>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> Welcome to the Library of Congress.
[Inaudible] My name is Jason Steinhauer
and I'm a Program Specialist for the John W. Kluge Center and the Office
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Now I'm going to turn it over to Mary Lou Reker
to start today's program.   [ Pause ]
>> Hello. My name is Mary Lou Reker and on behalf
of the Library's Office of Scholarly Programs
and the John W. Kluge Center, I welcome you to a talk
by Dr. Peter Wien entitled, " From the Glory of Conquest
to Paradise Lost: Al-Andalus in the Historical Consciousness."
So I want to ask you to please make sure your phones are off
so there's no extraneous sounds during the lecture.
And of course to thank the John W. Kluge family
for their support of all of our programs.
Dr. Peter Wien received his Ph.D. in Islamic studies in 2003
from the University of Bonn in Germany and his master's degree
in 2000 from the University of Oxford in Great Britain.
Dr. Wien, is an Associate Professor of Middle Eastern History
at the University of Maryland in College Park.
And previously, he taught at Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane,
Morocco and was a Fellow of the Centre
for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin.
In 2006, Routledge press published his book Iraqi Arab Nationalism,
Authoritarian, Totalitarian
and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932 to 1941.
And his articles have appeared
in various international journals concerning modern history
in Middle Eastern Studies.
Dr. Wien's research interests are on the role of cultures, of nationalism
and religion in the transformation of modern Arab States and societies.
And as a Kluge Fellow, he's been working on a cultural history
of Arab Nationalism during the late 19th and 20th centuries.
Please help me welcome him today, Dr. Peter Wien.
[ Applause ]   >> All right.
Thank you very much for coming out here today.
I'm slightly nervous about this talk because it's the first time
that I'm presenting this topic in a public venue like this.
So I stand you to be corrected.
If there are any things that are not sound, at this point
or especially at, because I think there might also a few Hispanist
in this room which I am not.
But let me start by thanking first of all the Kluge Center
for giving me the opportunity in the past half year
or so to work here on a book project.
Epecially, I would like over thank, Mary Lou, Mary Lou Reker which is,
we'll see you at this pulpit and also the director
of the Center Carolyn Brown.
But of course also my fellows at the Kluge Center
which with whom I had very lovely discussions.
I would also like to thank the librarians and the stuff
of the African and Middle East division reading room here
at the Library of Congress.
And for not only half year but many years of support
in this wonderful institution.
I think it's a unique collection in the reading room.
And last but not the least, I would like to thank my intern
and research assistant, Bauch A. Bastuck, he's been sitting over here
for his invaluable support during my research here.
So what I'm presenting today is basic chapter
of a book that I'm writing.
And the title of this book will be Arab Nationalism:
The Politics of History and Culture in the Modern Middle East
which is a presentation of cultural manifestations of Arab Nationalism.
So let me go right into the topic that's still here.
So I have to, I should take I away.   I hope this helps.
No it doesn't.
Okay. All right, good.   Okay. [Inaudible] Okay.
Al-Andalus is a geographic name and a historical location.
It is the Arabic reference to present day in Andalusia
as a political subdivision of the Kingdom of Spain
but it is also the name that Arabs gave
to the Iberian Peninsula during the period of Muslim-Spanish rule
from 711 to 1492 of the common era and I should say
that all the dates the I'm giving
in this talk are according to the common era.
Al-Andalus is however also an imaginary space,
a reference in collective memory in a great number
of cultural contexts ranging from references in western poetry,
opera and film over Arab literary and musical genres
to unfortunately also references in the diatribes
of present day Islam is terrorists.
In the eyes of many, it is a symbol for a magnificent
and opulent culture, fine architectural achievements,
lush gardens and grant intellectual achievement.
And the term "convivencia" is a synonym for a cultural
and for a culture of fruitful coexistence and cooperation
between Muslims, Christians and Jews in medieval Al-Andalus
which has become a tapas of nostalgic reference
to the potentials of religious tolerance among promoters
of dialogue between the three religions with a healthy dose
of orientalist imagination and kitsch.
Radical voices however also claim their share in the Al-Andalus myth.
After the 2003 terror attacks in Madrid,
a Spanish Prime Minister Aznar evoked historical memory
of Spanish resistance against the Muslim conquest
in 711 turning the country rhetorically into a battle ground
in the clash of civilizations.
For Muslim fanatics on the other hand, the Reconquista of Spain
for Christian rule completed in 1492 remains a powerful symbol
in propaganda calling for a role back of Christian rule in order
to achieve ultimate victory for fundamentalist Islam.
Al-Andalus has diverse meanings as a Tapas
in a trans-local Arab identity based on cultural memory.
I explored two trajectories of this cultural meaning in my inquiry.
The one-- the first one is the Glory of Conquest which is an analysis
of the perseverance of a particular literary tapas in Arabic literature.
And the second is the permanent exile from The Lost Paradise
which looks at Arabic literature as a depository
of nostalgic references reaching back to the glory days
of Arab-Muslims civilization in Al-Andalus.
Nostalgia takes on its literal meaning in this context.
The Greek term nostalgia which is home sickness.
