READING A BOOK:

MOORISH CULTURE IN SPAIN BY TITUS BURCKHARDT

Emilio Alzueta

INTRODUCTION
It may seem odd to select the reading of a historical text for a book such as Islam and
Muslims in Spain, which is concerned with chartering the contemporary situation of
Muslims in Spain. Yet, there are two powerful reasons for this choice. Firstly, it is a
general principle that the present can never be divorced from the past. And, if this is
true for the understanding of any current Muslim European community, it is even
more so in the case of Spain, which is the Western nation with the oldest, deepest and
most brilliant Islamic roots. The fact that, in political and manifest terms, Islam
disappeared from the Iberian Peninsula more than four centuries ago doesn’t mean
that it has not been present in indirect and subtle ways, up to our times, in which a
small, but growing Muslim community is spreading anew in its territory. Surely, a land
which still holds the treasures of the Alhambra and the Mosque of Cordoba is not, for
Muslims, like any other in the West.

Secondly, one of the goals of the Mesbar Studies and Research Center1, which
commissioned and published this volume, is “to revive the modern and enlightened
Arabic cultures, never submitting to the literary stalemate and intolerance, and deal
with identity discourses from a creative and effective humane approach, away from
hatred and isolation”. Historically, Al-Andalus is unquestionably one of the peaks of
Islamic civilization in terms of tolerance and scholarship. The realities and challenges of
Muslims, not only in Spain, but in the West, will always find a source of inspiration in
Islamic Spain, which the American scholar Hamza Yusuf defined as “Western
manifestation of Islam”, adding –in specific reference to Islamic Spain: ‘We have to
navigate the future using the compass of the past”2.

If the first reason impelled us to choose a book about Al-Andalus, the second refined
the search to a text that would not simply stay at the historical dimension, but would
be able to underline its relevance for today’s predicament. Something that can be
done in well-known, almost obvious terms –the aforementioned concepts of tolerance
and scholarship are good examples-, but which can also be approached from more

1
The goals of the Mesbar Studies and Research Centre can be read in their website,
http://www.almesbar.net. Accessed 10-06-2011
2
Nine Hundred Years: Reviving the Spirit of Andalusia, Hamza Yusuf (Audio CD). Alhambra Productions:
2006
unexpected angles. Moorish Culture in Spain by Titus Burckhardt masterfully illustrates
this second possibility.

The book was published in German in 19703 and was subsequently translated into
various languages, becoming a classic in its kind. Although certainly not beyond
criticism –we will in fact briefly discuss its shortcomings-, this work provides the reader
with a beautiful understanding of the qualitative aspects of the civilization of Al-
Andalus, as a universe animated by the metaphysical and holistic vision of Islam. A
vision that many contemporary Muslims in Spain are struggling to maintain –or regain-
in the midst of the centrifugal forces of the modern world.

THE AUTHOR
Understanding of a book usually requires some basic knowledge of its author. Moorish
Culture in Spain is certainly no exception to the rule. Titus Burckhardt, a German Swiss,
was born in Florence in 1908 and died in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1984. He belonged
to an aristocratic and artistically-inclined family and was the great-nephew of the
famous Swiss art-historian Jacob Burckhardt. Titus Burckhardt was known as an
eminent exponent of the so-called traditionalist or Perennialist school, inspired by
René Guenon and Frithjof Schuon, and which has been concerned not only with the
Islamic tradition but also with other spiritual traditions and religion-based civilizations.

Burkhart wrote extensively about metaphysics, cosmology and spirituality, translating

from the Arabic various Sufi masterpieces such as the Fusūs al-Hikām by Ibn ʿArabī 4,
al-Insān al-Kāmil by ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jilī 5, and the Rasāʾil by Muḥammad al-ʿArabī al-
Darqawī 6. He was an extraordinary connoisseur of Islamic art, architecture and
civilization. In 1930s, as a young convert to Islam, he spent some years in Morocco,
where he established close contact with the genius of Islamic civilization. He learnt
Arabic and was the student of Mulay ʿAlī ben Tayyib Darqawī, a teacher at the
Qarawiyyin University and grandson of the celebrated Sufi master Shaykh al-Darqawī.

From those formative years would eventually come one of Burckhardt’s most
celebrated books, Fez: City of Islam7 which was published in 1960 and which, to a very
large extent is a companion to Moorish Culture in Spain. Both are, in the words of
William Stoddart, books “of truth and beauty, science and art, piety and traditional

3
Die maurische Kultur in Spanien. Munich: Callwey, 1970.
4
La Sagesse des Prophètes [Fusūs al-Ḥikām]. Paris: Albin Michel, 1955.
5
De l'Homme Universel [al-Insān al-Kāmil]. Lyons: Derain, 1953.
6
Letters of a Sufi Master [Rasāʾil]. Bedfont, Middlesex, England: Perennial Books, 1969.
7
Fes, Stadt des Islam. Olten and Freiburg-im-Breisgau: Urs Graf Verlag, 1960.
culture”8. If the passages about Islamic Art in those two classic titles are already
extraordinary, Burckhardt would dedicate a monograph to the subject: Art of Islam9,
published in the 1970's and in which the author’s analysis of the intellectual principles
and the spiritual role of artistic creativity in its Islamic forms are accompanied by a
wonderfully rich array of illustrations and photographs.

His love for traditional Islam, as expressed in art and form, was not only contemplative.
Along with his friend Jean-Louis Michon10, in 1972 he was invited by the UNESCO, on
behalf of the Moroccan government, to participate in a study and evaluation of the
problems around the preservation of cultural heritage of Fez. In 1978, after several
years of work dedicated to the rehabilitation of the city’s fabric, a Master Plan for the
Urban Planning of Fez was completed, largely inspired by Titus Burckhardt’s vision. I
still remember the late Abdellatif al-Hajjami –former Director-General of the Agence
pour la Dédensification et la Réhabilitation de la Médina de Fès-, telling me about his
encounters with an elderly Titus Burckhardt, whom he described as a silent and
dignified man, endowed with deeply-rooted courage and resolution. On one occasion,
referring to his own efforts for the preservation of Fez's heritage, Burckhardt had said
to al-Hajjami: “As long as there is strength left in me, I will keep fighting for this cause”.
Such was also, to a certain extent the inspiration of some of his books, like Moorish
Culture in Spain: an effort to preserve, for what he saw as our decayed contemporary
age, the flavor of metaphysical vision made civilization.

THE BOOK: READING BY THE RULES

In their classic text How to read book, Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
defined a series of rules by which a book should be read if we aspire to obtain any
clear understanding. The first four rules -corresponding to what they called ‘analytical
reading’- are:

1. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.

2. State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity.
3. Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and analyze these parts
as you have analyzed the whole.
4. Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve.

Given the character and title of this chapter –“Reading a book”-, it seems a good idea
to begin our analysis with these basic questions, which will serve to orientate the
reader and provide a clear foundation to our discussion of the text. It will also serve to

8
The Essential Titus Burckhardt, ed. William Stoddart. World Wisdom, 2003.
9
Art of Islam: Language and Meaning. London: Islamic Festival Trust Ltd, 1976. New edition
10
Michon is the author of Lumière d'Islam: Institutions, art et spiritualité dans la Cité musulmane,
L'Arche: 1994; as well as of translator of several texts by the great Moroccan Sufi master Ibn ‘Ajība
illustrate the ‘art of reading’, which -like the ‘art of listening’- precedes both speaking
and writing, and which Adler masterfully described in his books, following the tradition
of the liberal arts which is also at the basis of Islamic classic education.

(1) Moorish Culture in Spain belongs to a rare genre of books that attempts to capture
the spirit of a civilization, either through a historical period –like in this case- or
through a particular artistic, spiritual or intellectual exemplar –like in the case of
Burckhardt’s Fez: City of the Spirit. In this way, it deals with history, but not in an
academic way, but using it as a canvas on which to paint the character and genius of
that particular civilization. Burckhardt himself made of this genre –through his work
with the Swiss publishers Urs Graf11 – one of his specialties.

(2) The genre itself leads us to subject of the book. Answering the second question,
Moorish Culture in Spain portrays the many facets of the civilization of Al-Andalus -
intellectual, artistic, literary, philosophical, spiritual- as a whole animated by a single
vision, based on the soul of Islamic civilization (the Qur’an and the Sunna), and
expressed throughout the currents and upheavals of history.

(3) The structure of the book is certainly one of its most brilliant assets, one in which
Burckhardt shows his synthetic genius, and his gift both for narration and philosophical
and aesthetic insight. The structure is in fact so closely connected to the book’s
meaning that we will look into it with some detail.

Moorish Culture in Spain starts not in a lineal historical manner –for example, with the
arrival of the Arabs to the Iberian Peninsula- but with the Mosque of Cordoba.
Burckhardt says:

Nothing brings us into such immediate contact with the culture of a bygone age as
certain works of art. Whether it is a sacred image, a temple, a cathedral, or a
mosque, it represents a focal point within the culture and expresses something
essential. It gives us an insight which neither arguments of history nor analyses of
social or economic circumstances can capture.

