Ayyubids and Mamluks held power in Egypt, Syria and Palestine. The most important event inthis area as far as the relation between Islam and the Western world was concerned was the series of Crusadesdeclared by the Pope and espoused by various European kings. The purpose, although political, was outwardly torecapture the Holy Land and especially Jerusalem for Christianity. Although there was at the beginning somesuccess and local European rule was set up in parts of Syria and Palestine, Muslims finally prevailed and in 1187Saladin, the great Muslim leader, recaptured Jerusalem and defeated the Crusaders[1].

Islam in Andalusia:

The Muslim conquest of al-Andalus had taken place during the Umayyad caliphate, with its seat in Damascus, and some of the settlers in the Iberian Peninsula were clients of the Umayyads. When the latter’s rule was put to an end by the new dynasty of the Abbasids (who moved their capital to Baghdad) a member of the fallen dynasty, Abd al-Rahman I (r. 756–788), escaped from the massacre of his family and with the help of the Umayyad clients managed to establish himself as ruler of al-Andalus[7]. The new Umayyad emirate had Cordova as its capital. During the ninth century, the Umayyads fought hard to maintain their power in the Iberian Peninsula, shaken by the attempts of Arabs, Berbers, and local converts to establish autonomous political governments. The eighth Umayyad ruler, Abd al-Rahman III (r. 912–961), succeeded in regaining control of al-Andalus and proclaimed himself caliph in order to give a firmer basis to his rule and to counteract the danger represented by the establishment of a Fatimid (Shia) caliphate in North Africa, while taking advantage at the same time of the decline of the Abbasid caliphate in the East. Political unity, general stability, economic flourishing, and cultural achievements were some of the traits of the tenth century, although the minority of the third Umayyad caliph and the military reforms carried out by his powerful chamberlain, al-Mansur ibnAbi Amir, eventually opened the door to civil war[2].

The conquest of Toledo in 1085 was partly the result of the political fragmentation of al-Andalus that took place during the eleventh century. The administrative centralization achieved during the tenth century disappeared with the collapse of the (second) Umayyad caliphate. It was abolished in 1031, but before that date independent Muslim kingdoms had already arisen, the most important being those of Seville, Toledo, and Zaragoza. With different ethnic backgrounds, the rulers of the so-called Party or Taifa kingdoms were engaged in a complex internal political game of war and peace, in which the intervention of the Christian kingdoms played a major role. Muslim military weakness led to the payment of tribute to those Christian kingdoms. This situation was novel in al-Andalus and almost exceptional in the Muslim world, as the predominant historical experience of Muslims had been until then one of conquest and rule, not of submission to non-Muslims. But money was not a deterrent to Christian military expansion, as became clear when Barbastro and Coimbra fell into Christian hands in the years 1063–1064, followed by Coria in 1079 and Toledo in 1085[5]. By this time, the need to seek military help outside al- Andalus had become acute and an appeal was made to the Almoravids by some of the Taifa rulers. Of Berber origin, the Almoravid dynasty had succeeded in establishing a unitary kingdom in the Maghreb (nowadays Morocco), having as its capital Marrakech. The powerful Almoravid army crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and defeated the Christians in the battle of Zallaqa (1086), although they were unable to regain most of the territory already lost to the Christians or to retain some major towns (Valencia was in Christian hands from 1094 to 1102, Zaragoza was taken in 1118, Lisbon in 1147, Tortosa in 1148). Almoravid political legitimization revolved around the abolition of illegal taxes and the pursuit of holy war (jihad). As this program failed, the support the Almoravids had attracted both among the elites and the masses of al-Andalus declined and by the third decade of the twelfth century, political and religious movements aiming at autonomous government had begun in several towns, shaking Almoravid rule in al-Andalus. The Almoravids were facing, at the same time, a new religious movement in their Maghrebi territory, that of the Almohads, who threatened Almoravid power both politically and ideologically[4]. The Almohad movement was founded by the Berber Messianic reformer IbnTumart his successor as political leader was also a Berber who adopted an Arabic genealogy in order to proclaim himself caliph. The movement started in the south of Morocco in the first decades of the twelfth century, expanding from there to dominate the whole of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) and al-Andalus. Aiming at a radical political and religious revival, the Almohads found support among disparate groups in Andalusi society who shared some of their puritanical reformist policies, although it was mostly the use of violence that helped them suppress, at least for some time, the opposition of those groups and individuals that either disagreed with their program or were against its more extremist aspects. Although the Almohads were able for some time to check Christian military advance, their armies suffered a major defeat in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in the year 1212[1]. This defeat had been preceded and was followed by the loss of major towns in what was left of al-Andalus: Silves was conquered in 1190, Cordova in 1236, Valencia in 1238, Murcia in 1243, and Seville in 1248.

