American Jewish Archives Journal, Vol 44, No. 01 (1992)

16 American Jewish Archives
culture. The intellectuals, schooled de rigeur in Koran and Tradition
(hadith), and as well in the scientific pursuits of the time, not the least
medicine, increasingly invested their leisure in cultural creativity. In
their growing worldliness both groups began to reassess the tradi-
tional world-view of their heritage, thus inaugurating in Europe what
has been called, if somewhat infelicitously, the confrontation between
reason and revelation.
As is always the case, this confrontation was resolved in one of
three ways: the rejection of reason, the rejection of revelation, or a
synthesis of the two. The rejection of reason was politically secure
and could be publicly trumpeted, given the fact that society and gov-
ernment were grounded in Islam's revealed texts and sacred tradi-
tions. The rejection of revelation was politically most dangerous,
since it courted punishment for treason, and therefore compelled all
but its doctrinaire proponents to remain intellectually closeted. The
intermediate solution of synthesis strove for the compatibilization of
reason with revelation in such a way as to support the societal struc-
ture while permitting a rational understanding of its underlying ide-
ology. Articulated by and on behalf of people uneasy with the
traditional coordinates of revelation, this solution generated the cre-
ative philosophical syntheses of al-Andalus.
The artistic renaissance is justly called the Golden Age of al-
Andalus. Its beginnings may at least symbolically be dated with the
arrival of Ziryab the singer from Baghdad during the emirate of Abd-
er-Rahman I1 (822-852) and its climax in the melodious poetry and
sophisticated philosophy of the caliphate and taifas. The poetic flores-
cence was pedestaled on scientific studies of the Arabic language.
Grammar, philology, and lexicography uncovered Arabic's natural
rhythms and directed its linguistic creativity. The philosophical coun-
terpart couched the inherited tradition in the forms of ancient Greek
philosophy, especially Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism. It culmi-
nated in the works of the Aristotelian Averroes (1126-1198).
In al-Andalus a new Jewish community came into being. The com-
munity was composed of three strata: the Jews of Visigothic Iberia,
those overrun by the Muslim advance, and those subsequently return-
ing from exile; immigration from elsewhere in the Muslim world, par-
ticularly as al-Andalus prospered and other Muslim lands declined;