Andalus and Sefarad Quotes

“In this book I have attempted to show that the history of philosophy in al-Andalus cannot be told as separate stories of Muslim or of Jewish philosophy. Nor can intellectual history be told as an abstract history of ideas, while ignoring the politico-religious circumstances in which these ideas grew and developed. The contributions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims to the development of philosophy in the Iberian peninsula are parts of a single work, a chef d’œuvre set in the frame of the political, social, and religious life of al-Andalus. It is by viewing these contributions as interwoven threads of a grand tapestry that we can begin to glimpse the glory of the intellectual history of al-Andalus.”
― Sarah Stroumsa, Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain

“The common linguistic and intellectual ground on which Muslim, Christian, and Jewish philosophy flourished then characterized the entire medieval Islamicate world. But within the semiclosed precincts of “this peninsula” (a term of endearment as much as a geographical designation, used by both Jews and Muslims), the commonality is particularly striking, and perhaps easier to follow. Without imposing on al-Andalus a single predominant school of thought (be it Pseudo-Empedoclean or Aristotelian), and without appealing to a spurious Spanish “genius,” one can identify recurring themes in Andalusian speculative thought. The true meaning of tawḥīd and the correct interpretation of the divine attributes run like a thread through Andalusian thought, from Ibn Masarra and Ibn Gabirol to the Almohads and Maimonides. The respective merits of rational thought and revelation, philosophy and scriptures, preoccupied thinkers from Ibn Masarra and Baḥyā Ibn Paqūda to Averroes and Judah Halevi. Key concepts such as tadbīr (as divine providence or as human governance) or iʿtibār (contemplation and drawing a lesson) surface time and again, receiving different interpretations and being put to different uses by Ibn Masarra and Baḥyā, by Averroes and Maimonides. All of these thinkers had to negotiate their way in the political and social framework of al-Andalus, balancing mundane commitments to the court and to their respective communities with a yearning for perfection, for the sublime and the transcendent. We can sometimes trace the movement of these themes from one thinker to another; more often, the transmission lines remain buried, leaving us to choose between assuming an enigmatic osmotic process and admitting the existence of yet unknown contacts.”
― Sarah Stroumsa, Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain