Download PDF | Ivy A. Corfis, (ed.) - Al-Andalus, Sepharad and Medieval Iberia_ Cultural Contact and Diffusion-BRILL (2010).

Download PDF | Ivy A. Corfis, (ed.) - Al-Andalus, Sepharad and Medieval Iberia_ Cultural Contact and Diffusion-BRILL (2010).

297 Pages 

Th ree Cultures, One World Ivy A. Corfi s University of Wisconsin-Madison Today, as in the past, al-Andalus evokes a wide variety of images and reactions. One need only “google” the term al-Andalus to see more than two million entries, ranging from art to dance, contemporary music and hotels to study-abroad programs; from festivals and blogs on history and culture to calls to jihād. Idealization of and a renewed interest in al-Andalus, especially vis-à-vis its linkage to modern political events, is evinced even through television programming: e.g., the Public Broadcasting Service’s airing of the 2007 documentary Cities of Light: Th e Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain. All these recent views of al-Andalus and medieval Iberia remind us how very diff erent yet how very similar 711 is to 9/11 and 3/11. 

In any period, in any cultural confi guration, there are boundaries, whether permeable or not, visible or not: boundaries of belief, language boundaries, social boundaries of culture and religion, boundaries of government and political rule. Boundaries are clearly mutable as they shift and change; and boundaries—either by crossing or respecting them—bring about contact of one sort or another: contact of resistance or tolerance, of reaching across or of staying within borders. Cultures meet without necessarily accepting or rejecting one another. Boundaries and their crossing need not bring about infl uence or contention, simply contact. In medieval Iberia, contact is usually discussed within the context of the three cultures: Christian, Jewish and Islamic. Al-Andalus, past and present, may evoke nostalgia for a lost paradise or golden age, but the exact dating, or even existence, of such a “golden age” is not universally accepted. Most scholars will agree that, if it did exisit, it included and centered around the Umayyads of Córdoba and the caliphate that ended in 1031. Th e “peaceful” co-existence of the three cultures, even within a golden age, is also subject to interpretation. In general, one can identify two major critical stances regarding cultural contact in Iberia. 

On the one hand, some scholars, such as María Rosa Menocal, maintain that tolerance was woven into the structure of Andalusian society, where the dhimmī (‘People of the Book’; that is, Jews and Christians), were protected under the Islamic rule of the caliphate, albeit with certain social restrictions (see, for example, Menocal 29-30, 72-73). It can be argued, then, that in al-Andalus Jews in particular lived with more freedom to participate in the political and social spheres than they did in Christian Europe. However, scholars such as Bernard Lewis and Mark Cohen argue that a golden age of tolerance is not based in historical fact but is rather a myth propagated as part of an ideological struggle fostered by scholars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as a reaction to the oppression of Jews in Eastern Europe and the Zionist movement. 

In al-Andalus, under Islam, the Jews prospered in some contexts, for example, under the reigns of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III (r. 912-961) and alḤakam II (until 976), in the service of the caliphate, but the pogroms against the Jews in Córdoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066 deny a generalized pacifi c co-existence. With the Almoravids in the Peninsula, tolerance became even more problematic, with moments of some exception, such as the rule of ‘Ali III of Morocco (r. 1106-1142), who was defeated by Alfonso VII, Emperor of Spain, in 1138 and by Afonso I of Portugal a year later. Under the Almohads the fate of the Jews was sealed; they were forced to convert to Islam or fl ee, and synagogues were destroyed. Both Jews and Christians fl ed to the north. “As a result of the Jewish (and Christian) exodus, the cultural and linguistic boundaries were renegotiated. Th e status of Arabic, as well as that of Hebrew, would be brought to the foreground not just in the period that followed the North African invasions and during the subsequent process of adaptation to the new Christian setting, but over the course of the next three hundred years” (Alfonso 17). Th us the shift in tolerance redrew the boundaries of politics, culture and language. 