While Almohad rule collapsed both in the Maghreb and in al-Andalus, there were attempts at replacing it with local forms of government. This happened in al-Andalus according to a pattern that had been followed before during the collapse of Umayyad and Almoravid rules. Military men, urban elites, and charismatic leaders aimed at creating viable political and military entities in order to ensure the maintenance of the remaining territory under Andalusi rule. Only one such attempt succeeded, that founded by Ibn al-Ahmar in Granada and the surrounding area. From the middle of the thirteenth century until 1492, the Nasrid kingdom of Granada managed to survive by taking advantage of the internal dissensions both among the Christian kingdoms and those Muslim states that had been created in North Africa after the demise of the Almohadempire. The political unity achieved by Isabel of Castille and Fernando de Aragَn signaled the end of the small Muslim kingdom of Granada. In the same year that Christopher Columbus disembarked in America and Jews were expelled from Spain, Granada was conquered and al-Andalus as a political entity ceased to exist. But the term survived in the form of Andalucيa, the name given to the southern regions of Spain, this being the area where Muslim rule had lasted longest[6].

Muslims under Christian Rule in Al-Andalus:

The religious experience of Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula also had a specific trait: that of the Mudéjares, the Muslims who had neither migrated nor converted when their lands were conquered by the Christians but who continued to live as Muslims under Christian rule. They were able to temporarily maintain the use of Arabic, while progressively acquiring the language of the conquerors. This bilingualism was short-lived in some areas, such as Castile, where Arabic was lost, while in the Kingdom of Valencia it lasted longer. A curious form of linguistic survival was to use Arabic letters to write Romance (the so-called aljamiado or aljama), not because those who used aljamiado wanted to ignore the Romanic script but because they sought to keep themselves linked to the sacred language of the Qur'an. The use of aljama was a profession of faith, a sign that indicated the users’ belonging to the Muslim community[4].

The status of the Mudéjares came progressively under threat after the conquest of the last Muslim kingdom. The Mudéjares of Granada and Castile were forced to convert to Christianity in 1501 and 1502, those of Valencia in 1521 and 1522, those of Aragon in 1524, in a process that by 1526 signaled the end of Islam as a permitted religion in the Iberian Peninsula. These forced converts are known as Moriscos. Efforts for the Christianization of the Moriscos were carried out according to policies closely intertwined with contemporary debates about the conversion of the Indians of America. In spite of the inevitable, but slow, process of religious and cultural assimilation, the new Christians were suspect in their religion and often denounced as a potential fifth column for the Muslim enemies of the Spanish crown. Also, there was rejection on the part of some sectors of Christian society of their cultural difference. After their rebellion in Granada in 1568, the persecution of the Moriscos at the hands of the Inquisition increased and the remaining communities grew weaker. Their expulsion was discussed in 1582, the first decree was promulgated in 1609, and between 1610 and 1614 the Moriscos were forced to leave the Iberian Peninsula. With them, the small amount of Arabic that still survived disappeared as a spoken language. The dispersion of the Moriscos in Muslim lands and their eventual acculturation to the new context also meant the disappearance of the Andalusi dialectal bundle. For a while, they preserved the Romance language in the new lands where they settled, even producing works in Castilian in Tunis[8]. Surviving legal opinions dealing with the issue of whether Muslims were allowed to live under Christian rule, mostly formulated by jurists who did not live in the Iberian Peninsula, show a powerful tendency to reject this possibility, arguing that residence in a non-Muslim territory precluded following fundamental tenets of the Islamic religion and was thus equated with religious and cultural corruptions such as eating carrion, blood or pork. This attitude must have been demoralizing for the religious elites of Mudéjaresand crypto-Muslim Moriscos who did not emigrate (emigration to Muslim lands was economically difficult, if not impossible, for the more humble members of the community). Even so, they managed to develop varied and fruitful strategies for religious and cultural survival, the study of which has offered and is still offering new perspectives on the general issue of the interplay between normative and local Islam. Aljamiado literature preserved the fundamentals of religion and law, as well as Muslim sacred history, and made them available to the community at large. Sophisticated forgeries such as the Gospel of Saint Barnabas and the Lead Tablets of the Sacromonte of Granada tried to demolish the distinction between “old Christian” and “new Christian” as a rationale for the elimination of the Moriscos, in an attempt to ensure the physical permanence in the Iberian Peninsula of the descendants of its former Muslim inhabitants[6].