Beginning with the Mosque of Cordoba doesn’t only illustrate that perspective, but
symbolically shows some of the historical effects of the Christian “Reconquest”: the
Baroque Cathedral which was built inside the Mosque, sits there, to this day, “like a
spider”. The kind of passional and highly intolerant form of Christianity that developed
in Spain is in many ways the opposite of the civilization on Islamic Spain. Starting with
the Mosque of Cordoba –the only great mosque still extant, even if partially, in Spain,
out of the hundreds and hundreds that once were filled with worshippers- is therefore,
a reminder of the highly evanescent nature of what the book is going to portray.

11
During the fifties and sixties, Burckhardt was the artistic director of the Urs Graf Publishing House of
Lausanne and Olten, in which he published his book Fes, Stadt des Islam.
Following that beginning, the history of Al-Andalus, since the arrival of the Arabs in 711
to the fall of Granada in 1492, and the final expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609, is told
succinctly, as a connective background to the analysis of the different dimensions of
the civilization of Al-Andalus, as well as to the contributions of some of the great
Andalusi geniuses. One could say that the 13 chapters in which the book is divided are
like a necklace of pearls strung together by the thread of history. In a quasi-
cinematographic technique, each topic is introduced as an independent unit, but
structurally connected to the historical flow of events. In order to illustrate this
structural method, we will provide a very brief summary of the content of each of
chapter, pointing at the narrative cohesion and the meanings derived from their
ordering and articulation:

1. Cordoba. It concentrates on the Mosque of Cordoba, which is analyzed

artistically and –at times- also symbolically. The mosque, with its different
dimensions of worship, learning, social encounter and even administration of
justice, is presented as a microcosm of the city and the civilization.
2. Religion and races. It underlines the diversity which was one of the hallmarks of
Andalusi civilization: Muslims, Christians and Jews, living under the tolerant
umbrella of Islam, with Arabic as a vital agglutinating factor. This is necessary
background to understand Andalusi civilization.
3. The caliphate. History until the end of the Caliphate. Administrative and judicial
organization of the Caliphate, touching on symbolic aspects. Characteristically,
Burkhardt moves from a general panoramic view to some concrete stories
illustrating the ideal of justice in everyday dealings.
4. The city. Portrayal of life in an Andalusi city. Again, after going from detail
(Chapter 1) to the wider sociological and historical canvas (Chapters 2 and 3),
Burckhardt returns to detail: the mosque is the heart of the city, which we can
now understand better after the two more general chapters.
5. Heaven and earth. Coming out of the city, it describes the richness of
agricultural life, following the rhythms of nature. This leads to cosmology and
to an exposition of the fascinating connections between medicine, psychology
and music. This cosmological outlook will also serve to deepen the discussion
on language, poetry and love which is developed in the following chapters. In a
way, we are told that what happens in the Andalusi city is not disconnected
with nature or with the universe. Indeed, the hallmark of this civilization is
tawhid, unity.
6. Language and poetry. From music we move to poetry and the substance of
poetry, which is language. Analysis of the distinctive features of Arabic as a
sacred language. Characteristics of Andalusi poetry and its influence on
Provencal and, in general, European poets.
7. Chivalric Love. Love poetry leads to an investigation of the topic of chivalry
(futtuwah) and chivalric love in the Islamic and, particularly, Andalusi tradition,
 from its more worldly aspects (Ibn Hazm) to its more spiritual dimensions (Ibn
ʿArabī). Again, the author shows the deep influence of these conceptions in the
West, for example in Dante and in the Christian veneration of Virgin Mary.
8. Spain in check. This is one of the more complex and finely-crafted chapters of
the book. It starts with an investigation of the historical philosophy of Ibn
Khaldūn, which is applied to the division of Al-Andalus into Ta’ifa kingdoms and
the coming of the nomadic (and puritan) Almoravids. This historical period is
presented (and obviously oversimplified) through a fascinating, novel-like
narrative with five characters, including the king and poet Al-Muʿtamid of
Seville and Yūsuf ibn Tashfīn, the leader of the Almoravids. In turn, the
narrative is fashioned like a game of chess, which provides an opportunity to
discuss the symbolic and cosmological dimensions of the game.
9. The philosophical outlook. From the most narrative chapter, the book moves
into its most abstract sections. In this chapter, it approaches some aspects of
the metaphysical outlook of Islamic philosophy, which synthesized Platonism
and Aristotelianism, mainly focusing on two great Spanish philosophers: Ibn
Masarra and Ibn Bajja.
10. Faith and science. It briefly returns to the historical skeleton, introducing the
change of the Almoravids by the Almohads. After the literalist fervor of the
first, the second create a climate in which philosophy and mysticism can thrive.
Chapter 10 deals with the controversy between Ibn Rushd and al-Ghazālī,
between philosophy and Ghazālī’s theological critique to the dangerous nature
of some of its dimensions. The chapter ends pointing at Sufi metaphysics -
especially Ibn ʿArabī- as the locus of resolution of some of the aspects of the
debate.
11. The mystics. The conclusion of last chapter leads the reader into Sufism, which
had a ‘relatively late flourishing in Al-Andalus’, specially under the Almohads.
Chapter 11 touches on great masters like Ibn al-ʿArīf, but mainly focuses on
Muḥyiddin Ibn ‘Arabī, who not only was the greatest Sufi teacher of Spain, but
also left the most detailed account of Sufi life in Al-Andalus, mainly in his book
Rūḥ al-Quddūs.
12. Toledo. Against the background of the progression of the Christian advance,
this chapter deals with the massive transfer of key areas of the corpus of
knowledge of Al-Andalus –which had preserved the Greek heritage- to the
West, through the School of Translators of Toledo. The working of this School
also underlines the cooperation between Muslims, Jews and Christians –which
survived in certain areas-, and so connects to the first part of the book.
13. Granada. It deals with the end of Al-Andalus and the flourishing of the last
great Andalusi kingdom of Granada. It also touches on the lot of the Moriscos
(the Muslims who, after 1492, were forced to convert to Christianity, though
many of whom remained crypto-Muslims among unimaginable difficulties, until
 their final expulsion in 1609). The pages dedicated to the Alhambra are among
the most beautiful of the book and contain extraordinary insights into Islamic
art. The volume finishes with the closing of a civilization which, however,
survived in the Maghreb and, in some aspects and in subtle forms, in the very
culture of Spain.

