Epilogue

The fall of the Arab state in Al-Andalus provoked a great deal of queries and extensive debates among historians and within research circles ever since.  First among such queries was whether the Arab presence in Spain was beneficial to the country and its people,  and what course was the history of Spain likely to have taken without the Arabs and Islam ?

By their very nature, such queries are deemed to remain without decisive answers.  The very nature of these queries invokes subjective attitudes, and the answer depends on where one stands.

For the Arabs, that presence represented the most glorious epoch of their history,  an epoch described by historians as one of greatness in all respects.  For the Hispanic masses it was a salvation from the Visigoth arrogance and class distinction.  For the Jews it was a liberation from  economic, religious and social despotism. For the Hispanic royalty, it was a threat to monarchy and to their very existence. For the church at large, it represented a threat to Christianity as such.

The average Spaniard of today feels no bitterness towards those who had invaded his country and ruled it for eight centuries.  In fact some would describe the Arab presence as settlement and tend to think of it with tenderness.  The more enlightened individuals and especially the scholars among them tend to have yearning to those days and some even proudly claim they have Arab blood running through their veins, or an Arab syllable within their name structures.

Feelings of bitterness do exist however among the Arabs,  not against the Spanish. but against their fellow Arab ancestors who were not able to hold to their adopted paradise.  They have always had strong feelings towards that epoch in their history. For them that period represented their golden era, the crown jewel of their history.  Had they remained united, the Christian kings of the north would probably not have been able to reconquer the land even with outside help.

In fact the expression  reconquista,describing the conquest of the lands where the Arabs had settled for the previous eight centuries, was not based upon a long perceived strategy by those kings.  The reconquistastarted  as a series of opportune seizures of territory from their weakened enemy, whose internal strife and  disunity transformed them from the status of masters to that of vessels,  depending for their very existence and security upon the goodwill of those masters.  The famous Spanish historian Jose Ortega was right in wondering ë.. how something which lasted eight centuries can be called reconquista.í

Yet when the Spaniards finally managed to drive their conquerors out of Spanish soil, they held back everything the Arabs had brought to their soil except Islam.  And this is one other thing that students of history find difficult to understand;  how did Spain manage to be the only country among those occupied by the Arabs to get rid of Islam so completely.  Yet one need only remember the growing might of the Catholic Church in the Iberian Peninsula and Europe at large, and its instrumentalities in imposing its sovereignty and establishing itself as the guardian of the only religion to be permitted to be institutionalised on European soil.

The religious fervor and the taste of victory not only rid the Iberian Peninsula of its conquerors, but also paved the way for the Spaniards to become conquerors themselves, first in Italy and then in the New World thus ceating  an empire on both sides of the Atlantic.  But like all empires, the tides of change and alternating balance of power caused the Spanish might to shrink and bring Spain to its normal size.

As for the non-Christians who survived the cleansing rituals of the Catholic church, little documentation exists regarding their fate. There is evidence, however, that for obvious reasons, the vast majority of them, including the big Jewish community,  found their way to al-Maghrib, where most of them settled, while the rest dispersed throughout North Africa and the countries of the Middle East.   In fact, one still finds, in many of the major towns and cities in the Middle East,  sections named Harat al- Magharbah,Moroccan quarter.

These immigrants have, however, blended normally in their new habitat, and with time,  became distinguishable only by their names, where such names were derived from locations or towns and villages in Al-Andalus like Al-Qurtubi  (Cordoba), Ar-Rondi(Ronda), Al-Ishbily (Seville), Al-Maliqi(Malaga), Al-Ghirnati(Granada) etc...

However those immigrants, the majority of whom must have left the Iberian soil empty handed, had concealed within their souls and hearts what their enemy could not strip them off.... their cultural heritage. Wherever they went,they carried with them their typical Andalusian architectural, musical and poetry forms, which were particularly  reminiscent of a glorious past of which they were profoundly proud.   And since it was in North Africa where, most of the Andalusian immigrants settled, it was North Africa which had always boasted, and rightly so, of nurturing these treasures and preserving them.

However the roads of dispersion led many an immigrant to other locations, some not far from Al-Andalus, like southern France, north Italy and Switzerland - especially in the Jura area - and some to much further locations overseas. In fact many of them are thought  to have joined, in disguise, the early expeditions to the new land following the discovery of the Americas.  The vast majority of those are thought to have managed to blend perfectly in their new environs without being discovered,  and some, it is claimed by certain researchers, were discovered and liquidated.   Most of those who survived are thought to have eventually converted to Christianity.

Apart from the typically Arab features which can be observed among many of the inhabitants of today's Latin America, there is a substantial Andalusian influence in the architecture of many Latin American countries, which might have been brought about by such Immigrants.

There is evidence, however that a substantial number of the Muslim population had  chosen, for one reason or the other, to remain in the peninsula at any cost.   Some converted to Christianity voluntarily and others were forcibly babtized.   Many had moved to new places, especially in the north of the country,  and managed to conceal their true identity and faith, and continued living among the local inhabitants in perfect harmony and as an integral part of them.  But when the winds of change swept Spain recently, and finally freed the souls of people from the nightmare of the inquisition, they were encouraged to come out to the surface and declare their true faith.

A detailed study of the fate of those people, and how they might have influenced their new surroundings, will no doubt reveal interesting information which might also shed some light on a large number of issues, and especially, on the history of the Nasirid kingdom in Granada, which was left wothout adequate coverage after the death of the great historian of Al-Andalus, Ibn Al-Khatib in 1374.  This, of course, is an enormous undertaking requiring the resources and effort of more than one individual.  It is sincerely hoped that such a worthy undertaking would find its way to light.