María Rosa Menocal, the late professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University. It is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read.
The book talks about Andalusia in general and Cordoba in particular as a developed town during Europe’s Middle Ages. I quote here excerpts from the book.
Cordoba by the 10th century was a wealthy town of prosperity, which included 900 public baths, thousands of shops, mosques, gardens, palaces, water channels, paved and well-lit streets. The caliph’s library (one of 70 in the town) contained 400,000 volumes at a time when the largest library in Christian Europe probably held no more than 400 manuscripts.
There were 70 scribes of the Quran at the town’s market. The index of Cordoba’s library comprised 44 volumes, containing information about 600,000 volumes.
The book takes readers back to the Islamic conquest of Andalusia through the end of a state that emerged and disappeared as a dream; happy beginning and fatal end.
The author delves into the factors that made Andalusian towns, including Cordoba, reach a remarkable level of development and civilization and then fall into religious and racial conflicts.
The state ended after 600 years, with groups of homeless, poor people carrying their belongings on their backs, waiting for ships to travel to foreign lands.
The Andalusian state was not religious, but a Muslim state taking in all faiths, which were treated equally according to the law. All sects were free to run their own affairs, such as marriages, feasts, inheritance and worship.
Tolerance was the norm. Religious and racial fanaticism did not exist as people lived under unprejudiced rule that regulated only public affairs, leaving aside personal matters.
Most tragedies take place when a nation embraces certain ideologies and forces people to follow them. Even secularism becomes an ideology if the state adopts it and coerces people to follow it.
This is not the role of the state. Its role is to deal with people equally before law, organise their lives, defend borders and protect wealth. However, it would breach that role if it interfered with people’s faiths and beliefs.
The Andalusian model is not the only one in history. It may be the most successful model created by Arab Muslims. This success story has been reproduced by European countries to set up generally accepted political systems after long bloody conflicts.
Europe’s civilization, welfare and scientific progress was achieved in Andalusia many centuries ago. We wonder at things we had brought into being then we cry over ruins!
Development and progress should be gauged not by blocks of cement, state-of-the-art devices and brand name clothes but by religious tolerance, literacy and good manners. In other words, the criterion of civilization should be a developed quality of life, not imported means of welfare.
