Status Updates From The Myth of the Andalusian ...

I still wonder whether he doesn't romanticize christian women in spain a bit, even while I do believe him when he says they had more freedom in christian spain than islamic spain. And what he writes about the status of jews sounds a lot like their status in christian europe. it has all: High status, special clothes, pogroms etc

Right, I forgot that black slaves were less valuable then white ones, and I wonder why, Was it really just asthetics or also because they were easier to get because of the established subsaharan african slave trade.

So the reason for the various skills of slave women was their sexual conquest and needs of their owners. Also they had more means to leave the house exactly because they were not considered proper. However, sometimes I did wonder whether the author paints the spanish christians as too free in comparison so making a similar mistake as the people he criticizes.

Women even needed a male agent to inherit property or testify and for that even a young son would be needed simply to say that this veiled woman is actually his mother. The latter I can understand because how would you otherwise know?

So it was normal for proper and free Muslim women to be veiled when outside and otherwise staying at home with only family.

So this "servant of the merciful" was a friend of pretty brutal executions, exposing his crucified victims as well as their heads to the crowds. And another caliph had a cazholoic 13 year old beheaded because the boy had turned him down. And all this brutality of several caliphs is confirmed by muslim sources. And caliph Abd al-Rahman an-Nasir used black children as a counterweight to draw water.

So when being conquered the muslim king of granada stipulated a clause that jews should not have authority over muslims. Why? Did he hate jews that much?

wow, they got so radical by fearing impurity from christians and jews. That is anything but tolerant, that is primarily religious seggregation. Not surprising with such purity religions.

So islam in spain was much more rigorous than the one in the east. they were much more strict against heretics and apostates. And apparently prosecuting and killing witches was a lot more strict and swift and less spectatcular here than in western cases. And they seem to at least let an underage boy in a homosexual act go, but not when both are adults.

Wow are these purity laws sexist towards women and infidels and look at that in Spanish spain jewish families (or other non-christians) could achieve high status as well, just like in islamic spain, that is usually omitted. And one claim about cordoban islamic tolerance actually referce to a time when cordoba was christian again.

So the terman byzantine is historically so meaningless and only some guy called Hieronymus Wolf came up with it. So back then those people would have been called Romans or Greeks.

According to this book Visigoth spain was quite whealthy and culturally advanced due to its long roman history and connection to the western roman/byzantine empire and had the muslims not invaded the two would have joined and the knowledge from antiquity would have come from there.

So not just the reconquista mistrusted Moslems in Spain due to fear of allying with their enemies, but the muslim conquerers from centuries past did the same with the christians.

So Arabs were so high in the social order that others tried to pass themselves off as such. That reminds me of the first caliphate and how arabs were on the top there as well.

So Arabs were not allowed to become dhimmis. That reminds me of how they are generally on the highest social order. And naturally, violence and "peace" are part of a whole strategy here.

yeah, what hee quotes here from medieval muslim sources does not sound at all as if jhiad is just a spiritual quest and being a dhimmi and paying the jizya is in any shape of form tolerant. According to him this special tax is meant to humiliate jews and christians.

I can definitely say that I encountered this motivated blindness that he described here. I see it in regard to homosexuality in history, sometimes that blindness is so bad that clearly homophobic stories and accounts are somehow pro-homosexuality. Especially in regards to China.