Convivencia in Medieval Spain: The Christians, Jews, and Muslims of al-Andalus.

Catalog description

This course will examine the unique culture that flourished beginning in tenth-century Córdoba, al-Andalus (a name for medieval Spain), where Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived and worked together, greatly expanding human knowledge especially in agriculture, astronomy, medicine, and philosophy. Al-Andalus (also known as Sefarad by the Jewish community) was an Islamic society where Christians and Jews embraced classical tradition, salvaging Greek philosophy, to an unthinkable extent in the Christian West. Muslims, Christians, and Jews did not have separate cultures; rather the Muslim-ruled society practiced relative tolerance known as convivencia. We will analyze works by Maimonides, one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars, and Averroes, the unparalleled commentator on Aristotle, among others. We will also study the art and architecture of Córdoba, Granada, and Seville from the same period.