Ornament Of The World

Posted By J

http://www.amazon.com/Ornament-World-Christians-Tolerance-Medieval/dp/0316168718/sr=1-1/qid=1158375558/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-2114092-4768951?ie=UTF8&s=books

A fascinating book, part history, part (dramatized but true) story-telling, part lament. The author tells snippets of the history of medieval Spain describing the manner in which a world most of us have forgotten flourished in a fit of creative zeal and then vanished under the weight of internal and external intolerance and greed. Most in the West have forgotten that 1492 was the end of a golden era for the Arab/Islamic world and for Spain itself in favor of our rememberances of the new world and an era of gold. (Aside: reading "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" right after finishing this book was a fascinating exercise in "what ifs"). The book is a hard to put down page turner with fascinating stories of Arab-Ladino-Hebrew speaking Jewish warriors, self-Arabizing Norman kings, transmissions of knowledge across cultural boundaries in translation factories that were the envy of Europe and Baghdad, and numerous others.

Arabs and Muslims still look upon medieval Spain as a Golden Era painfully lost (often correlating the loss to the modern loss of Palestine). While many in the West may see this as some sort of latent threat, a read of this book will explain just why it was a Golden Era, how it was sharing and cultural exchange which enriched Spain and ultimately Europe, and how the downfall of that Golden Era bears great lessons that neither east nor west seems able to fully grasp to this day.