The city of Granada from the Alhambra Palace, residence of the Nasrid kings from the 13th to the 15th century • ISTOCK We owe to Ibn Khaldûn, Arab thinker of the XIV th century, an original theory on empires. According to him, the only way to create wealth is to accumulate it by raising taxes. Any empire therefore presupposes a subjugated and exploited mass of wealth creators and an elite of warriors. In the land of Islam, the pact of the dhimma provides special provisions for “People of the Book”, Jews and Christians; they are not forced to convert. This does not mean that they are placed on an equal footing with Muslims, since they are subject to fiscal, civil and legal discrimination. But this is what explains why they were able to retain the freedom to practice their religion and a relative legal autonomy. What religious freedom? By allowing religious minorities to live, work and worship freely, has Muslim Spain shown tolerance? You need to know what you're talking about. Today, the word tolerance has positive connotations. It is associated with open-mindedness, freedom of conscience and worship, the respect that one must have for what others think. This attitude is a recent phenomenon; religious freedom is a conquest of history. Let's get rid of the image of a Spain 10 centuries ahead of the evolution of the world. In the Iberian Peninsula, between the VIII th and the XV th century, Muslims, Christians and Jews are equally convinced that they hold the truth. However, if a religion is true, the others are necessarily false. To authorize them would therefore be to recognize the right to error, which was unthinkable at a time when it was considered that opposing the faith was the sign of mental disorder. For lack of anything better, we tolerated; but to tolerate is not to respect. The word has a negative sound:it is to support more than to allow; we close our eyes to what we disapprove of, but we remain convinced that our religion is the only true one. It was against this conception of tolerance that Pastor Rabaut Saint-Étienne protested before the Constituent Assembly on August 22, 1789:“I claim for two million useful citizens [the Protestants] their rights as Frenchmen. It is not tolerance they are asking for:it is freedom. Tolerance ! the support ! forgiveness ! the clemency ! ideas that are supremely unjust towards dissidents, as it is true that the difference of religion, that the difference of opinion is not a crime. Tolerance ! I ask that it be proscribed in its turn, and it will be, this unjust word which presents us only as citizens worthy of pity, as culprits to whom we forgive! » Apparent benevolence Even so nuanced, the benevolence that Al-Andalus would have shown towards religious minorities has been idealized. They were constantly victims of discrimination and even persecution. It was the Almoravids (1056-1147), then the Almohades (1130-1269) from the Maghreb who dealt the fatal blow to Spain, known as the “three religions”. The religious rigor of the first contrasts with the eclecticism and freedom of life that they find in Spain; they impose the exclusive use of Arabic and claim to restore the dogma to its original purity. The Almohads take over. They are Berbers whose name means "supporters of the one God". They too are intransigent on the purity of the faith and the obligations that flow from it. Both forcibly convert the minorities or expel them. A number of Jews found refuge in Morocco, most emigrated to the Christian kingdoms - Portugal, Castile, Navarre, Aragon - where the sovereigns made them welcome. It is the same for the Mozarabs. From the XII th century, the benevolence of Al-Andalus towards the religions of the Book – if it ever existed – gives way to persecution. Few Jews still live in the land of Islam. As for the Christians, in the Granada of the Nasrids that the Romantics admired so much, the only ones who were still there in the years 1480-1492 were prisoners, locked up in jails. The soldiers of the Reconquest freed them and hung their chains on the walls of the monastery of Saint John of the Kings, in Toledo; there are still a few left today. From the twelfth th century, the benevolence of Al-Andalus towards the religions of the Book – if it ever existed – gives way to persecution. We must abandon the myth of a Muslim Spain that is welcoming and benevolent towards religious minorities. The masters of the country have always been convinced of the superiority of their faith. Jews and Mozarabs have never been more than second-class subjects. In the XIV th and in the XV th century, the situation will be reversed. Christianity will then become the dominant religion, and the sovereigns will agree to reign over the infidels – Muslims, this time, and always the Jews – who are tolerated, but subjected to discrimination of all kinds. There is, moreover, an unmistakable sign:sexual relations between Christians, Jews and Muslims have been frequent, although theoretically prohibited; on the other hand, we do not know of any case of mixed marriage:there could not have been one. Maimonides forced into exile There is too much of a tendency nowadays to idealize the Spain of the three religions, of which we have a false image. How can we, for example, see in Maimonides the symbol of this multicultural Spain to