The same can be said for the Christians. Th e Visigoths and their heirs, upon the rapid conquest by the Islamic forces, experienced periods of tolerance and intolerance as borders were redrawn. Indeed, tolerance toward the Christians may have been nothing more than a political strategy resulting from liberal surrender treaties off ered to and negotiated by the Christian rulers (Lowney 38). Th e extent of tolerance, then, is diffi cult to determine. How is tolerance defi ned and measured? How tolerant was the tolerance? With the Christian movement into Islamic territories, the debate continues, albeit in a diff erent vein. Clearly Christian political rule over Jews and Muslims brought new complexities to cultural contact in the Iberian Peninsula; but again, scholars argue for periods of golden age, even up to the fi nal expulsions of 1492 and 1614. A prime example are the Jews who fought with Alfonso VI of Castile against Islamic troops, and the “School of Toledo,” which was founded in what was one of Europe’s great cultural and ethnically diverse cities even before the Christian and Jewish exodus from the southern Peninsula upon the Almohad invasions. As Chris Lowney has summarized: Medieval Spain’s Muslims, Christians, and Jews embraced and rejected each other’s faith traditions and customs, fought alongside each other and against each other, occasionally tolerated their neighbors and somehow forged a golden age for each faith. Th ey allow us some glimpse of what a common society might look like. Th eir glory was their joint accomplishments; their tragedy that they could not see and preserve what made those accomplishments possible . . . Uncomfortable necessity, rather than some higher-minded ideal of tolerance, fi rst spurred the accommodation that scholars hail as Spain’s era of convivencia. (14, 189) Indeed, the complexity of the cultural contact, in moments of tolerance and moments of enmity, is not easily described by one term or defi nition. Th e mixture of cultures is a multi-faceted, wide-ranging topic, where clear defi nitions are elusive. Th e purpose of this volume of essays is to probe more widely and deeply into the context of contact in the Iberian Peninsula through the sixteenth century. With the recent foci of post-colonial and border studies applied to the Middle Ages, and even with the re-conceptualization of what is “medieval” and what is “contact,” scholars fi nd the medieval Iberian multicultural existence an intriguing area of investigation. It is, however, an intellectually subtle exercise to bring to bear the modern concepts of “postcolonialism” and “borders” to the medieval or early modern world, where frontiers and borders were permeable and mutable. Even the concept of a “frontier” or “border” must be culturally as well as chronologically specifi c, as some of the papers in this volume show. Terms and defi nitions need to be redefi ned when applied to the period under study in al-Andalus and the Peninsula. Medieval Iberian border-crossers were not what we associate today with the concern of illegal immigration or the debate that rages around such concepts in twenty-fi rst-century North America, Europe and, indeed, the world. Yet, the context of al-Andalus brings to the fore important and timeless issues regarding religious and ethnic contact and society and borders overall. 

