All You Need is
Love: A Review of Emeralds in the
Alhambra and Shadows in the Shining
City from the Anthems of Al-Andalus series
by John Cressler
John Cressler, Emeralds of the Alhambra. Sunbury Press, 2013, viii + 424pp.
John Cressler, Shadows in the Shining City. Sunbury Press, 2014, viii + 584pp.
Reviewed by Julia C. Baumgardt
About his foray into historical
fiction with the first two in a series of historical novels centered on
Islamicate Iberia, Dr. John D. Cressler, Schlumberger
Chair Professor in Electronics and Ken Byers Teaching Fellow in Science and
Religion—and author of five
additional non-fiction books—states: “My principle goal was to reawaken this time period for modern readers,
and to do that while telling a great yarn.” Richly layered with
historical detail and carried forward by casts of extremely loveable
characters, Emeralds in the Alhambra and
Shadows in the Shining City roundly
achieve this aim. Readers from a general audience will be captivated by what
may be a new discovery of the cultural flourishing of medieval Spain and more
initiated readers will likely enhance their knowledge of the minutiae of life
in Islamicate Iberia.
The first book in
the Anthems of Al-Andalus series, Emeralds in the Alhambra, opens in 1367
in the Nasrid kingdom of Granada under Sultan Muhammad V. With plenty of space
given to military endeavors, political intrigue and florid architectural and
spatial description, the novel follows the story of two young lovers: the
decorated Breton soldier William Chandon and Layla al-Khatib, the daughter of
the Sultan’s Gran Vizier. Their story parallels the fight between King Pedro of
Castile and the (eventually successful) pretentions of his brother, Enrique of
Trastamara, in a Castilian Civil War; the quite longstanding alliance between
Nasrid Granada and Castile; as well as the Catholic Church’s meddling in
Iberian political and religious life. The novel opens as Chandon, allied with
Enrique, prepares his troops for battle at Jaen against the Nasrids, who are
allied with Castile. After an impressive display of both knightly valor and
swordsmanship, Chandon defeats the Grenadine commander—the Military
Vice-Vizier’s nephew—but is then seriously wounded by a cheap shot and taken
back to Granada as prisoner. The famous Jewish physician Salamuun heals Chandon
and in so doing befriends him and educates him on the sophisticated and heterogeneous
culture of Granada. As both a political move and a cultural transaction, the
Sultan arranges for Chandon to learn Arabic from his Grand Vizier’s fiercely
intelligent and independent daughter, Layla, and for the Breton to teach her
English. Through their interactions, they fall in love, Chandon decides to
become a Muslim, and the two marry, with the blessing of many—but not all—from
the Alhambra community. During their lessons and courtship, Layla is also
studying under the great Sufi master, Mansur al-Mussib and, through the
latter’s direction, begins to volunteer in the Maristan hospital for the infirm
and destitute. It is here that she opens her heart to love—platonic, romantic
and spiritual—and has her first experience with Tawhid, mystical union with the divine. The pursuit of and respect
for love in its many forms is a central component of this novel, where love is
linked to any and all inclusive, non-dogmatic practice of religion and
spirituality. In contrast, religious practice characterized by regulation and prohibition
is portrayed as love’s antithesis and connected to political machinations, the
accumulation of power, and the exclusion of the Other.
Shadows in the Shining City is the second book in the Anthems of Al-Andalus series, though
temporally its prequel, and is set in the “Golden Age” of Al-Andalus, the
Caliphate of Cordoba under al-Hakam II. The story’s action begins in 975 and carries
to the dissolution of the Caliphate and the time of fitna, all of which occurred historically over the course of a
decade but which the novel compresses to a span of two years. Central
characters are the historically infamous Muhammad ibn Abi Amir (al-Mansur) and
his daughter Rayhanna, as well as their lovers, friends and enemies. Shadows follows the Abi Amir family’s
trajectory: Rayhanna’s voracious appetite for books and thirst for knowledge
that leads her to the Royal Library, Aristotle’s Book of Optics and replica of his camara obscura, and Zafir; as well as Muhammad ibn Abi Amir’s insatiable
desire for wealth, prestige and power that leads to his steady moral decline
and that of the Caliphate itself. The political focus is on Muhammad’s illicit
introduction into palace life through the beguiling and beguiled Subh (wife of
the Caliph and mother of al-Hakam’s only heir), his machinations to secure
dominance in Cordoba through alliance with North Africa, and his eventual self-inflicted
dehumanization as his quest for power grows. As with Emeralds, Shadows also
centers on a love story—and Cressler promises the final installment will
continue this tradition—though this time played out in a more complex, tri-part
network of protagonists. Rayhanna and her beloved Zafir—a saqaliba with a prominent role as translator of Greek and assistant
to the Royal Librarian—are the story’s primary romantic couple. Samuel, the
librarian himself, and his wife, Rebekah, are the second set of lovers in Shadows
and, as a mature couple, they provide both a fitting complement to the
headstrong and hormone-driven young lovers and invaluable assistance in Rayhanna
and Zafir’s quest to be united. The third pairing is significantly different from
the first two but no less important to the plot: the haunting presence of Ibn
Abi Amir’s great love with his late wife, Rayya. The memory of their passion, as
well as Rayya’s apparent wish that Rayhanna marry for love, serves as the
catalyst for Rayhanna’s grandmother’s timely intervention as the plot develops.
