This essay is based on the ‘Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree’ by the British-Pakistani author, Tariq Ali. It is the first book in the Islam Quintet, a series in which the author is interested in sketching a history of Islam in Europe through the ages. The book was first published by Chatto and Windus in 1991 and was also awarded a prize as the best foreign language fiction published in Spain in the year 1994.
My essay has two broad divisions. In the first part of the essay, I will discuss the theme of intercultural dialogue and the confrontation between the Islamic and Christian culture as depicted in the novel with respect to the Spanish Reconquista of Granada in the late 15th Century. In the second section, I draw attention to the dynamic between history and the novel. I also briefly discuss about the author, Tariq Ali, his work.
I
History has shown that the clash of two cultures brings with it a number of interesting developments. Right from the Antiquity to our present times, cross cultural contact has brought about a lot of progress and at the same time, regression. Cultural groups try and assert their supremacy over the ‘conquered’ in many forms such as imposition of religion, language, social institutions, social practices, etc. One also sees the forced acculturation. Very often the fine lines that previously divided cultures are blurred and thus a new type of culture is born.
The changes brought about by forced acculturation are faced by all the people across various levels. Right from the very small families that are the building blocks of the society up to the ruling elites of the conquered society. The fight for survival in the changing politico-cultural times takes a toll on individuals, families, friends, everybody.
The narrative begins by introducing us to Ximenes de Cisneros, the personal confessor to Queen Isabella, who orders the knights to round up people in the town square to view the bonfire of seized books and ancient Islamic manuscripts. This horrific imagery is lodged in the minds of the people as the ‘Wall of Fire’. The people watch in horror as their reserve of knowledge amassed over hundreds of years goes up in flames. This incident sets the tone for the rest of the book and makes clear that Ximenes’ control over Gharnata (Granada) was not merely spiritual but also political.
The Christians had promised the Spanish Moors freedom to practice their religion, culture and use Arabic. However, they do not abide by their promise and instead, begin forcible conversion and destroy Islamic culture by raiding libraries, burning literary material and also banning the use of Arabic.
The dialogue between Ximenes De Cisneros and Don Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, Count of Tendilla, Mayor and Captain-General of Granada is an interesting one as Ximenes reprimands the mayor for being too soft on the Moors and Jews and letting them off too easily. Ximenes says that the use of force is an effective way of bringing the ‘heathens’ to the true path of salvation. The mayor, in defense, invokes the deeds of Ximenes’ predecessor, Friar Talavera who was still respected because he stuck to the terms laid out in the agreement after surrender. He also says that the Moors and Jews are no ‘rootless phenomena’ and had been inhabiting the Iberian Peninsula for many centuries. He argues that the use of force would only incite more rebellion that would eventually result in the death of many people.
The relation between the current head of the Banu-Hudayl, Umar and Don Inigo, the mayor is also intriguing. They had known each other since they were children as their grandfathers had fought against each other in legendary battles. Both of them were heroes in their own right and had later become good friends. The author mentions that both of them knew the ‘true costs of war.’ The friendship between Umar and Inigo had ended after the siege of Granada. However, Inigo is sympathetic to the Moors and the Jews and even exclaims that a Granada without them would be like, “a desert without an oasis.” He tells him of how the Church and the ruling class want to do away with Islam and they had soldiers and weapons to do so. In a desperate bid to help save the life of his friend, he offers the possibility of conversion to Christianity, an offer which Umar declines.
While the process of forced conversion was underway, many Muslim families, in an effort to protect their families from the wrath of the Christians, converted to Christianity. Two examples from the text include Bishop Miguel (formerly Meekal), an uncle of Umar, who, though a convert himself, says his Friday prayers in the direction of the Mecca in private. Miguel also says that his decision to convert was determined by politics and not religion. He quotes the Prophet and talks about being pragmatic when he says, “Trust in God, but tether your camel first.” Ibn Hisham, a cousin of Umar also converts himself to a Christian and calls himself Pedro al-Gharnata, to protect his business interests and that of his family.
