Summary of Maria Rosa Menocal's The Ornament of the World

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Abd al-Rahman, a young man from the heart of the Islamic Empire, fled to the Maghrib, where he met with his Berber kinsmen. They had converted to Islam and were partially Arabized, and they had pushed across the Strait of Gibraltar to conquer Iberia.
#2 The local politics in al-Andalus were shaped by the often violent rivalries between the majority Berber rank and file and the Arab leadership. The emirs of these Andalusian frontier territories were fairly autonomous representatives of the rather distant central government.
#3 The history of al-Andalus, which is the history of Islam in Europe, is largely unknown and misunderstood. It was a period of time that was dark and barbaric in the conventional histories of the Arabic-speaking peoples, but it was a fascinating period of time that profoundly affected European history.
#4 The book follows the path of Abd al-Rahman, who escaped the destruction of his home to become the first of his line. It is about a foundational European cultural moment that qualifies as first-rate in the sense of E Scott Fitzgerald’s formula: the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.

Sujets

• Medieval
• Histoire
• Edad Media
• Middle Ages
• History
• Europe
• Islam

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 23 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822546547
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Maria Rosa Menocal's The Ornament of the World
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15 Insights from Chapter 16 Insights from Chapter 17 Insights from Chapter 18 Insights from Chapter 19
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Abd al-Rahman, a young man from the heart of the Islamic Empire, fled to the Maghrib, where he met with his Berber kinsmen. They had converted to Islam and were partially Arabized, and they had pushed across the Strait of Gibraltar to conquer Iberia.

#2

The local politics in al-Andalus were shaped by the often violent rivalries between the majority Berber rank and file and the Arab leadership. The emirs of these Andalusian frontier territories were fairly autonomous representatives of the rather distant central government.

#3

The history of al-Andalus, which is the history of Islam in Europe, is largely unknown and misunderstood. It was a period of time that was dark and barbaric in the conventional histories of the Arabic-speaking peoples, but it was a fascinating period of time that profoundly affected European history.

#4

The book follows the path of Abd al-Rahman, who escaped the destruction of his home to become the first of his line. It is about a foundational European cultural moment that qualifies as first-rate in the sense of E Scott Fitzgerald’s formula: the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.

#5

The heart of culture lay in al-Andalus, which required us to redraw the map of Europe and place the Mediterranean at the center. It was there that the profoundly Arabized Jews reinvented Hebrew, and where Christians embraced nearly every aspect of Arabic style, from the intellectual style of philosophy to the architectural styles of mosques.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The stories in this chapter highlight the vast difference between what the conventional histories would have us believe about the Middle Ages and what we can learn from the many testimonies that survive in the songs people really sang.
Insights from Chapter 3

#1

The death of Muhammad, the Prophet who brought Islam, the religion of submission to God, in 632 was the beginning of major changes in Europe. The Arabs of the Arabian peninsula had been practicing a form of monotheism similar to Islam, and their poetry-obsessed culture was heavily influenced by this new and uncompromising monotheism.

#2

The succession to Muhammad was extremely contested, and led to the creation of a rival Islamic polity in southern Europe. The Umayyads were a dynasty that came to power in 750, and they symbolized the original fusion of a culture and a revelation.

#3

The Umayyads, who had come from the Arabian desert, defined their version of Islam as one that loved its dialogues with other traditions. They began building new defining monuments in places where the remains of other cultures were still visible.

#4

The Umayyads, who overthrew the Abbasids in Damascus in 750, had different claims to caliphal legitimacy. The Iberian Peninsula, like the rest of Europe in the eighth century, was a culturally and materially dreary place.

#5

The collapse of Rome’s northern and eastern borders and the takeover by various Germanic tribes ruptured Europe’s connection with its own cultural past. Christianity was not adopted fully by the Visigoths, who eventually became the overlords of the former Roman province of Hispania.

#6

The Muslims were able to take over and rule Hispania because the Visigothic kingdom was politically unstable, religiously and ethnically fragmented, and culturally debilitated. The Muslims never took over the entire peninsula, however, and Christian outposts clung to the mountainous regions of the northwest Atlantic coast and the Pyrenees.

#7

The Andalusi Muslims were a mix of several different ethnic groups, and their religion was conversions were encouraged. The Muslims’ distinctive power and authority resided in a faith that was not only possible but desirable and encouraged.

#8

The Arabic language, which was the lingua franca of the Islamic empire, was adopted by the non-Arab communities of al-Andalus as the ultimate in classiness and distinction.

#9

The Abbasid empire began to crumble in the first half of the tenth century, and in 909, the caliphate was taken over by a group of Shiites who proclaimed themselves to be descendants of Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law. From the Andalusian perspective, it had been one thing for the rather unimportant Umayyads to pay lip service to the authority of the Abbasids.