The longing for the deserted mother land,
its commemoration constitutes a shared Arab cultural heritage
evoking two principal emotions, pride and longing that are
at the heart of an invention of tradition.
So for the sake of a stringent narrative here, I reverse the order
of these two trajectories.
I've speak first about Paradise Lost and then about the Glory of Conquest
and you'll find out later and why that makes sense.
Plus, you know, this inquiry leaves out one or another crucial element
of Al-Andalus as a realm of memory which is music, Andalusian music
which is something that would be an entirely different talk
which I cannot cover here.
References to paradise were common in the context of Al-Andalus.
In 1936, the eminent Arab nationalist
in transcultural intellectual Shakib Arslan who lived
from 1869 to1946 published a book based
on his experiences during a journey in Spain
that he undertook throughout 1930,
the type of the book you seen on the slide.
He characterized the book and its subtitle
as an Andalusian Encyclopedia which encloses everything
that came off this Lost Paradise.   Arslan was an influential politician
and an accomplished poet before World War I but spent most
of the interwar period as a political exile in Geneva
where he became a self-declared representative
of the Arab nationalist course at the League of Nations
and an influential voice
in Arab nationalist discourse throughout the Arab world.
His book, Al-Halal al-Sundusyeh has received little attention amongst
his work.
It was published in Cairo from 1936 to 1939 in three volumes.
In volume 3, Arslan laid out his plan to publish
up to ten volumes altogether that were
to cover his own impressions doing his journey in Spain combined
with reports about Arab scholars who emerged from the places,
who had emerged from or the places he visited during the period
of Muslim rule.
And two, in subsequent volumes history of Islamic Spain
from the conquest to the Reconquista concluding the history
of the Morescos'.
It was peculiar approach that he took and one that Arslan shared
with other Arab Muslim travelers in Spain
that had preceded him or followed him.
So the approach to evaluate the country in a nostalgic manner
with little regard to the post Muslim period.
Arslan takes his readers on a tour of collective imagination.
A photo with Dorin's page one of volume I of the book.
I think this photos here on the slide, and the caption reads image
of the author in front of the Mosque of Cordoba.
Arslan sits in front of the characteristic forest of columns
that makes the Mezquita and Cordoba a monument of world heritage today.
His posture, the clothes he wore, and the accessories
that are visible formed a quite a eclectic ensemble.
All together, they represent a vague orientalness.
The turban, the rope, the ledger of a tea ceremony,
and about all these elements are not part
of an identifiable regional national style.
Let's have a closer look at the background of the image.
Arslan seems to be posing as an Arab inside the Mezquita.
But should the wording
of the caption then not be inside the Mosque of Cordoba.
So instead of a mama infront
of Fidakhel [phonetic] inside the Mosque of Cordoba.
The background while perfectly exact in terms of perspective
in vanishing point has a certain artificial flatness
to it as if painted.
A comparison with the actual architecture of the Mezquita,
which you make, you can see a few impressions of it here.
Reveals that the axis of the gaze of the camera
in the photo would have produced an unobstructed view
through a straight line of arches instead of what actually,
we can actually see on the photo here.
So, because the columns in the Mezquita actually stand in line
and are not staggered as the photo suggests.
The astounding visual impression of standing in a forest
of columns only comes about when the [inaudible] reviews the columns
at an angle.
Moreover, the only place, or the particular shape of the columns
that we see on the photo can be found
in the Mezquita is the entrance to the Capilla de Villaviciosa
which is close to the old Mihrab of the mosque.
This Capilla however which we can see an image of here has steps
that lead to the entrance or if the angle of you would be reversible,
we would see something like a view that we have here
on the bottom here, a view towards the Mihrab.
So what's comes out of this is that, the particular prospective
of Arslan's photo is impossible in the Mezquita.
And therefore, the picture must have been taken in a photo studio
of the kind that is popular in many tourist locations into nationally
where photographers offer to take pictures in period costumes in front
of historical background of choice.
Like for instance, an American visitor
to Colonial Williamsburg would have taken a picture of himself
with the wick and the front coat and to capture an image
for a nostalgic identification with national history.
For Arslan, placing himself in an artificial oriental setting meant
that he, the oriental, created his own orientalist Arab
Andalusian imaginary.
Images in Geneva show Arslan normally in suit and tie
as a respectable spokesperson of Arab modernity.
The fact that he submitted himself to the rules
of the paradigmatic western gaze
as a stereotypical Arab was evidently not in mere hopes
for Arslan, a tourist, but he chose it to introduce, and he chose it
on purpose to introduce as a luminous image to Al-Andalus
as the lost paradise of the Arabs.
The choice-- it was however, his choice is well not to reveal
to his Arab readers that the setting of this picture was fake
which throws light on the entanglement
between the authenticity of the place, the Mezquita and Cordoba,
its position in a historical narrative and its central position
in an identity shaping imaginary.
Arslan's Al-Andalus was as rightfully claimed by Arabs as part
of a common heritage as it was invented
by European orientalist poets and scholars,
and both their prospectives are intertwined.
References to Al-Andalus were also statements
in the competition between East and West.