Another stirring picture painted by Tariq Ali is the one at the mosque where the young preacher, Umar bin Abdullah and al-Zindiq (the self-proclaimed sage who lives on the rocky mountain.) The tone is grim and the fear of an impending catastrophe is imminent. The sounds of the bells of the churches are described as ‘ominous.’ The preacher uses morbid imagery such as that of a ‘shroud already prepared for them’ and also the arrival of doomsday to reflect the general sentiment of the people. He also says that the rapid spread of Islam as a world religion was threatening the likes of Isabella and Ferdinand. In order to assuage the fears of the people, an equally confused Umar bin Abdullah offers three solutions to the problem. They are, voluntary conversion (the mention of which draws cries of dissent from the crowd), fighting the Christian knights till death (a solution which only finds favour among the younger section of the crowd who are steeped in notions of chivalry and valour) or the abandonment of their current homes and a migration to a safer area where they would be free to practice their faith without fear. Following this, al-Zindiq says that their only shot at survival at the hands of the Castilians would be through conversion.
Rare instances of communal harmony are also mentioned in the novel. For instance, during the same interaction at the mosque discussed above, Ibn Hasd, talks about the communal harmony that existed in his village for over five hundred years. He says that Jews have never been tormented there and that the Christians, Jews and the Muslims even bathed in the same public baths.
There is also a verse (surá) from the al-Koran, which the Muslims, Christians and Jews repeat aloud:
‘Say: “O Unbelievers,
I worship not that which ye worship,
And ye worship not that which I worship,
Neither will I worship that which ye worship,
Nor will ye worship that which I worship.
Ye have your religion and I have my religion.”’
An instance of inter-community marriage before the massacre at al-Hama is also mentioned in the book. The patriarch of the Banu-Hudayl (the clan upon which the family in this novel is based), Ibn Farid, breaks convention and gets married to Asma, a Christian kitchen girl. This action is not seen favourably by the members of his family and village and after his death, Asma dies under mysterious circumstances.
II
With this book, Tariq Ali offers an insight to a period of European history as seen from a non-European perspective. Most of what I have studied about the Reconquista was from a Christian European perspective so this book offered an interesting view from an Islamic standpoint.
The process of history writing is such that while we look to archive some aspect of the past, we also end up ‘unarchiving’ many other aspects in the process. This has many implications on the process of how we write about the past. Many a times, as is evident even in the exploits of the Christians during the Reconquista (or by any other colonial power), accounts of atrocities committed were unrecorded and dismissed as being trivial.
At times, the colonizer, often deliberately leaves out major portions of the history of the subjugated people and even refuses to acknowledge their history as worthy to be archived. There is a spirit of denial. This denial of the trifling or the so called ‘insignificant’ history by the people in power is done to underplay the sentiments of the people. In the book too, the Christian’s disregard for the Muslims is pretty blatant.
According to Derrida, the possession of political power means the control of history and also the public memory. In the novel too, the note sent by Cisneros to the Queen Isabella is filled with a lot of references to increasing force and subduing the Islamic culture in Grenada, and in the process, remoulding the public memory and history.
Cisneros states that although he had every intention to keep up the terms of surrender laid out after the siege of Granada, and me kind to the Moors, he felt that they had misunderstood the soft approach of his predecessors and thus had not shown any inclination to convert to Christianity. He refers to the knowledge of the Islamic world as a ‘bottomless sea’ and thus asks for them to be consigned to the flames of hell. He pleads to the queen to bestow powers on him so that he could carry out his work of converting people and in the process, destroying the existing culture. He also asks for the installment of an Apostolic Inquisitor who would act as a force to observe, report and take stringent action against heretics who indulged in blasphemous and scandalous activities. In a bid to achieve Christendom, he asks for the queen to destroy all public baths. He proudly mentions how the invading armies destroyed the public baths of Alhama which were full of obscenities painted on the walls. The public baths needed to be destroyed by the rulers as they were venues for unofficial meetings in which the monarch was criticized, dissent brewed and seeds of sedition sown.