Borders, frontiers and multiculturalism are essential features of al-Andalus and the Iberian Peninsula; but just as the terms themselves need defi nition for the period to which they are applied, so too does the understanding of “contact” within the context of changing borders and the infl uences that may occur from contact. Indeed, infl uence is a very slippery slope on which to begin a scholarly trek, for measuring it requires information that is not always extant. What we can measure and discuss, as many of the following essays show, is where, how and why cultures come in contact in Medieval Iberia in general and in al-Andalus in particular, and how cultures meet (or not) within the geographical context of the area. Th e current volume results from a conference held in October 2007 on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus: “Al-Andalus: Cultural Diffusion and Hybridity in Iberia (1000-1600).” Th e conference brought together scholars from across the US and abroad to discuss how these concepts had an impact not only on the identity of the Peninsula but on the diff usion, change and advancement of knowledge in science, art, literature and religious culture: contact across cultures that ultimately produced traditions carried later to other parts of Europe and the Americas. From that conference twelve essays were selected for publication in this volume. Th e present collection of essays has been grouped into three sections that study various manifestations of contact: contact through art and learning, through society and culture and through confl ict. Th e essays in each section center around the boundaries of contact and how that contact either crossed or reinforced cultural borders in the broadest sense of the word: including those of art, thought, ethno-religious beliefs and political realms. Th e fi rst grouping of essays, Contact through Art and Learning, brings together insightful articles by Bernard R. Goldstein, Maribel Fierro, Harvey J. Hames, Richard C. Taylor and Dwight F. Reynolds, that address the question of how contact aff ected art and culture through the appropriation of ideas in science, philosophy and music, to enrich the cultures on the one hand and cause debate on the other. Even through debate, it is clear that scholarly thought and models crossed and superceded religious, political and philosophical boundaries. Professor Bernard R. Goldstein (University of Pittsburgh), in “Astronomy as a ‘Neutral Zone’: Interreligious Cooperation in Medieval Spain,” demonstrates how throughout the medieval Iberian Peninsula, Jews and Christians contributed to the study of astronomy as a “neutral zone” where scholars of diff erent faiths borrowed ideas from one another. He provides various examples of this scholarly interaction, with special emphasis on the  Alfonsine Tables. Although it has long been known that the study of astronomy in Spain was a cooperative eff ort on the part of Muslims, Jews and Christians and that this knowledge passed to European astronomers north of the Peninsula, the scholarly interactions across the various Iberian religious communities had been relatively overlooked until Professor Goldstein’s work. As he shows, astronomy was an intellectual space where scholars who were sharply divided on religious questions could come together to exchange knowledge. While in ninth- and tenth-century Baghdad the gathering of scholars across faiths became more common as a way to share knowledge, in Medieval Europe such activities rarely took place except in the Iberian Peninsula. Th e importance of this exchange of knowledge cannot be overstated; it represents a signifi cant Iberian cultural phenomenon that added to the European and world intellectual development. Maribel Fierro (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científi cas), in “Alfonso X ‘Th e Wise’: Th e Last Almohad Caliph?,” makes the case that in the thirteenth century there was a period of infl uence and contact between the peoples of Christendom, Islam and Judaism that can be linked to Islamic thought. In particular, she studies Almohadism and the unique characteristics of Almohad political and religious doctrine. She enumerates fi ve points of interest: (1) a theocratic government founded by a quasiprophetic fi gure, where the leader is the vicar of God on earth and the promoter and guarantor of all knowledge; (2) the creation of new religious and political elites, educated under the direct control of the caliph; (3) legislative unifi cation, political and administrative centralization and reforms of weights and measures; (4) the encouragement of encyclopedic knowledge and the development of philosophy, natural sciences and magical and Kabbalistic knowledge; (5) an interest in extending knowledge through educational texts and works. She postulates that aspects of Alfonso X’s legislative and intellectual initiatives parallel the concerns of the Almohad caliphs, thus placing the Learned King as the last in an important line of leaders following that model. Harvey J. Hames (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), in “It Takes Th ree to Tango: Ramon Llull, Solomon ibn Adret and Alfonso of Valladolid Debate the Trinity,” studies the three authors to discuss how in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries their arguments exemplify the boundaries and relationship between religious traditions. Llull’s use of the doctrine of the correlatives to prove to Jews and Muslims the absolute truth of Christianity was disputed by Ibn Adret, the leader of the Jewish community in Aragón and Catalonia. Ibn Adret’s response deals in part  with interpreting the Midrash on Psalm 50:1. Th e same Midrash was then taken up by Alfonso of Valladolid (or Abner of Burgos), using it as it was understood by Jewish scholars, but in support of Christianity. Alfonso uses the Jewish terminology that Llull lacked to address the doubts of his Jewish audience. Th e three scholars refl ect an ongoing confl ict between rationalism and faith in both religions. Alfonso debates Adret’s reading of the Midrash and seems to engage directly with Llull’s theory of the correlatives to suggest, like Llull, that if Adret’s ideas are accepted, the truth of the Trinity, and thus of Christianity, is certain. Th e debate and methodologies demonstrate the complexities of religious conversion and the philosophical boundaries that distinguish Jews and Christians. Richard C. Taylor (Marquette University), in “Ibn Rushd / Averroes and ‘Islamic’ Rationalism,” studies Ibn Rushd’s Fasl al-Maqāl ̣ , or Book of the Distinction of Discourse and the Establishment of the Relation of Religious Law and Philosophy. While the work can be read as a religious treatise when viewed through the lens of religious law, or sharī‘a, the Fasl al-Maqāl ̣ is in fact a philosophical treatise disguised as a fatwā. From that point of view Professor Taylor analyzes the rationalist monotheistic philosophy of Ibn Rushd and the coherence of his works and writings in the context of Andalusian rationalism. He shows that Ibn Rushd viewed Greek Aristotelian philosophy as central to the understanding of God and evoked sharī‘a within the Long Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle (Tafsīr mā ba‘d at-Ṭ ̣abī‘at). He sees a consistency in Ibn Rushd’s rationalist project, albeit a very special kind of rationalism, that is fully compatible with Islam. Although Ibn Rushd’s view did not take root in dār al-Islām, its infl uence through translations in the Latin West would continue to impact Christian writers versed in Augustinian thought, who affi rmed the importance of faith as the basis for understanding. Dwight F. Reynolds (University of California at Santa Barbara), in “Music in Medieval Iberia: Contact, Infl uence and Hybridization,” reexamines the history of medieval Iberian musical traditions through evidence found in Arabic manuscripts and early Castilian writings, treating the role of musicians and singers in medieval Iberia as well as the introduction and development of the “bowed lute,” or “fi ddle.” Sources show that interaction between the two musical cultures was more profound and prolonged than previously thought. From a fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript Professor Reynolds fi nds previously unknown biographies of late-eighth- and early-ninth-century musicians/singers in the Cordoban courts of al-Ḥakam I (r. 806-822) and ‘Abd al-Raḥmān II (822-852). Th e  information gleaned from the lives of these artists provides a rich understanding of the music of the early Umayyad period, rewriting both the chronology of the merger of Arabic and Christian music and the categorization of singers. Th ese texts put forth a portrait of musical cultures that were very much in contact and, as a result of that contact, developed distinctive characteristics that set them apart from the music of Christian Europe on the one hand and that of the eastern Arabo-Islamic world on the other. With regard to the “bowed lute,” it is commonly repeated that its arrival in Europe came through the Arabs, by way of northern Iberia, where the playing position changed from vertical to horizontal against the chest or shoulder. However, upon scrutiny of visual representations in text and sculpture, it would seem that the history of bowed string instruments is a complicated narrative, undergoing transformations, traveling from one region to another and surviving into the present-day in a wide range of forms. Professor Reynolds concludes from the extant documentation that perhaps the scholarship on medieval Iberia would be best served by letting the evidence speak for itself without imposing established terminology such as “Christian,” “Jewish” or “Arabic,” to let the true richness of contact across cultural boundaries be seen on its own terms. As a group, the articles in this section remind us how contact infl uenced art and learning in a wide range of fi elds: politics, science, philosophy, music and religion. Scholars sought knowledge across cultural borders and from all points of contact; the dividing line between “Christian,” “Jewish” and “Islamic” became blurred as cultures shared intellectual and artistic pursuits. Th e appropriation of art and ideas did not recognize cultural or political boundaries, but rather crossed over and through lines of cultural division. In the second section of the volume, Contact through Society, Francisco J. Hernández, Ross Brann and María Jesús Fuente present three very different views of how contact between societies aff ects language, stereotype and assimilation. Francisco J. Hernández (Carleton University), in “Th e Jews and the Origins of Romance Script in Castile: A New Paradigm,” studies Jewish documents dating from 1187, 1219 and 1220, from the region of Santa María in Aguilar de Campoo, in the northwestern tip of Castile, to show how a new Romance code was fi nding its way into written script. He notes that none of the fi ve initial Cistercian abbeys founded in the 1140s seem to be interested in linguistic innovation, but that a second generation of monastic expansion in the 1160s and 70s show evidence of writing that anticipates subsequent Romance script. Texts from Aguilar in  the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries exhibit Romance tendencies, especially in the limited use of abbreviations. Th e oldest Aguilar Jewish document written in Romance dates from 1187 and would seem to implicate the soferim scribes in the expansion of non-Latinate writing models. It is only in the 1180s that Romance texts move away from the use of Latin to a writing code that resembles what is seen in Spanish today. By the fi rst decade of the thirteenth century, a series of documents related to the Cistercian convents of San Clemente in Toledo, Las Huelgas of Burgos and even to the royal chancery exhibit similar traits; it may be no coincidence that the earliest literary texts written in Romance also appear around this time. Once the script spread in use, it was adapted to the linguistic conditions of local populations, including Jewish communities in diff erent parts of Castile. Th e aljama of Aguilar seems to have embraced the innovation early on and provides the fi rst-known Jewish contribution to the development of written Spanish. Ross Brann (Cornell University), in “Th e Moors?,” looks at the sociohistorical importance of the term Moor from early modern Spain to the present day. Medieval Iberia was clearly characterized by a high degree of cultural and religious diversity, and ninth- and tenth-century Muslim Hispania was a center of urban culture and independent polity that governed most of the Peninsula. Th e Iberian multiculturalism that passed from alAndalus to the Christian Castile has captured the modern and post-modern imagination. However, the term Moor takes on various meanings through the ages. Canonical texts such as the Poema de Fernán González and the Alfonsine Primera crónica clearly demonstrate the thirteenth-century Castilian cultural opposition between Christian and Islamic identities. Th e word Moor marked Andalusi Muslims as Other in a Christian Iberian context. Professor Brann maintains that the term enabled thirteenth-century Christian Castile to categorize as “foreign” the diverse Andalusi Muslim population as well as its own Mudejar citizenry. Even in our own time, in modern fi lm and texts, Moor is still a term that attempts to reclaim or re-invent the non-Christian Other in various forms. María Jesús Fuente (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), in “Christian, Muslim and Jewish Women in Late Medieval Iberia,” studies the role of women in the diff usion of culture within the Peninsula. Th rough documentary evidence, Professor Fuente assesses the function of women in the domestic and public space, through their work in daily tasks as well as keeping religious and ethnic traditions and customs. She concludes that women were guardians of cultural identity in their communities and  resisted change within the private domestic space. Professor Fuente studies women’s interaction and function in the public sphere, in diff erent settings and under various conditions, to show that they could learn from one another through families divided by religion, through social festivities, or as practitioners of various professions such as midwives and nursemaids. However, in spite of frequent contact, there was little integration among communities or infl uence of other cultures in the household. While women were submissive and stayed within their culturally and socially assigned roles, their passivity became a boundary mechanism to protect the home from outside cultural infl uences. Women accepted others outside the home in public spaces and celebrations, but in the home they closed the door to the world and defended their religious identity against external forces. As a group, these three articles show that while contact between the Christian, Jewish and Islamic cultures brought advances in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries through language and letters, it also created tensions as pluralism dissipated into distinctions between “us” and “them,” and women worked to close the home to the outside world, as if it were a kingdom unto itself, with borders to defend and protect. Just as the Islamic Other became a foreigner in his own land, so too the Iberian Jewish communities that helped to create Romance script would later suff er cultural change and expulsion with shifting political realities; and women, while instrumental in protecting the minorities’ cultural identity, were assigned limited and specifi c roles and functions. Linguistic and social boundaries are redrawn as cultures come into contact. In the third section, Contact through Confl ict, Russell Hopley, Justin Stearns, Denise K. Filios and Danya Crites investigate various approaches in diff erent contexts to examine how, even up to the present, war and confl ict, bringing cultural realities into contact, (re)defi ne the representation of ideas, places and people through myths, longing, remembering, architecture and legal constructs. Russell Hopley (Princeton University), in “Th e Ransoming of Prisoners in Medieval North Africa and Andalusia: An Analysis of the Legal Framework,” explores points of contact between Muslim and Christian cultures through the act of ransoming captives in warfare. 