In 1913, the eminent Egyptian poet, Ahmed Shawqi and I will say more
about him later wrote a poem on the occasion of the fall of Ethernet,
ancient Adrianople to Bulgarian troops
in 1913 during the first Balkan war.
Which he called the poem, which he called Al-Andalus Al Jadida,
the New Al-Andalus.
And I have to say that in order to understand this, we have to be aware
that Shawqi at the time before World War I was an Ottoman patriot
influence by the Arab cultural revival of his time.
He promoted Muslim unity, but with a strong Arab cultural reference.
And this was part of widespread
that stands among Arab intellectuals at the time.
For Shawqi, Ethernet was the new Andalus
because of the role it had played at the history of the Ottoman empire
as a short lift capital from 1413 until 1458 on European ground
and as a burial place for a number of Ottoman sultans.
For Shawqi, Ethernet was the new Andalus
because its fall was a repetition of the Fall of Granada.
Addressing a personified Ethernet, Shawqi lamented in the first stanza
of his poem, "Oh sister of Andalus, peace be with you.
The Caliphate has fallen from you and so has Islam.
The crescent fell from the sky.
Two wombs continue to bear down the true motherlands."
In a footnote to this poem, the editor of this poem explained
that Ethernet and Al-Andalus were the two wombs
of the motherlands were those of the Arabs
of the Turks combined under Ottoman rule.
I move now to the first major part of my talk which is
about Arab travelers in Spain.   Do this, I have a map here.
It represents Spain in the year 1030 during the period of rule
of the taifa kings in Muslim Spain.
After the Fall of Granada in 1492 and the expulsion of the Morescos
from Spain in 1609, there were only few Muslims who had--
who set foot on the Iberian Peninsula.
Knowledge of Al-Andalus survived as historiography such as death
of the great historian of Muslim Spain,
Ahmad ibn Mohammed Al-Maqqari whose
"Nafh at-tib min gusn Al-Andalus all right-ratib," his major work as one
of the major Arabic sources about the country during the Muslim period
because its author compiled a vast amount of information taken
from texts that in many cases are no longer extent today.
The Reconquista cut the physical bond between the Iberian Peninsula
and the rest of the Muslim World.   Muslims who traveled to Spain
up to the 19th century travel to enemy territory.
And those who left written records
of their journeys were generally either Moroccan
or Ottoman Ambassadors.
Records of such travels reveal little to nothing in terms
of identification with Spain as a cultural realm.
Visitors exhibited a lofty destained for Christians
and [inaudible] the perceived desecration of former Muslim places
of worship like the Mezquita of Cordoba.
New perceptions emerged in the late 19th century in the context
of the Arab culture arrival, the so-called naphtha.
And this was a move to cultural identification.
The Egyptian intellectual, Ahmed Zaki embarked on a journey to Spain
from late 1892 to early 1893.
His trip resulted in a change of paradigm
in the Arab reception of Al-Andalus.
Zaki was a literary figure, a bibliophile
and Egyptian government official as well as a confident
of Khedive Abbas II, the Egyptian monarch who sponsored the journey.
He played a leading role in the publications
of classical Arabic texts in Egypt.
Zaki was the first to publicize his travel in a grand framework at first
in Egyptian daily Al-Ahram and then as a widely read book.
He was also the first to be part from broad Muslim point
of view moving to an Arab Egyptian one.
This actual destination of his trip was London to participate
in the 9th orientalist congress but he dedicated almost three months
of his journey to the Iberian Peninsula.
And as he report about the journey, Zaki addressed his readers no longer
as co-religionist as others have done but his compatriots.
For Zaki, Egypt and Al-Andalus were inseparably linked
through civilization.
He once referred to Iberia as the second Arabian Peninsula.
His references to the path were no longer about religion
but about ethnic identity and civilization.
Science was a lead topic of his thought,
and Spain in this context represented the past glory
of Arab science.
Zaki reported about Spain through a prism to the effect
that he hardly took notice
of the post Reconquista achievements of Spanish culture.
Visiting monuments of Spain's heritage such as cathedrals
and museums on the trip, he only noticed the remnants of an Arab past
but refused to take in the beauty of the monuments as a whole.
Al-Maqqari's Nafh al-Tib was his travel companion.
If Zaki's account established an original paradigm
for the historical narrative that all following Arab travelers used
and referred to in their travel laws.
He denounce the intolerance of the Christian rulers of,
after the Reconquista writing that Muslims had respected religion law
and prosperity of the people after their initial conquest.
But he also wrote about the modern Spaniards who received him
with great warmth and hospitality, but he also wrote
that they retained many institutions but also numerous traits
of the Arab characters such as dignity,
hospitality, and faithfulness.
As for all other Arab travelers that I have used in my research,
the climax of Zaki's experience in Spain was his visit
to the Mezquita in Cordoba.
Like for most others, it was a place that proplexed and confused him.
Zaki remarked that he could not imagined any place of worship
of whatever religion being a more perfect rendering
of human religious humility.
In contrast to early Muslim visitors,
he viewed the Mezquita as a Muslim space.
He did not-- or let me start the sentence again.