The Legacy of Al-Andalus:

As in other Islamic societies, in al-Andalus Muslim rulers allowed the existence of Christian and Jewish communities as dhimmis, although there were episodes of persecution under certain political and religious circumstances, such as the pogrom of Granada in 1066, the expulsion of the Christians to North Africa in 1126 and the forced conversion of the Jews under the Almohads. Eventually, both non-Muslim communities either disappeared from al-Andalus or saw their numbers greatly di-minished, although their Arabo-Islamic acculturation had lasting consequences. But before exploring them, what was their contribution to Andalusi cultural and intellectual achievements? Echoes of the Latin tradition in astrology, medicine, geography, history, and perhaps agronomy have been identified in early Andalusi culture. The most famous example is the Cordovan Calendar. But there was nothing comparable to the impact of Hellenistic culture in the Eastern Islamic civilization and thus Said of Toledo, writing in the eleventh century, stated that the scientific development of al-Andalus was not indebted to any indigenous tradition[2]. The related issues of the possible influence of Romance lyrics in the appearance of new poetical forms (muwashashat and azjal) in al-Andalus and of the possible influence of such forms in Western poetry have been (and still are) widely and ardently debated. The muwashashat encapsulate verses in Romance called kharjas. They have attracted a passionate interest from Arabists, Hebraists, and Romanists, giving rise to hugely divergent interpretations and becoming one of the cornerstones of the presentation of al-Andalus as the land of the three cultures or the land of religious convivencia (living together). This largely mythical presentation has had a recent flourishing, owing once again more to contemporary needs than to historical accuracy. Less open to debate is the impact that Andalusi Christians and Jews had in Latin Christendom and in Jewish culture. In the case of the Christians, those who emigrated to Christian lands brought with them artistic skills that modern scholarship has analyzed as representing a specific Mozarabic art, unique to the Iberian Peninsula. The Christians who lived in Muslim lands conquered by the northern Christians kept for some time the use of Arabic, as shown by the rich collection of Arabic documents from Christian Toledo (eleventh to thirteenth centuries), and they also preserved the old Visigothic church ritual[4].

But it was mostly the highly Arabicized Jews who played a crucial role in the transmission of Arabic culture and science to Christian Spain and Europe. They are closely associated with the so-called school of translators of Toledo, a label which is merely a way to express in a simple manner the complex linguistic and intellectual process through which Arabic works were translated into other peninsular languages (Latin, Romance languages, Hebrew). The need to translate arose mainly for two reasons.

