A Student's Notes and Comments on
The Ornament of the World
Maria Rosa Menocal. Little, Brown, 2002

Caveat

These are notes taken (and comments occasionally added) by a student (albeit an aging one). I am not a scholar of this complex subject. But if you find these notes of use, feel free to browse. Actually, I've only just started this book so the notes are just the beginning -- but the book looks good.

Introduction

Still in progress -- just some early preliminary notes here.

Contents

• Beginnings
• A Brief History of a First-Rate Place (not done yet)
• Conversation with Menocal

Beginnings

• begins with the conquering of the Umayyads by the rival Abbasids
  • Uthman, the 3rd Caliph was the first of the Umayyad dynasty but the dynasty really began follwing the 4th Caliph Ali's death in 661
  • ruled from 661 to 750
  • the Abbasid revolutionary movement gained momentum in the east and in 749 the first Abbasid calih was proclaimed
  • the Umayyads (centred in Syria) were massacred in 750 and only Abd al-Rahman escaped and fled to Spain
  • the Abbasids came to power under the auspices of the Shi-ite movement and ruled from 750 to 1517
• Menocal begins her book with the flight of the last Umayyad (Abd al-Rahman) from Damascus to Spain (arriving there in 755)
• previously the Berbers (al-Rahman's mother was Berber) had, under Syrian Arab leadership, made some inroads into Spain -- the former Visigoths had called the capital Khordoba, after the Roman Corduba
• in 711 a "Moorish" Islamic army had invaded Visigoth Christian Spain -- after 8 years held most of Spain -- were stopped at the Pyrenees by Charles Martel (the Hammer) at the Battle of Tours in 732 -- Spain then became part of the expanding Umayyad empire under the name Al-Andalus
• when al-Rahman arrived eventually succeeded in establishing himself as Caliph of Cordoba -- effectively making Al-Andaluz independent from the empire now run by the Abbasids (which meanwhile had moved their capital to Baghdad)
• this began the Islamic Golden Age of Andalusia
• held Spain until 1492 -- just after Columbus set sail, the Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain
• the German nun Hroswitha called Cordoba "the ornament of the world" -- [RJA comment: in the small-world department I once wrote the libretto for a one-act opera ("Dulcitius" by Peter Paul Koprowski) (performed by the Canadian Opera Company ensemble in 1989) which was developed from a Hroswitha medieval miracle play -- in addition, I just met this year an acquaintance living in Gore's Landing, Roswitha Hardenne, who says she was named in honour of the medieval nun -- a complete digression, but a small world, no?]

A Brief History of a First-Rate Place

• STILL TO DO

Conversation with Menocal

• as a pure digression, I note the reference to F. Scott Fitzgerald who held "that the first-rate mind is the one that can hold two contradictory ideas at the same time" -- [RJA comment: I am amazed to discover this source -- the same thing was said, more currently, by the late David Bohm and David Peat in "Science, Order, and Creativity" who argued that it was necessary "for each person to be able to hold several points of view, in a sort of active suspension, while treating the ideas of others with something of the care and attention that are given to his or her own" and for people to "face their disagreements without confrontation and be willing to explore points of view to which they do not personally subscribe" -- and basically bemoaning the decline of creativity in modern scientific discourse (not unlike bemoaning the closing of the 'gates of ijtihad') -- but, yes, this is a subject for another day]