It is this intervention that stalls what would have unfolded as a Shakespearean
tragedy, complete with poison, faked suicides and a rather unreliable antidote.
The spectral memory of Rayya haunts al-Mansur as well, and his tender memories
of their love and his devastation at losing her round out his personality by
providing a sympathetic backstory and a plausible explanation for his seemingly
inhuman hardness and unquenchable ambition. The contrast of a great love lost
and the brutal impossibility of recovery after the fact triangulates with the
other two couples and provides a much-needed balance and dose of reality to the
otherwise rose-colored portrayal of love in both Anthems books.
The plot and
characterization of both novels are engaging, though Emeralds’ characters—however loveable—at times come off flat and
one-dimensional. Shadows demonstrates
a blossoming in Cressler’s narrative craft, with al-Mansur in particular
represented in considerably more depth. In addition, the inclusion of certain
questionable or outright problematic cultural elements in both novels goes far
to balance and nuance the portrayal of an often overly idealized period. Likely
the most well-known of the controversial cultural practices is the harem, a
space of enclosure-prison for royal women. Shadows’
portrayal of Subh’s unhappiness and isolation within the harem and the Sultan’s
near undoing because of his lust for Layla in Emeralds highlights this problematic institution. In addition, the
depictions of these more objectionable aspects present a cautionary tale of the
volatility of even the most seemingly stable of polities when they are
constructed upon the oppression or marginalization of certain groups. The
creation and maintenance of eunuchs, an element of the harem often overlooked
in popular portrayals, is also brought to light through the character of Jibril
and his young protégés. Anthems does
also present local responses to such challenges and social problems, such as
the existence of the Maristan Hospital and the new hospital Layla founds in Emeralds.
An especially
strong area in both novels is the rich historical detail in weaponry and warfare,
politics and historical events, and cultural elements such as architecture,
contemporary literature, food and bathing practices. Anthems not only creates loveable characters and compelling plots,
but also places them within an entire historical world reconstructed
meticulously and in vivid color. In the areas of warfare and city geography in
particular, the novels take on a more documentary quality, which strengthens
their purpose and complements the love stories. It is clear that the series has
been thoroughly researched and each book contains not only the text of the
novel but also maps, a glossary, several historical primers, notes about facts
and fiction in the text, and an extensive bibliography.
Religion in
general is rightly given a central place, with an emphasis on tolerance, open-mindedness
and love. That Chandon learns Arabic and converts to Islam in Emeralds is an excellent demonstration
of the linguistic and religious permeability of the heterogeneous Islamicate
culture Anthems celebrates. The same
is true for the recognition of social mobility for Jews and Christians (slaves
or free) within the Caliphate and Emirate through characters such as Salamuun
(the Caliph’s doctor, Emeralds),
Reccimund (the Christian Bishop and Vizier of Dhimmi, Shadows), Samuel and Zafir. All the ostensibly good characters in
the novels cultivate and practice a kind of open spirituality that expresses
itself within a specific Abrahamic faith, whereas religious dogmatism is
equated with political quests for power and control. On the portrayal of strict
religious observance as incompatible with tolerance, Cressler states that “tolerance and openness to the Other
are indeed essential aspects of what religion can and should aspire to.” It is
noteworthy, and, as Cressler indicates, “historical,” that those characters who
influence the plot most negatively seek to limit the possibilities of spiritual
expression of both their religious Other and those within their same
confessional community, and always do so in the pursuit of power, riches and
prestige.
As is fitting,
then, both Emeralds and Shadows pay commendably nuanced attention
to the intricacies of politics and their intermingling with religion.
Throughout both novels, the complex alliances and scheming of various political
players take center stage and influence the tide of decisions made by the Emir
and the Caliph as well as those of their allies and enemies to the north, the
northeast, and the south. The complexity of the political situation in
al-Andalus and Castile, Iberia generally, and the Mediterranean more broadly is
extremely well-presented given the scope of the novels and their intended
readership. Anthems offers a nuanced
approximation to the papacy’s pretended political and ecclesial influence
through the depiction of the visiting monks of Cluny in Shadows and the Cardinal in Emeralds.
In addition, the books rightly complicate what contemporary readers might
well have assumed to be a homogenous medieval Christian (i.e. Catholic) church
by depicting the unique practices of southern Iberian Christians in the
Mozarabic rite.
