GEORGE T. BEECH
Muslim Saragossa as a channel for the transmission of Arabic
and Jewish culture to northern Europe in the later Middle Ages
by George T. Beech [Western Michigan
University]
ABSTRACT: The Almoravid and Aragonese conquest of the city
and kingdom of Saragossa in two stages in 1110 and 1118 brought to a brutal end
the exceptional eleventh century cultural flowering of that city’s Muslim and
Jewish writers in philosophy, literature, biblical studies and the sciences –
physics, mathematics, astronomy and botany. Yet the city’s influence lived on
after its fall through the translation in the Saragossa region of the writings
not only of its own authors but also of famous books of ancient Greek,
Hellenistic, Jewish, and early Arabic origin.
Borrowing also occurred through oral communication (word of
mouth.) The incorporation of Arabic words into Occitan, the Romance vernacular
of southern France, is evidence of linguistic exchanges. Further proof for the penetration
of andalusi culture to the north comes from the incorporation of decorative
features of andalusi architecture into French churches in the 11th and 12th centuries.
These French appropriations of elements of andalusi culture inevitably lead to
the question of the origins of Occitan love poetry in the 12th century – could
the troubadour poets have been influenced by the Arabic love poetry flourishing
in Muslim Spain (including Saragossa) in the 11th century as believed by the
proponents of the thèse arabe? My objective in this paper is to present
evidence (the most spectacular being the Eleanor of Aquitaine vase) showing
that the author of the earliest known troubadour poems, Duke William IX of
Aquitaine (1071-1126), William the Troubadour, had personal friendly contacts
with the last Muslim king Saragossa, Imad al-Dawla, may well himself have known
some Arabic, and that this could explain the possible presence of Arabic verses
in one of his poems. This does not establish the validity of the Arabist thesis
but it does, I would argue provide new evidence favoring that hypothesis.