Following Historic Manuscripts of Muslim Sapin and re-conquest of  parts of Spain by Ferdinand are at display at “The John Carter Brown Library”. One Mnanusript below is enalrged but others are small. The description at the bottom of post about Averroes reads” His school of philosophy is known as Averroism. His theological thinking took some unusual turns, and he has been described as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe”.

Averroes( Ibn Rashud) tried to reconcile Aristolinism with Islam and Saint Thomas Aquinus used similar logic to reconcile theology with reason and coined the phrase ” Averroism”. Averroes followed Al-Farabi school of thought ” Reason Above Revelation”. During the early European Rennaisance period term “Averrorism” became synonymous with ” “Atheism”

Spain and the Human Diaspora in 1492

The year 1492 is known to every American schoolchild as the year of Columbus’s first arrival in the Americas and the beginning of a vast colonial undertaking by European powers. Earlier that same year, the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella had completed their conquest of the parts of Spain that had for centuries been under Muslim rule. With the recapture of Grenada, Jews and Muslims were required to convert to Christianity or leave the combined kingdoms of Spain. Between 1492 and 1610, some 3,000,000 Muslims voluntarily left or were expelled from Spain, resettling in North Africa. This displaced population provided an army of recruits prepared for commercial war against Christendom, launching piratical attacks from bases in Algiers, Tunis, Morocco, and Tripoli.

At the time, half the world’s Jews lived in Spain, often achieving eminent positions in society. They were placed under severe pressure to convert or leave Christian areas as early as 1391, while grandfather agreements in peace treaties allowed the continued practice of Islam for at least a generation or so. Many Jews left Spain for Portugal, while most accepted conversion. The Inquisition was introduced to inspect the veracity of the converts. The conversion or removal policy came to Grenada early in 1492.

[1] Columbus Takes Leave of Ferdinand and Isabella

Girolamo Benzoni. Das vierdte Buch von dern neuem Welt. (Frankfurt a.M.: J. Feyerbend, for Theodor de Bry, 1594).

Columbus takes leave of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabello of Castile. (Plate viii from the illustrated De Bry edition.)

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2] Tolerance and the Re-Conquest of Islamic Spain

Sebastian Münster. Cosmographiae universalis lib. VI. (Basel: 1554).

Officially, a policy of tolerance existed in Islamic Spain. Jews and Christians were freely permitted to exercise their religion, under certain strictures. Christians, for example, were forbidden to proselytize, to build new churches, or to openly display the cross. From March 1492, however, a zero-tolerance policy for observant Jews was the rule throughout Spain. Separate grandfather agreements for Muslims existed in each kingdom and principality. The treaty in Granada allowed the moriscos to retain their religion, but Archbishop Hernando de Talavera was charged with the responsibility of converting them. Early in 1502, conversion or exile was ordered for all Moors in Granada. Similar orders went out for Muslims in Valencia and Aragon in 1526, but many were able to stay after paying a bounty for a 40-year suspension of the edict. The Arabic language and mode of dress was forbidden in 1566, and unconditional expulsion was finally effected between 1606 and 1616.

[3] Columbus Makes Landfall

Girolamo Benzoni. Americae pars quarta. (Frankfurt a.M.: J. Feyerbend, for Theodor de Bry, 1594).

Here, Theodor de Bry imagines Columbus arriving and exchanging greetings with indigenous islanders of the Caribbean. When the explorer arrived at Cuba, he thought it likely that he had reached the Asian mainland. He had brought with him an interpreter for Arabic, Luis de Torres, who was a recent Jewish convert to Christianity. Columbus hadthe intention of meeting with the Great Khan, understood from Marco Polo and other sources to be the highest political authority in the region. To set the stage for a trade agreement, he sent Luis de Torres into the interior of Cuba to search for the imperial court. Torres returned without success, but Arabic became thereby one of the first Old World languages to be heard by the Indians of the Caribbean.

Columbus himself was deeply religious, and anticipated that vast material wealth from trade would be employed in the recapture of the Holy Land and hasten the fulfillment of Christian prophecy.

[4] The Spanish Inquisition

Juan Gomez de Mora. Auto de la Fe celebrado en Madrid este ano de MDCXXXII.(Madrid: 1632).

