Classics & Chaos: 'God's Crucible'

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (0)

IN HIS BOOK "God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe 570-1215," Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Levering Lewis makes Muslim Spain out to be a pretty sunshiny place — at least in comparison to what was happening on the other side of the Pyrenees.

During the height of the Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together in relative order and harmony among the tilled fields and water wheels of advanced civilization.

Meanwhile, over in France things were a little closer to "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" — filthy, feudal and over-reliant on bearskin as interior decoration.

But Lewis isn't out to disparage the Western world, or — as some reviews have maintained — insist that Europe would have been better off had the Muslims not stopped at the Pyrenees.

"I've been somewhat misrepresented in saying that I cheer on the Muslims and that I am sad that they didn't overrun Europe," explained the author. "It's really just a cost benefit evaluation of what happens."

According to Lewis, had the Muslims traveled over the Pyrenees and incorporated the territories that were to become Europe into their empire, it wouldn't have taken Europe so long "to pump itself up to the level of vibrancy and scientific progress," as the Muslim Empire.

"Denied the advantages of a superior civilization, it took three centuries longer to do so," said Lewis. "Also, it resulted in a kind of society that wasn't an entirely great result — one of feudalism, caste, religious intolerance and cultural retardation."

Luckily, the Muslims' presence on the Iberian Peninsula was enough to impart at least a few ideas that would be important as Europe's intellect began to awaken at the end of the Dark Ages.

"Al-Andalus was a conveyor belt that fed knowledge on the science and literature of classical antiquity — much enhanced by the Arabs themselves — into the new centers in Europe," said Lewis. "So the wisdom of Aristotle, Plato, Euclidean geometry — all of those things are worked over, much improved and changed. So that as Europe begins to awaken, it is awakening due to the Muslims' recuperation and enriching of classical knowledge. Soon you have [Thomas] Aquinas, who admits that much of his writings were in debt to Averroes [Ibn Rushd]."

Lewis closes his book in 1215, the moment at which Christians and Muslims finally clashed under the banner of religion — bringing the mingling of cultures to a full stop.

"Previously, the battles were not ideological," he said. "At the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, 60,000 Christians under the cross faced off with 100,000 Muslims under the crescent. It was won by the Christians in a terrific victory. After that, the contest would be along strict lines of confession of faith."

The final blow would be the Catholic Church's Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.

"Here, the nabobs of Christian Europe declared Islam a heresy, that all Jews must wear certain clothing and that all Christians that do not accept the established faith must be persecuted," said Lewis.

"At this point the clash of civilizations becomes self-fulfilling prophecy."

» Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW; Wed., 7 p.m., free; 202-364-1919. (Van Ness)

Written by Express contributor Aaron Leitko
Photo by Frank Stewart