To Abulcasis is credited one other tradition, and it is the one that always comes to mind when trying to understand his life and practice: the tradition of taking flowers in hand to those in sickness. It is a simple gesture, but in it we feel the graceful and generous spirit of this good doctor.
WHERE SONG WILL LEAD
A recovering patient, in a surround of flowers, might well have hastened her recovery by listening to the musicians of Al-Andalus. It is an extraordinary period for music. And it is music that has proven its worth by the vigor of its survival. One superb scholar of this music, Dwight Reynolds, tells us that “the Arab-Andalusian musical legacy … ranks as one of the oldest continuously performed art music traditions in the world.” And no one writes about it without a focus upon the grand, outlandish figure of the African singer Ziryab (which means blackbird), who arrived in Al-Andalus in the year 822 like a cultural thunderclap. He was tall and lean, with dark olive skin and considerable grace. No one seems to know the real story of his background in Baghdad, in the magnificence of the Abbasid court. But there are common themes in the wild tales: he was so gifted a musician that he offended his own teacher by surpassing him with ease and élan in performance, or that he gave offense by his ideas or conduct to potentates in one or another court. One has the sense of a man overflowing with musical genius and myriad opinions.
When he arrived at the court of Abd al-Rahman II, he set about remaking court society, as if he were some cyclonic force of fashion come to a new and rustic culture. It is almost comical, twelve centuries later, to read about it, for it seems he hypnotized the whole society. He introduced bleach and instructed all and sundry how to vary the color and style of their clothing to accord with the four seasons. He brought recipes and the idea of serving food in courses and using tablecloths and glasses, and such is his influence that he is even given credit for introducing exotic foods, such as asparagus. Lest he be associated only with asparagus for all of history, he promoted bathing in the morning and the use of toothpaste and deodorant. If this were not enough, he even founded a school of cosmetology and was a cheerleader for short hair and shaving.
All this was in his spare moments. For his central work was always music. He had a repertory of more than ten thousand songs, which drew upon poetry and history and the deep musical traditions of the Middle East, in which he had such intensive training. He concentrated his knowledge in a school of music he founded, where he invented new methods for training the voice and which was full of students he taught himself, including all ten of his children, eight boys and two girls. One of the instruments they played was the ‘ud, which became the lute of the Renaissance. It was Ziryab who is credited with a redesign of the lute, using thinner and finer woods, distinct materials for different strings (from lion’s gut to silk), and the addition of a fifth string, to represent the soul, even as the standard four strings represented the four humors natural to the body. This fifth string, alas, was discarded by later musicians, who brought their own souls.
Yet music had its performers even before Ziryab, and centuries afterward. I mean the widespread and well-documented qiyan, who were highly trained professional female singers, often referred to in histories, curiously, as singing girls, as though they were the warm-up act at a local school. They were not. They were the main event. We even know the names of some of them, so let us use them, since we want to honor these extraordinary figures. Qumar was a young woman trained in Baghdad, and three others—Fadl, ‘Alam, and Qalam—were trained in Medina. All these singers performed in Al-Andalus, and the story of Qalam is emblematic of the times. For she is not Arab at all, but from northern Spain, either Basque or Navarrese. She was taken in a military raid at a young age, enslaved, and then packed off all the way across the Mediterranean to Medina, where she was pressed into a course of studies in Arabic poetry, singing, dancing, and calligraphy. From there, she returned to perform in Al-Andalus as a much-praised favorite in Córdoba in the courts and country houses of Abd Rahman II. All these improbable arduous journeys, and her star turns in Andalus, were in the ninth century.
