Thawrat ash-Sha\’ab

Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain

October 11th, 2007 at 12:26am luqman

Having now seen the movie I have mixed feelings about it. The production values were amazing and the poems which were quoted to emphasize the atmosphere were quite moving. In particular, the poem about the weeping mihrab almost made me weep for what we have lost as a community. I do, however, take issue with the depiction of Ibn Hazm (although it brought a smile to my face to see them focus on him), especially making him out to be an anti-semite. In addition, it really fails to do justice to the Muwahhidun (AKA ‘Almohads’) and the changes they enacted. I also find the attention paid to Jewish figures to be rather excessive; if one were not familiar with the intellectual history of the period one would come away thinking that Jews did most of the intellectual work in Al-Andalus which is not the case. It also ignored the fact that MANY groups of people were persecuted for ’spreading’ the Black Death, including lepers. Jews were not the only target.

I came away with the impression that the producers were trying to portray Muslims who are tolerant to the point of laxity (i.e. compromising on clear ahkam of the shar’iah such as those prohibiting alcohol) as ‘enlightened’ and those who were trying to construct a community based on the sunnah (including a lifestyle which is in accordance with the sunnah) as ‘backwards.’ The ‘enlightened’ rulers could be extremely capricious but this was not depicted at all. In contrast everything distasteful to modern western sentiments which the Muwahhidun are supposed to have done is not only described but acted out in detail. I see a definite bias in that and it makes me wonder if there is some kind of agenda that the producers are persuing. Where does the funding for this organization come from, if I may ask?

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