In contrast to early Muslim visitors who viewed the Mezquita
as a Muslim space emaculated by the Christian take over,
Zaki detached it from its mere function as a mosque and viewed it
as Islam's contribution to world civilization.
And the fact that the mosque had been turned
into a cathedral was worth a half sentence to him only.
And he remarked that he had not altered its general characteristic.
Zaki in his report made a queer distinction between Arab
and Spanish civilization.
He didn't even mentioned the Berbers in his book.
He ignored that Muslim's rule
in Spain had created a very hybrid culture in effect.
So, but by ignoring this, he made it easy for Arab travelers
that follow him to claim Andalusian civilization for themselves
as an Arab civilization instead of accepting it
as something peculiar in its own sense.
Zaki's account clearly left an impression among his contemporaries.
He was praised in the present published in various editions.
But in all accounts, the most prominent and most influential visit
to Spain was death of Ahmed Shawqi, Egypt's prince of poets.
Shawqi had been court poet for two Egyptian monarchs;
the Khedive Tawfiq and Abbas up 'till 1914.
After the letter is force abdication at the outbreak of World War I
and after publishing a poem criticizing the British,
the British advised Shawqi to seek exile in a neutral country.
He opted for Spain for no other reason but the effect that Barcelona
where he spends the greater part of his exile from 1915
to 1919 was the major Mediterranean port of the country.
And therefore, offered quick access to an eventual passage back home.
Al-Andalus had not been a prominent topic
of Shawqi's panegyric poetry prior to his exile.
A rare, if not the only occurrence is the Ethernet poem
that I quoted above.   Shawqi had been an Ottoman patriot
above all else before his Spanish exile.
That he stay, and the trip he undertook to Andalusia
in late 1918 changed Shawqi's vision of the country
and his general intellectual trajectory.
Today, Shawqi's work is considered crucial in bringing
about the Al-Andalus revival in Arab culture that is
because he was instrumental in the revival
of medieval Andalusian poetic forms for neoclassical Arabic poetry.
In Spain, he started to copy and to borrow rhyme schemes and meter
from classical Andalusian poetry thus
for shadowing a romantic reconstruction
of an ancient literary Al-Andalus.
This reconstruction reach his fulfillment in his long poem,
a Rihla ilal Al-Andalus, The Journey to Al-Andalus
which combines a description of his longing for Egypt was an account
of his trip to Al-Andalus.
He explained in the introduction to this poem that he traveled
to Al-Andalus in two modes.
Like a visitor who strolled from monument to monument in awe,
but also with poets of medieval Al-Andalus in his company.
Shawqi's descriptions of the monuments he saw,
in particular the Mezquita and the Alhambra present the author
in a dream-like state evoking the times of Andalusian splendor.
In one verse, for example, he alluded to an adorned case
in the famous prayer niche, the Miharab of the Mezquita
that according to legend enshrined several pages
of a Qur'an handwritten by the third Caliph Usman.
Shawqi wrote,"The place of the book emits for you a perfume of rose,
though it is empty and you draw close to touch."
His approach was different than that of previous visitors.
He had no concern for the present day or the perceived desecration
of the place by Christians but you reinvented them
as vehicles for his imagination.
Informed by his readings on Islamic history and literature,
invoking a deep melancholy over times past.
The last verse of the poem is a summary lesson addressing Shawqi's
fellow Egyptians.
"If you have lost regard for the past,
then you are lost to consolation."
Shawqi's poems were crucial in triggering a broad interest
in a distinctively Arab Andalusian past as living history.
They have become part of the repertoire of motives that poets
and novelists would use up until today.
And most importantly, they have become part
of school curricula throughout the Arab worlds and many
of his poems actually have been turned into song, popular song.
For Shawqi himself, they were a vehicle to express the pain of exile
and the longing for a better place either
in a different location or in a different era.
Above all, the reinvention of Al-Andalus
as a lost paradise was a means
to create a chronological trajectory of eternity.
Visions of paradise always imply lost and eviction too.
But they also refer to longing for the return to paradise.
And therefore, are a promise of redemption
and reinstallation into form a grander.
Al-Andalus does establishes a reversed chronological order.
Eviction from paradise is the end of the story and at the same time,
the beginning of a permanent exile, setting the stage
for the current state of longing at nostalgia.
To create the new Al-Andalus and for most Arabs except some phonetics,
this can only be an imaginary Al-Andalus.
Arabs would have to follow a reversed root back to the beginnings
in the glory of conquest.
Shawqi inserted this message of hope for restitution of strength
and superiority in his
of aforementioned, Ederina [phonetic] poem.
In the following verse.
Time poses to you a standpoint like the one that Tariq took.
"Desperation is in the back and hope is before you.
Patience and fearlessness were in him and they became deadly weapons
but even deadlier is not to have them."
This verse is a reference to the legendary speech
that Tariq ibn Ziyad gave after he led an Arab-Berber Army
across the straights of Gibraltar
in 711 before he defeated King Roderick,
the last king of Visigothic Spain in the Battle of Guadalete.
The speech is one of the most prominent textual litigious
of the early Islamic conquests.
