12

Edging Toward ibEria

Jean Dangler

as i edge toward a complete definition of medieval iberia, with its constellation of Mus-lim and Christian realms and Jewish communities from approximately 500 to 1500 CE, i strive for precise word use, for unity and accuracy, but i am always on the perimeter of iberia’s fullness. i am always at its edge trying to capture it all by researching Castilian kingdoms here and Muslim realms there, or Jewish poets in this instance and aragonese physicians in that one. iberia is more than mere geography. Just when i am certain that i have arrived at an airtight definition of the place, its inhabitants, and its cultural pro-duction, another contingency emerges to throw my neat design into a state of doubt and disorder. iberia always eludes me. is my area of study fully “medieval iberia?” do i always consider Portugal after its twelfth-century split from Castile? when dealing with medieval iberia, how can i separate north africa from al-andalus, the name the Muslims gave their iberian territory? and if i cannot divide them, should my area of study be iberia and north africa? Can “iberia” contain north africa in its meaning? and where does medieval iberia fall, in “Christian Europe” (yes), or toward “the Muslim east” (yes), which was not truly “toward the east” at all? How to contain all that diversity in one obligatory word, in one comprehensive toponym? i wonder if trying to find the perfect name for the diversity of the iberian Middle ages is an important or worthy undertaking. Many colleagues are content to use lim-ited terms such as “medieval Spain” or “Hispania,” but i am not. a growing number of scholars, such as María rosa Menocal [“Visions of al-andalus” 12] and anthony Pym [14–15], have recently discussed this difficulty in nomenclature, yet i cannot help but think that this is our own modern preoccupation: medieval people surely did not con-ceive of medieval iberia in this way. we invented the Middle ages. Modern scholars especially from the nineteenth century on determined and maintained, however loosely, chronological breaks between what we call antiquity and the Middle ages, and between the medieval and early modern periods.1 in addition, scholars often erroneously applied modern values to the past, as demonstrated in studies by, for instance, norman F. Cantor, John dagenais, Umberto Eco, Mark d. Meyerson, and gabrielle M. Spiegel. These inves-tigations point out many modern presumptions about the medieval period, such as about ethnicity, hierarchies of powerful and marginalized groups, gender relations, nationhood, or authorship and book production in medieval manuscript culture. and while the most useful scholarship avoids the unthinking application of modern concepts to the medieval period, it is evident that scholars are always confined by their own limits and values, even if they wish to describe the past with accuracy. it is like walking a tightrope between the medieval period and the present; it is like being on iberia’s edge, trying to have that broad scope from the twenty-first century to contain it all. but the tightrope, the edge is

1. r. Howard Bloch and Stephen g. nichols discuss the nineteenth-century rise of medieval studies in France and germany, in Medievalism and the Modernist Temper. Catherine Brown ana-lyzes ramón Menéndez Pidal’s role in the invention of the Middle ages in nineteenth-century Spain, in “The relics of Menéndez Pidal: Mourning and Melancholia in Hispanomedieval Studies.” Teo-filo ruiz claims that we are captives of periodization and of an artificial division between the late medieval and early modern periods, in Spanish Society, 1400–1600 [1–2].