The practice of ransom was governed by Islamic law, which established a legal framework for the release of Christians held by Muslims. Th e process of ransom also occupied the attention of law codes in al-Andalus, with considerable re-working of Muslim legal constructs to fi t the particular circumstances of Iberia; the ʿulamāʾ recognized that the rules codifi ed in the seventh century for  ransoming non-Muslims did not always fi t the circumstances of the Maghreb some fi ve hundred years later. Th e ʿulamāʾ developed a considerable understanding of fi dā’, or ‘ransom,’ and Andalusian laws provide insight into how Muslim jurists viewed interaction with non-Muslims, especially with regard to prisoners. Professor Hopley focuses on the Cordoban jurist Abū ’l-Walīd b. Rushd (d. 1126), grandfather of the wellknown Muslim philosopher Averroes, who assumed the post of qāḍī al-quḍāt of Córdoba during the period of Almoravid rule (1070-147). Th e writings of this infl uential jurist show how Islamic Spain reacted to the Christians from the northern kingdoms through a series of advisory legal opinions, fatwā, that address the status and ransom of Christian prisoners held by Muslims. In addition, Ibn Rushd compiled a summa on Islamic law, al-Bayān wa’l- taḥsīḷ , dedicated to a more theoretical treatment of fi dā’, which shows how Ibn Rushd understands ransom to operate in relation to jihād against non-Muslims. 