According to a widely accepted tradition,
Tariq ordered to burn the ships that the Muslim Army had used
to cross the straits to show his soldiers that the decision
for conquest and battle was irreversible
and retreat was no option.
The original line according to Al-Maqqari was,
"Oh people, where is the escape?
The sea is behind you and the enemy before you.
And by God, you have nothing left but confidence and patience."
Shawqi's verses therefore not only alluded
to a popular historical account but also to the motives of patience
and self assertion, as crucial virtues in the faith
of overwhelming enemy force.
The historical record of the Muslim conquest of Spain is complex.
The first Arab accounts which are extent the age to the 9th century.
There's considerable controversy as to the details of Tariq's biography
and these actual circumstances of his conquest.
The question that was standing of the story is myth or fact,
Tariq ibn Ziyad's speech of the burning the ships is a main stay
of not only Arab but generally Muslim belligerent rhetoric
until today.
It features almost identically, in all modern Arab versions
of the story of the conquest.
References to Tariq's speech and in particular,
the code of interest appear early in the Arabic tradition.
Today, Tariq speech has become a central element
of modern fictional renderings of the conquest of Al-Andalus story.
It appeared in a play that the poet
for Ad Al-Khatib [phonetic] published in 1931 in Amman
under the title Fath al-Andalus, the conquest of Al-Andalus.
And Al-Khatib was a prominent neoclassicist poet
and Arab nationalist politician at his time,
but today, he's largely forgotten.
The reason why I mentioned him here is
that he plays an important role in my book all together.
Not only Al-Khatib's usage of rhyme [inaudible] demand
at certain adaptations of the original version of the speech
but there are also modifications ought
to the author's Arab nationalist agenda.
Al-Khatib cites that the problem of the Berber ethnicity
of Tariq's soldiers and Tariq himself
by simply turning them into Arabs.
The line, "Oh people, where is the escape?"
becomes an Al-Khatib's rendering "Where, oh,
you my people is the escape?"
and the term he uses for "my people" is Arabic [foreign language].
The audience of Al-Khatib's play would've unmistakably interpreted
this term in a nationalist sense as meaning "my nation" or according
to customary usage at the time.
The speech is given at a crucial moment of the play right after Tariq
and his army entered the scene and right before the start,
the start of the battle the dynomo of the entire play.
The line is therefore a rallying call, and Al-Khatib put the answer
that he would have deemed appropriate
into the enthusiastic reply
of Tariq's army onstage, "Here we are, we Arabs.
We are the swords that's trimmed."
But therefore, it seems peculiar that Al-Khatib assigned plenty
of room in his play to non-Arab, Visigothic characters inspite
of his own Arab nationalist inclination of the role
that the Al-Andalus myth played as a signifier
for a nostalgic feelings of past Arab glory.
Two of these characters are Count Julian, a nobleman, advised region
of the North African enclaved Septa modern day Spanish Feuta [phonetic]
and his daughter Florinda, by these names.
Count Julian plays an important role
in the Arab historiographical tradition about the conquest
of Al-Andalus because he is set to be one,
to be the one who provided the ships for the passage of Tariq's army
to cross the straits of Gibraltar.
He makes an appearance in the early chronicle by Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam
which is also the first extent record of a tapas of abused treason
and revenge in the story of the conquest of Al-Andalus
that has become-- that has come
to play a central role in various traditions.
The tapas evolves around Count Julian who is called Julian
in Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam's account and he's the [inaudible] of Septa
and some vessel of King Roderick
who in Arabic's called Ludrick [phonetic] who resided in Toledo.
Julian had sent his daughter who remains nameless
in Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam's chronicle, to Ludrick for education.
The king took advantage of the situation and raped her.
When Julian learned of this,
he set that he could not see another punishment
but to send the Arabs upon this king.
It was then Julian who became proactive and entered
into an alliance with Tariq and to provide him
with transportation across the straits.
This is not the place for an exhaustive genealogy of Count Julian
of this-- a Count Julian tradition, Arabic throughout the centuries
which constitutes a continuous chain of transmission
that arguably reached into the 19th and 20th centuries.
There is however no trace of the name Florinda that Al-Khatib used
for Julian' daughter in any other Arabic source that I know of up
until the end of the 19th century.
Neither does it occur in what was arguably the first rendering
of the story as a political activist drama which is--
Mustafa Kamil's 1893 play Fath al-Andalus.
Kamil was 19 years old when he wrote the play, he's widely considered
to be the founder of the Egyptian nationalist movement,
very important figure in modern Egyptian history.
But I have no time here to go further into his play.
What I would like to say though is that, Kamil only glanced
over the Count Julian and Florinda story and did not give a name,
did not mention the name Florinda for the daughter of Count Julian.
It is therefore arguable that the name Florinda appeared
for the first time in Jurji Zaydan's 1903 novel Fath al-Andalus
which is-which was its induction into the realm
of Arab nationalist popular culture.
The influence of Zaydan as a historian and popularizer of history
in the Arab, is not broader Muslim world can hardly be overstated.
His historical novels continue to appear
in countless new editions until today.
They have been translated into languages as far as Indonesia.
Reading Zaydan's novels initiated many Arabic speakers
to a popular historical consciousness.
