One of the main technological advancements brought from the East to the ravaged Visigothic lands was in the agricultural industry. This tolerance led to a few centuries of prosperity, manifested through an explosion of artistic production. Tolerance for cultural and racial intermixing was a major component of certain governments, even moving towards a secular understanding of Islam as a religion that welcomed a dialogue with others. One of the key reasons for the successes of this society was the peaceable coexistence of a large variety of ethnic groups. It produced intellectual centers that were incubators of thought and art, generating work that was significant to the development of the European Renaissance to come it was a period that could realistically be considered in terms of a modernizing society. Especially during the first 300 years, it was notable for its degree of cultural integration. When viewed through another lens, however, the period of Islamic presence in Andalusia, which began in 710, brought with it a multitude of advances to many sectors of society. This was a conquest that would not end until the last Muslim power was cast off of the European continent, a goal roughly accomplished by 1492, at the dawning of the Modern Era. From this perspective, the long period during which Islamic power flourished in the Iberian Peninsula is usually regarded in terms of the “Reconquista,” the 800 years during the Middle Ages when Spanish monarchs were committed to retaking the lands that they had claimed to be their own. To the latter, Andalusia’s Islamic rule was the result of an Eastern invasion of a land belonging to the West. The story of Andalusia reads very differently from an Eastern perspective than it does from a Western one.
I became interested in how this concept of toleration could be read into the variety of built forms and histories of the Andalusian Islamic empires. After visiting and delving deeper into the area’s rich history, the role of toleration took on more complex flavors.
The original intention of my project was to explore the concept of tolerance as it was represented through ornament and ornamentation in Andalusia, a region of Spain that was once under Islamic rule.
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