the point of dedicating a statue to him in Cordoba, when he is one of the most illustrious victims of religious intransigence? Coming from a Jewish family, Maimonides was born in the Andalusian city in 1135. Like many of his co-religionists, he received an Arab education. He was 12 years old when the Almohades took power. These place Jews before a choice:conversion to Islam or exile. Maimonides' family pretends to convert, then goes to Fez and from there to Cairo. Now safe, Maimonides returned to Judaism, became a rabbi and a doctor, and composed a philosophical and scientific work in Arabic that earned him international notoriety. He never returned to his native land, which he does not even mention in his books. Intransigence drove Maimonides from his country; to make him the representative of a tolerant and welcoming Spain is a misinterpretation. It is therefore by an abuse of language that we speak of a Spain of the three religions. Al-Andalus was a Muslim country, religious minorities were never really accepted there and they ended up disappearing in the 15th th century. Intransigence drove Maimonides from his country; to make him the representative of a tolerant and welcoming Spain is a misinterpretation. Even within Islam, clashes were not uncommon. There was in Al-Andalus a more intransigent, more conservative, earlier and better organized ulema milieu than in the East. There are also violent ethnic conflicts which, from the 8 th at X th century, oppose Arabs and muwalladûn (Hispanics converted to Islam). One still observes the ruthless repression of any trace of Shiism in Al-Andalus. Alone among the Sunnis, the Andalusians chose to authorize a single school of law and exegesis of the divine Law, Malikism, whereas in the East the plurality of schools was the rule. Far from the lost Orient To which is added the theme of exile. Driven out of Damascus in 750 by the Abbasid revolution, the Umayyads who had escaped the saber of the victors had retreated to Spain. From the beginning, therefore, Al-Andalus served as a refuge for those vanquished who considered themselves in some way as in exile, far from the lost East. This attachment to Syria has for them nothing anecdotal or nostalgic. Driven out of the East, in their opinion at least, by the revolt of non-Arabs converted to Islam, in particular the Persians, the Umayyads never ceased to reaffirm their rights to a land in Spain which they considered as naturally hostile. It is for them to take their revenge, this time in the West. The enemy is always the same:the non-Arab, Persian in the East, Hispanic or Berber in the West, always anti-Arab. Under these conditions, tolerance is less important to them than the maintenance of Syrian customs and the purest Arabic language. If Muslims were intolerant towards those who shared their faith, what must have been their behavior towards religious minorities? It is to the great Spanish academic Américo Castro that we owe the relative success of a tolerant and benevolent Muslim Spain towards religious minorities. Castro considers that Spain is not part of Europe. He wasn't always of that opinion. Before 1936, he had endeavored, on the contrary, to highlight what brought one to the other:humanism, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment. The book he published in 1925 under the title El Pensamiento de Cervantes bears witness to this concern. Castro wants to show that Spain participates fully in the cultural currents of Western Europe. This orientation was radically called into question starting with the civil war of 1936. From then on, it was the singularity of Spain that held Castro's attention. He now thinks that it is foreign to the values that constitute Europe. For him, the decisive fact is the Muslim invasion of 711; From this date, Spain is characterized by the coexistence of three castes:Christians, Moors and Jews. The division of social labor is a function of belief:in general, Muslims practice manual trades or specialize in certain agricultural work (irrigation); the Jews are involved in finance and commerce, exercise liberal professions (they are doctors or pharmacists) or even devote themselves to intellectual activities; the Christians, finally, even if they happen to engage in the preceding tasks, are rather peasants, warriors or monks. The three castes first lived on good terms; Christians, Moors and Jews respected each other. The progress of the Reconquest led to the obliteration of the Muslims, relegated to a situation of inferiority; the Jews were in turn victims of Christian intolerance; the era of conflict led to persecution (notably with the creation of the Inquisition), then to the expulsion of Jews and Muslims. In doing so, Spain would have mutilated itself; by depriving itself of two dynamic communities, it would have caused its own decline. Spain in search of an ideal It was the civil war of 1936 that led Castro to deny the first part of his scientific work. By ruining the hopes that the liberals had placed in an evolution that would place Spain on the same level as other European nations, this conflict made him realize that his homeland was less close to Europe than he thought. A bitter discovery, which recalls the disappointment of another Spanish intellectual, the poet Quintana, a century