(4) The fourth question posed by Adler and Van Doren -“to define the problem or
problems the author is trying to solve”- gives us the cue to explore some of the book’s
shortcomings, which cannot obviated in any balanced review. We could say that the
fundamental problem that Burkhardt tries to solve is how to present the many facets
and the history of the civilization of Al-Andalus, from the starting point of its essential
principles. This he does, in many aspects, successfully, but the way in which he
approaches the problem is necessarily tinted by the idiosyncrasies of the Perennialist
school, to which he belonged. Undoubtedly, this school –which counts with such
eminent figures as Martin Lings, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Charles Le Gai Eaton and
William Chittick- has made a great contribution to the understanding of the
metaphysics and the tradition of Islam, through works of the highest scholarly and
aesthetic standards. Its outlook of religion and the world, however, is over-essentialist
and, hence, static12. Too often, Burckhardt makes absolute assertions which are not
based on proof, but which come from some kind of metaphysical apriorism that he
considers beyond question and which he either maintains in the philosophical plane or
applies to cultural, historical, social or artistic aspects. His very symbolic and
metaphysical insight can therefore make him blunder. One good example is his
exposition of the conception of man and woman in Islam –at the beginning of Chapter
7-, which generalizes certain features at the expense of others and doesn’t take into
account licit historical variations.

Although the book is always well-documented and historically solid, these

shortcomings have raised objection among scholars in the field. Once realized,
however, they shouldn’t blind the reader to the true contribution of Moorish Culture in
Spain, which never tries to be an academic piece of research, but a multi-disciplinary
essay written by an art critic and metaphysician and destined to enlighten the reader
about the purposes stated at the beginning of this section, as well as to invite him to a
treasure of meaningful insights.

12
They present, for example, a view of religious diversity which is based on allegedly eternal archetypes,
by which each religion is an archetypal manifestation of the Divine. However, they do not take into
consideration the factor or time, of history, the historical distortions of religions, and the conception
of an ongoing continuity between the different original religious dispensations. The result is,
therefore a ‘static’ and over-intellectualized perception.
 WIDENING THE CIRCLE OF READING
One of the pillars of the Islamic classical tradition was always the commentary of
books. Texts were read with a teacher, who would offer explanations and comments,
in a way which not only contextualized the book and facilitated its assimilation, but
which also expanded on it, using it as a trunk for further branching. Books were
annotated and it is not uncommon to find manuscripts of great works written on the
margin of other books. There were three basic premises for this phenomenon. The first
was an understanding of the essential unity of knowledge, based on the unifying
source of the Qurʾān, and by which all disciplines were interconnected; this fostered
both inter-pollination and a need for short and clear manuals that summarized the
principles of a field. The second was the conception of knowledge as something that
transcends the individual, and is served by him; that is, freedom of the superstition of
originality. The third was the awareness of the need to make the knowledge relevant
to each new context, while remaining rooted in permanent principles.

