Andre’s Reviews > The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain > Status Update

done

So the arab world benefitted from the byzantine empire, zoroastrian persia and hindu india and most great muslim scholars were persian and not arab.

I am not surprised that christian defiance against muslim rule is simply stated to be the work of fanatics even if mostly peaceful and non-violent. If this were the other way around it probably would be shown differently.

looks like scholars were unsure about the reasons for the visigoth antijewish legislations.

I suspected that the dhimma system and the tax was more of a protection racket and the author confirms it here. And boy where there many rules to show the superiority of a muslim over a christian, e.g. one should not meet a christian first or a christian man could not marry a muslim woman.

So the persecution of the Karaites was so successful that he principle of rabbinic tradition was never questioned again.

So basically the reason behind the "Peace" was religious seggregation with muslims, jews and christians each having very strict rules. And they could be very strict, the sephardic rabbis persecuted the karaite jews as heretics and did it with the support of the muslim rulers. Jewish transgressors could be punished beatings mutilation and even death.

Anti-Jewish progroms and riots and yet this is supposed to be tolerant al-andalus?

I still wonder whether he doesn't romanticize christian women in spain a bit, even while I do believe him when he says they had more freedom in christian spain than islamic spain. And what he writes about the status of jews sounds a lot like their status in christian europe. it has all: High status, special clothes, pogroms etc

Right, I forgot that black slaves were less valuable then white ones, and I wonder why, Was it really just asthetics or also because they were easier to get because of the established subsaharan african slave trade.