earlier, when he saw the French army invade Spain in 1823 to restore absolutism there. Speaking to the British Hispanist Lord Holland, Quintana does not hide his disappointment:England has let the powers of the Holy Alliance do their thing; it was therefore that she thought that Spain was not one of the civilized nations. The way in which Western democracies abandoned republican Spain must have inspired similar feelings in many Spanish intellectuals:the intervention of the "Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis" in 1823 has the same meaning as the non-intervention of 1936 :Africa begins in the Pyrenees… In 1975, the death of Franco made it possible to openly express the exaltation of Al-Andalus. We were tempted to rehabilitate the victims of imperial Spain, Jews, Moriscos, heterodox… Al-Andalus appeared as a promised land, a time of prosperity and open-mindedness. A few years later, the news came to inflame passions. Some intellectuals or politicians have enthusiastically embraced the cause of Islam and Al-Andalus, a model of tolerance... In 1975, the death of Franco made it possible to openly express the exaltation of Al-Andalus, appearing as a promised land, a time of prosperity and openness. This is what made the success of Roger Garaudy (1913-2012). This former leader of the French Communist Party converted to Islam and discovered the promised land:Al-Andalus, a country in which Muslims, Jews and Christians, instead of killing each other as in the Christian West, exchanged ideas… Andalusian politicians, looking for a project to materialize the essence of the new autonomous region, let themselves be persuaded. The mayor of Cordoba, Julio Anguita, provided Garaudy with funds for a foundation and placed at his disposal a historical monument, the Calahorra tower. Garaudy set up the Three Cultures Museum there. A little later, in the same vein, was born, with the help of the Junta of Andalusia, a touristic-cultural project, the “Andalusian Legacy”. A set of exhibitions accompanied by leaflets was to constitute the main part of the activity. To make known this exceptional period, we organize conferences where we exalt the figure of these two parallel lives, Averroes and Maimonides, two contemporaries, except that the second, as we said, was forced to emigrate. so as not to be the victim of the fanaticism of the Islamic leaders. Some nationalists have pushed the myth of an Andalusia doomed to decadence since the Muslims were driven out to absurdity. According to them, the history of Andalusia is divided into two periods:a time of prosperity, already notable in prehistoric times, then at the time of Tartessos and Roman Betica, prosperity which flourished with the arrival of the Arabs (the Visigothic period is considered a parenthesis without great importance), and a time of decadence which begins with the Christian Reconquest. There would therefore be two Spains that have been fighting each other since the Reconquest, just as there would have been two irreconcilable Frances since 1789, that of the Church and that of the Revolution. Find out more Andalusia. Truths and Legends, by Joseph Pérez, Tallandier, 2018.Al-Andalus, the invention of a myth, by Serafín Fanjul, The Gunner, 2017.Christians in Al-Andalus. From submission to annihilation, by Rafael Sánchez Saus, Editions du Rocher, 2019. Timeline 711 The first Moorish contingents land in Gibraltar. Beginning of the conquest of the kingdom of the Visigoths.1031 Fall of the Caliphate of Cordoba, a century after its foundation. The territory is fragmented into Muslim kingdoms, the taifas.1085 The capture of the taifa of Toledo by Alfonso VI of Castile marks a turning point in the history of the reconquest of Muslim territories.1086 The Almoravid dynasty is called for help by the taifas. In 1118, Alfonso I st of Aragon retakes Zaragoza despite everything.1212 Alfonso VIII of Castile, Sancho VII of Navarre and Peter II of Aragon win the victory of Las Navas de Tolosa.1236 Ferdinand III of Castile takes over the Guadalquivir valley. Cordoba falls into Christian hands.1492 Isabelle of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon seized Granada in January. This is the end of the Reconquest. The Mozarabic:Christians in an Islamic country The Mozarabs are Christians who have kept their municipal organization and their ecclesiastical hierarchy (bishops, priests, monks). At the beginning of the X th century, they would still have constituted three quarters of the population in Muslim Spain, a ratio which would have been reversed in the following century. The word and the concept are late. They designate less a religious phenomenon than a cultural reality:the Mozarabs are Arabized Christians; they speak Arabic and, in contact with the Arabs, they adopt their way of life; Latin remains their liturgical language, but they adopt Arabic as the language of culture and communication. Mixed with the Moors – apparently they did not live in separate quarters – they ended up integrating into Muslim society. But although they were tolerated, they were still defeated. They were kept away from honors, dignities, responsibilities. They were not immune to vexations. This is why the Mozarabs fled to the Christian kingdoms in the north of the peninsula whenever they had the opportunity.
