Dear Readers,
It is unfortunate that Muslims are a divided people and that is our greatest problem today where disunity and suspicion affects us like an incurable disease. Fragmented and divided, we are disunited at every level – within communities, at the local level, the national level and at the international level. We are great at talking about and discussing the problem of disunity in meetings and conferences but we manage to find excuses to create division amongst ourselves – dividing ourselves according to race, sect, our pre-Islamic cultures, political opinions, ancestry, etc. All around us we see governments in Muslim nations failing to attain unity and peace. Not so long ago much of the Middle East and Africa were immersed in unrest and popular revolt, this is true even today. Dr. Mohammad Ali Al-khuli is his book titled “The Light of Islam” writes, “Islam is the greatest unifying force in the world. It is a religion to all humans regardless of color, race and language. It is a religion that tolerates other religions and orders its followers to respect and protect all humans.” Yet we are disunited and remain indifferent to the suffering of brother Muslims. The Muslim Ummah has come out of many crises and problems throughout history due largely to unity. The last example of a crisis was the State of Andalusia (Spain) established by Muslims and renowned to be a place for knowledge and science for the whole world. This great civilization lasted for centuries but suddenly, the State was invaded and it collapsed. Why? Because differences had cropped up amongst the Muslims and their leaders and rulers were in dispute and corruption. There were also hypocrites who cooperated with the enemy against Muslims at that time. But in the end, it is the unity of people that makes a nation strong and invincible and this is the reason why Islam lays great stress on the importance of unity. For the benefit of readers I am reproducing my article WALKING THROUGH HISTORY.
Former EWI Board Member and a friend beyond compare Frank Neuman made me an offer I could not refuse, to spend a few days in his villa on the beach near Alicante on the eastern coast of Spain. Even though Frank is in-waiting for a complicated heart procedure he journeyed from New York to be physically present as our host, giving new meaning to the phrase ”an invitation from the heart”. One cannot be grateful enough for the opportunity of visiting Granada 500 kms to the south and 100 kms to the north, Valencia. Once the German Ostrogoths (East Goths) (466-84) completed the conquest of whole of Spain, the Gothic and Romans lived 150 years under different codes till King Recceswinth imposed (c.654) a Visigothic common law on both. When King Roderick seized the throne early in the 8th century his rivals appealed to the Muslim leader Tarik Bin Ziyad, whose victory (711 AD) in a battle near Medina Sidonia ended the Visigothic kingdom and inaugurated the Moorish period.
Resting in the shadows of Spain’s snow-capped Sierra Nevada Mountains in Andalucia and edged by an extraordinary fertile plain, Granada’s stunning natural surroundings conquered the hearts of the Arab sultans who established the known world’s most educated civilisation and society with the vestiges of centuries of Arab domination very visible in the Alhambra. Quaint, picturesque winding streets of the Albaicin district, the old Arab Quarter, the flamboyant gardens of the Generalife, the enigmatic silhouette of Alhambra, the forbidden city towering 150 metres above. The Alhambra and the medieval Albayzìn Quarter make up a coherent ensemble, their configuration reflecting the Hispano-Moorish past of the city.
Built by the last Muslim Emirs in Spain of the Nasrid dynasty, the Alhambra’s Islamic palaces are surrounded by the beauty of its lush gardens and stunning decoration. Called Qal’at al-Hamra’ (the Red Fortress) after the reddish stone from which it was built, exquisite courtyards have delicate columns and handsome arches intertwined with graceful Arabic script reach their epitome of splendor in the pavilion known as the “Courtyard of the Lions”. These magnificent constructions were made from every-day building material like masonry, clay bricks and pebbles.