These gifted women, young and mature, turn up everywhere as musical performance and training developed in Al-Andalus, which offered a regime of studies of real rigor and scope. A girl would learn as many as five hundred examples of a complex form called the nawba, which moves in rhythm from languorous to swift and has four movements altogether. She learned to play a whole set of instruments, and the skills in song and movement that fit the piece and the performance. She learned the arts of improvisation, to the extent that one singer is credited with a two-hours-long outpouring of variations on one line of one song. She even learned shadow puppetry, and at graduation—there were certificates that described her attainments—she was a fully formed artist. When she was sold, she brought the sweep of her talents to the life of a court or to a wealthy family. These remarkable women were so valuable that their possession, whether by capture or purchase or trade, was a natural part of military and political maneuvering. It is among the ways that medieval warfare in Al-Andalus differs from modern warfare: nations at present do not attack a rival in hopes of winning a retinue of singing girls for their own country. If only the prizes of war could offer such joy and such beauty, we might see that it would be better to stay home with such women, and learn from them, and not go to war at all. Better yet, given the way these women had demonstrated their dedication, discipline, stamina, and learning on so many fronts, they might be excellent candidates for heads of state.
Most histories of European poetry feature the troubadours, the famous first singers of vernacular poetry in Europe, a poetry whose influence was of the most remarkable power and consequence. That influence reached throughout Europe, and later to America. The troubadours have fascinated everyone from Dante to Ezra Pound. The man often named as the first such poet, William IX of Aquitaine, grew up in a court in Southern France—an area heavily influenced by Al-Andalus—in the company of hundreds of these highly trained young women. Their music, their Arabic poetry, court songs and street songs, all the emblematic and sensuous poetry enlivened by the convivencia, must have had (one can only imagine) the most vivid and seductive influence on this capable and intelligent young man. Later in life, he would join the first Crusade, stay on in the Holy Land, and by all accounts deepen his knowledge of Arabic culture. Later, back in his court in Europe, he would manage to be excommunicated twice and to write the first lyric poems in European history, so decisive in the history of verse. I hear singing girls in them.
And to speak of singing: we cannot leave the music of Al-Andalus without visiting the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the uncanny collection of songs produced in the reign of Alphonso the Wise, who, as we recall, was otherwise busy, not just with his kingship, but with his school of translation; that is, busy with some of the most consequential work in recorded history. The Cantigas comprise more than four hundred songs with Mary as their protagonist and tell stories that show her on earth, at work, intervening hither and yon in human affairs, with power and meticulous judgment and unexpected whimsy. I urge the reader to seek out recordings of this music. And we should here dip into the stories, for they give a savor of the era, its religion, imagination, and art.
Let us begin with Mary’s miracles, for she swoops in miraculously for all manner of interventions. In many of the songs she brings the dead to life, especially dead children and occasionally stillborn babies. As if that were not enough, she can revive dead horses, even mules. She’ll even return lost hunting falcons for those who favor her with their worship. In one transport of scholarly zeal, she brings back to life a sick boy, and he straightaway begins quoting scripture and reading Latin. She even zips over to a battle in Constantinople, sinks the ships of the Moorish navy, and saves the city.
My favorite is her sojourn in Sicily, where the volcano is erupting. Mary approaches some worthy fellow and suggests he compose a song in her honor. Happily, he was able to produce an acceptable rhyming ditty, and, s
atisfied, she obligingly turns and quiets the volcano. These are not powers usually associated with bursts of lyrical poetry. But perhaps, learning from the Cantigas, we should reform our ideas.
Then there is Mary’s formidable and surprising powers of forgiveness. In one song, a beautiful nun (these nuns figure frequently in the Cantigas) is courted by a rich and virtuous man. She decides to go off with him and says a final prayer to the statue of Mary, who promptly steps off her pedestal and blocks the way from the chapel. This happens a second time. The third time, the supple young nun dodges around the Virgin, goes off with her beau, and with him lives happily and deliciously, bearing many children who, sure enough, are also beautiful. The family is rich, and her husband makes her independently wealthy, just as he had promised. Mary bides her time but eventually comes to remind the former nun of her convent, to which she returns. Her husband then repairs, obligingly enough, to an abbey himself. We pray it was one nearby.
