María Rosa Menocal's wafting, ineffably sad The Ornament of the World tells of a time and place--from 786 to 1492, in Andalucía, Spain--that is largely and unjustly overshadowed in most historical chronicles. It was a time when three cultures--Judaic, Islamic, and Christian--forged a relatively stable (though occasionally contentious) coexistence. Such was this period that there remains in Toledo a church with an "homage to Arabic writing on its walls [and] a sumptuous 14th-century synagogue built to look like Granada's Alhambra." Long gone, however, is the Córdoba library--a thousand times larger than any other in Christian Europe. Menocal's history is one of palatine cities, of philosophers, of poets whose work inspired Chaucer and Boccaccio, of weeping fountains, breezy courtyards, and a long-running tolerance "profoundly rooted in the cultivation of the complexities, charms and challenges of contradictions," which ended with the repression of Judaism and Islam the same year Columbus sailed to the New World. --H. O'Billovich


From Library Journal
Menocal (R. Selden Rose Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and director of Special Programs in the Humanities, Yale Univ.) has previously published The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage, as well as other books on the role of the vernacular in medieval cultures. This book certainly reflects her deep scholarship. Menocal offers persuasive evidence that the Renaissance was strongly foreshadowed by the intellectual climate of Spain in the preceding centuries, starting in 783 with the founding of Andalusia by Abd al-Rahman, an Umayyad from Syria. The culture created was receptive to intellectual pursuits not allowed in the rest of Europe for several centuries, including the creation of impressive libraries and the study and translation of Classical authors. Menocal claims that this environment was largely a result of the tolerance shown by this ruler and his successors toward Christians and Jews and their cultures. Menocal has not given us a history book so much as a demonstration that puritanical cultures of any ilk are detrimental to the development of science, art, and literature. Her arguments are convincing even without the dark background of September 11. Recommended for all libraries.Clay Williams, Hunter Coll. Lib., New York Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
In the eighth century, the Abbasids took control of the Islamic empire from the once-powerful Umayyads. Abd al-Rahman, an Umayyad, fled to Spain and founded al-Andalus. There Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together in relative peace and equality for centuries. The Andalusian kingdom has been largely ignored by Western and Eastern historians alike, but Menocal argues persuasively that to see the Middle Ages through an Andalusian lens reveals no dark ages among them but instead "a whole series of golden ages." Indeed, from the rediscovery of Hebrew by Jews to translations of Plato and Aristotle, the Andalusians laid the groundwork for the Renaissance. The culture of tolerance slowly fell apart, of course, and has never really returned. Menocal displays a lavish sense of place that should be the envy of many novelists, telling an engaging story in detail without ever alienating the general reader. Her seductively written history serves as both a testament to past tolerance and the hope of a peaceful future. The lessons of Andalusian history surely have never been more timely. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Aportrait of the vibrant civilization of medieval Spain, The Ornament of the World is the story of an extraordinary place and time. Both history and literature often depict the Middle Ages as a dark and barbaric period, characterized by intellectual backwardness and religious persecution. Now Maria Rosa Menocal brings us an altogether different vision of medieval Europe, where tolerance was often the rule and literature, science, and art flourished in a climate of cultural openness. The story begins as a young prince in exile -- the last heir to a glorious Islamic dynasty -- flees the massacre of his family and founds a new kingdom on the Iberian peninsula: al-Andalus. Combining the best of what Muslims, Jews, and Christians had to offer, al-Andalus and its successors influenced the rest of Europe in dramatic ways, giving it the first translations of Plato and Aristotle, the tradition of love songs and secular poetry, advances in mathematics, and outstanding feats of architecture and technology.

In a series of captivating vignettes, Menocal travels through time and space to reveal the often paradoxical events that shaped the Andalusian world and continue to affect our own. Along the way, we meet a host of intriguing characters: the brilliant and dedicated Jewish vizier of a powerful Muslim city-state; the Christian abbot who commissions the first translation of the Quran; the converted Jew who, under a Christian name, brings a first taste of Arabic scholarship and storytelling to northern Europe. This rich and complex culture shared by the three faiths thrived, sometimes in the face of enmity and bigotry, for nearly seven hundred years. Ironically, it was on the eve of the Renaissance that puritanical forces finally triumphed over Spain's long-standing traditions of tolerance, ushering in a period of religious repression. In the centuries since, even the memory of the vital and sophisticated culture in which Muslims, Jews, and Christians once lived and worked side by side has largely been overlooked or obscured. In this remarkable book, we can at last uncover and explore the lost history whose legacy is still with us in countless ways and whose lessons -- both inspirational and cautionary -- have a powerful resonance in today's world.

SYNOPSIS

In this engaging and learned volume, Menocal (Spanish and Portuguese, Yale U.) recounts the remarkable, multi-cultural history of medieval Spain, when Muslims ruled much of the country and elevated standards of art and learning. The narrative is suitable for the general reader. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Miami Herald

...tells the story exceptionally well...a skillful history of...political history...

Wall Street Journal

...a lively read and gives us a fascination insight into the history of almost 800 years...

Booklist

...displays a lavish sense of place that should be the envy of many novelists...seductively written...

Washington Post Book World

...an affectin g portrait...a splendid account...the beauty lies in [Menocal's]...eye for the illuminating anectote...

Library Journal