Albaicín is spread on a hill opposite the Alhambra, Museo Archeológico is housed in a renovated old Arab home; Dar Albaida, better known as a former Moorish palace and now a school for Arabic studies; Aljibe del Frillo, a cistern built during the Moorish age; Casa Moraisca, an old Arab home; the Church of El Salvador, the former great mosque of the Albaicín; Baños Arabes, the best preserved baths in the Iberian Peninsula; and Daralhorra Palace, the home of Abu Abdullah’s (the last king known as “Boabdil” in Moorish Spain) mother and now part of the Convent de Santa Isabel del Real, are the remains from the Moorish centuries to be found in the heart of the city. Within its walls were houses of all classes, palaces, offices, a Royal Mint, public and private mosques, workshops, garrisons, prisons, baths, a zoo, an aviary, and game reserve.
American author Washington Irving (“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”), essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century, wrote a great work on the conquest of Granada, some memorable lines from one of his letters dated May 28, 1828, “the Arab conquest bringing a higher civilisation and a nobler style of thinking into Gothic Spain. A quick witted, sagacious, proud-spirited, and poetical people, the Arabs were imbued with Oriental science and literature. Wherever they established a seat of power, it became a rallying place for the learned and ingenious; and they softened and refined the people whom they conquered.”
Granada is also known to be a city of great scholars. Al-Mazini al-Andalusi al-Gharnati was an Hispano-Muslim geographer, al-Idrisi was another illustrious geographer of that era, Ibn Tufayl was a well known scholar, muslim scientist and physician. Alongside Ibn Tufayl were Ibn Rushd and Ibn Zuhr, and many more scientists and scholars.
The Moorish fortress rose to prominence during the reign of Sultan Almoravid in the 11th century. In 1238, the Christian Reconquest forced the Muslims south to Granada, the Moorish civilization’s last refuge. It flourished culturally and economically for the next 200 years, but in the late 15th century internal feuds and a strengthened Spanish monarchy under Ferdinand and Isabella signaled the end of Moorish civilization in Spain. Abu Abdullah surrendered Granada on January 2, 1492, in 1502 the Spanish crown ordered all Muslims forcibly converted to Christianity. The next century saw increasing persecutions, in 1609 the last Moors still adhering to Islam alongwith the remaining Jews were tortured and expelled from Spain, a land they had made into the garden of the west.
Professor Dr. Nazeer Ahmed in his essay, “The Fall of Granada” makes a sound assessment, “….It is said among Muslims that the hills of El Pujarra around Granada still weep for the sound of the adhan every morning and the mosque of Cordoba stays awake all night waiting for the sajda of a single momin. …..No other country was contested between Muslims and Christians as bitterly as was Spain. The struggle went on for 500 years. When the battles had ended and the last adhan was said from the ramparts of Granada in 1492, Muslims had lost the crown jewel of the Maghrib. Their monuments were razed, their mosques destroyed, their libraries burned and their women sent as slaves to the courts of Europe.” The Christians brutally persecuted Jews and muslims in Europe, nowhere more ruthlessly than the Inquisition of the Jews in Spain. They simply wiped the Muslim and Jew population out of Spain. The German Holocaust came to a head before and during World War 2, what an irony that now a bigotted minority among the Christians and Jews now target muslims wholesale. Any wonder that a similar bigotted minority among muslims use this perception to instill hatred among the great silent majority of muslims against Jews and Christians, making Samuel Huntington’s “Clash between Civilizations” into a self-serving truth? Why can’t the religions live together in peace?
According to my friend Frank Neuman, ”Muslims and Jews lived together with Christians under Moorish rule for centuries, creating the greatest civilization on earth at that time, the façade of Christian churches cannot hide the converted muslim mosques and Jewish synagogues constructed nearly a 1000 years ago”. Nowhere was this more evident than in Valencia and all along the eastern coast. The watch towers on high ground constructed by the Moors as an extensive security network still stand as testimonials of the peace, stability and prosperity in Spain over six centuries earlier. How can one thank Frank Neuman enough, not only for being our gracious and generous host but also a virtual well of credible history? One is proud and lucky to have such a man as one’s friend, and as he puts it, a cousin!
Six centuries after the Moorish rule was eliminated from Spain, Muslims visiting the Alhambra can be forgiven for feeling both tremendous pride in what was achieved and utter desolation at what was lost while walking through what was once “Paradise on Earth”.
M. Ikram Sehgal