And some of us who were in this room today probably also attended a
conference that was held in his honor
in this very room several weeks ago.   And this novel was mentioned too.
Jurji Zaydan published 21 historical novels between 1819,
1891 and his death in 1940-- in 1914.
Fath al-Andalus presents Zaydan's typical approach
to writing history combining historical accounts with fiction
and love and suspense stories all based
in meticulous research expressed in numerous footnotes
to increase the appearance of scholarly, authority,
and also adding a bibliography of sources.
Zaydan gets a long way to uphold the impression that hardly anything
in his novels is a matter
of mere fiction including the heroes of the novels.
And at the same time, Fath al-Andalus is ard
with the first appearance of the name Florinda in an Arabic text.
Another central element of Zaydan's story is also entirely absent
from the tradition in the Arabic language historiography
which is the love story between Florinda,
the daughter of Count Julian, and Alfonso,
the son of the former Visigothic King Wittiza,
that had been ousted by King Roderick.
Which was actually a central part of the plot.
Zaydan relate on both Arab tradition in numerous western sources
but he must have taken a great deal
of inspiration form the European literary tradition as well
as especially Spanish mythology as conferred by romantic poetry.
Which is a source that he very often used for his novels
but never give credit to in his-- at least not in this novel.
To be sure, Zaydan's novels were no mere translations or compilations
of various Arabic or European lines of tradition.
He used the historical record to comment on themes that were
of a very present concern to him.
In contrast to Al-Khatib, the Goths were not vile foreigners to him
but promoters of some sort of liberalism.
He came and we have to acknowledge of about 30 years before Al-Khatib.
He saw some resemblance between the Goths and the Arabs,
both of whom had been conquerors
of Roman territory sharing the roughness of a nomadic mentality.
The Arabs however had managed to build a new civilization
on the Romes-- of Roman civilization
and that turned the nations they subjugated into a single nation
with one language which the Goths had never managed.
This appeal to civilization and unity based on a shared language
which was also reassurance
that Arab-Muslim civilization was stronger than that of the Goths.
Both those shared the legacy of Roman civilization
which in turn also bound them to Europe.
The mistake of the Goths is that they emphasized was
that they had not been able to control Roman
or we could say Western cultural hegemony.
In the novel, Bishop Oppas
who is Alfonso's uncle personifies this conflict.
He's an example of integrity but also a decedent who gets
into serious conflict with King Roderick.
In one scene, Oppas [inaudible] about the shift from Arianism
to Catholicism as the official religion of the kingdom
of the Visigoths brought about the loss of unity.
Under Arianism, there had been a separation of church and state
which Catholicism no longer respected.
All together, Arianism had been closer to reason
than all other Christian religions according to Zaydan.
With Oppas as a mouthpiece,
Zaydan argued for optimum imperial unity based on a common civilization
which was in turn based on religion moderated by reason.
The second banned for a community however was language
which was closely connected to religion and for Oppas,
the adoption of Catholicism and thus the growing influence
of the Romans among the bishops had resulted to in a loss
of importance for the Gothic language.
In this discussion, Zaydan expressed once more the arguably,
uneasy coexistence between loyalty to the state which was for Zaydan,
the optimum empire based on inherited bonds of religion
which he, as a Christian author accept it.
Combined with a strong sense for a civilization and unity
that added language to religious heritage.
And for Zaydan, this was without a doubt the Arabic language.
Zaydan's adaptation of European literary [inaudible] provided
arguments in domestic intellectual and political debates.
And in those debates of his optimum Arab environment.
Zaydan was certainly familiar with the Arabic tradition of the conquest
of Al-Andalus, yet his set of characters relies heavily
on a parallel European line of tradition
that developed throughout the middle ages until the 20 century.
Indeed, it has been argued that the story of the conquest of Al-Andalus,
and in particular, the part of it that evolves around King Roderick,
Count Julian and his daughter Florinda constitute a foundational
myth and lead tapas of the literature
of the modern Spanish nation the myth of La Cava,
or in another name Florinda and her illicit relationship
with King Roderick, the Spanish Rodrigo with is a story
of seduction, sexual morality and the correlation
between individual misbehavior
and the larger dynamics of faith and providence.
For Arab-Muslin chronicles, the conquest of Al-Andalus was
but one story in a long line of glorious conquest
and triumphs over Christianity.
And the story of the raped of Count Julian's daughter fulfilled the
narrative function to really find denigrate the opponents
as morally corrupt.
For Christian authors, it was exactly the other way around.
And Roderick's rape became one of the most persistent literary motives
of Christian Spanish literature because it provided an explanation
for the catastrophe of the Muslim conquerors as a punishment from God.
It came for the first time in Latin chronicles of the 11th century
and then moved into versions
in the Spanish word vernacular in the 13th century.
The names, and these that are so important in this line
of traditions first, La Cava came up in the medieval period too first
as Al-La Cava, and later turned into La Cava.
And then in the 16th century
with the book La verdadera historia del rey Don Rodrigo
by Miguel de Luna who introduced the name Florinda.
And so it is probably his brain child, the name Florinda.
In the further course of the transmission of this mythology
which then spread into the entire European realm
as a material for literary production.
