El Suspiro del Moro

[Nadia_H]

i want this to be a thread about discussion regarding Andalusia and Granada. For example, what sort of conditions - negative AND positive - that existed between the inhabitants of multiple faiths.

Right before surrendering to Ferdinand and Isabella on 25 November 1491, the last king of Granada, Muhammad XII Abu 'Abd Allah (Spanish modification of name is Boabdil) reportedly stopped at an elevated point (now called El Suspiro del Moro, which means “The Moor’s Sigh”), and gave one last sigh as he looked back at Alhambra, at the Muslim lands and aspirations that were being surrendered.

There’s a couple interesting articles about all of this, and the International Herald Tribune recently published a pretty interesting article titled, “**Seeing both sides in the Islam of old Spain**”.

An excerpt from another interesting article re: this aspect of history:

One story above all captures the romance and pain of Moorish Andalucia: that of Muhammed XI, the last Muslim ruler of Granada. Known as Abu Abdallah to his subjects - later corrupted to Boabdil by the Spanish - he presided over the final decade of civil war and strife in a shrivelled empire that once stretched to Salamanca in the North, Lisbon in the West and Valencia in the East. In one final humiliation in 1492, he was forced to surrender the Alhambra itself to Ferdinand and Isabella, and thus sign away the final vestige of Muslim Spain.

Boabdil was first imprisoned and then granted control of the mountainous Alpujarras region south of Granada to live out his days in internal exile, but his heart was broken and he fled to North Africa.

His mother was less generous to Boabdil than his Catholic conquerors, and is alleged to have said: ‘Weep like a woman, you who have not defended your kingdom like a man.’

As he left, Boabdil took one final glance back at his beloved Alhambra palace and heaved a terrible sigh at the thought of the lost glory of the European empire of the Moors. El Suspiro del Moro, The Moor’s Last Sigh, has since come to signify the end of Muslim dreams of a European empire and the beginning of the military and economic dominance of the Christian West. (Source: **See Granada and sigh**)

i have some archaeologically/historically interesting pics as well that i’d like to put up, of current and past churches/synagogues/mosques in Alhambra. i’ll do that as soon as i find where i saved them.

[Nadia_H]

Well i don’t have the pictures scanned unfortunately, but just wanted to bump up this thread when i came across this article. Only posting excerpts.

**Islam once was at forefront of world civilization**, Stevenson Swanson, Chicago Tribune, 18 February 2004

GRANADA, Spain - As the fiery orange sun sinks behind the mountains, the stones of the 800-year-old Alhambra take on a rosy glow. Against the backdrop of the snowcapped peaks of the Sierra Nevada, the fortress’ rugged towers stand out in the gathering dusk.

As the lights of this long-ago capital of al-Andalus - Islamic Spain - blink to life, about 30 men kneel in neat rows inside a whitewashed mosque atop a hill facing the Alhambra. Palms held upward, they recite the evening prayers and bend forward until their heads touch the floor. Behind a thin screen, the shadowy outlines of the women of the mosque move in the same time-honored rhythms.

These two hilltop edifices represent the past and present faces of Islam.

The Alhambra fortress, which the Moorish rulers of southern Spain began to construct in 1238, recalls the splendor and achievements of the golden age of Islam, when the youngest of the three great monotheistic religions held sway from the Straits of Gibraltar in the west to the banks of the Indus River in the east.

Across the ravine, the humble mosque, whose plain white walls and red tile roof make it virtually indistinguishable from its neighbors, testifies to the renewed vigor of Islam, a fast-growing religion with a worldwide membership of about 1.2 billion, including 2 million to 4 million in America, although some Muslim groups put the figure at 7 million.

It is the first new mosque in Granada in more than 500 years, yet its opening in July came at a time of profound questioning about the meaning and direction of Islam. The Koran, Islam’s holy book, preaches peace and charity, but to some Western ears, the loudest voices in the Muslim world extol hate and violence.

…] In Europe, Muslim immigrants are also facing scrutiny and coming into conflict with authorities over such issues as the height of minarets at mosques or, as in France, the wearing of the hijab, or head scarf, in schools.

As a small step toward making Islam less threatening, the leaders of the new mosque in Granada have decided to leave the curtains of the mosque’s prayer room open during services. Drawn by the mosque’s stunning view of the Alhambra, crowds of curious onlookers peer at the men of the mosque as they bow toward Mecca.

“I think it is very necessary that Western people should have firsthand knowledge of how Muslims really live and believe,” said Abdalhasib Castineira, the director of the foundation that built the mosque. “This is one little service that we can render to clarify these ideas that people have about Islam, mainly negative notions.”

[Zakk]

Nadia..

When i first read the story of the fall of Granada as a kid it really upset me because of it’s intensity, especially the famous line said by Abu 'Abd Allah’s Mother while he wept…** “It is good that you cry like a woman for what you could not keep like a man” **

Anyway here are some interesting quotes about the “moors of Spain”

Quotations on Moorish (Islamic) Civilization

Stanley Lane-Poole in ‘The Moors in Spain’: Introduction
*
"With Granada fell all Spain’s greatness. For a brief while, indeed, the reflection of the Moorish splendour cast a borrowed light upon the history of the land which it had once warmed with its sunny radiance. The great epoch of Isabella, Charles V and Philip II, of Columbus, Cortes and Pizarro, shed a last halo about the dying monuments of a mighty state. When followed the abomination of dissolution, the rule of inquisition and the blackness of darkness in which Spain has been plunged ever since.

"In the land where science was once supreme, the Spanish doctors became noted for nothing but their ignorance and incapacity. The arts of Toledo and Almeria faded into insignificance.

“The land deprived of skillful irrigation of the Moors, grew improvished and neglected, the richest and most fertile valleys languished and were deserted, and most of the populous cities which had filled every district in Andalusia, fell into ruinous decay; and beggars, friars, and bandits took the place of scholars, merchants and knights. So low fell Spain when she had driven away the Moors. Such is the melancholy contrast offered by her history.” *

• S.P. Scott in ‘The History of the Moorish Empire in Europe.’

“Yet there were knowledge and learning everywhere except in Catholic Europe. At a time when even kings could not read or write, a Moorish king had a private library of six hundred thousand books. At a time when ninety-nine percent of the Christian people were wholly illiterate, the Moorish city of Cordova had eight hundred public schools, and there was not a village within the limits of the empire where the blessings of education could not be enjoyed by the children of the most indigent peasant, …and it was difficult to encounter even a Moorish peasant who could not read and write.” *

Ps: Nadia, I maybe wrong but I think gharnatah (Granada) fell in January 1492? Shortly before Ferdinand and Isabelle entertained a request from a then little known Italian explorer who believed travelling west by sea he could find a short cut to “Cathay and out flank” the “Mahomadans”

[Zakk]

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