In today's world the lines between Europe and the Middle East, between European Christians and Muslim immigrants, seem to be getting tighter;
Alert newspaper editorials compare the arrival of Muslim refugees to Europe with the “Islamic conquest of 711,” warning that Europe should defend its borders.
In an attempt to swim against this xenophobic tendency, an American academic studies the "sense of history" by tracing the spectrum of contemporary Andalusia, as he sees that the "Andalusian sense" is linked in multiple ways with Islamic Iberia in the Middle Ages.
Professor Charles Hirschkind, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, is a leading anthropologist whose research interests include religious practices and emerging forms of political society in the Middle East and North America.
He contributed to the editing of books, including the book "Powers of the secular: Talal Asad and his interlocutors" published by Stanford University Press, and he also published a book called "Moral Phonetics: Cassette discourses and Islamic counter-mass". The ethical soundscape: cassette sermons and Islamic counterpublics) for Columbia University Press.
As well as the book highlighted by Al Jazeera Net dialogue, entitled "The Feeling of History: Islam, Romanticism, and Andalusia", issued by the University of Chicago Press in 2021, and embodies an attempt to understand the "Andalusian tendency" by entering into The literary, aesthetic and heritage world of Andalusia and its impact on contemporary reality;
For more, I leave you with the dialogue.
The book "Feeling History: Islam, Romance and Andalusia", published by Chicago Press 2021 (Al-Jazeera)
According to the anthropological approach, you confirmed in your research that there is a rift in the Spanish national identity, which considered itself European Catholic, while Andalusia embodies a common heritage between Spain, Arabs and Muslims. Which she did by excluding the narrative of the history of Andalusia from Spanish history?
You are right that the modern nation-states exert a strong coercion in the direction of defining the common geographical space within the borders of the nation; This includes defining a common history, a common language, a common religion, and a common culture, as well as rejecting differences that are seen as threatening the cohesion of the nation. There are also narratives of identity and affinity that are incompatible with the nation-state; Think of the way many African Americans feel a strong connection to Africa. They see Africa as a part of themselves geographically and historically, even though they have never been there, and you can look at the way many people from all over Europe understand it today (though They were certainly not all) that they were bound together by a common civilization, although previously they looked upon each other as if they were sworn enemies.
The Andalusian tendency found in the Spanish heritage that I focus on in the book is based on the view that contemporary Andalusia - an administrative region located in southern Spain - (and by extension Spain and Europe) is linked in very important ways with Andalusia in the Middle Ages, North Africa and the Middle East, and that The challenges that Andalusians (and Europeans more broadly) face today require recognition of this enduring historical identity. Those who believe in this heritage feel an affinity for the societies on the other side of the Mediterranean, and this sense of closeness shapes their morals, their politics, and the way they organize their lives.
The Spanish writer and Arabist, Gil Benumeya, was an ally and friend of the Moroccan national movement, and at the same time he was an employee of the Spanish General Franco. Was the idea of Andalusia that he dreamed of the engine of this paradox?
Khail bin Umayyah saw the Arab countries as natural allies of Spain, united by a common history and heritage dating back to Andalusia.
He understood his support for Arab and Islamic nationalism as a natural consequence of this historical relationship, and at the beginning of his career he believed that Franco's (ruled his country from 1939 to 1975) political program might be a way to support and strengthen the renaissance movement taking place throughout the Middle East, and over time he realized Franco's policies in the region were directed at maintaining Spanish dominance.
By locating Andalusia as an alternative to our present, Khail Ibn Umayyah traced the geopolitics that linked Spain not only to the Middle East but also to Latin America.
By specifying the location of Andalusia as an alternative to our present, Khail Ibn Umayyah traces the geopolitics that linked Spain not only to the Middle East but also to Latin America, due to the Spanish colonization of the region;
He saw a contemporary affirmation of the Hispanic-Arab heritage in Latin America in the place of the Arabs in the politics and trade within it.
As part of his career, he corresponded with prominent Arab figures residing in Latin America in order to enhance their awareness of these historical ties and to explore their political potential for this;
We can say that the imagined geography of Khil ibn Umayyah was a fiction, that is, not based on political facts, however;
It is interesting to note that in 1945, that is, when the League of Arab States was established, the name of Khel bin Umayya was put forward as a possible candidate for the position of the representative of Latin America within the League, even though he was not from Latin America or from the Arab countries.
Rodolfo Khel Ben Umayya at an event at the Library of the Spanish Cultural Center in Rabat (Spanish Press)
So;
At least in the eyes of some of the founders of the League of Arab States, the life of Khel ibn Umayyah gave such a concrete embodiment to the concept of the Spanish-Arab civilization that it had its origins in Andalusia that they could imagine him as the legitimate representative of that temple.
Andalusianism is a modern tradition that enables critical reflection on norms of European politics and culture based on a cultivated appreciation of the history and heritage of Muslim and Jewish communities in southern Iberia.
In your valuable book, you provided us with the conception of Khail Ibn Umayyah, which he wrote in his notebook in the mid-thirties of the last century, and called it "Andalusianism" or "Andalucismo rabe", a political vision that considers Andalusia a linking point between Spain and Spain. And North African countries (especially Morocco) for reasons of history and common civilization between them, but don't you see that this perception was used by Franco's fascism to facilitate the occupation of Morocco and the employment of Moroccan soldiers to suppress anti-fascist protests in Spain? In other words, don't you see that romantic narratives reinforce authoritarianism in the modern age?
