A surviving moorish spain

That part of the article didn't go into detail but it strongly implied that they were serious booze-hounds;).

But only relative to their co-religionists. (with the probable exception of the Persians, back in the day).
Again, in medieval times, drinking alchool was widespread amongst the Arabo-Islamic world. Even old rigorists gave up forcing people stopping doing that and only had books to disaproove such conduct.

In fact such regulation was technically more important in Al-Andalus than in other places (not that they were respected).

They were as drunkyards than people today are debauchee because they make unmarried sex.

This conference of Philippe Clément is really interesting about it, especially on Spain.
It's in french though, but it's referenced a bit there, while informations about the production can be found there (still in french)

I wonder what Christian Europeans though of Iberian Muslim drinking habits?
They didn't talk about it. Probably because they didn't cared (being wine lovers as well), and that people sold them enough wine (technically forbidden, but who gave a s**t), and brought them "tools of the trade" (glasses, bottles, distillation, agricultural techniques)
 
Again, in medieval times, drinking alchool was widespread amongst the Arabo-Islamic world. Even old rigorists gave up forcing people stopping doing that and only had books to disaproove such conduct.

However, it was in very late Medieval times that coffee slowly began to supplant and became the social drink par excellence in much of the Islamic world. By this time, though, al-Andalus was but a nostalgic memory...

I notice that in one of your sources, it references the perhaps predominant Jewish role in wine production. Ah, there are some great topers among my people... :D (although a fairly low rate of alcoholism--apparently, in part, genetic--thank you!)
 
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However, it was in very late Medieval times that coffee slowly began to supplant and became the social drink par excellence in much of the Islamic world. By this time, though, al-Andalus was but a nostalgic memory...
Al-Andalus nostalgia is more an relativly recent western thing : both from orientalism and reject of a western middle age percieved as dark and barbarian.
Truth is, it seems that few are interested about Al-Andalus for a mirror of their fears or their phantasms, rather than what it was : an human society with all the "Dignity of Reality" that it implies.

I digress a bit : yes, coffee use was more widespread at first in places without a wine tradition well established (as Yemen and south Arabia). Now to say it supplanted...
We don't have much sources about it, and far less after the XVI : still it seems that alchool (rather than wine, once the religious minorities in Arabo-Islamic world radically diminished) was still drink : from fruits, mostly and certainly not too openely, but there's still a continuity up to nowadays (just look at Morocco alchool consumption).

I notice that in one of your sources, it references the perhaps predominant Jewish role in wine production. Ah, there are some great topers among my people... :D (although a fairly low rate of alcoholism--apparently, in part, genetic--thank you!)
Well, only Christian and Jews were authorized to make wine and to sell it (technically forbidden to sell it to Muslims but...)

It seems a bit restrictive, but then you remember that Spain, Palestine and Egypt had relative majority of Christians up to the XIIth century, and strong minorities afterwards, and that Jewish communauties (and Jewish Berber tribes) were still very important (and connected trough trade roads)
 
Al-Andalus nostalgia is more an relativly recent western thing : both from orientalism and reject of a western middle age percieved as dark and barbarian.
Truth is, it seems that few are interested about Al-Andalus for a mirror of their fears or their phantasms, rather than what it was : an human society with all the "Dignity of Reality" that it implies.

I was not referring to Western orientalist notions...

The nostalgia I speak of was the recorded nostalgia of refugees from Al-Andulus in the wake of the Reconquista. Of former residents of Grenada or of the Alpujarras who kept the keys to their lost homes as keepsakes even as they made new lives in Tangiers and Tetouan in Morocco.
 
The nostalgia I speak of was the recorded nostalgia of refugees from Al-Andulus in the wake of the Reconquista. Of former residents of Grenada or of the Alpujarras who kept the keys to their lost homes as keepsakes even as they made new lives in Tangiers and Tetouan in Morocco.

Giving the behavior of Moriscos before the expulsion, I would say it's less the nostalgia of Al-Andalus than Muslim Spain (see my first post for the distinction) and critically of their homes (for the part with keys particularly, it's less recorded than a traditionnal account, that shouldn't be taken that literally as in "all of these did that") rather than something that disappeared more than one century before (and eventually, more than that for a good part of the regions concerned, as in Valencian countries).

I'll grant you that they named themselves "andalu" in Morocco, and kept particularities there (not to be exaggerated, their difference with other Maghrebi being limited, far more than they were centuries before), but I'll take that rather as an equivalent of Ladino that wasn't exactly a nostlagia of Medieval Spain but rather an identity marker.
 