What Professor Hopley concludes from the study of the laws, as they were adopted over time and implemented in different parts of the Islamic world, is that the twelfth century was a turning point when the eastern Islamic world began to look west for guidance on many fronts: a view of Maghrebi history that off ers new understanding and insights into this region of the Islamic world. Justin Stearns (Middlebury College) in “Representing and Remembering al-Andalus: Some Historical Considerations Regarding the End of Time and the Making of Nostalgia,” explores this concept in the writings on al-Andalus. Th e narratives written during the Umayyad caliphate, such as the works of Ibn Ḥabīb (d. 238/853) and Ibn al-Qūtiyya (d. 367/977), ̣ show how al-Andalus was represented during this early period of Arab dominance. Later the historical presence of al-Andalus was described by writers such as al-Ḥumaydi (d. 488/1095). Th e anonymous Fatḥ al-Andalus and Dhikr Bilād al-Andalus and the work of Ibn Sa‘īd (d. 685/1286) also turned to the Peninsula’s past. Th en, after the defeat of the Almohads and the establishment of the Nasrids in Granada, writers again addressed the glory and importance of al-Andalus in the century prior to 1492. Finally, the Moroccan historian al-Maqqarī (d. 1043/1631) and the ambassador al-Ghassānī (d. 1119/1707) off er a consideration of al-Andalus’ importance for Muslims in North Africa after the fi nal expulsion of the moriscos between 1609-1614. 

