Behind Him Lay The Great City Of Spain Analysis

Muslim Spain (Al-Andalus) has been a subject of much discussion among scholars, due to its unique history, cultural and intellectual achievements and values it espoused from 711 – 1492. However, what is usually overlooked is the contribution that Al-Andalus made to the Western world/New World and its bearing on it. As a result of which the history of this New World is viewed in isolation to that of Islamic Iberia’s and in doing so, the link and the movement of culture, ideas, values and knowledge that occurred from the Muslim Spain to the Western World, is brutally severed. The purpose of this essay therefore, is to critically analyze the article by Rana Kabbani on “Behind him lay the Great City of Cordoba” and attempt to link it with different
It is as if Muslims and their culture, achievements, knowledge, and values have no claim to this New World when it should not be forgotten that America was discovered by Columbus through the aid of Islamic geography. And, this is what Dr.Haq talks about in his article in Dawn “What is it that rattles? – on the autonomy of ideas” that “J. H. Kramers, a known scholar of Islam, had declared a while ago that “[t]he Islamic geographical theory may claim a share in the discovery of the New World.” And further: Arabic geographical knowledge kept “alive the doctrine of the sphericity of the earth … without which the discovery of America would have been an impossibility.” Therefore, why is that the Muslims, whose contribution and development in geography paved the way for the discovery of the New World, have largely being written out of the history of the New
As Menocal writes in her article “For the first time in a thousand years, Hebrew was brought out of the confines of the synagogue and made as versatile and ambidextrous as the Arabic that was the native language of the Andalusian Jewish community. Almost miraculously, Hebrew was once again used as the language of a vibrant and living poetry, what we call secular and vernacular, because the immensely successful Jews of al-Andalus decided that their God and His language too should be great enough, first-rate enough, to transcend prayer, to not mind sharing the language of erotic love. Why should Hebrew too not be the vehicle for contradictory ideas?” (8). Not only that, Dr.Haq also talks about how “the European Romance poetry — more specifically Provençal poetry — and the songs of French troubadours have their origins in Hispano-Arabic literature.” Thus, it can be seen the Arabic language played an immense role not only in the influx of Arabic terms in the Spanish language, but also in the revival of Hebrew and in the influence on the European Roman poetry and French