Then there is the practical Mary, ready to help. She’s especially ready to help a sinner who will honor her with prayers, vigils, devotions, songs, or whatever. She redeems thieves, gamblers, rapists, and other criminals, who are cleansed of their infamies. There seems to be no one beyond forgiveness: in one remarkable song, a beautiful noble woman sleeps with her godfather and bears him three children, all of whom she murders. Then, in despair, she stabs herself, but misses the mark. She next swallows spiders, trying to die. Finally dying, she repents and asks the Virgin for forgiveness. Mary comes posthaste, saves her, and then, astonishingly, makes her more beautiful and fit than ever. And straight to the convent she goes. There is no further word of the amorous godfather.
And this is not the only instance of her sympathy for infanticidal women. In one song, a Roman woman whose husband had died goes to bed with her son, becomes pregnant, and kills the child when it is born. A devil masquerading as a diviner tells the emperor, who summons her and attempts to find out the truth. The incestuous murderess prays straightway to Mary, who confounds the devil, leaving the emperor without proof and the woman exonerated. It is a most remarkable tale, and the message seems to be: whatever you have done, no matter how abominable, call on Mary.
She is also the one to call for a cure. She cures the paralyzed, lepers, the lame and halt, the disfigured, the crippled. She restores sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the mute, and she’s especially good on the removal of kidney stones, reported to be the size of hen’s eggs. She will even remake eyes that have been gouged out and heal the wounds suffered by a knight who fought a dragon. For the most arduous of these cures, she has a magic potion: the milk of her breasts. It is a half-naked Mary who comes to the rescue of the most needy cases, for with her most exalted potion she can remedy any malady, any at all. I do not know of any other song sequence where mother’s milk is so often pressed, literally, into action. All this surprising worship culminates in a song about John of Chrysostom, who is blind, lost, and has fallen into a patch of briars. He takes the occasion to ask Mary, who has come to cure him, what Jesus loved most on earth. Mary goes away, and John continues suffering but has a vision in which Mary comes to show him just what Jesus loved most: her breasts. John, of course, is then cured and heads off for heaven not long after.
Yet Mary has her vengeful side. Woe betide those who will not do her bidding, or those who make her jealous. A priest who steals silver from a cross, gives it to a woman, and then lies about it is blinded, and his nose is made to grow all over his face. And we will not even discuss the fate of the priest who stole some fancy altar cloth to make himself underpants. Consider, instead, the fate of the young man who puts a ring on the hand of a statue of the Virgin and pledges fidelity to her. Her hand closes over the ring. Later, he marries, and Mary, having none of it, gets right into bed with the couple, lying between the bride and bridegroom, disrupting the wedding night and rebuking the young man for abandoning her. He realizes immediately that having the Mother of God in bed with you and your bride is not a propitious sign that consummation will be yours. He goes off to the wilderness and ends up a hermit in a pine grove. It is but one example of the sexual mischief of Mary. The songs are replete with lustful priests and knights. Many a concubine or nun is left behind for the greater glory of the Virgin. One sorry knight prays to Mary for help in controlling his lust, which has led him as much into bed as onto the field of battle. Mary summarily makes him impotent. And in one barbaric song, yet another beautiful nun—has ever a country had more beautiful nuns?—is about to run off with a gallant and handsome knight and is saying a last prayer in the chapel. The statue of the Virgin begins to weep, and Jesus, next to her on the cross, wrenches a hand free and slaps the nun. And she loses her beauty, because Jesus’s hand carried its nail with it for the slap.
Such agonies are rare, what with the cures, miracles, and mercy. And the occasional sweetness. One song relates how a monk sat down in a lovely garden by a fountain and asked Mary to give him a foretaste of paradise. A bird began to sing with such finesse and power that the priest listened and listened … for three hundred years.
And another tale relates how an archdeacon was composing a song for the Virgin and had it complete except for one crucial rhyme. He prays to her, the perfect rhyme is delivered, and the statue of Mary leans forward to thank him. And that is why that statue leans to this day. It is a story to give hope to minstrels and sonneteers everywhere.
