How to Interact With a Christian Family Member Living in Sin

Introduction

Islamic Kingdom of spain (711-1492)

The Courtroom of the Lions, Alhambra, Spain ©

Islamic Spain was a multi-cultural mix of the people of three keen monotheistic religions: Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

Although Christians and Jews lived nether restrictions, for much of the time the 3 groups managed to go along together, and to some extent, to benefit from the presence of each other.

It brought a caste of civilization to Europe that matched the heights of the Roman Empire and the Italian Renaissance.

Outline

In 711 Muslim forces invaded and in seven years conquered the Iberian peninsula.

It became one of the great Muslim civilisations; reaching its acme with the Umayyad caliphate of Cordovain the tenth century.

Muslim rule declined afterward that and ended in 1492 when Granada was conquered.

The heartland of Muslim rule was Southern Spain or Andulusia.

Periods

Muslim Spain was not a unmarried menses, but a succession of unlike rules.

• The Dependent Emirate (711-756)
• The Independent Emirate (756-929)
• The Caliphate (929-1031)
• The Almoravid Era (1031-1130)
• Decline (1130-1492)

Sound journeying

The Alhambra Palace, the finest surviving palace of Muslim Spain, is the beginning of a historical journeying in this audio feature, In the Footsteps of Muhammad: Granada.

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Conquest

The conquest

The traditional story is that in the year 711, an oppressed Christian chief, Julian, went to Musa ibn Nusair, the governor of Due north Africa, with a plea for aid confronting the tyrannical Visigoth ruler of Spain, Roderick.

Musa responded by sending the immature full general Tariq bin Ziyad with an army of 7000 troops. The name Gibraltar is derived from Jabal At-Tariq which is Arabic for 'Stone of Tariq' named later the place where the Muslim army landed.

The story of the appeal for aid is non universally accepted. In that location is no doubt that Tariq invaded Spain, but the reason for information technology may have more to do with the Muslim drive to enlarge their territory.

The Muslim army defeated the Visigoth army easily, and Roderick was killed in battle.

After the first victory, the Muslims conquered nigh of Kingdom of spain and Portugal with footling difficulty, and in fact with footling opposition. By 720 Spain was largely under Muslim (or Moorish, as it was chosen) control.

Reasons

One reason for the rapid Muslim success was the generous surrender terms that they offered the people, which contrasted with the harsh conditions imposed by the previous Visigoth rulers.

The ruling Islamic forces were made up of different nationalities, and many of the forces were converts with uncertain motivation, then the establishment of a coherent Muslim state was not easy.

Andalusia

The heartland of Muslim dominion was Southern Spain or Andulusia. The proper name Andalusia comes from the term Al-Andalus used by the Arabs, derived from the Vandals who had been settled in the region.

A Aureate Age

Stability

Stability in Muslim Spain came with the establishment of the Andalusian Umayyad dynasty, which lasted from 756 to 1031.

The credit goes to Amir Abd al-Rahman, who founded the Emirate of Cordoba, and was able to get the various different Muslim groups who had conquered Kingdom of spain to pull together in ruling information technology.

The Golden Age

The Muslim menses in Kingdom of spain is frequently described every bit a 'golden age' of learning where libraries, colleges, public baths were established and literature, poetry and architecture flourished. Both Muslims and non-Muslims fabricated major contributions to this flowering of culture.

A Gilded Age of religious tolerance?

Islamic Spain is sometimes described as a 'golden historic period' of religious and indigenous tolerance and interfaith harmony between Muslims, Christians and Jews.

Some historians believe this idea of a golden age is false and might pb modern readers to believe, wrongly, that Muslim Spain was tolerant by the standards of 21st century Britain.

The true position is more than complicated. The distinguished historian Bernard Lewis wrote that the status of not-Muslims in Islamic Spain was a sort of second-grade citizenship but he went on to say:

Second-course citizenship, though second grade, is a kind of citizenship. Information technology involves some rights, though not all, and is surely better than no rights at all...

...A recognized status, albeit ane of inferiority to the dominant group, which is established by law, recognized by tradition, and confirmed by pop assent, is not to exist despised.

Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, 1984

Life for non-Muslims in Islamic Spain

Jews and Christians did retain some freedom under Muslim rule, providing they obeyed certain rules. Although these rules would now exist considered completely unacceptable, they were not much of a burden by the standards of the time, and in many ways the non-Muslims of Islamic Spain (at least earlier 1050) were treated amend than conquered peoples might have expected during that menstruum of history.

• they were not forced to alive in ghettoes or other special locations
• they were not slaves
• they were not prevented from following their organized religion
• they were not forced to convert or dice under Muslim rule
• they were not banned from whatsoever detail ways of earning a living; they often took on jobs shunned by Muslims;
  • these included unpleasant work such every bit tanning and abattoir
  • merely also pleasant jobs such equally banking and dealing in gold and silver
• they could work in the civil service of the Islamic rulers
• Jews and Christians were able to contribute to order and culture

The culling view to the Gilt Age of Tolerance is that Jews and Christians were severely restricted in Muslim Spain, by being forced to live in a state of 'dhimmitude'. (A dhimmi is a non-Muslim living in an Islamic state who is not a slave, but does not accept the same rights equally a Muslim living in the same state.)

In Islamic Espana, Jews and Christians were tolerated if they:

• acknowledged Islamic superiority
• accustomed Islamic ability
• paid a tax called Jizya to the Muslim rulers and sometimes paid higher rates of other taxes
• avoided blasphemy
• did not endeavor to convert Muslims
• complied with the rules laid downwardly by the authorities. These included:
  • restrictions on clothing and the need to wear a special badge
  • restrictions on building synagogues and churches
  • not immune to carry weapons
  • could not receive an inheritance from a Muslim
  • could not bequeath anything to a Muslim
  • could not own a Muslim slave
  • a dhimmi homo could not ally a Muslim woman (merely the contrary was acceptable)
  • a dhimmi could non give evidence in an Islamic courtroom
  • dhimmis would become lower bounty than Muslims for the aforementioned injury

At times there were restrictions on practicing ane'south faith too obviously. Bell-ringing or chanting too loudly were frowned on and public processions were restricted.

Many Christians in Spain alloyed parts of the Muslim culture. Some learned Standard arabic, some adopted the same clothes equally their rulers (some Christian women even started wearing the veil); some took Arabic names. Christians who did this were known as Mozarabs.

The Muslim rulers didn't give their non-Muslim subjects equal status; equally Bat Ye'or has stated, the not-Muslims came definitely at the lesser of society.

Social club was sharply divided forth ethnic and religious lines, with the Arab tribes at the top of the hierarchy, followed by the Berbers who were never recognized as equals, despite their Islamization; lower in the scale came the mullawadun converts and, at the very bottom, the dhimmi Christians and Jews.

Bat Ye'or, Islam and Dhimmitude, 2002

The Muslims did not explicitly hate or persecute the non-Muslims. As Bernard Lewis puts it:

in contrast to Christian anti-Semitism, the Muslim mental attitude toward non-Muslims is one not of detest or fear or envy only only of contempt

Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, 1984

An example of this antipathy is constitute in this 12th century ruling:

A Muslim must not massage a Jew or a Christian nor throw away his refuse nor make clean his latrines. The Jew and the Christian are better fitted for such trades, since they are the trades of those who are vile.

twelfth Century ruling

Why were not-Muslims tolerated in Islamic Spain?

There were several reasons why the Muslim rulers tolerated rival faiths:

• Judaism and Christianity were monotheistic faiths, and then arguably their members were worshipping the aforementioned God
  • despite having some wayward behavior and practices, such equally the failure to have the significance of Muhammad and the Qur'an
• The Christians outnumbered the Muslims
  • so mass conversion or mass execution was not practical
  • outlawing or controlling the beliefs of so many people would have been massively expensive
• Bringing not-Muslims into government provided the rulers with administrators
  • who were loyal (because not attached to whatever of the various Muslim groups)
  • who could be easily disciplined or removed if the need arose. (One Emir went and so far every bit to take a Christian every bit the head of his bodyguard.)
• Passages in the Qur'an said that Christians and Jews should be tolerated if they obeyed certain rules

Oppression in later Islamic Spain

Non all the Muslim rulers of Espana were tolerant. Almanzor looted churches and imposed strict restrictions.

