![]() ![]() ![]() In Cordova-to which they moved in the wake of the Arab conquest of Spain-the Ummayyads went even further in cultural license than in their Syrian days. The lantern tower and façade of this Grand Trianon were found to be decorated with life-size statues of scantily clad boys and girls, and even a representation of the caliph himself-a flagrant violation of Islam’s injunction against graven images. The extent of the Ummayyads’ emancipation from orthodox Moslem tenets can be appreciated from the recently unearthed ruins of al-Mafjar, one of their “desert palaces” near Jericho. While in Damascus, the Ummayyad caliphs made ample use of what was left of Greco-Roman and Persian art in the Near East to achieve a splendor to vie with Baghdad which was then ruled by the Abbasid caliphs (of the Arabian Nights). Their conversion to Islam seems to have been more political than religious-they never capitulated to the ascetic ethic of the Moslem creed-and their worldliness was reflected in the opulence of their royal courts, which attracted poets, philosophers, artists, and architects. ![]() With the subsequent conquests of Islam, however, and the foundation of an Islamic empire stretching from South Arabia to Southern France and East Iran (a situation that offered opportunities for power and wealth to the family of the Prophet) the Ummayyads gave up their opposition, establishing themselves as caliphs first in Damascus and later in Cordova. Though the Ummayyads were related by blood to Mohammed, they had originally (in Mecca) opposed the new religion preached by the Prophet. These developments may illustrate some aspects of Ahad Ha-am’s distinction between Jewish “creative competition” and “destructive assimilation” or “imitation.” Implied in this discovery is an extremely intimate relation between emancipated Spanish Jews and the courtly culture of the Ummayyad caliphs of Cordova who ruled Spain from the 8th through the early 11th centuries. I have recently been able to prove that the earliest parts of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain’s most famous castle, are largely remnants of a palace built by the Jewish vizier Yehoseph ibn Nagralla as an expression of the quasi-messianic ambitions he had inherited from his father, the famous statesman, poet, and Talmudist, Samuel ha-Nagid. Indeed, Jewish participation in and competition with Moorish culture in Spain went even further than has generally been thought. There had been nothing in Jewish history quite like it since the Hellenistic period. The involvement of a Jewish intelligentsia-who observed their religion most devoutly-in the secular activities of Islamic Spain between the 9th and 11th centuries is, therefore, surprising. Medieval Jewry in general resigned from the cultural and even more so the political ambitions entertained by the Moslems and Christians. ![]()
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