And so in the further distribution of this myth Arabs and Berbers cease
to play a significant role if not a role at all.
The story became rather an example or a symbol for the consequence
of lust and like a virtue.
It's appeared in Spanish ballets and Romanceros of the 18th
and 17th century Lope de Vega brought it to the stage and fur--
in the 17th century the English dramatist William Rowley rendered
George Frederick Handel the composer and turned the Florinda
and Roderick myth into his opera Rodrigo
which was first performed in Florence in 1707.
Handel's version is based on a libretto by Francesco Sylvani
which likes all references to Muslims or there conquest of Spain.
While that's an almost unrecognizable version of the myth
of the conquest of Al-Andalus had entered the European cannon
of the arts, it is more likely how Jurji Zaydan actually took his
inspiration from works by English romantic poets such as Walter Scott,
Walter Savage Landor and Robert Sauti who wrote about the myth
in the early 19th century.
There are many more references that I cannot go into here.
I just mentioned 20 centuries Spanish novelist
and [inaudible] file Juan Bartisolo [phonetic] or a musical production
that was put in stage in London in 2000 based on a 1977 novel
and script by Dana Broccoli was actually the wife
of James Bond film produce by Albert R. Broccoli.
One would be hard press to accept the various parallels
in narrative lines and names of characters as clear lines
of transmission for the various motives in Zaydan's novel.
At the end of the day, Zaydan's novel remains a fictional account
in which several sources that he used,
that he used as an inspiration flow together.
Had you relied slavishly on his sources,
the novel would have become a much less compelling story.
This nevertheless, nevertheless less highly arguable
that Fath al-Andalus became the wood text
of the modern day's tendered story line
of the conquest of Al-Andalus myth.
Was contemporary Arab renderings of the story concentrate
on Tariq ibn Ziyad as one of the great heroes of Islamic history.
Placed with Al-Andalus references were popular
on stages throughout the Arab world in the interwar period.
And books for youth present Tariq ibn Ziyad as one
of various Arab and Muslim heroes today.
And appearances of Florinda
and Count Julian are ubiquitous in these novels.
There's also another example which I unfortunate won't have the time
to go into in that period which is a cartoon film that came,
that was produced in Saudi Arabia probably in the 1990s or 2000.
I could not identify the exact date and which is basically a rendering
of the Jurji Zaydan's novel in film.
To conclude, literature and poetry are only one facet
of the construction of Al-Andalus as a collective Arab realm of memory.
It signifies a glorious past of harmony and wisdom
but also the superiority of civilization.
Lines of transmission of individual [inaudible]
in this mythology remained hard to trace
that Zaydan's work evidently functioned like a focal lens
of several lines of tradition.
From various origins bringing together motives from Arabic
and European historiography and literary history.
Thus highlighting the transnational nature
of nationalist narrative lines.
Zaydan introduced the Florinda, Roderick motif not only
as an adoption but as a radical adaptation of the European myth
to the discourse of context of the late Ottoman empire.
As a historicist, Zaydan used the material of the story
to reconcile the growing Arab cultural awareness of his milieu
with his own location as a Christian in the Muslim majority environment.
Questions of loyalty even dictatorial monarch
and the advantages of a morally superior Arab-Muslims ruler are
at the heart of Zaydan's version of the novel.
And yet he also argued for a secular state
when he propagated the division of church and state.
All these aspects marked as novel as a literary work
of the Arab revival period, the naphtha
or in other words of proto-nationalism.
Than you very much.   [ Applause ]
>> So ready to take some questions?   >> Yes, please.
>> Yeah.   >> Yes, please.
[ Inaudible Question ]   >> I don't know of any utopias.
>> Okay.
>> I mean-- [Inaudible Comment] That's very interesting.
Yeah. I mean that it's-- [Inaudible Comment] It's very popular topic
in modern day, Arabic poetry still.   >> Okay.
>> And many of the modern Arab poets Mahmoud Darwish, Adunis and people
of this kind used it as a tapas, as a reference
but without any historical meaning attached to it.
But it is comes up as an image as something that to some extent,
probably represents a utopia rather
than an image projected into the past.
So I think it's probably sometimes hard to make a distinction between.
Yeah?   >> But that's the first.
>> That's first, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Inaudible Comment] Yes, yes, yes but I don't know if any narrative--
>> Okay.   [ Inaudible Question ]
>> So do you mean Arab nationalist projects of various Arab States?
>> Yeah.
>> The argument that I'm making is that Al-Andalus is
as a cultural reference, is a reference that all Arabs share.
So it makes-- or it triggers certain feelings
and a certain nostalgia among Arabs from Morocco to Iraq.
Which is why it is so, why there's such a powerful tapas.
The various manifestations in different countries than maybe
of a very different kind, you know,
Al-Andalus means something very different from Moroccans
than for instance for Palestinians or for Syrians.
Who used it pretty much in the senses
as I finished proving it you know, as a symbol of a possible future
of grander, you can now have a redemptive story.
Whereas, for Moroccans nowadays, it has a much more concrete meaning
because the, for instance, you find in Morocco,
many families of high standing who traced back their origin to families
in Muslim, Spain and this has probably actually really,
a concrete line which they can trace back to families that once
that during the that after the, Reconquista came to Morocco.
