Convivencia - Wikiwand

Convivencia (Spanish for "living together") is a term used by scholar Américo Castro to describe a period in Spanish history from the Muslim Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 700s to the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. It claims that in the different Moorish Iberian kingdoms, the Muslims, Christians and Jews lived in relative peace. This idea suggests that medieval Spain was a place of religious tolerance and cultural exchange-very different from later periods when only Catholicism was allowed.

However, some scholars have challenged the historicity of the above view of intercultural harmony, depicting it as a myth, and claiming that it is ahistorical.^[1]^[2] According to The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, "Critics charge that [the term 'convivencia'] too often describes an idealized view of multi-faith harmony and symbiosis, while supporters retort that such a characterization is a distortion of the complex interactions they seek to understand."^[3]

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Cultural meaning

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Perspective

Convivencia often refers to the interplay of cultural ideas between the three religious groups and ideas of religious tolerance. James Carroll invokes this concept and indicates that it played an important role in bringing the classics of Greek philosophy to Europe, with translations from Greek to Arabic to Hebrew and Latin.^[4] Jerrilynn Dodds references this concept in the spatial orientation seen in architecture that draws on building styles seen in synagogues and mosques.^[5]

A good example of Convivencia was the city of Córdoba, Andalusia during the 9th and 10th centuries, when it was part of Al-Andalus (Muslim-ruled Spain). At that time, Cordoba was considered one of the most important cities in the world. Christians and Jews took part in the royal court and contributed to the city's rich intellectual and cultural life. Yale professor María Rosa Menocal, highlights how Cordoba's libraries were a symbol of its advanced society-not just in terms of scholarship, but also as a sign of overall social well-being. The city became a meeting point for knowledge, culture, and different religious traditions.^[6]

James L. Heft, the Alton Brooks Professor of Religion at USC, describes Convivencia as one of the “rare periods in history” when the three religions did not either keep “their distance from one another, or were in conflict.” During most of their co-existing history, they have been “ignorant about each other” or “attacked each other.”^[7]

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Historical context

Islamic rule in the Iberian Peninsula began in the early 700s, when Arab armies took control and named the region Al-Andalus. For a time, it was united under the Caliphate of Cordoba, but after the death of its ruler Al-Hakam II in 976, the Caliphate began to break apart into several smaller Muslim states. In the 11th and 12th centuries, two North African Muslim groups-the Almoravids and later the Almohads-briefly reunited parts of Al-Andalus. However, during this same period, Christian Kingdom in the north began pushing south, gradually reclaiming land in what is known as the Reconquista. By the 1200s, Muslim rule was reduced to just the Emirate of Granada, in the south governed by the Nasrid dynasty, which lasted until 1492.^[8]

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End of the Convivencia

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The Almohad Muslim dynasty forced Christians and Jews to convert, and forced Muslims into their interpretation of the faith.^[9] Among those who chose exile rather than conversion or death was the Jewish philosopher Maimonides.^[10]

While the Reconquista was ongoing, Muslims and Jews who came under Christian control were allowed to practise their religion to some degree. This ended in the late 15th century with the fall of Granada in 1492. Even before this event, the Spanish Inquisition had been established in 1478. In 1492, with the Alhambra decree, those Jews who had not converted to Catholicism were expelled. Many Jews settled in Portugal, where they were expelled in 1497.^[11]

Following a failed revolt in Granada in 1499, the Muslims in Granada and in the Crown of Castile were forced to convert, face death, or be expelled. This happened as the treaty assuring religious freedom at the time of Granada's surrender in 1492 was seen as voided by the rebellion. Between 1500 and 1502 all remaining Muslims of Granada and Castile were converted.^[12] In 1525, Muslims in Aragon were similarly forced to convert. The Muslim communities who converted became known as Moriscos. Still they were suspected by the old Christians of being crypto-Muslims and so between 1609 and 1614 their entire population of 300,000 was forcibly expelled. All these expulsions and conversions resulted in Catholic Christianity becoming the sole sanctioned religion in the Iberian Peninsula.^{[citation needed]}

As Anna Akasoy has summarized in a review article, Menocal "argues that the narrow-minded forces that brought about its end were external", both from the North African Muslim Almoravids and Almohads, and Christian northerners.^[13]

Major groups

Converso (Jewish converts to Catholism)
Moors (Muslims in Al-Andalus)
Morisco (Muslim converts to Catholism)
Mozarab (Christians in Al-Andalus)
Mudéjar (Muslims in Christendom)
Muwallad (Christian converts to Islam)
Sephardim (Jews in Iberia)

Debate

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Perspective

The idea of convivencia has had supporters and detractors from the time Castro first proposed it. Hussein Fancy has summarized the underlying assumptions on both sides of the debate: "The convivencia debates were never about political ideologies or partisan politics, as they are often construed, but rather," as Ryan Szpiech^[14] has argued, "about fundamental and unresolved methodological and philosophical issues. While Castro appealed to philosophical interpretivism, [Claudio] Sánchez-Albornoz appealed to scientific positivism."^[15]

David Nirenberg challenged the significance of the age of "convivencia," claiming that far from a "peaceful convivencia" his own work "demonstrates that violence was a central and systemic aspect of the coexistence of majority and minority in medieval Spain, and even suggests that coexistence was in part predicated on such violence".^[16]

Some critics of the concept of Convivencia point to the execution of the Martyrs of Córdoba during the 850s as a challenge.

Mark Cohen, professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University, in his Under Crescent and Cross, calls the idealized interfaith utopia a myth that was first promulgated by Jewish historians such as Heinrich Graetz in the 19th century as a rebuke to Christian countries for their treatment of Jews.^[17] This myth was met with what Cohen calls the "counter-myth" of the "neo-lachrymose conception of Jewish-Arab history" by Bat Yeor and others,^[17] which also "cannot be maintained in the light of historical reality".^[18] Cohen aims to present a correction to both these "myths".

The Spanish medievalist Eduardo Manzano Moreno [es] wrote that the concept of convivencia has no support in the historical record [“el concepto de convivencia no tiene ninguna apoyatura histórica“]. He further states that there is scarcely any information available on the Jewish and Christian communities during the Caliphate of Cordoba, and that this may come as a shock in view of the huge clout of the convivencia meme [“... quizá pueda resultar chocante teniendo en cuenta el enorme peso del tópico convivencial.”] According to Manzano, Castro's conception "was never converted into a specific and well-documented treatment of al-Andalus, perhaps because Castro never succeeded in finding in the Arabist bibliography materials suitable for incorporation into his interpretation.”^[2]

Aaron Hughes adds that "contemporary ecumenicists appeal to the 'Golden Age' of tolerance" in the 10th and 11th centuries in Córdoba under Muslim rule, but, for the most part, they are not interested in what actually happened among the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Rather, they mention "tolerance", a concept that "would have had little or no meaning" at that time.^[19]

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