While the text
proper of the novels is appropriately complex in its approach to the
socio-politico-theological matrices of medieval Iberia, the historical
summaries and primers surrounding the novels do not appear to be quite so
carefully worked. In those texts, the tensions between Iberian Christians,
Cluny, and the Papacy, as well as the Castilian Civil War, are presented as
“infighting” and “bickering” within otherwise unified groups (Emeralds 406). This oversimplifies the
situation as it existed historically and as it is generally depicted in the
novels and feeds into an all-too-black-and-white notion of Reconquista as a
time-tested, unified, and perdurable impulse. The word “reconquista” itself
appears sixteen times in Emeralds in
the mouths of a variety of its characters and another nine times in the historiographic
materials surrounding the text of the novel. With each use it gestures toward a
universally understood and accepted (by all the kingdoms of Iberia, England,
France, and Rome) notion of a common, underlying impetus uniting all of
Christianity against Islam, in a struggle for both ecclesial domination and
territory. While this conception of Reconquista is not by any stretch novel—and
may perhaps be an easy way for the uninitiated reader to dive into the
historical and historiographical questions surrounding medieval and Early
Modern Iberia—the simple use of the term in the mouths of characters is likely
an anachronism. Evidence suggests that “restoration” (in ecclesial terms) or
“conquest” (more military/territorial) were used in reference to the confessional
and military changing of hands of Iberian kingdoms, and according to Ríos Saloma, the earliest extant incidence
of the term “reconquista” referring
to armed struggle between Christians and Muslims does not appear in Spanish
until 1796 (194). This is not to say that the impact of the crusading mentality
and rhetoric did not reverberate within Iberia, nor to deny the presence and
influence of Jimenez de Rada’s vision of the Christian character and destiny of
Iberia—it was he who so firmly connected the dots from Visigoth rule to Pelayo
at Covadonga through to the conquest of Toledo and the continuing might of
united Christian armies at la Navas de Tolosa. This concept of a slow but
steady regrouping of Christians post-711 Muslim “invasion” and the REconquest
of “their” territory toward the teleological victory of (Christian) Spain makes
for a great story. However, a tape-measure notion of Reconquista as “no
illusion…inevitable” (325) as the Military Vizier al-Bistami suggests in Emeralds, involves a fair amount of
glossing over the very political, cultural, linguistic, and even religious
intricacies that Anthems otherwise
works hard to present in their complexities. [1]
That the Visigoths were Arians (and thus, heretics) until (at the earliest) the
end of the seventh century, that the Mozarabic (Hispanic) rite was banned by
the Council of Burgos in the eleventh century but has been practiced
continually in some form into the present day, and even, in fact, that a (if
not the) principle enemy of the Christian front alongside which the
Grenadine army fights at the beginning of Emeralds
is Pedro—another Christian ruler—all
run the risk of being elided by the repeated emphasis on the term
“reconquista.” Perhaps with this the novels pave the way for Anthems’ final installment, which will
treat the Catholic Monarchs and the fall of Granada and, as such, will likely
(and hopefully) take up the rhetorical strategizing and propaganda campaign
around the completion of the Christian conquest of Spain engineered by Isabel
the Catholic.
The use of the term “Moor” and
“Moorish” in Emeralds and Shadows as a blanket signifier for all
Muslims and all things Islamicate on the Iberian Peninsula presents similar
misgivings. Cressler acknowledges on the very first page of Emeralds, prior to the text of the novel
itself, that “the Muslims of Spain, regardless of ancestry, are known
collectively to Europeans by the term ‘Moors,’” but fails to acknowledge the
racialization of the term and the problems of its continued use. As I and many
others have argued, the word “Moor” refers to a monolithic and universalized
Muslim Other—an always already imagined figure, a repository of anxiety of the
Christian Other, and never a real and contextualized individual (Baumgardt 115;
Flesler). While it may be fitting to place the term in the mouth of the
Cardinal or Papal envoy, its use in the front or end matter of the novels and
in their description might be productively replaced by Hodgson’s “Islamicate”
or similar nomenclature.
Overall, the
first two novels in the Anthems of
Al-Andalus series depict the complexity and heterogeneity of the Iberian
Peninsula in the Middle Ages in vivid color. Emeralds of the Alhambra and Shadows
in the Shining City weave well the varying shades of its immense tapestry
and unfold around characters that are alluringly attractive (or despicable)
enough to captivate both period specialists and a general readership. Few will
want to resist Cressler’s consistent portrayal of love as spiritual experience,
as antidote, and as all-powerful force for good. This series is a welcome foray
into a period still underrepresented for Anglophone audiences. Its conclusion
will be awaited with anticipation.
Julia C. Baumgardt, Marian
University, Indianapolis
Works
Cited
Baumgardt,
Julia C. The Times of Al-Andalus:
Performing Alternative Temporalities in Spanish
New Historical Novels,
Festive Reenactment, and Conversion Narrative, The Johns
Hopkins
University, 2015,
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, 10302153.
Cressler,
John. Emeralds of the Alhambra.
Sunbury Press, 2013.
---. Shadows in the Shining City. Sunbury
Press, 2014.
Dimock,
Wai Chee. Through Other Continents: American
Literature Across Deep Time.
Princeton
UP, 2009.
Flesler, Daniela. The
Return of the Moor. Purdue UP, 2000.
Ríos Saloma, Martín F.
“La Reconquista: génesis de un mito historiográfico.” Historia y Grafía,
no. 30, 2008, pp. 191-216,
www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=58922939009. Accessed 8
Dec. 2015.