In that tradition, this article intends to be not just a review in the modern sense, but a
sort of new grafting in the trunk of Moorish Culture in Spain. Like a gloss written in its
margin, it must speak to our contemporary context and contribute to it. In fact, the
activity of reading is by no means confined to written texts. One can also read a
person, or an event, or a period of history. Reading –taken in this more general sense
of deciphering signs- becomes in this way a multidisciplinary task, by which we can use
the knowledge and insights obtained from a book to help us read ourselves and the
world around us. And if, as in this case, it is a book of history, then we can use it to re-
read the past, so that it help us in the task of reading the present.

REASSESSING THE CONTRIBUTION OF AL-ANDALUS

No objective historian can deny the immense debt of Western Civilization to Islam. The
European Renaissance was built on the shoulders of Islamic intellectual contributions.
As Tim Wallace-Murphy says:

(…) European culture owes an immense debt to the world of Islam. Muslim
scholars preserved and enhanced the learning of ancient Greece, laid the
foundations for modern science, medicine, astronomy, and navigation and
inspired some of our greatest cultural achievements. (…) We in the West owe a
debt to the Muslim world that can never be fully repaid.13

However, for long the history told in the West has been–and still is in some quarters-
that, in the 15th century, Europe suddenly recovered the Greek and Roman heritage
which had been lost or forgotten through the “dark” Middle Ages, and started the

13
What Islam Did For Us: Understanding Islam's Contribution to Western Civilization, Tim Wallace
Murphy. Watkins Publishing: 2006.
humanist project of the Renaissance. At this turning point, either Islamic civilization is
credited with an almost passive transfer of the great contributions of the ancients, or –
for the more informed- it will be acknowledged that they made great original
contributions14. For both perspectives, however, one thing is clear: after handing the
baton to the West, Islamic civilization falls behind, into a kind of stalemate. In his book
Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers and Artists, Michael
Hamilton Morgan explores some of these characteristic Western attitudes towards the
subject:

The ‘Orientalist’ camp (…) holds that the Muslim world had a period of intellectual
brilliance, from about A.D. 800-1200 (!), largely enabled by the translation of
Greek thinkers, and that this essentially Greek body of knowledge was then
passed on by the Muslims to the Europeans. But later, because of a combination
of the Mongol attacks and internal inconsistencies that prevented the
development of a secular freethinking society, the Muslim world fell behind.

(…) the “proto-science” camp (…) holds that until the 15th century, Muslim
science and technology was far superior to that in Europe and that many of its
breakthroughs seeped into medieval Europe, providing the seeds of the coming
Renaissance. But then the Muslim world hit a glass ceiling of internal
inconsistencies and barriers inherent in the culture, plus economic and climatic
crises, so that as with China and India, the Muslims could not make the leap to
modern science, which was left to Europe.15

As for the first aspect of the issue, the truth is that the Islamic intellectual tradition had
assimilated and built on not only Greek learning but basically on the learning from all
ancient civilizations, from India to China and Persia, creating new masterful synthesis.
So, in the transference of part of that extraordinary body of knowledge to the West, it
is impossible to speak of passivity, of Islamic civilization being a mere connector to the
Greeks. Historically, two centers were crucial for this process: Spain –especially Toledo-
and Sicily. As Burckhardt says:

(…) the acquisition of Toledo had brought with it an undisturbed center of

Moorish culture, complete with its scholars, artists, and libraries under Christian
protection. After Norman-Arabic Sicily, Toledo was the most important entry
point for Arab culture which had fed upon Greek, Persian and Indian sources. (…)
To detail the full extent of the flow of knowledge that poured from Toledo into
the Christian West would take us too far from our purpose.

14
There are, of course, also those for whom Islamic civilization is simply and completely out of the
picture –something untenable as scholarship but widespread as uniformed belief.
15
Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers and Artists, Michael Hamilton
Morgan. National Geographic Society: 2008.
As to the second aspect, is there any other way of reading what happened at that
crossroads between Islamic civilization and the Western Renaissance? This question is
extremely important, because it is also common for Muslim authors to assume that
the best way to sing the glories of classical Islamic civilization is to detail the names
and contributions of great scientists and thinkers, presenting them –so to speak- as an
avant-garde of our glorious rational and scientific age. This was a common approach
among the Muslims modernists at the end of the 19 th century and beginning of the
20th century, and no doubt it has survived. But underneath lies a too often uncritical
embrace of the Western paradigm, sometimes even presented as a natural
continuation of the Qurʾānic project.