And for them to consider themselves as Spanish is very important as part
of their identity which then is not an identity that becomes an element
of a general Morocco or of our identity but it sets them apart
from the rest of the society.
So to be an Andalusian in Morocco means
that you have a certain standing in Moroccan society.
So it adds to your position in society.
You know I thought there are also these examples of family,
so still carry the keys of the houses they left.
And you know that's, I don't know
to what extent is mythology are actually concrete.
So the manifestations on the ground, the kind of political
and social meanings that people attached to it,
when they hear these stories, when they hear the poet,
poetry and so they are obviously very different according
to the location that you're in.
But the myth as such is one that I would identify as a shared myth
that has value and importance for all people
who consider themselves part of belonging to our culture.
Yes please.   [ Inaudible Question ]
The most important, okay, okay.
That's-- I can go back to my wonderful images.
So the Mosque, you can see the, you know, this is the floor plan
of the Mosque in Cordoba.
The Mosque encouraged today is the cathedral of Cordoba.
Since one of the outstanding churches in Spain and actually,
the conquer of Cordoba decided to maintain the cathedral,
the Mosque in the state that it was in when it was conquered.
He only-- they only put a nave in the right in the center
of the prayer hall of the Mosque of Cordoba.
So it's like, it's kind of an, it's a very intricate mixture
in combination of the old structure of the mosque
with a gothic structure and a church nave towering in the middle.
Yes please.   [ Inaudible Question ]
Okay. The Jewish topic is a very important value which is
that I chose not to include it here just for the sake of, you know,
I would've become much larger presentation.
Jews play a very important role in Jurji Zaydan's novel and they play
in important role in for Ad Al-Khatib's play.
And they do so in very different ways.
In Jurji Zaydan's novel, they are allies of the Muslims.
So they represent the part of the story of the tapas that is related
to Islamic rule as being beneficial to other religions.
To so called Damian people, the people who are protected,
the religions that are protected under the rule of Islam
which is why Zaydan introduces a Jewish conspiracy in that
in his novel which works against King Roderick and which works
in favor of Alfonso the son of the former King Wittizan
which also works to bringing the Muslims as future rulers of Spain.
You can definitely identify certain traces of anti-Semitic stereotypes
in effect that there's a conspiracy you know.
But it is very different from the way how Jews and the role of Jews
and they sustained portrait literature and especially
in the play by Fath Al-Khatib [phonetic]
where the Jews are basically given a negative role.
So you see, Zaydan writes in 1903.
And the Ottoman empire is an empire that you know expects
to exist forever, you know.
In 1903, they don't know that it falls in 1918 you know.
So they expected that exist forever and their people built an ethos
around Ottoman rule which is precisely about
"convivencia" it's precisely about living together.
And the Muslim ruler of the Sultan and Caliph providing protection
to Christians and to Jews in, you know,
under the umbrella of the empire.
Whereas, in 1931 when Fath Al-Khatib writes, he writes in the context
of the Palestine conflict, you know, the major topic of Arab nationalism
at the time two years after the so called wailing wall in Sweden
which is one of the major you know flaring, which is a flaring
up of the violent conflict between Arabs and Jews and Palestine.
So there are two very different context
which provide very different outcomes here.
Now the second part of the question, would actually,
I would give the same answer as the one that I gave before.
You know there is, there are certain parts of the Arab world
and these are precisely or mostly, Tunisia and Morocco
in which Andalusian heritage which it can be traced back
through a very concrete family lengths.
Family lengths to Andalusia play a very important role.
So there's, there is the direct link to the places
where people used to live.
But there's also the link of Andalusian music which is
so important especially in the context of Morocco
where Andalusian music is one of the major and cultural marked
as that also the monarchy.
The Moroccan monarchy uses in order to, you know, create this bond
of longevity between the population and the past of Moroccan glory.
Yeah so much with that, yeah.
>> Here, I think we have time for one more question.
>> Sure, there is none.   Oh, yeah?
[ Inaudible Question ]
Okay. So, I still have to look at textbooks.
I haven't done that yet.
And I'm actually looking forward to seeing, to what extent, you know,
names come up like Count Julian and Florinda which have nothing to do
with the Arabic tradition but really come, you know, I think it's clear,
it's clearly identifiable that they come
from a European tradition through Zaydab.
What I can say, is that there is a whole range
of novels for young people.
That are clearly simply rewrites of Zaydan's novel.
I think it is enormously important as a trigger of a particular kind
of historical consciousness into a particular story line.
And again, I wouldn't be surprised
if I would find the same story line also in modern textbooks.
[Inaudible Question] You know, it's a mixture, probably, you know,
Zaydan's novel is a mixture.
You know, it's a mixture between Arabic tradition Al-Maqqari and so
on that he cites in his book and other elements that he takes
in which I say are inspired by European literature.
And in the same sense, I wouldn't be surprise to find in textbooks
for Arab students, similar lines, similar story lines that are told.
>> Thanks, thank you very much.   >> Thank you.
[Applause]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library