The Arts of Intimacy. Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture by Jerrilynn D. Dodds et al

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 235 Jerrilynn D. Dodds, María Rosa Menocal and Abigail Krasner Balbale, The Arts of Intimacy. Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008. The subject of The Arts of Intimacy, a lavishly illustrated volume co-authored by three specialists of the Arabic-Islamic culture of the Iberian Peninsula, is the role cultural elements often identified as Islamic or, to a lesser extent, Jewish have played in Castile during the Muslim presence in al-Andalus. The authors’ intention is to present a ‘different narrative of cultural history’ (p. 7) in which the ‘lost memory of Castile’ becomes obvious and hybridity is revealed as a norm even though it was at least historically ideologically inconvenient. The aim is also to make recent research in the field more accessible to a wider audience. The inter-cultural dimension of the history of the Iberian Peninsula has been the subject of numerous publications. More recently, scholars have examined the ways in which this dimension has been described and raised a number of important methodological questions. How do we write the cultural history of a region which is an embodiment of cultural diversity and complexity? How to disentangle the different threads, if this should be done in the first place? How do we describe interactions between groups of the society or societies of a region in which collective identities and the relationships between different groups are overlapping and in constant flux? How do we deal with layers of history, some of them more, others less fictitious, which were interpreted and reinterpreted by generations of historiographers, litterateurs, propagandists and historians? Unpretentious versions of the history of the Iberian Peninsula have simple stories to tell: according to one of them, the region was an underdeveloped backwater which the Muslim conquerors of the eighth century with their sophisticated systems of irrigation turned into a paradisiacal garden. Their tolerant religion and enlightened spirit allowed them to create a peaceful and intellectually productive multi-religious society, and its achievements had a lasting impact on Western thought. The dream came to an end when the Christian reconquistadores conquered al-Andalus, expelled the Jews and Muslims and the Inquisition ended all forms of creative intellectual activity. Within such a framework, an equally simple account of cultural exchanges can be presented in which clearly delimited cultural elements are passed on from one clearly defined culture to another. Most stories of exchanges which happen as the result of cultural encounters are much more multi-faceted and involve an interplay of translation, transformation, creative appropriation, influences, etc. But are we still talking about the same element of literature, philosophy or architecture when it appears in a different context? The situation becomes even more complex when these 236 BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS developments take place against the backdrop of tense political relationships where today’s strong man may be tomorrow’s weak one, and it becomes more complex still if we take into consideration that the major players in the region changed their priorities and identities over time and were connected to others outside the region whose political strategies and agendas were also evolving over time. As is obvious from their preface and their frequent emphasis on the dynamic nature of cultures, the authors of The Arts of Intimacy are fully aware of all these difficulties. Their response to them is to tell on the one hand exemplary stories of cultural ‘exchanges’, and on the other hand to contextualize them within the wider framework of the political history of Castile and, to a certain extent, Muslim Spain. The book is divided into a preface and introduction, seven main chapters and appendices. The first chapter introduces the history of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslim conquests until the loss of Toledo with a special emphasis on coalitions transcending religious boundaries, as in the case of the Cid. In the second chapter, which discusses the urban splendour of Toledo, the authors present a whole kaleidoscope of 11th century marvels which the Castilians after 1085 were happy to make their own. Chapter 3 focuses on Christians under Muslim rule and how, because they had absorbed...