Challenge: The al-Andalus Experience

Abstract

This chapter deals with the way the experience of al-Andalus, Muslim Spain, is used in modern Arabic poetry as a vehicle to face the decline of the Arabs’ self-image and to challenge Western cultural hegemony. Since the nineteenth century, Arab poets have been invoking the image of al-Andalus in a conscious effort to highlight the benefits that Western civilization has gained through its interaction with Arab civilization—the al-Andalus experience is seen as an epitome of that interaction, the Arabs’ greatest and most enduring success on European soil. But even more so, when poets recall the cultural achievements of the Andalusian Arab heritage during nearly 800 years of Muslim rule, they do so to remind their audience that their present bitter state is only a transitory period, a temporary clouding of the skies between a glorious past and a splendid future. Inspired by nostalgia, the picture that most frequently appears in modern Arabic literary writings is that of al-Andalus as the “lost paradise” or “God’s paradise on earth.”