THE ORNAMENT OF THE WORLD

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 be transported to the New World.

Contemporary Israeli poets and Arab intellectuals pine for the glories of al-Andalus, as did Federico García Lorca and Antonio Machado. So, too, does Menocal.