By
Maria Rosa Menocal The lessons of history, like the lessons of religion,
sometimes neglect examples of tolerance. A thousand years ago on the
Iberian Peninsula,1
an enlightened vision of Islam2
had created the most advanced culture in Europe.
Al Andalus,3
as the Muslims called their Spanish homeland, prospered in a culture
of openness and assimilation.4
A nun named Hroswitha, called it "the ornament of the world."5
Her admiration stemmed from the cultural prosperity of the caliphate6
based in Cordoba,7
where the library housed some 400,000 volumes at a time when the largest
library in Christendom8
probably held no more than 400.
What strikes us today about Al Andalus is
that it was a chapter of European history during which Jews, Christians
and Muslims lived side by side and, despite intractable differences
and enduring hostilities,9
nourished a culture of tolerance.
This only sometimes meant guarantees of religious
freedoms comparable to those we would expect in a modern "tolerant� state.
Rather, it was the often unconscious acceptance of contradictions on
an individual level as well as within the culture itself.10
For many who came to know Andalusian culture throughout
the Middle Ages, whether at first hand or from afar—from reading a translation
produced there or from hearing a poem sung by one of its renowned singers—the
bright lights of that world, and their illumination of the rest of the
universe, transcended differences of religion.
It was in Al Andalus that the profoundly
Arabized Jews rediscovered and reinvented Hebrew poetry. Much of what
was created and instilled11
under Muslim rule survived in Christian territories, and Christians
embraced nearly all aspects of Arabic style—from philosophy to architecture.
Christian palaces and churches, like Jewish
synagogues,12
were often built in the style of the Muslims, the walls often covered
with Arabic writing; one synagogue in Toledo even includes inscriptions
from the Koran.13
And it was throughout medieval Europe that
men of unshakable faith like the two great philosophers of Al Andalus,
Maimonides14
the Jew and Averroes15
the Muslim, saw no contradiction in pursuing the truth, whether philosophical
or scientific or religious, across confessional lines.16
This was an approach to life—and its artistic,
intellectual and religious pursuits—that was contested by many, sometimes
violently, as it is today. Yet it remained a powerful force for hundreds
of years.
Whether it is because of our mistaken notions
about the relative backwardness of the Middle Ages or our own contemporary
expectations that culture, religion and political ideology will be roughly
consistent, we are likely to be taken aback by many of the lasting monuments
of this Andalusian culture.17
The caliphate was not destroyed, as our cliches
of the Middle Ages18
would have it, by Christian-Muslim warfare. It lasted for several hundred
years—roughly the lifespan of the American republic to date—and its
downfall was a series of terrible civil wars among Muslims.
These wars were a struggle between the old
ways of the caliphate—with its libraries filled with Greek texts and
its government staffed by non-Muslims—and reactionary Muslims, many
of them from Morocco,19
who believed the Cordobans were not proper Muslims.
But in the end, much of Europe far beyond
the Andalusian world was shaped by the vision of complex and contradictory
identities that was first made into an art form by the Andalusians.
The enemies of this kind of cultural openness have always existed within
each of our monotheistic religions,20
and often enough their visions of those faiths have triumphed.
But at this time of year, and at this point
in history, we should remember those moments when it was tolerance that
won the day.
1．Iberian Peninsula: 伊比利亚半岛（欧洲西南部）。
2．enlightened vision of Islam: 伊斯兰教的远见卓识。enlightened:
开明的，没有偏见的；Islam: 既指伊斯兰教，又指伊斯兰教徒。
3． Al Andalus: 阿尔·安达卢西，这是穆斯林对西班牙南部一地区Andalusia（安达卢西亚）的称呼。
4． a culture of openness and assimilation:
一种开放、融合的文化。
5． the ornament of the world: 可直译为“世界的亮点”，亦可转译为“异彩纷呈的世界”。ornament:
点缀、装饰或增添光彩的人/事物。
6． caliphate: 哈里发的辖地。哈里发（caliph），穆罕默德的继承人，中世纪政教合一的阿拉伯国家和奥斯曼帝国国家元首的称号。
7． Cordoba: 科多巴，西班牙地名，当时伊斯兰教统治西班牙的中心。Cordoban,
科多巴人。
8． Christendom: 基督教世界。
9． intractable differences and enduring
hostilities: 难以消除的分歧和长期的对抗。
10. 恰恰相反，它（指三教和平相处）常常是在个人之间，同时也在文化本身范围之内，无意识地相互接受彼此的差别。（也就是说，这种宽容并不是出于无可奈何，而是已深入到其文化习俗的底蕴里面。)
11．created and instilled: 创造和灌输。What
is created常常是具体的，物质的；而what is instilled常常是抽象的，精神的。
12． Jewish synagogue: 犹太教堂。
13． Koran: 《古兰经》，伊斯兰教的“圣经”。
14． Maimonides: 迈蒙尼德（1135-1204），犹太教法学家、哲学家、科学家，出生于西班牙，定居埃及。
15． Averroes: 阿威罗伊（1126-1198），伊斯兰哲学家，将伊斯兰传统学说和希腊哲学融为一体，并评注过亚里士多德的作品和柏拉图的《共和国》。
16．confessional lines: 信仰的界限。
17．lasting monuments of this Andalusian
culture: 这种安达卢西亚文化持久的丰碑。
18．cliches of the Middle Ages: 关于中世纪的“陈辞偏见”。cliche法语借用词，指陈辞滥调，套话或偏见。
19．Morocco: 摩洛哥，北非的一个伊斯兰教国家。
20．monotheistic religions: 一神教的宗教。monotheism,
一神教，同“多神教”相对，指只信奉一个神的宗教，如犹太教、基督教、伊斯兰教等。
By
Maria Rosa Menocal The lessons of history, like the lessons of religion,
sometimes neglect examples of tolerance. A thousand years ago on the
Iberian Peninsula,