History should not be forgotten
Jan. 21st, 2009 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI've been watching some BBC4 stuff lately about the Islamic history of Europe. I just watched the set about Al Andalus, which is pretty much Spain now. And I have these oddly paired feelings of enlightenment and anger.
This is the bit of the jigsaw I didn't know was missing. This makes history be a smooth and logical progress rather than a jumpy surprise. I've heard bits and pieces, but nothing that connects things up so systematically.
So now I have the shiny new knowledge feeling, but I'm also just annoyed, really very annoyed, that I didn't know this before. Partly in a way that's all about the world not telling me the important stuff. Clearly I should know everything.
But also partly because the story I knew is all about war and conflict, and that story is *wrong*.
This series emphasised (I'm probably going to spell this wrong) convivencia, the way that Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together and cooperated on a number of great projects, cultural and scientific. This started in the Islamic countries, but then there was a Christian king who modelled his country after them for a while. The minority religions got taxed a lot more than the dominant one, so it wasn't perfect equality or anything, but it was a system people could live with that worked.
And then it didn't.
Relations broke down, there was fighting, there was eventually a dominant Christian kingdom that kicked out the Muslims and at best forcibly converted the Jews.
It went from tolerance to oppression.
And I think that's an important story to remember, from two angles.
There's this way of telling history like it's all progress, like the old days started out with all sorts of mistakes and we've been gradually getting rid of them ever since. And if you tie that up with the story of all the wars and conquests you get a rather nasty narrative of just wars and necessary conflicts where the people that won were bringing civilization and were clearly the good guys. History written by the winners. It writes off the achievements of anyone who ever lost a war. Nasty mess.
But it's also important to remember that every gain can again be lost.
There's an attitude that comes up in discussions of any -ism, racism, sexism, anything that's got some laws against it and some decades of progress towards equality. Someone will say that it's All Done now. Battle won, world set to rights, we have a nice equal world now and what are y'all complaining about.
It becomes then absolutely necessary that we remember there were times that lived happily together, worked together, had laws people could live with, and lost them.
History is a wheel, not a road, and everything changes. And everything, even the story of it, could be lost.
This is the bit of the jigsaw I didn't know was missing. This makes history be a smooth and logical progress rather than a jumpy surprise. I've heard bits and pieces, but nothing that connects things up so systematically.
So now I have the shiny new knowledge feeling, but I'm also just annoyed, really very annoyed, that I didn't know this before. Partly in a way that's all about the world not telling me the important stuff. Clearly I should know everything.
But also partly because the story I knew is all about war and conflict, and that story is *wrong*.
This series emphasised (I'm probably going to spell this wrong) convivencia, the way that Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together and cooperated on a number of great projects, cultural and scientific. This started in the Islamic countries, but then there was a Christian king who modelled his country after them for a while. The minority religions got taxed a lot more than the dominant one, so it wasn't perfect equality or anything, but it was a system people could live with that worked.
And then it didn't.
Relations broke down, there was fighting, there was eventually a dominant Christian kingdom that kicked out the Muslims and at best forcibly converted the Jews.
It went from tolerance to oppression.
And I think that's an important story to remember, from two angles.
There's this way of telling history like it's all progress, like the old days started out with all sorts of mistakes and we've been gradually getting rid of them ever since. And if you tie that up with the story of all the wars and conquests you get a rather nasty narrative of just wars and necessary conflicts where the people that won were bringing civilization and were clearly the good guys. History written by the winners. It writes off the achievements of anyone who ever lost a war. Nasty mess.
But it's also important to remember that every gain can again be lost.
There's an attitude that comes up in discussions of any -ism, racism, sexism, anything that's got some laws against it and some decades of progress towards equality. Someone will say that it's All Done now. Battle won, world set to rights, we have a nice equal world now and what are y'all complaining about.
It becomes then absolutely necessary that we remember there were times that lived happily together, worked together, had laws people could live with, and lost them.
History is a wheel, not a road, and everything changes. And everything, even the story of it, could be lost.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-22 04:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-22 05:08 am (UTC)and they're running with it a series from I think 2005
An Islamic History of Europe
Rageh Omaar visits Spain, Sicily and France to discover the history of Islam in Europe
three episodes only
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gp0gc
no subject
Date: 2009-01-22 05:48 am (UTC)