Journal: Global Journal of Classical Theology
Volume: GJCT 14:2 (Sep 2017)
Article: Book Review: "The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Sp"ain, by Darío Fernández-Morera, Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2016. 361 pages.
Author: Roland Cap Ehlke

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Book Review:
The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain, by Darío Fernández-Morera, Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2016. 361 pages.

Roland Cap Ehlke

Dr. Darío Fernández-Morera teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University, is a former member of the National Council on the Humanities, and holds a PhD from Harvard University. In The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, he takes on the widely held idea that Muslim hegemony in Spain (and beyond) was a good thing for everyone involved—whether Muslim conquerors, Christian and Jewish dhimmis, women, or slaves.

Fernández-Morera begins each of the book’s seven chapters as well as the introduction and epilogue—and at times sub-chapters—with one or more politically correct epigraphs regarding the supposedly enlightened conditions of Muslim Spain. Some fifty such short quotations are scattered throughout the book. This review will follow the pattern by highlighting (and indenting) a number of entrenched attitudes to which the book responds.

Muslim rulers were far more tolerant of people of other faiths than were Christian ones. . . . Islam and the West: Never the Twain Shall Peacefully Meet? The Economist, 2001. (pp. 1–2)

The standard-bearers of tolerance in the early Middle Ages were far more likely to be found in Muslim lands than in Christian ones. Tony Blair, former prime minister of Great Britain, 2007. (p. 2)

In the Introduction, Fernández-Morera explains, “This book aims to demystify Islamic Spain by questioning the widespread belief that it was a wonderful place of tolerance and convivencia of three cultures under the benevolent supervision of enlightened Muslim rulers” (2). To that end, in addition to the oft-quoted Muslim sources, his research includes archaeology, coins, and Christian and Jewish sources.

The task is not easy. He recounts the case of author Sylvain Gouguenheim (Aristote au mont Saint Michel, 2008), who demonstrated that, contrary to current notions, Islamic civilization was for the most part “unreceptive to the spirit of Greek civilization” (6). Moreover, Aristotle had already been translated in France at Mont Saint-Michel, and even the Arabic translations were done by Christian scholars. In other words, there was a “continuity between Greek and European civilization . . . that did not require Islam’s appearance on the historical scene” (6). Gouguenheim’s work was condemned by the establishment, with—among other reactions—the Sorbonne University holding a “scholarly colloquium to denounce the book” (6).

This is what anyone who bucks the system can expect. Fernández-Morera attributes such reactions to...

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