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From: minow@decvax.UUCP (Martin Minow)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion
Subject: Re: ISLAMIC TOLERANCE (Jews in Spain)
Message-ID: <152@decvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 12-Jan-86 22:07:16 EST
Article-I.D.: decvax.152
Posted: Sun Jan 12 22:07:16 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jan-86 00:43:18 EST
References: <2360@sdcc6.UUCP>
Reply-To: minow@decvax.UUCP (Martin minow)
Organization: DEC - ULTRIX Engineering Group
Lines: 53
Keywords: more follow-up on the "Arab Tolerance" discussion
Xref: lsuc net.politics:2864 net.religion:615

The following attempts to shed some light on the experiences of
the Jews in Spain under Moslem rule.  It is HEAVILY condensed and
abstracted from
	Felipe Torroba Bernaldo de Quir'os.  The Spanish Jews.
	Madrid, 1972.  translated by John I. Palmer.

"There is no doubt that the Jews cooperated in the Moslem invasion.
this is not suprising, when they had suffered so much under the Visigoths.
... It was then that the golden age began for the Spanish Jews, an age
that lasted more than three centuries.  They settled in all parts and
prospered everywhere.  They met an atmosphere of toleration  ---
characteristic of the Arabs in their conquests --- and the two religions,
though unreconciliable, united against the symbol of the Cross....

"The Hebrews did not hesitate to dress as Arabs, to adopt their customs and
language....

"At the end of the 11th century the Almoravide wave fell upon Moslem
Spain.  The sons of the desert --- who veiled their faces, perhaps,
as a poet was to say, to conceal the shame of their barbarity ---
were led by the fierce Yusuf, who obliged his camel-drivers to cross
the Straits.... Yusuf hardly knew Arabic, and when in the refined
court of Motamid the king's poets presented him with their verses,
he confined himself to saying, ``I don't understand them, but I
know they are asking for bread.''

"Yusuf the Almoravide, covetus of the wealth of Lucena [the foremost
Jewish city in Spain], arrived before the city gates with his ferocious
warriors.  Advised by his scholars, who hated the Hebrews, he put before
the Jewish community the dilemmma:  mass conversion to Mahommedanism,
or they would be put to the sword.  The rabbis warded off the danger
for the moment, and managed to placate Yusuf by offering him gold....

"The invasion of the Almohades, as fanatical as the Almoravides or more
so, who believed themselves the people chosen by Mahomet to extend
the dominion of Islam throughout the world, brought all kinds of
misfortune to the Hebrews.  The Almohades attacked the churches of
the Christians, but also the Jewish synagogues....  In Andalusia a
fierce persecution was unleashed against the Jews, whose synagogues were
destroyed by fire and sword.  The persecution reached its peak in the
country around Cordoba, and Lucena was rased to the ground.  Thus
there disappeared all that had been built throughout long years in
which the two Semitic races had lived toghethers; ``those cultural
exchanges that contributed to the greatest splendour of Moslem Spain,
which was the protagonist of Eastern civilization in the West and the
best bulwark of a culture that created some original ways o flife and
some suprising modes of living together.''"


transcribed by

Martin Minow
decvax!minow