The Al-Andalus Quartet: Part Two
THE AL-ANDALUS QUARTET: PART TWO
CÓRDOBA / QURTUBAH 950 AD / 339 AH
From Madinat al-Zahra
and the City of Córdoba, the roads
to the Renaissance are renamed and
traveled, patrolled and protected, routed
and projected by the Umayyad Caliph
and the frail conviviality of constituent
cultures, which like the white light of
day and the lace veil of night, are somehow
connected in the shadows of evening and
the gray skies of dawn but in fundamental
opposition define one another
An astute Sephardic rabbi
said the culture of Islam in Al-Andalus
is like a cataclysmic flood that abuses
the land, rearranges its features, nourishes
its soil, eventually disappears through
evaporation and runoff, leaving folksong
and legend to chronicle its passing
The transmission and enhancement of
Classical knowledge, philosophical
erudition, the patient diplomacy within
the righteous framework of an arrogant
tolerance are like a brilliant sunrise in the
medieval world but even the sanguine
observer hears the clashing of swords in
the far mountain passes and the whispers
of betrayal at clandestine meetings and
knows that, bright as it is at this high tide
of impact, the culture is fading, not like
day into night but like the moment of
noon into the moment thereafter, that
sunlight and flood, both powerful and
magic, are receding in concert, slowly,
inexorably, through the Taifa mosaic,
the slow-motion shattering of a
stained-glass window shining colors and
light in a thousand directions, then fading
through evening toward midnight and
darkness, illuminated by stars that,
in spite of their beauty, will later be
remembered as light years away
Emanuel Carter
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