The Inquisition was originally conceived as a means of halting the activities of French heretics. In the beginning, it was run by a committee of Cardinals, but later came under the supervision of Rome. In Spain, a separate operation was conceived by Ferdinand and Isabella with control vested in the Spanish crown, an unconventional arrangement which the papacy grudgingly and haltingly agreed to. The focus of the Spanish Inquisition was in the beginning on New Christians of Jewish heritage who were suspected of relapsing into their old faith. Later, Protestants and Muslims also came under the institutional examination. This pamphlet, a report to King Philip IV, includes a ceremonial prayer addressing “the Judaic superstition, the Mohammedan Sect, and the heresy of Lutherans”.

In practice, the storied Spanish Inquisition was never as effective or well-funded as a modern police state and was forced to rely on occasional denunciations by suspicious and envious neighbors who watched for outward signs of religious scruple, like prayer rituals or an avoidance of pork.

The arms of Spanish cities and the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon are displayed in this plate.

[5] The Spanish Inquisition in Protestant Eyes

Raimondo Gonzales de Montes. A discovery and playne declaration of sundry subtill practices of the Holy Inquisition of Spayne. (London: John Day, 1569).

Though the Spanish Inquisition was focused chiefly on converted Christians suspected of lapsing into former beliefs and practices, Protestant writers and artists in England, Germany, and the Netherlands were the most effective publicists of righteous indignation against the dubious methods of interrogation which commonly resulted in false confessions, if not injury or death. This English engraving accompanied an English edition of a Sanctae Inquisitionis Hispanicae artes aliquot delectae, orginally published in Heidelberg in 1567. Here holding “feet to the fire” is not just a metaphor.

The mysterious author, Reginaldus Gonsalvius Montanus, was probably a Spanish or Flemish Protestant. This is a prime example of the European half of the Black Legend, under which the worst excesses of Spanish policy were presented as the norm. The American portion of the Black Legend was focused on the portrayal of Spanish colonial mistreatment of the New World indigenous peoples.

[6] Moorish Architecture

Juan Alvarez de Colmenar. Annales d’Espagne et de Portugal. (Amsterdam: 1741).

Though Muslims in Spain were required to convert or leave the country, Islamic cultural influences remain, the most obvious being architectural monuments built by both Muslim rulers and Christian sovereigns with the help of Muslim workers. The great mosque of Cordoba, the world’s third largest, was refashioned as a great cathedral following Christian victory there.

Some of the most prominent structures are featured in this set of annals by Alvárez de Colmenar, published in the mid-eighteenth century, including the Alhambra and the Royal Palace in Seville.

The Alcázar of Seville, the Moorish-style Royal Palace shown here, was built on the ruins of an old Moorish fort. The Arabic al-quasr means “palace”. Construction was undertaken by King Pedro of Castile from 1364, using Moorish workers, under a distinctly Islamic design. The structure was often enlarged and remodeled, including among other things contrasting Gothic and Italian Renaissance elements. The apartments are still used by Spain’s royal family.

Other Islamic elements of Spain include a residue of the Islamic law used there for centuries, including in particular the titles of officials, such as alcalde (“mayor”), which were also introduced into Spain’s colonial American governments.