diacritics 36.3–4: 12–26

diacritics / fall–winter 2006 13

like quicksand that constantly shifts; it is a border without limits. Edging toward iberia is being outside iberia, moving around it, toward it, but being in it at the same time. one example of how modern constructs continue to inform our understanding of the past is the artificial periodization of the era into roughly ten centuries. Yet even the recog-nition of the medieval period as a modern invention does not change the practical value of terms such as “medieval” or “the Middle ages,” which are maintained by scholars and the public alike.2 Eco suggests that to some degree we always recast the Middle ages in our contemporary image, which manifests in modern novels, movies, and scholarship. He calls attention to the constructed quality of the medieval period by delineating ten types of “Middle ages” made popular nowadays through media and scholarship, including “the Middle ages as a barbaric age” and “the Middle ages . . . of occult philosophy” [69, 71]. How do we characterize or study the medieval period in a way that demonstrates medieval issues and values rather than modern ones, knowing at the same time that we always mark our efforts with our own era? This dilemma parallels the difficulty in search-ing for an accurate name for the iberian Middle ages. i look for a holistic name that will meet medieval diversity, that will subsume and gather in all the varying, fragmentary, po-litical and social manifestations during the approximate one-thousand-year period, from Muslim-dominated al-andalus to shifting Hispanic kingdoms and crowns, and finally to Jewish communities. whatever i call my object of study will to some degree determine my approach and ultimately my findings, since one leads to the other; the task is dif-ficult if not impossible. Can i find a term that will include and expand both socially and geographically, that will reflect diverse communities and nongeographical expectations of space? Medieval iberia was so much more than a set of boundaries: the atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees, the border between Portugal and Spain. i want my term unbound by fleeting historical names or groups of people. i want it to signify at differ-ent times all the social and political manifestations on the medieval peninsula, as well as the political, social, and economic networks that constituted the iberian Middle ages throughout the Mediterranean, north africa, and the Middle East. This search is, as Eco would say, a dream: any term will bear limitations or predetermined value. but my term can signify in multiple ways, both as a static, ordered place and a dynamic space. ac-cording to Michel de Certeau, place is the stable ordering of units side by side, or twenty kilometers apart, such as on a map, while space “is composed of intersections of mobile elements”: “a space exists when one takes into consideration vectors of direction, veloci-ties, and time variables” [117].” in other words, “space is a practiced place.” it designates activity within an ordered place, and it allows for chronological change [117]. i want my term to signify both a place and a space, both the stable ordering of elements, such as the Mediterranean, Cordova, al-andalus, Castile, and burgos, and the dynamic interactions between people in the medieval period, that is, the actions that result from the movement of mobile elements in a place. The distinction between place and space permits variation, change, and diverse meanings for my selected term; the name that i choose will not have a static definition. it will not merely refer to the physical, geographical iberian peninsula, nor to the medieval period as an intrinsic, resolute entity. Medieval people represented neither iberia nor the Middle ages in this way. due to my broad historical scope in the twenty-first century, my quest for a complete name cannot always reflect how medieval people described their world. it is clear that some medieval people were concerned with wholeness, accuracy, or maybe control. in 1150, for instance, the king of Castile, alfonso Vii, dubbed himself the ruler of the three

2. For a recent discussion of periodization and the use of the phrase “the Middle ages,” see chapter 2, “What are the ‘Middle ages?,’” in Marcus Bull’s Thinking Medieval.

