Cultural Boundaries in Al-Andalus: „An Impossible Andalusian Utopia, or a Memento of a Medieval Multicultural Reality?

Authors:

Pages: 180-188

Abstract:

As a cultural and historical phenomenon from the Middle Ages, Al-Andalus reveals a profound problem that characterizes the turbulent processes in the Christian-Arab-Jewish cultural synthesis which took place on the Iberian Peninsula. The controversies regarding the cultural boundaries drawn by the phenomenon of coexistence in this multiethnic and multilingual space, as well as the peculiarities of the formation of the Andalusian society, still influence the attempts to determine the Spanish identity. By combining a comparison and an analysis of the ideas of the two main figures in Spanish historiography, Castro and Sбnchez-Albornoz, about the essence of the specific Spanish mentality, on one hand, and, on the other, through an overview of the main strokes in the eventfullness that marked the whole period of Arabic influence over the peninsula, the paper attempts to answer the following question: “Was Al-Andalus a myth, or a reality that embraced the three cultures?”.

Keywords:

Al-Andalus, coexistence, multiculturalism, national identity, Arabization, Islamization

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