Tariq Ali's Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree: A Khaldunian Study

Abstract

Tariq Ali's Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree is the postmodern retelling of what happened to the Muslim civilization in Spain and how the Muslims fell from their grandeur in a cyclic mode of rising and fall. Due to the lack of social solidarity (Asabiyyah) and weak civilization (Umran), the Nasrid Empire in Granada became weak and was overrun by the stronger Christian civilization. Ibn Khaldun's Cyclic Theory of the rise and fall of civilizations from his Muqaddimah is applied as a major theoretical perspective and two of his key concepts, Asabbiyah and Umran are also discussed with reference to Ali's work. Ali's metafiction combines politics as well as the poetics of the postmodern culture and shows the relevance of Khaldunian ideas to the current metamorphosis in the Muslim World. The study deconstructs the Eurocentric notions of Muslim history and finds the trajectory of cultural conflicts of Christian-Muslim civilizations.