Giving the behavior of Moriscos before the expulsion, I would say it's less the nostalgia of Al-Andalus than Muslim Spain (see my first post for the distinction) and critically of their homes (for the part with keys particularly, it's less recorded than a traditionnal account, that shouldn't be taken that literally as in "all of these did that") rather than something that disappeared more than one century before (and eventually, more than that for a good part of the regions concerned, as in Valencian countries).

I'll grant you that they named themselves "andalu" in Morocco, and kept particularities there (not to be exaggerated, their difference with other Maghrebi being limited, far more than they were centuries before), but I'll take that rather as an equivalent of Ladino that wasn't exactly a nostlagia of Medieval Spain but rather an identity marker.

At least some of the refugees saw themselves as very distinct from their new Maghribi neighbors ---usually as being culturally more sophisticated. There are prose and poetic accounts of comparing their new surroundings with those they had lost. I remember reading one intellectual refugee's (apparently a connoisseur of military architecture) description of the walls and towers of Sale (in Morocco) and comparing them as very inferior to the ones of his home (Seville, I think)...

There is a whole body of Andalusi poetry, a poetry of nostalgia and loss, from poets who had relocated the length and breadth of the Mediterranean Islamic World.
 
At least some of the refugees saw themselves as very distinct from their new Maghribi neighbors ---usually as being culturally more sophisticated.
I don't think that's discernable from some ponctual accounts.
At this time, Maghrebi society was already influenced by Arabo-Andalusian cultural features since centuries, it's not like intellectual Arabo-Andalusian were total strangers or still Berbers of the VIIIth century.

Actually, the last wave of Moriscos, after the expluslion of 1600's were probably less arabized and less touched by arabo-andalusian culture than Maghrebi : speaking Spanish more than Arab, religious rites and knowledge quite deformed under semi-clandestine practice and were coldly "welcomed" by Arabs and Berbers of North Africa (up to slaughter).
So I'm not sure we can talk of cultured and refined Andalusians expelled into rude Africa : distinction between different waves of exile are to be made.

I remember reading one intellectual refugee's (apparently a connoisseur of military architecture) description of the walls and towers of Sale (in Morocco) and comparing them as very inferior to the ones of his home (Seville, I think)...

The only poem I know about that is "Comparison between Malaga and Salé" by Ibn al-Khatib, but it's more than two centuries before the expulsion of Moriscos. If it's not this one, could you send me the poem you're talking about?
(In fact, I think I remember him making comparison about schools and some buildings, but I'm no sure about the walls)

If it's not this one : we'd still in the familial/local nostalgia there, rather than on a nostalgia for Al-Andalus.

Furthermore, the elites of Salé were often Moriscos that left Spain before the expulsion of 1609. If it's about Sevilla, he was probably one of these that fled before and kept its goods (the Moriscos expulsed after being largely a peasant or semi-urban population rather than intellectual elite).
 
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It was indeed al-Khatib's "Comparison between Malaga and Salé". Having just looked it up, I was remembering it wrongly. Still pretty amusing...

Definitely walls are mentioned... ;)

I wish I had access to the the following:
Looking Back at Al-Andalus: The Poetics of Loss and Nostalgia in Medieval Arabic and Hebrew Literature by Alexander E. Elinson
This book has pertinent things to say about our conversation. I no longer own it and there are only brief teases on the web.
 
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How could a Muslim Spain survive?
I put forth a possibility some time ago. If the native rulers in the Basque Country and Asturias become reconciled with Islam (even in an initially pro-forma manner), then their sweeping down from the hills in the face of future political collapse will be if anything not only even faster but would get more support from the Muladis/Mozarbs.
 
I put forth a possibility some time ago. If the native rulers in the Basque Country and Asturias become reconciled with Islam (even in an initially pro-forma manner), then their sweeping down from the hills in the face of future political collapse will be if anything not only even faster but would get more support from the Muladis/Mozarbs.

That's particularly unilkely : not only these rulers can't be reconcilied with Islam for the good reason they weren't islamized in first place, and even admitting they convert, they would be rejected by their nobility (remember what happened to Mauregato, with a strong opposition only because he had ties with muladi/islamic by his mother, depsite fighting incoming Muslim raids).

It would require, furthermore, an actually agressive policy from Cordoba, that favoured regular raids over Asturias because it was less costly for a better profit (and of course, an actual invasion would require a pacified Al-Andalus, somthing hard on itself).

Everyone was pretty fine with Christian principalties in northern Spain : it allowed a convenient target for Umayyads (whom prestige was partially based on their capacity to raid them) less dangerous and resistent (even if they were) than Franks and less costly.
Banu Qasi (that never borthered themselves too much with religion) used them as a buffer region or a distraction : making them converting to Islam (even if possible) would have eventually meant more power to the Umayyads.
 
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