	[22] Alexandria’s LibrariesHartmann Schedel. Register des Buchs der Chroniken und Geschichten.(Nuremberg: 1493).An artist’s conception of the burning of the storied library at Alexandria, Egypt, from the German 1493 edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle. Pre-Islamic Alexandria held the greatest collection of writings in the ancient world. Its destruction is regretted in Western and Middle Eastern sources alike. The settlement was founded in 332 B.C.E. by Alexander the Great and became the largest city in the Mediterranean basin. It was the greatest city of Hellenistic and Jewish culture, fostering such achievements as theSeptuagint, a translation by Jews of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek. An amazing 700,000 scrolls were housed in two celebrated libraries, and a fine university developed. In later Roman and Byzantine times, it became a great center of Christian learning, rivaling Rome and Constantinople.The libraries were gradually destroyed from the time of Caesar’s invasion (48 B.C.E.) and suffered especially in 391 A.D. when Theodosius I ordered Pagan temples and other facilities to be destroyed. The city was in commercial decline when it fell to Muslim Arab forces in 642, and its importance lessened further when they moved their capital to Cairo in 969.
	[23] The Great Physician andPhilospherAvicenna, 980-1037. Principis Avic. Libri canonis, necnon De medicinis cordialibus [et] Cantica / ab Andrea Bellunensi ex antiquis Arabum originalibus ingenti labore summaq[ue] diligentia correcti atq[ue] in integrum restituti vna cum interpretatione nominu[m] Arabicoru[m], q[uae] partim mendosa p[ar]tim incognita lectorem antea moraba[n]tur. Opus plane aureu[m], ac omni ex parte absolutum. (Venice: [1527]).Ibn Sina (980-1037), known to the West as Avicenna, was of Persian origin and became the most famous philosopher of medieval Islam and was everywhere the most influential medical writer from 1100 to 1500. His classification of the sciences was adopted by the medieval schools of Europe.In the illustrated title page of this medical book, portraits appear of the great classical and medieval Islamic figures of medicine and philosophy: Aesculapius, Hippocrates, Galen, Avicena, Rasis, Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus and Averroes. Also shown is a view of the first page of the glossary of Arabic medical terms from the front of the book.It is not by accident that the Venetian printer Lucantonio Giunta included three Muslim men of learning with the names and portraits of the great Greek and Roman scientists and philosophers: Avicenna, Rasis and Averroes. Rasis, also rendered as Rhazes (850-923), is known to Arabs as abu-Bakr Muhammed ibn-Zakariya al-Razi. He was born in Persia and rose to the position of chief physician in a great hospital in Baghdad. Having written 140 medical works, the most important being translated later into Latin, he had a great influence on medical science in medieval Europe.Averroes (1126-1198), known by his full name in Arabic as Abu ‘l-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd, is better known just as Ibn Rushd. Averroes was an Andalusian polymath born in Córdoba, Spain, in its Muslim era; he died in Marrakech, Morocco. In his career, Averroes was an authority in early Islamic philosophy and theology , Islamic law and jurisprudence, logic, psychology, in the sciences of medicine, astronomy, geography, mathematics and physics, and even in Arabic musical theory. His school of philosophy is known as Averroism. His theological thinking took some unusual turns, and he has been described as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe. LOAN FROM THE LOWNES COLLECTION, JOHN HAY LIBRARY, BROWN UNIVERSITYTo see More Manuscripts click on link below;http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/islam/pages/spain.html  Posted by F.Sheikh

George Harrison with Ravi Shankar in 1967.

Ravi Shankar was a giant in music world both in subcontinent India and in the West. I attended two of his concerts, one in Lincoln Center and other in New Jersey PAC, and it was exhilarating experience especially when Allah Rakha is playing tabla. Recently he was performing along with his daughter Anoushka Shankar, also a virtuoso pianist. At New Jersey PAC, we actually went to listen to his daughter Anoushka Shankar who was supposed to play sitar along with his father but unfortunately got sick and did not play.

Some excerpts are worth reading from obituary posted by NYT;

Ravi Shankar, the sitar virtuoso and composer who died on Tuesday at 92, created a passion among Western audiences for the rhythmically vital, melodically flowing ragas of classical Indian music — a fascination that had expanded by the mid-1970s into a flourishing market for world music of all kinds.

His final performance was a concert with his daughter, the virtuoso sitarist Anoushka Shankar, on Nov. 4 in Long Beach, Calif. He was also the father of the singer Norah Jones.

Ravi Shankar, whose formal name was Robindra Shankar Chowdhury, was born on April 7, 1920, in Varanasi, India, to a family of musicians and dancers. His teacher was Allaudin Khan and he married his daughter, Annapurna Devi, also a sittarist.

Often his tabla player was Alla Rakha, who became a renowned soloist in his own right. At times, Mr. Shankar also shared the spotlight with Ali Akbar Khan, a master of the sarod, another Indian stringed instrument. These concerts, including an annual performance at Carnegie Hall, adhered to traditional forms, in which the musicians would improvise on a raga, often ecstatically, for about an hour per piece.

Through his recitals and his recordings on the Columbia, EMI and World Pacific labels, Mr. Shankar built a Western following for the sitar. In 1952 he began performing with Menuhin, with whom he made three recordings for EMI: “West Meets East” (1967), “West Meets East, Vol. 2” (1968) and “Improvisations: West Meets East” (1977). He also made recordings with Rampal.

Click below to read full article;

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/arts/music/ravi-shankar-indian-sitarist-dies-at-92.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&smid=fb-share&adxnnlx=1355428932-ZGYEAS8Iv56gxhCAStVMAQ

Posted by F. Sheikh