On the one hand, knowledge of the other was necessary in order better to confront the Muslims or to convert them, especially when Christian expansion led to the presence of Muslim communities inside Christian territory. In the twelfth century, Latin Christendom started the serious study of Islam, thanks mainly to the encouragement given by Peter the Venerable of Cluny to the translation of Muslim religious texts. Raymond Lull (1232–1316), who called himself Christianus Arabicus, developed a philosophicalapologetical system with the aim of convincing the infidel Muslims of the truth of the Catholic faith, arguing not against, but rather from their own faith, which he had deeply studied. On the other hand, translation was needed to take possession of the knowledge achieved by the Muslims in philosophy, science, and other fields. For example, Christian historical works written in the thirteenth century, like those produced under the patronage of Alfonso X the Wise, were highly indebted to Arabic chronicles, in the same way that the Arab geographers had learned about the Iberian Peninsula from Latin sources[5]. But the translation effort concentrated mostly on the field of the sciences of the ancients. The Greek and Latin legacy was sought where it was known to have been preserved, in those Arabic works containing translations from that legacy, but also the original contributions made by Muslims themselves. In fact, in searching for the scientific and technical knowledge of antiquity, the Christians had to acknowledge the importance of the additions made in the Arabo-Islamic civilization. That search started early, as shown by the manuscripts of Ripoll monastery (in Catalonia). The main impulse took place in the twelfth century, when Hermann of Carinthia and Robert of Ketton worked in the Ebro valley, while DominicusGundisalvus and Gerard of Cremona centered their activities in Toledo. The exact sciences, linked to astrology and magic, attracted the first translating efforts, but philosophical an d medical treatises were soon incorporated. AndalusiAristotelianism had a lasting influence in Latin and Hebrew philosophy.

Averroës’s works were already translated in the first half of the thirteenth century, shortly after having been written, provoking the well-known reaction of both attraction and rejection in Christian Europe[6]. Alfonso X the Wise promoted the translation from Arabic into the vernacular, employing mostly Jews, of a wide range of works dealing with magic, astrology, astronomy, games, and literature. Arabic vocabulary penetrated into these vernacular languages, mainly in the fields of agricultural products and techniques, building crafts, clothing, and food. Mudéjar art, like its counterpart Mozarabic art, singles out Spain from the rest of western Europe with the exception of Sicily. Spanish medieval literature is indebted in both contents and form to Arabic literature. The Muslim religious influence on peninsular Judaism has acknowledged manifestations in the fields of mysticism and theology, while its influence on Christianity is less widely accepted. This reflects the tensions that have existed (and continue to exist) in the construction of a Spanish Catholic national identity, while similar debates (such as that on the debt of Dante’s Divine Comedy to Muslim eschatology) show that the study of religious interaction has been, and still is, a contested field.

CONCLUSION:

The al-Andalus cultural and intellectual legacy should not be sought only in what is now known as the West. Andalusi Islam produced works and developed doctrines and practices that had a lasting influence in the Muslim world at large. Following Christian expansion in Muslim lands, Andalusi intellectual elites started a process of emigration to other regions of Islamdom. Its rhythm and peculiarities are not yet well known, but it helped disseminate Andalusi cultural achievements among Muslims. Any look at the contents of extant Muslim libraries reveals that the list of Andalusi “best-sellers” in Muslim religious literature is substantial and that in certain areas, such as North and Central Africa, Islam cannot be understood without reference to the thought and works of Andalusi scholars.

REFERENCES:

1. Abbas-Ali AmidZanjani, (1998). The Islamic Revolytion and its Roots,Tehran: Tehran University.

2. Hghnavaz J, (2014). Islam and Islamic Civilization. Research Journal Humanities and Social Sciences 2014; 5(1): 10-16.

3. Hghnavaz J,(2014). Spread of Islam in Africa. American International Journal of Research in Humanities Arts and Social Sciences, 6(2): 124-128.

4. Haghnavaz , J, (2013).A Brief History of Islam: The Spread of Islam, International Journal of Business and Social Science- United States of America, Vol.4, No. 17, 213- 217.

5. Icker, M,(2000). The Islamic World in Decline: From the Treaty of Karlowitz to the Disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, Praeger Publishers.

6. Rashidvash, V,(2012). The Qajar Dynasty in Iran: The Most Important Occurence Evented in the Qajars Monarchy. International Journal of Business and Social Science- United States of America, Vol. 3, No. 12, 181-187.

7. Saidiyan, AbdAlhossein, (1991). Peoples of the World, 4th edit. Tehran, Science and life pub.The Islamic Revolution and its Roots,(1998). Abbas-Ali Amid Zanjani ,Tehran: Tehran University.

Received on 09.10.2014

Revised on 12.11.2014

Accepted on 05.12.2014

Research J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 5(4): October-December, 2014, 384-388