Accompanying many editions of the Cantigas are beautiful illustrations of the musicians who performed these songs. They show us so much about daily life in the thirteenth century that whole books have been written using those images as reference. In them we are reminded of just what instruments were played. Just as in agriculture, in administration, and in science and mathematics, fields which have many Spanish and English words of Arabic origin, so in music many common instruments have the same origins. We have seen how the lute, indispensable to Renaissance music making, derives from the ‘ud; so the rebec, from Arabic rabab, offered a way of using the bow that led to the emergence of the viol family, whose instruments are fretted in a way similar to lutes. And there are a host of other examples, all together making up a healthy portion of musical instruments of Europe. What calls our attention, then, in the images, is the very familiarity with those instruments. They were part of life in a way that was open, intimate, prolonged, and cherished. The Christian cultures knew these instruments because they were so often in their hands.
WE HAVE BEEN traveling among the regions of Al-Andalus, and through its history, visiting provinces of mind and experience: the poetry, the science and mathematics, philosophy, agriculture and botany, medicine and music. It is an extraordinary picture, a joy to study, and it leaves us with awakened admiration for the men and women of medieval Spain, who ventured so far in their investigations. When we first moved to the Albayzín, I had never heard of many of the people I write of now, such was my ignorance of the period. But we had the simple need to understand where we lived, and what I expected to be a sojourn among some few books turned out to offer long, fascinated journeys with brilliant companions into just-discovered country. This recent work by many scholars—Spanish, European, and American—on medieval Spain is called the “historiographical revolution,” which is a long name for beginning to get it right at last.
THE ARTS OF LOVE
Among these many surprising and useful books, none has been more stunning than a scholarly and comprehensive study of a manuscript called G-S2, found in an obscure set of codices (folios 75v–104v) in the Library of the Royal Academy of the History of Madrid. The book is by the esteemed scholar Luce López-Baralt and is titled A Spanish Kama Sutra. The manuscript she studies, written in 1609, is a treatise on the arts of love.
We recall the startlingly erotic poetry of the period, written not only by men, but also by some women, who set down poems of open sensuality and independence. It makes us wonder about the sexual practices of Al-Andalus, and of course we can never know. But we have this one
manuscript, and it is full of details and ideas, suggestions and guidance. It is a book of erotic counsel, theology, and poetry, all at once. There is absolutely nothing like it, nothing at all, in Spain, or in Europe of the period. And so in keeping with our theme of convivencia, as we come to the end of our look into Al-Andalus, it is fitting that we address the most ardent convivencia of all: that of a couple in love, in one another’s embraces.
Most of us are familiar with the history of misogyny worldwide, a calamity which has infected philosophy and theology, with heartbreaking results for women, denying them education, liberty, and the chance to develop their minds, their gifts, and their art. Even today in much of the world these attitudes persist, a plague and a disgrace to humankind. In the West, in particular, that misogyny was bound up with female sexuality, and Professor López-Baralt sets out for us the conceptions of women that dominated thinking in the West since Aristotle. I will follow her summary.
Aristotle thought that a woman is a defective man, a kind of failure of nature. She cannot produce semen, and therefore needs a man, the more authentic human, to produce a child. This inferiority is part of a natural incapacity in practical and spiritual matters. And when we add to this rank idiocy of Aristotle the Old Testament story of Genesis, in which Eve is responsible for Original Sin, and that sin is associated with sexuality, we have the makings of a theological disaster.
Make it they did: beginning with Saint Paul, the fathers of the church addressed sexuality with consistent attitudes that moved within a restricted range: from suspicion to condemnation to repugnance, for sexual love in general and women in particular. It is a remarkable spectacle, one that has been studied in detail by many scholars; yet their analyses and summaries sustain the most lively incredulity as we read our way through the original texts of such influential and learned theologians. How could they have believed what they wrote, when their ideas are so at variance with the experience of so many men and women alike? How could they refer to women with such scornful contempt? How could they deny the joy and the hopefulness that comes to any of us who give ourselves to the prolonged and various pleasures of the one we love?
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