14

religions Christianity, Judaism, and islam, suggesting his desire to encompass the varied peoples of his realms [Pym 15]. but, when medieval people specifically described iberia, they largely shaped it according to their objectives and motivation within their specific historical period. i will discuss three examples to illustrate this point, one from cartogra-phy and two from narrative history, although examples of medieval people’s portrayals could be described virtually ad infinitum. Little is known about the Persian cartographer, abu ishaq al-istakhrK (fl. 951), whose tenth-century map of al-andalus and north africa constitutes my first example. al-istakhrK followed the tradition of the balkhK school, a group of mapmakers named for the cartographer al-balkhK, who died in 934. Mapmakers in the balkhK tradition usually aimed to illustrate the routes of caravan and sea travel within islam, since many of the authors were travelers who had firsthand knowledge of the routes of the islamic world. They tended to depict large areas that “corresponded to contemporary political entities (mamalik),” instead of following the Ptolemaic method of dividing the world into regions or climes [bloom 148–49]. They also rendered places as geometric shapes [Harley and woodward 115], as in a fifteenth-century copy of al-istakhrK’s tenth-century map, where the cartographer depicts al-andalus and north africa together as a series of circles. in the middle of spherical al-andalus lies another circle denoting the andalusi cultural and political center of Cordova, while smaller towns, also rendered as circles, radiate from the Cordovan center with north african towns drawn in the same way as circles.3 The circle sizes of the towns around Cordova are smaller in dimension and importance because of their distance from Cordova, the andalusi seat of power, as are cities along the north african coast. The Straits of gibraltar come between al-andalus and north africa, and a pronounced circle containing Sijilmasa “and the land of the blacks (bilad al-Sudan)” is located in north africa [Harley and woodward 119]. on the andalusi side, the circle sizes and the distance between them illustrate Cordova’s political and perhaps spiritual dominance, since the andalusi Caliphate was as much a governmental hub as a religious center, with a series of less significant places arranged around it.4 al-istakhrK’s map con-siders the peninsula and north africa in tandem as one spatial area organized according to the importance of their cities and towns.5 The impact of places within the entire realm apparently depends on their relation to Cordova. north african coastal sites are not sepa-rated ideologically by the Straits of gibraltar, but are connected to Cordova as smaller and therefore less important circles. it is evident that al-istakhrK’s map does not coincide with modern notions of physical geography; instead, the shape of al-andalus hinges on its association with north africa and on Cordova’s centrality. a second example is a comparison of two andalusi histories of the Muslim conquest, which illustrate the varying contingencies that prompted medieval people to describe their world. Janina M. Safran has demonstrated that these works, ‘abd al-Malik ibn Habib’s ninth-century universal history, Kitab al-Ta’rK j (la historia), and the anonymous tenth-century akhbar majmu‘a fi fath al-andalus (Collected reports on the Conquest of al-andalus), describe al-andalus in contrasting ways because of differing historical circumstances. although such a contrast might be obvious to modern readers, the dispar-

3. This fifteenth-century copy is reproduced in Turner [Science 125], and in Harley and Wood-ward [plate 6]; other maps related to al-IstakhrK are found in Harley and Woodward [120–21, 125, and plate 7]. 4. al-IstakhrK was not alone in indicating the importance of cities and towns by different cir-cle sizes; at least one other mapmaker in the BalkhK school, al-MuqaddasK, did the same [Bloom 148]. 5. gerald r. Tibbetts, the author of the chapter on the BalkhK school in The History of Cartog-raphy, says that north africa “includes Spain” on al-IstakhrK’s map, suggesting that the mapmaker considered the two areas together as one [Harley and Woodward 114, 119].

diacritics / fall–winter 2006 15

ity between these accounts illustrates three interrelated claims whose connection is not transparent. First, medieval iberians described their world according to the political and historical circumstances of their time. Second, searching for an accurate, inclusive term for the iberian Middle ages is prompted by our modern perspective toward the past, as well as by the sometimes unavoidable limits of periodization. Medieval people did not have this perspective. and third, just as medieval people imputed value to iberia depend-ing on their political or historical goals, the name that scholars select today for medieval iberia will ascribe a certain worth to the space, and ultimately may inform their analysis of the period. in the Kitab al-Ta’rK j, ibn Habib portrayed al-andalus as forbidding and isolated from the centers of islamic civilization, and thus emphasized its location on the edge of familiar islamic society [137–41]. ibn Habib’s descriptions were motivated in part by the social and political turmoil of his time, and by the fact that in the ninth century al-andalus was a work in progress, a faraway place for continued Muslim settlement. in contrast, the akhbar majmu’a recounts the history of al-andalus from the Muslim conquest to the author’s present day in the tenth century. The anonymous author devotes a section of the text to Muslim dynastic history in an effort to identify “the conquest as the platform for Umayyad rule” [142]. The author also “inscribes al-andalus with a new history” through the cataloguing of andalusi place names in arabic [142]. in the discussion of the conquest, the author recognizes the threat of Pelayo and his party of thirty men and ten women in the northern stronghold of Covadonga, although the writer lays claim to the entire peninsula for the Muslims, with its northern limit in narbonne.6 Hence, the tenth-century “conquest history . . . . provides an imagined map of islamic al-andalus that may or may not have corresponded to its actual configuration at any time” [143]. The writer further describes al-andalus according to how cities and territories were conquered, that is, whether Christian inhabitants fought back or surrendered. The manner of their ca-pitulation determined how they were treated with regard to property issues and taxation [144]. Thus, al-andalus has different meanings and value for these two writers accord-ing to the goals of their historical prose. ibn Habib emphasizes in part its isolation from islamic civilization, while the author of akhbar majmu’a demonstrates its significance within Umayyad rule. and thirdly, i turn to the renowned thirteenth-century historical prose of alfonso X (1253–84), whose team of writers and scribes aimed to situate espanna in the historical trajectory of previous rulers and empires, namely those of Hercules and Julius Caesar, and thus legitimize alfonso’s own royal ambitions [Prosa histórica 49–51; Funes 9–10]. espanna denotes the entire peninsula for alfonso in the thirteenth century, even though during the early years of Christian expansion the name designated for Christians the Muslim territory of al-andalus. it only later came to refer to the peninsula as a whole, as it does in alfonso’s historiography [Penny 30; Menocal, “Visions” 12]. in contrast, arab historians sometimes called Christian iberia Ishbaniya, although they also used the term al-andalus to refer to the entire peninsula, or only to Muslim territory [Menocal, “Vi-sions” 12]. in the same way that the andalusi writers discussed above did not consider al-andalus a delimited nation-state, alfonso does not view espanna as a nation in the modern sense, despite his evident imperial goals. The idea of national identity during alfonso’s sovereignty is highly doubtful. Even if it existed in fledgling form, anthony Pym notes that it “disintegrated into a series of internal struggles during and follow-ing alfonso’s reign” [140]. Some historians have tried to cast historical figures such as alfonso as part of the “reconquest,” the effort to regain the peninsula from what these