What Burckhardt presents in Moorish Culture in Spain is an emphasis on those aspects

of Islamic civilization, knowledge and science that were lost in the transference of the
West and that show that Islamic civilization was much wider, deeper and richer than a
mere historical connective element. It is true that in certain aspects there was a
decline after the 16th century: for example, the ulūm al-ʿaqliyya or intellectual
sciences16 tended to be more disregarded than before; and the integrative, critical
genius that Islamic civilization had shown towards the civilizations of the past was not
readily applied to what would develop, with growing speed, in the West. But, on the
other hand, Islamic civilization retained what the West was eventually going to lose.

Following the cultural and psychological heritage of Christianity17, with the advent of
the Renaissance the West would end up adopting a purely horizontal and eventually
materialistic approach which fostered a quantitative science with huge technological
applications and possibilities, but which would also abuse and destroy nature and
growingly stifle essential dimensions of the human being and of the universe. This
approach would also create a general economic order of immense aggression, both in
social and ecological terms. In one word, the West took the route of lack of tawḥīd, of
lack of unity, completeness and harmony. Islamic knowledge was, on the other hand,
integrated in a holistic vision of the universe and man, based on the Qur’an and the
Prophetic example. Not to take the route of the West was not just lack of innovation,
but a civilizational choice (or impossibility, given the nature of things).18

16
Traditionally, Islamic sciences were divided in al-ʿulūm al-naqlīyya, or transmitted sciences –from the
foundation of the Revelation, such as fiqh, tafsīr, hadīth, ‘aqīda y kalām- and al-ʿulūm al-ʿaqlīyya or
intellectual sciences -such as mathematics, natural sciences, etc.
17
The Christian heritage included both the positive aspects of spiritual and moral orientation -based on
Revelation- and the negative aspects of authoritarianism (which separated religion and science),
exclusivism and intolerance and an almost dualist conception of the dangers of the world and the
conflict between the spirit and the body. It is obvious that this almost dualist outlook would
influence Descartes formulation of matter and spirit –which he reduced to mere discursive reason.
18
For a detailed discussion of this subject, see Science and Civilization in Islam, by Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Islamic Texts Society: 1987.
If the West took the route of materialistic and purely quantitative science, Moorish
Culture in Spain underlines those qualitative and holistic aspects which were not
adopted –or fully adopted- by the Western project. The insights of the book are many,
and open up perspectives to follow which would almost require an entire book: from
science, cosmology and the hierarchy of knowledge, to the vertical dimension of the
arts, ethics and spirituality and the presence of the transcendent in everyday life.
Limited by the scope of this article, we will just focus on two exemplary areas, science
and ethics, dealing with the first in some more length.

1. Burkhardt describes how Muslim philosophy characteristically synthesized Plato

and Aristotle. Their philosophical perspectives are not, in fact, mutually
incompatible, but complementary. On commenting on the symbolic diagram on
the left, Burckhardt says:

Taking the diagram in its “theocratic” sense, and

comparing the center (of the circles) with the
“unexpanded” divine origin, then we have an
illustration in the simplest terms of the Aristotelian
and Platonic thought. It is Aristotelian to consider each
of the different circles, or that which they represent,
as separate entities, and that makes the center, too, separate from the rest.
The Platonic view instead is to consider the analogies which link all the
different levels of reality. In visual terms this may be expressed by sending
rays or radii out from this center to intersect all the circles. All points on the
same radius, on whatever circle they are situated, are thus related; they are
like traces of the same essence on different levels of existence.

From this it may be inferred that Aristotelian thought applies chiefly to the
logical order or continuity of a certain level of existence, while Platonic view
is to observe the symbolic character of a thing, through which it is
connected vertically to realities of higher planes. The two views can be
readily reconciled, provided their differences are borne in mind. It is upon
this that the Aristotelian-Platonic synthesis of philosophers like Ibn Sina and
Ibn Bajja are based.

