Toledo and Text

Two days ago, a bullet train zapped me from Madrid to Toledo (80km) in half an hour, as if by future-techno-magic. Then, by the grace of an opposite-seeming force, I walked out of the neo-Moorish style train station, across a bridge over a moat, and up a number of steep stone stairways, through stone arches cut into thick stone walls of the old medieval city that was named a world heritage site in the 80´s. Raised up on a small hill and separate-feeling from the world, it is a truly special place, a miracle that it exists. People live there, but it´s hard to say what they do besides catering to the tourists who visit. There are a few chain stores near the main square, a scattering of nice restaurants and hotels and cafes and bars, some artisan shops, and then so many holy shrines—many active and many turned into museums. I went first to the two remaining ancient mosques. Both quite small, which had been transformed to churches, and now remain museums. Quranic inscriptions were carved on the face of the tiny Mezquita de Cristo de la Luz, and inside Christ hung on the cross amidst a room of Muslim arches and a mysterious patch of Arabic script in a kind of calligraphy I´ve never seen before. The second mosque had a row of even more dramatic arches, with an ancient Visigothic column (with Christ´s face, effaced) holding up the last. Then I found the two synagogues still standing, one with its gorgeous wood ceiling restored and turned into a museum about the history of Jews in Spain, which tells the story of them thriving under the Muslims and kicked out finally alongside the Muslims and by the Catholics with the famous 1492 decree and the second one of the most gorgeous rooms I´ve been in, and one of the oldest synagogues standing in Western Europe. Interesting the explanatory language in all these sites, interesting too the fact that the (ancestors of the) Sephardim have been invited back only recently in an act of official reconciliation, interesting how Islam has (not) been embraced similarly. Interesting the connections across all three monotheistic faiths, both in teachings, in stories, and also in these ancient buildings, ancient buildings I can only say I was lucky to experience, each one letting the light in a certain way, each one lovingly restored, each one demanding I look up, up, up.

With only the anchor of Toledo´s grand cathedral at the center, I proceeded to get lost over and over again as I traced Toledo´s twisted streets. Unlike the streets of Madrid´s centro, which tend to twist and turn but lead somewhere new eventually, in Toledo I often found myself back where I started or stuck in a dead-end. I read somewhere that these dead ends point to the sensibility of the Moorish people who occupied Toledo during the 700 years that various Muslim rulers were in power there. The idea was they built their cities in this way in order to allow for the privacy of their families. I wish I could remember where this notion came from because I´m not quite sure I buy it anymore, or at least I want to return to the text and understand it more deeply. I have been reading a lot of different things since I got to Spain, and I´ve not done so well at keeping track of what comes from where. When embarking on this project/journey that I proposed for the support to get me here (thank you, New York University Global Research Institute!), I thought I´d really only need the same things I used to write about China—Wikipedia and my own two feet—plus a bilingual edition of the Quran. Wikipedia is obviously not a great source, but a useful, easy one and enough for now (consider it a gateway, I always tell my students!) if my reading and my experience are really my material here. But, it´s been quite a boon while in Madrid to be assigned to an office at the NYU campus here with Abigail Balbale, who has been great company and also a shared a wealth of recommendations and knowledge on the intersecting areas of academia, Islam, Quranic translation, Arabic language, historiography regarding religion and Spain and whatever else with me.

Wikipedia tells me that in Toledo there are still traces of the ancient Romans, who built a circus there and in 400 held a church council there. Then this part of Rome fell and the Visigothic people--Goths, Celts, Arians who had been living there under Roman rule--came to power for two centuries during which they made it their kingdom´s capital, devoted themselves to Christianity, holding many more church councils there, and built important libraries. This is to say, the Muslims were not the first to make Toledo a center of learning and devotion to a higher calling. But then the Muslims did come and as a way to mark those 700 years, I have been familiar with the narrative of Convivencia (or "Coexistence"), of Christians, Muslims, and Jews living side by side, peacefully. It is perhaps a useful (if cheap) story to conjure today. To be sure, Muslims, Jews, and Christians did coexist there--whether peacefully or not, it was a setting fertile with new knowledge in a way that has been rarely rivaled in human history, with Toledo´s role as translation capital, where math, science, religion, art, culture and everything else were transmitted between Arabic, vernacular Castilian, and Latin by armies of linguists, philosophers, scribes, and translators. This is something I read in Toledo, over coffee, then over lunch and over afternoon beer and croquettes, in the scan of a chapter of a book Abby shared with me (which she co-authored).

As I´m sitting down and gathering these thoughts today, I´ve decided it´s time to make some better effort to track sources than simply keeping them in email and on my kindle, so I´ve drawn a source chart, based on a research assignment I have guided my students through for years but have never done myself. That´s the final image here. I like having the Quran at the center of the bullseye. It fits with so much of what I have been reading and experiencing regarding the way it functions as a text and in this place where it has existed, in people´s minds, on their tongues, both very much alive and alive, but forgotten, put away. On that note, two quotes to end, one from Bruce Lawrence´s book, "The Quran": "...while the Qur´an itself is a unitary, coherent source of knowledge, there is not a single Qur´anic message."

And finally from a translated interpretation of the Quran itself, done by Thomas Cleary that Lawrence uses:

Say, even if the ocean were ink

For (writing) the words of my Lord,

The ocean would be exhausted

Before the words of my Lord were exhausted,

Even if We were to add another ocean to it. (18:109)