Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain

Richard Fletcher. Moorish Spain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Pp. xiv and 189. 28 Illustrations and 5 Maps. ISBN 0-520-08496-9. Softcover.

Sean Guynes, Western Washington University

Moorish Spain reflects the detailed and comprehensive scholarship of one of medieval Spanish history‟s outstanding academics, Richard Fletcher. His work is an introductory overview of the history of Spain under the Moors (more on terminology later), roughly spanning the period that begins with the fall of the Visigothic kingdom of Spain circa the invasion of an Arabo-Berber army under the leadership of Tariq in 711 to the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada in 1492 during the final stage of the Reconquista at the hands of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel. Fletcher‟s Moorish Spain goes beyond providing a basic historical introduction of the eight-century Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula to present to the reader the historically unique cultural atmosphere of medieval Spain in which Christian, Jewish, and Islamic promulgated innovations on political, philosophical, religious, and artistic bases. His work is organized in appropriately-sized chronological chapter that are easy enough to digest, making the book suitable for audiences with not more than the typical interest in Spanish or Islamic history, using primary Islamic and Christian sources to reinforce his accomplished scope. However, from the point of view of a burgeoning scholar, Fletcher‟s work does leave something to be desired in his lack of precise references and the occasional typographical error, though these are minor shortcoming in light of the book as a whole. A more precise look at Moorish Spain will give a better sense of Richard Fletcher‟s accomplishment at providing an introductory text to those desiring a look at medieval Spain, the Moorish occupation thereof, and its cultural-historical significance.
As noted, Moorish Spain is separated into chronological sequential chapters pertaining each to an era of Andalusian Moorish history that can reasonably be partitioned called separate from other eras. Its 175 pages are divided into nine chapters, beginning with a concise introduction to the “reality” of Moorish Spain in which Fletcher disavows myths of Moorish brutality against medieval Christians, provides considerable data on the linguistic effect of the Moorish occupation on modern Spanish, and an extensive geographical introduction that proves beneficial throughout the text (most of which is unaccompanied by maps). With this beginning Fletcher establishes that “the Iberian peninsula is the area of Mediterranean Europe where the most prolonged and intimate encounter between Christendom and Islam occurred” (5). In the following chapter the conquest of Visigothic Spain by Tariq‟s army – beginning in 710 and extending until the final Visigothic kings had been killed or pacified in about 720 – is detailed alongside the lasting effects of the Arabs‟ reliance on loosely-Islamicized Berbers (rife with revolts), the creation of the tierras despobladas, or a demilitarized zone defining the Muslim-Christian frontier, and the establishment of the Spanish Umayyad Caliphate under `Abd al-Rahman. The third chapter provides necessary, and appealing, insight into the issue of conversion to Islam in Andalusia (from the Arabic term Al-Andalus, i.e. the Iberian Peninsula), as for the first few centuries of Islamic occupation the Muslims had remained a relative minority. However, the work of American Richard W. Bulliet suggests that the percentage of Muslims in Andalusia double every fifty years, so that “by about the year 1000 the proportion [of Muslims] stood at something like 75%” (38). The following three chapters explicate the political, and at times complex, history of the creation golden age of the Spanish Umayyad Caliphate; its disintegration into a number of smaller party (faction-based) states called taifa states (as a whole this is called the fitnah or “strife” period); the conquest of the taifa states by the Almoravids – a fundamentalist Berber sect from Morocco – who ruled Spain from without, in Morocco; and the Almoravids‟ fall to another, though even more orthodox, Islamic Berber sect who thought themselves led and ruled by the Mahdi, “„the rightly-guided one‟ sent by God in the last days to restore righteousness before the Day of Judgment” (119). These three chapters alone span some 513 years – the bulk – of Moorish Spanish history, covering as well the golden ages of Arabo-Spanish philosophy and literature, many examples of which are provided from a copious number of sources. They form the greater part of Fletcher‟s work compiling this book, in that he was generously fine combed the details of such a complex period so as to illustrate in a manner that is easily intelligible, providing (where necessary) multiple examples, such as the extravagance of taifa court life and the subsequent mass-production of court patronized artists and writers (see Chapter 5: The Party Kings).
To wrap up his discussion of Andalusian history, Fletcher concludes with a largely religio-cultural chapter that outlines the general trend in Christian-Muslim relations from the twelfth century (Spain under the Almohads) to the formation of the Kingdom of Granada, and subsequently with a look at the final Islamic kingdom in southern Spain and the culmination of the so-called Reconquista of Granada. The convivencia – or, living together – of Muslims and Christians (to use Fletcher‟s term) is examined in considerable detail, taking into account both the Christian and Muslim perspectives, though through a lens that is slight Islamocentric: Fletcher seems to bemoan the particularly harsh conditions of the Mudejars (Muslims under Christian rule; from the Arabic al-mudajjar, “person allowed to remain”), even appealing to the reader for sympathy via a tragic ballad involving the rape of a young Muslim girl. While sympathizing for historical atrocities is not undesirable, these chapters together place Fletcher among a strain of Islamocentric historians, beginning perhaps with Stanley Lane-Pool in 1897, who believe that “whatsoever makes a kingdom great and prosperous, whatsoever tends to refinement and civilization, was found in Moslem Spain” (171). These two chapters, paired with the final, epilogual chapter (which, ironically, since he questions the combining history and nostalgia in medieval primary sources, discusses the nostalgic idea of Muslim Spain alongside a sketch of the book‟s content) conclude what is a brilliant addition to the body of literature devoted to Islamic history in general, and perhaps a paradigm for future introductory texts on the history of medieval, Islamic Spain.
While the content and organization of the book is of the quality a reader may easily respect and admire, as has been noted, there is a lack of precise citation of sources. For example, Fletcher will at times reference the title of a source, as in his citing of a passage from the Qu‟ran on page 79, or his use of Dante‟s commentary on Averroes from the Inferno on page 134. In fact, it seems that Fletcher‟s reference to Dante is the only in his entire work that provides a complete citation: Inferno, IV, 144. It is frustrating that, more often than not, references and quotes used by Fletcher are not even associated with a specific work, often following the form: “Isa Yabir, a prominent Muslim intellectual …compiled a compendium of the law of Islam” – a quote would be inserted following such a typical phrase (135). In addition, there is not bibliography provided for this work, and Fletcher seems pleased to follow the final chapters with a “Further Reading” section, though it does provide a fair number of sources. Also, it has been discovered that the index is not the most comprehensive source, as it tends to provide only the first page that an indexed figure appears on, rather than a list of all pages (this has made searching for particular references within Moorish Spain rather difficult). Truthfully, these number of errors listed here represent bias of a student of history criticizing the work from an academic perspective, and it should be noted that Fletcher perhaps has left the book in such a state not to displease the scholarly audience (as the book does not seem intended for academia alone) but to make the book as comprehensible for the average interested reader as possible, leaving out such references, citations, and thorough indexing that would otherwise be of no concern.
In totally, Richard A. Fletcher‟s Moorish Spain stands as a compendium of Moorish Andalusian history, stretching from the conquering of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 by Islamic forces to the destruction of its final Muslim kingdom at Granada in 1492, and including countless resources that display the cultural industry produced therein. While from a scholarly perspective Moorish Spain is lacking, this is of little consequence when compared to the breadth of scope Fletcher has accomplished in providing an introductory text on medieval Hispano-Islamic history that is easily accessible and enjoyable to those with a sincere attraction to this invaluable era.