These and other texts discussed by Professor Stearns show the shifting importance of territorial identity in Andalusi historiography. It was a land of wonders and a land of jihād: a place linked to the end of time. While al-Andalus cannot be defi ned by a single term,  meaning or representation, as Professor Stearns shows, it is continually linked to a discourse of remembrance and comes to be viewed with nostalgia. Denise K. Filios (University of Iowa) writes on “Legends of the Fall: Conde Julián in Medieval Arabic and Hispano-Latin Historiography,” analyzing the legend of Count Julián and the Muslim invasion of Hispania to avenge the rape of his daughter. Although historians have shown the legend to be more myth than fact, literary studies continue to consider Julián as an historical fi gure. Th e legend was adopted by Christian writers to explain or justify the fall of the Visigoths to the Islamic armies, attributing political, cultural and religious signifi cance to the conquest of Iberia. Professor Filios focuses on the treatment of Count Julián in the Crónica mozárabe de 754; ‘Abd al-Malik Ibn Ḥabīb’s (d. 853) Kitāb al-Ta’rīkh; Ibn ‘Abd al-Ḥakam’s (d. 870-871) Futūḥ Misr; Crónica de Alfonso III ̣ (post 884); Akhbār Majmū‘a fī fatḥ al-Andalus (c. 940); Ibn al-Qūtiyya’s ̣ Tārīkh iftitāḥ al-Andalus (before 977); the Chronica gothorum pseudo-isidoriana (1100-1150); the Historia silense (1110-1120); and the Chronicon mundi of Lucas, Bishop of Tuy (1236-1242). 

Professor Filios traces the development of the Count Julián legend, as it combines historical and fi ctional elements to explain the Muslim victory. Julián becomes the legendary fi gure defending his borders as well as the border-crosser; the Strait is a border that both separates and joins, both barrier and conveyance. Overall, the narratives crafted a series of exemplum that downplayed the tale’s politico-military aspect to emphasize the confrontation between pseudohistorical fi gures in an ideological context, with the Julián fi gure fulfi lling the purpose and vision of his role that each text upheld in its specifi c time of composition. Danya Crites (University of Iowa), in “Churches Made Fit for a King: Alfonso X and Meaning in the Religious Architecture of Post-Conquest Seville,” studies the architectural projects of the Christian monarchs during the thirteenth century, particularly those in Seville, where the conversion of mosques to churches, and the extensive building of churches overall, can be directly related to a desire to refl ect power and cultural dominance. Both Fernando III and his son Alfonso X converted important mosques to Christian churches upon their victories in Seville. Many were signifi cantly altered or entirely replaced. 

This is especially true of the Great Mosque and its minaret, the Giralda, an important symbol of Islamic culture until its meaning was undone with its conversion into a cathedral bell tower. Th e Great Mosque’s transformation into a Christian cathedral exemplifi es the way in which political and cultural power can be made manifest through physical buildings and monuments. Th e construction of numerous religious structures in Seville may also be related to the imperial vision held by Alfonso, as physical buildings become symbols of empire. Professor Crites concludes that architecture provided an avenue to reaffi rm Christian sovereignty over Seville, and that the shift in boundaries between Islamic and Christian rule is manifested through the appropriation of architectural structure and space. 

The modifi cation of Seville’s religious and secular buildings is a visual manifestation of power in a frontier society and creates symbols of Alfonso’s political ambitions at home and abroad. In sum, the four essays in this section demonstrate how representations changed over time through contact and confl ict: laws and realities shifted and changed; buildings refl ected power and conquest; borders were permeable and fl uctuating; and the past was remembered and reconsidered through the lens of later realities. Boundaries in governance, time and space are constantly redefi ned as cultures meet. Th e articles in this volume show the many facets of contact in al-Andalus and Medieval Iberia. Lessons of the past apply today as al-Andalus captures the modern imagination and cultures continue to come into contact across borders that either allow fl uid diff usion of ideas or block their passage. A post-modern world continues to deal with issues still vital as cultures face off and open or close frontiers to ideas, customs, ideologies and the arts. Al-Andalus is still a wonder even after its golden age.

 

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