As Burckhardt later shows, in contrast with these philosophers, the work of Ibn
Rushd is exceptional in that he is almost purely Aristotelian. The sheer impact
of the Latin translations of Averroes –as he would come to be known in the
West- simply underlines the road which was going to be taken. The West would
limit the spectrum to a science and knowledge solely focused on the “logical
order or continuity” of the material level of existence, thus forgetting the
vertical connection to “realities of higher planes”. As Charles Le Gai Eaton says:

Islamic science could not be independent either of cosmology or of

metaphysics, for the lower forms of knowledge are necessarily dependent
 on the higher forms. The Muslim scientist might legitimately be concerned
with the way in which things function in the material world, but his primary
concern was necessarily with their meaning as “signs of God”. (…) The
scientific method, as it has developed in western culture, is forbidden to
take account of “eternity”, which is outside the time process, or “infinity”,
which is beyond any possible series of numbers.(…) It reduces the objetcs of
its study to empty shells, deprived of all meaning and then, with good
reason, declares them to be meaningless.19

The word “science” in Latin, scientia, originally meant knowledge in general or a

particular branch of knowledge. The subsequent Western reduction of the term
to the experimental and quantitative –taken as the only accepted “objective”
form of knowledge- reflects the prior divorce between this scientific modality
and revealed or even purely rational knowledge. However, it is very significant
that the journey of modern science has finally taken it –with the advent of
quantum physics- to a realm in which the world is deprived of its “solidity” and
the object cannot be separated from the subject or observer- thus eroding the
myth of its ‘ultimate objectivity’, and almost pushing it to transcend itself.

For the traditional Muslim scientist the understanding of the laws and the
“logical order of continuity” of the physical world did not make him close the
later as an independent reality. Before Roger Bacon –who studied in Cordoba-
would be invested with the title of discoverer or formulator of the scientific
method; this had been perfected and used by Muslim scientists, in Al-Andalus
and elsewhere. But they were not limited by it. Even if phenomena were
understood in terms of physical laws, the vertical and symbolic dimension, the
reflection of the One and of higher realms of existence was always sought for: a
kind of understanding which is as relevant to the Islamic cosmological theories
as to the mysteries of relativity, light and black holes. No matter how much
modern science can move into a larger astronomic –but material- realm or into
smaller subunits, it will not be able to hold the key to meaning; and, yet, each
of these new landscapes will partake of symbolic possibilities. To think that,
because of the fact that some of their theories of findings have been
superseded, Muslim traditional science was only an obsolete antecedent to
Western science is to ignore its whole paradigm and restrict one’s vision just to
a convenient part. As Burckhardt says in connection with the astronomical
physics of Ibn Bajja:

Whereas, for Galileo, the movements of the planets are of a mechanical

nature, for Ibn Bajja, gravity is none other than a remote instance of the
spiritual, that is to say, substantial and purposeful force inherent in the

19
Charles Le Gai Eaton, Remembering God. The Islamic Text Society, 2000.
 heavenly bodies, or more accurately, the celestial kinetic order. Indeed, we
do not know what gravity basically is. The fact that the way it takes effect
can be formulated logically points just as much towards the spiritual as to
physical existence. Acceptance of Arab philosophy and sciences might have
led to an entirely different view of reality from that which reigns today.

2. In an interesting parallel to this discussion about the horizontal and vertical

dimensions of knowledge and science, in chapter XI -“The Mystics”- Burckhardt
dedicates some paragraphs to the conception of ethical virtues in Sufism,
particularly in the writings of the great master Ibn al-ʿArīf, from Almeria. The
parallel –in which we are faced again with the complementary perspectives of
Aristotle and Plato- is indeed significant, as it underlines the inseparability of
knowledge (and hence science) with ethics. On one hand virtue can be
understood –and indeed that is its nature- as a mean between two extremes,
both of them unbalanced and hence not virtuous. This is a conception of
immense value, which indeed reflects the idea of virtue in many traditional
civilizations and, particularly, in the Sunna of the Prophet, who was the most
balanced of human beings. Its psychological aspect makes it more easily
preserved –though in simplified and superficial form- in our era, when indeed it
is used by psychologists and self-help manuals. And yet, it must be
complemented by another –and equally true- conception that sees in virtue a
reflection and manifestation of the Divine Qualities or Names and indeed a
means to the realization of those Names; in fact, a road to the Divine.
Something which has fallen into oblivion along with the very faith in the God.

Contemplative virtue should be free of any intention that could indirectly

reinforce the limits of the human self; it must not aim at any kind of
rewards, either in this world or in the next, nor apply any human standard
to God. Thus, true gratitude does not merely consist of being thankful for
blessings; those who love God are also thankful to him in the midst of
suffering, for their gratitude is not for anything specific –it expresses their
awareness of the divine origin of their existence. Virtue –gratitude,
patience, humility, dignity, goodness, and so on- is thereby transformed
from a form of behavior into a form of being, of intention-less being,
receptive to inner infinity.

