Entry 7: The Spain of El Cid
I started to write this entry about certain patterns that arose in Christian-Muslim relations during the middle ages. I wanted to argue that, if one compares the Christian-Muslim cohabitation of Spain to that of the Holy Land, one finds different political structures, but nearly identical social structures. In the Peninsula, the Caliphate waned in power, giving rise to the fractious taifas, which the Christians in the north exploited by offers of protection for vast sums of what was essentially tribute money. In the Holy Land, the Saracen and Christian rulers would, during the intermittent peacetimes, treaty with one another for the economic benefit afforded by such accords. While the states pressed ominously against one another's borders, vacillating between war and peace, the Christian and Muslim men and women, the ordinary people, continued to trade and work with one another, the only difference being that at one time or another, a different religion would rule.
And this is so.
But, the salient feature here is not these two peoples in these two instances in this particular period. Rather, what comes through is that the people, the individual men, women, and children know little of the greater political machine. As subjects of their king, emir, caliph, or count the vast majority of people seem to have lived simple lives, without the romance of great battles and upheavals. They seem to have gotten along with their neighbors, for the most part, regardless of which edition of The Book they followed.
Were it not so, the wars could not have gone on. This, I think, lends some irony to the situation. At the "lower" echelons of society Muslim and Christian worked side by side during the periods of Caliphate, taifa, and Kingdom, producing goods and services. At one point, Fletcher mentions the vast number of charges and bows Moorish factories could put out during the Caliphate of Cordoba - I wonder, how many of the factory workers were Christians and Jews? Given that the population was still, at this time, largely Christian (Hispano-Romans their predecessors, mostly, with some of the recently deposed Visigoths), it stands to reason that there were at least a fair number of Christians at the factories of the Caliphate. And therein lies the irony. It was peace between common men that allowed the wars of religion to take rage.
And so it is today.