March 2006 Archives

To Lure the French, Don't Be Too Sweet - New York Times

Moroccan chef charms Paris with North African pastries.

The Road to Fez posts recipes.

I just received a copy of the Nouvel Observateur's Morocco issue.

As Percy Bysshe Shelley recognized when he penned Ozymandias, there is nothing quite so Romantic as a lost civilization. The history of the Andalus is a poignant, if not melancholy, example. Not only did the Umayyad caliphate in Cordoba and the taifa kingdoms that followed its collapse represent a unique flowering of poetry, scholarship, and architecture, but they were also key conduits for the transfer of classical learning and Arabic science and culture to the West. In a remarkable display of short-sightedness and ingratitude, the West repaid the favor by conquering the Andalus and forcibly converting, exiling, or exterminating its inhabitants, setting the stage for the rape of the New World.

Richard Fletcher's is a straightforward but engrossing history of the Arab/Berber conquest of most of the Iberian peninsula and the civilization that flourished there until the completion of the Reconquest in 1492. The history is rich in fascinating anecdotes, such as the parallel careers of the Arabic poet and adventure Ibn Ammar and Rodrigo Diaz, El Cid. While Fletcher beautifully describes the cultural richness of the Andalus, he is skeptical about the extent to which Christians, Jews, and Muslims were able to live peacefully together.

Maria Rosa Menocal's is more interested in cultural history than Fletcher and spends more time on the cultural influence that Arabic science and poetry had on European thought, describing at some length the translation projects of Peter the Venerable and the scholarly impact of Arabic culture on Petrus, Peter Abelard, Boccaccio, and Geoffrey Chaucer. She is also fascinated by the phenomena of such figures as Samuel Ibn Nagrila, the leader of the Jewish community who also became the Jewish Vizier of the taifa kingdom of Granada in the early eleventh century. Little more than a half century later, the Jews of Granada were massacred in 1066, but their position in Granadan society contrasts remarkably with their expulsion after the Reconquest.

Sins of the Father: Reform in Rabat

The Bush administration may have as much to learn from the Moroccan experience as do the autocracies of the Middle East.

The Washington Post's Jim Hoagland writes about Morocco's unique path toward reform.

MoorishGirl: Tahar Ben Jelloun's The Last Friend

MoorishGirl reviews Tahar Ben Jelloun's The Last Friend, which I commented on earlier.