AP/JWST 4803 6.00
Church, Mosque and Synagogue: Jews, Muslims and Christians in Medieval Spain
The Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula in 711 inaugurated a complex trireligious society that was to endure nearly eight hundred years (and more than eight centuries on the Muslim lunar calendar). This development has given rise to Spain’s designation as a “”land of three religions”” and Spain’s reputation as premodern western Europe’s foremost “”pluralist”” society. It has also made Spain, as compared with other European lands, a hard country for non-Spaniards to understand.
This course seeks to explore diverse facets of Jewish-Muslim-Christian convivencia (“”dwelling together””; coexistence), a topic that continues to be the object of attention for a range of scholars — and many beyond the academy who have found it pertinent to an understanding of our own age. The course focusses on religious, intellectual, and cultural contacts and their sociopsychological dynamics, placing these in various historical and at times (very partial) geographic, linguistic, political, economic, and technological contexts.
The course centers on written sources but does not wholly neglect iconography, music, and architecture. It stresses diverse perspectives within and across religious boundaries and at times forces us to ponder difficulties faced by scholars seeking to explain religious or religiously-linked phenomena (e.g., what actual human experience lies behind the metaphor of “”religious conversion””?). Methodologically, our enterprise emphasizes study of primary sources as the only way to arrive at a trustworthy model of convivencia. In the course of such study, attention is paid to peculiarities of genre, the frequent indeterminacy of evidence, and difficulties involved in formulating historical assessments.
RESERVED SPACES: All spaces reserved for Year 3 & 4 Humanities & Religious Studies and History Majors and Minors.
PRIOR TO FALL 2009: Course credit exclusions: AS/HUMA 4000V 6.00 (prior to Fall/Winter 2003-2004), AS/HUMA 4803 6.00.
Cross-listed to AP HIST 4225