The position of non-Muslims in Spain deteriorated substantially from the middle of the 11th century every bit the rulers became more strict and Islam came under greater pressure from exterior.

Christians were not allowed taller houses than Muslims, could non employ Muslim servants, and had to give way to Muslims on the street.

Christians could not brandish any sign of their faith outside, not even carrying a Bible. In that location were persecutions and executions.

1 notorious event was a pogrom in Granada in 1066, and this was followed past further violence and bigotry every bit the Islamic empire itself came under pressure level.

Every bit the Islamic empire declined, and more than territory was taken back past Christian rulers, Muslims in Christian areas establish themselves facing similar restrictions to those they had formerly imposed on others.

Simply, on the whole, the lot of minority organized religion groups was to become worse afterward Islam was replaced in Spain by Christianity.

The Court of the Lions, Alhambra, Spain ©

At that place were also cultural alliances, particularly in the architecture - the 12 lions in the courtroom of Alhambra are heralds of Christian influences.

The mosque at Cordoba, at present converted to a cathedral is still, somewhat ironically, known as La Mezquita or literally, the mosque.

The mosque was begun at the end of the 8th century by the Ummayyad prince Abd al Rahman ibn Muawiyah.

Nether the reign of Abd al Rahman III (r. 912-961) Castilian Islam reached its greatest power as, every May, campaigns were launched towards the Christian frontier, this was also the cultural peak of Islamic civilisation in Kingdom of spain.

Cordoba

Cordoba

Mezquita mosque in Cordoba ©

In the 10th century, Cordoba, the capital of Umayyad Spain, was unrivalled in both Due east and the Due west for its wealth and culture. 1 writer wrote about Cordoba:

there were half a one thousand thousand inhabitants, living in 113,000 houses. In that location were 700 mosques and 300 public baths spread throughout the city and its xx-ane suburbs. The streets were paved and lit...There were bookshops and more than seventy libraries.

Muslim scholars served as a major link in bringing Greek philosophy, of which the Muslims had previously been the primary custodians, to Western Europe.

There were interchanges and alliances betwixt Muslim and Christian rulers such every bit the legendary Spanish warrior El-Cid, who fought both against and alongside Muslims.

Muslim, Jewish and Christian interaction

How did Muslims, Jews and Christians interact in practice? Was this period of apparent tolerance underpinned past a respect for each other'southward sacred texts? What led to the eventual plummet of Cordoba and Islamic Spain? And are we guilty of over-romanticising this period as a golden historic period of co-beingness?

3 contributors discuss these questions with Melvyn Bragg. They are: Tim Winter, a convert to Islam and lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University; Martin Palmer, an Anglican lay preacher and theologian and author of The Sacred History of U.k.; and Mehri Niknam, Executive Manager of the Maimonides Foundation, a joint Jewish-Muslim Interfaith Foundation in London.

Decline and fall

Decline and fall

Toledo fell to Christianity in 1085 ©

The plummet of Islamic rule in Spain was due not only to increasing aggression on the part of Christian states, merely to divisions amidst the Muslim rulers. The rot came from both the centre and the extremities.

Early in the eleventh century, the single Islamic Caliphate had shattered into a score of small kingdoms, ripe for picking-off. The starting time big Islamic centre to fall to Christianity was Toledo in 1085.

The Muslims replied with forces from Africa which under the general Yusuf bin Tashfin defeated the Christians resoundingly in 1086, and by 1102 had recaptured nearly of Andalusia. The general was able to reunite much of Muslim Spain.

Revival

It didn't last. Yusuf died in 1106, and, as one historian puts information technology, the "rulers of Muslim states began cutting each other's throats again".

Internal rebellions in 1144 and 1145 further shattered Islamic unity, and despite intermittent military successes, Islam'southward domination of Spain was ended for proficient.

The Muslims finally lost all ability in Spain in 1492. By 1502 the Christian rulers issued an guild requiring all Muslims to convert to Christianity, and when this didn't work, they imposed brutal restrictions on the remaining Spanish Muslims.

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Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/spain_1.shtml

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