He even suggests arresting the ring leaders and burning them at the stake. In the end, he suggests some measures that were needed to be implemented by the Church, without the interference of any other local political authority. They were:
Ban on the speaking of Arabic in private or for transacting business in public. The destruction of Arabic literary material would speed the process,
Ban on the possession of slaves who were ‘bred in captivity.’
Ban on the use of Moorish clothes. Instead, a Castilian dress coode would be introduced.
Ban on the covering of faces of women.
Ban on the closing of the front doors of the houses of the people.
Destruction of all public baths.
Ban on public Islamic festivities, weddings, songs and music.
Any family that had more than three children would be placed in the care of the Church at Castile and Aragon.
Any act of sodomy would be punishable by death.
These were the methods by which they wanted to systematically destroy the culture of the people of Al Andalus.
When histories are being systematically framed and written, a lot of issues get ‘unarchived’ (excluded) and go undocumented as they are not of any particular interest to the custodians of history, says Gyanendra Pandey. This book, therefore tries to provide a narrative (fictional but inspired by real events) of the history of the people under the oppressive rule of the Spanish Church and Crown.
This issue of leaving out the lives of the common people as well as significant events is aptly summarized by G Pandey in his introduction to the book Unarchived histories: The “mad” and the “trifling” in the colonial and postcolonial world as:
“In a word, the very process of archiving is accompanied by a process of “unarchiving,” rendering many aspects of social, cultural, political relations in the past as incidental, chaotic, trivial, inconsequential, and therefore unhistorical. The archive, as a site of remembrance – doing the work of remembering- is also at the same time a project of forgetting.”
This book, though a historical fiction, by its documentation of the ‘trifling’ or the mundane histories and lives of the Moors and their families tries to ‘re-archive’ the history of the Islamic community that was conveniently dismissed by the people in power as being inconsequential, and incompatible to their narrative of history.
Pandey says that there is another reason why there is no documented history of many other issues in human history. This is due to the repetitive and monotonous nature of so many of our socio-economic and political activities that make it trivial. It takes some strong social movements to challenge these practices and make these issues heard and worthy of archiving. It was only after the rise of the women’s rights movement that the previously naturalized practices of domestic violence, marital rape, dowry and honour killing were made heard, treated as unnatural, legally challenged and made punishable by law.
This story is told through the struggle of a reputed family who had migrated from Syria to Moorish Spain. Here, their ancestors had, from scratch, built and created a new culture and a way of life which was now being destroyed.
The book concludes on a chilling note, twenty years later, with the Spanish army landing in the Americas, going up to Tenochtitlan, the city ruled by Moctezuma. The smile on the face of Captain Cortez at the mention of the riches of Mexico is a foreshadowing of the eventual plunder and the rise of the Spanish empire in the Americas.
This book is quite critical in its treatment of the Christians at the helm and is at the same time shows the Muslim community as being too perfect to the extent that it sometimes becomes unreal. The characters in the book lack depth and personality and are quite wooden. Even the young characters in the novel acquire and reflect intellectual capabilities which are well beyond their years. However, the lessons that the author teaches are conveyed well and the imagery used is very vivid. The issues of displacement, identity, cultural contact and others are very relevant to us even today and is not confined only to the book.
In conclusion I feel that it is essential that people be made aware of the past as it is only through the acknowledgment and the realization that we learn and make good decisions in the future. What also happens very often is that colonizers often suffer from ‘Historical Amnesia.’ They conveniently sweep incidents of atrocities committed in the past, under the carpet. These issues need to be addressed and remembered so that a similar pattern may be detected in the future and averted. The Juan Goytisolo, the famous Spanish poet thus wrote about this book, ‘A wonderful novel that we have been waiting for to help Spain learn its past.’
References:
Ali, T. (1991). Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree. New York: Verso, 2015.
Miller, A. (1949). Tragedy and the Common Man. In: A. Miller, ed., The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller. New York: Viking Press, 1978, pp. 3-7.
Pandey, G. (2014). Unarchived histories: The “mad” and the “trifling”. In: G. Pandey, ed., Unarchived histories: The “mad” and the “trifling” in the colonial and postcolonial world. New Delhi: Routledge, 2015, pp. 3-20.
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