The great intellectual, scientific and artistic achievements of Al-Andalus grew in a

matrix presided by that sense of infinity: a metaphysical and holistic vision of the world
and humanity, grounded on the Qur’an and the Sunna, but also on the actualization of
those spiritual, ethical and intellectual values by exemplary human beings. The
dimensions mentioned or detailed above show that there is more to the contribution
of Al-Andalus –indeed, to the contribution of Islamic civilization- than what is usually
discussed and praised. For the Western world, Al-Andalus is not only an important
source for what constitutes the Western scientific and humanistic paradigm, but a
reminder of the very limitations of that paradigm. For Muslims, it is a reminder of the
depth and integrity of the Islamic tradition and a continuous inspiration for excellence.

READING THE PRESENT BY READING THE PAST

Is reading a book like Moorish Culture in Spain a mere intellectual activity, eye-
opening, fascinating, but somehow disconnected from our everyday life? It certainly
can be like that –one only needs to frequent academic circles a little to be too aware of
this almost schizophrenic split between ‘learning’ and life. But it should not that way.
The understanding of history can help -paraphrasing Hamza Yusuf- “to navigate the
future using the compass of the past”.

This is, in fact –I think- the approach of many Muslims in contemporary Spain,
especially those converts who, after having been raised in the modern Western
paradigm are perhaps in a better position to see the limitations of the West. Muslim
converts who are doctors, artists, craftsmen, scientists, mothers and housewives,
poets or scholars and who want to infuse their art and life with the vertical dimension
and the holistic vision of the tawḥīd. For this they turn to the Qur’an and the Sunna, to
the contemporary awliyāʾ and ʿulamā, and also to the vast Islamic tradition. And it is
here where the qualitative dimensions of Al-Andalus which Burckhardt describes so
beautifully can become –as we said before- reminders of the richness and depth of a
tradition which must not be weakened by superficial interpretations -either of a
literalist or a narrowly modernist kind-, nor by personal opinion ungrounded on real
knowledge. One cannot truly comprehend the Qurʾān or the Sīra and Aḥādith without
a metaphysical conception20 of the universe and an understanding of the ultimately
spiritual goal of human existence. Without these, Muslims are bound to force the
Qur’an and the Sunna into the molds of their passing conceptions or ideologies.
Neither can knowledge and action be divorced from the Prophetic light of adāb and
akhlāq and the purification of the heart.

But the lessons of Andalusi civilization can also come through via negativa. Al-Andalus
is very easy to idealize –indeed, for centuries, in the Arab world it has been treasured a
sort of nostalgic, paradisiacal symbol. But there were important reasons why the
treasure did not last. Even a book such as Moorish Culture in Spain21 shows the
intestine struggles, the gradual loss of unity between the Muslims, the frequent

20
We do not mean by this the categories of philosophy, but a natural sense of the symbolic nature of
reality, of how all that exists reflects the One and the Attributes of the One; of how all is
interconnected, on several planes of being, from the ‘alam al-laḥūt or Divine world to the material
sphere. This metaphysical conception can naturally be the outlook of an ‘uneducated’ person but
infused with the light of faith and a fiṭrī (coming from his primordial nature) intuition of the reality of
things.
21
In fact, Burckhardt –like, in general, the writers of the Perennialist school- has a frequent tendency to
idealize the past.
decline into worldly ambition and empty brightness –no matter how sophisticated or
‘civilized’. These are also important reminders for contemporary, in a time in which the
fitna between the different tā’ifa kingdoms of Islam is more rampant that ever. Not
learning from the mistakes of the past means having a great chance to repeat them,
for human behavior and history are often made of returning patterns.

An essential message remains, however, at the very core of the Moorish Culture in
Spain. In his description of the Mosque of Cordoba, Burckhardt writes:

Wherever a worshipper happens to be standing or kneeling on a mat, for him that

spot is the center of the mosque, indeed, of the world.

A center also manifested in time –a present moment which is the expression of

eternity- and in the invisible thread which connects the worshipper to the Kaʿba, the
archetypal center of this lower world. The ṣalāt is indeed the symbol of the human
potential as khalīfatullāh, the viceregent of Allah in the creation –a station the fullness
of which is only realized by the prophets and the saints. For the saint has become the
true inheritor of the Prophet: both a complete servant and the manifestation of the
Divine Names, the summary of the worlds. This inner dimension was, in the end –in
Burckhardt’s Sufi perspective- the animating spirit of the civilization of Al-Andalus,
indeed of all truly Islamic civilization. For him, neither literal and exclusivist
interpretations, nor an indiscriminate embrace of technology and superficial
knowledge and science can finally inspire the excellence, beauty and civilization of the
golden age of Cordoba or Granada. Nor can they offer the world the answers which
Islam can give and which the world is seeking.