Exactly, Franco saw Andalusianism as a tool to expand the power of the fascist regime and exploited it for this purpose. Today, this heritage is embraced by multicultural activists who work to support the rights of immigrants. But it is wrong, in my view, to reduce this heritage to its political uses and interpretations; Andalusianism is a modern tradition that allows for critical reflection on the norms of European politics and culture on the basis of a cultivated appreciation of the history and heritage of Muslim and Jewish communities in southern Iberia. What Andalusians share is not a common political orientation, but rather an insistence that the historical legacy of Andalusia must be the ground through which the problems and challenges of the present should be viewed, evaluated, and lived.
I have said that Andalusianism is a marginal tradition in two respects; The first lies in the discipline’s marginalization of history, and secondly, that it is a productive knowledge in the geographical and conceptual milieu of Europe in the border regions of the discursive processes that secure the cohesion of this civilized space. Can you explain this?
Most historians in medieval Spain view Andalusianism as an unreliable and distorted course of knowledge, and a way of obscuring passion in terms of its connection to the subject of its thinking, and therefore it is unable to realize the lack of importance of the Andalusian past in contemporary life, in the eyes of many;
The discourses of Andalusianism are nothing more than a romantic imagining of the past, which is sometimes referred to as "invented history";
Heritage has therefore always been marginal to the system of history and its forms of power, and because it challenges some of the basic assumptions underpinning the concept of Europe, it is also marginal in relation to the dominant discourses (historical, cultural, political, and religious) regarding European identity.
You see that Andalusian tendency is valuable because of the disturbance it causes to political and geographical certainty. Do you mean that it questions the compass of political modernity?
But does not modernity question the function of Andalusianism as well?
The geography and history produced by the Andalusians are inconsistent with the historical and political knowledge that underpins the idea of Europe.
And the Andalusians who live on the fringes of Europe and inhabit this picturesque region, with their language imprinted with centuries of Islamic presence, are discovering that they are not quite the purified subjects of Catholic Spain with which historians tell them their intertwined lives.
It is difficult to assess and explain the legacy of the Jewish and Muslim populations on the Iberian lands, especially given the fact that much of this history of modern Spain has been built on the erasure and/or denial of these legacies.
We can say that they find themselves inhabited by Andalusia and by the ways of social and political identity through which they understood themselves. Andalusian tendency emerges from this confusion regarding the question of its function.
In my opinion, this is something that only experience answers, and there is a lot about the current European-American political life that seems largely ineffective, and yet there does not seem to be an obstacle to it.
The Andalusian past does not reside in the museum, but becomes an integral part of the way the present is encountered, felt and responded to.
There is sadness in the literary works you used to describe Granada, is it because of nostalgia for "heritage" as an escape from modern Spain?
During the twentieth century, poets such as Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) and many artists and writers put a stamp of nostalgia for Granada in their writings, given that it was a great city whose Muslim and Jewish inhabitants suffered the penalty of exile or death;
This melancholy character is not, in my view, an escape route for modern romantics, but a way of keeping the pain and losses of the past alive, as an energetic force in the present;
In this way, the Andalusian past is not relegated to the museum, but rather becomes an integral part of the way the present is encountered, felt and responded to.
Andalusians have all found in flamenco the most enduring example of an echo of modern Spain and its connection to its medieval past as well as the Middle East. I was struck by how much Andalusian literature appeared in flamenco.
You said that there is a relationship between flamenco music and Andalusian music, and that they used sound as a historical medium. What are the effects of this interconnection in building the identities of the inhabitants of Andalusia and Morocco?
Andalusians have all found in flamenco the most enduring example of the echo of modern Spain and its connection to its past in the Middle Ages and the Middle East. I was struck by how much Andalusian literature appeared in flamenco, as if this musical form was the only path through which one could feel the convergence and intersection of Andalusia. the province of Andalusia today; Since the beginning of the flamenco heritage, Andalusians have listened through it to the vitality and spirit of their Muslim, Jewish and Gypsy past. The flamenco songs they listen to are considered a repository of sensory memory, for parts of the past experience that include both sides of the Mediterranean, and the Spanish poet García Lorca embodies one of the famous examples of this perception, and this is evident by his suggestion For Arab and Persian poets, in order to be able to decipher the meanings of the Andalusian musical heritage of his time.
I envision Andalusianism as a legacy based on the formulation of a space of commonalities, that connects Europe with the Middle East, and returning to medieval Iberia is a space that allows exploration of connections that cannot be recognized in national historiographical narratives.. Music and flamenco in particular provided a means chief to explore these commonalities that connect both sides of the Mediterranean.
Do you not find that Andalusian music contributed to building Western music, just as Andalusian philosophers (such as Ibn Rushd) contributed to building Western thought, including modernity?
According to your anthropological view, does modernity really contradict the heritage of Andalusia?
There is no doubt that the Andalusian musical forms left an imprint in the musical heritage of Europe, although European musicologists worked hard for many years to refute this, and yet the important question today is: What difference did Arab Muslims make at the time of their great influence on heritage? Literary, aesthetic and scientific in Europe?
For Andalusians, this fact has profound implications for what it means to be European, and for the ethics and politics of Europe's relationship with the Middle East, which is why I argue that their vision has something important to contribute to modernity.