6. See pages 38–39 of the Spanish translation of akhbar majmu’a for the narration of this episode and the territorial claim.

16

scholars consider the illegitimate occupancy of the Muslims, who resided there from 711 until the dissolution of their last kingdom in granada in 1492. This reconquest ideology is epitomized by beliefs such as that of the critic Emilio garcía gomez that almost eight hundred years of Muslim rule constituted an accident of history that was finally rectified in 1492 with granada’s capitulation to the Catholic monarchs Fernando and isabel [Marín 17–18]. Scholars such as garcía gómez view the reconquest as an effort by unified His-panic kingdoms against the supposed Muslim infidel, while recent studies cast it more accurately as part of a global medieval European effort to weaken Muslim economic and political hegemony [Pym 140–41].7 alfonso X’s association with the reconquest ideology of garcía gómez and others is extremely questionable. while the Castilian king included stories about Muslims in his works, his remarks did not necessarily constitute a personal enmity toward them, nor an incontestable wish to participate in the international initiative to decrease Muslim power.8 although alfonso wished to elevate Castile’s renown within the peninsula and throughout Europe [Funes 9], this desire did not translate into a ma-rauding, crusading military enterprise against islam. on the contrary—during alfonso’s reign in 1265, Pope Clement iV was concerned about “the reluctance of Christian kings [in iberia] to eliminate” non-Christians from their midst [Linehan 39]. This continued tolerance of Muslims is exemplified by alfonso’s dealings with granada’s nasrid king as one of his vassals [52]. Leonardo Funes believes that alfonso’s political goals mainly consisted of administrative and political centralization [10]. but Funes also recognizes that this goal represented a novel, large-scale political and cultural project, since alfonso sought to carry out his objectives in collaboration with what Funes calls the largest and most erudite group of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim intellectuals of his time in all of western Europe (“con la colaboración del círculo intelectual más numeroso y erudito de su época en el occidente europeo, integrado por cristianos, judíos y musulmanes” [9]). These three examples illustrate the variety of ways that medieval people portrayed iberia according to their motives and goals during specific eras. writers and cartographers used variable terms, and they granted iberia contrasting value depending on their aims. ibn Habib and the author of the akhbar majmu’a called it al-andalus, which was at times polyvalent, since it could refer both to the entire peninsula and to the area under Muslim rule [Menocal, “Visions” 12]. also, the mapmaker al-istakhrK probably understood al-andalus and north africa in tandem, rather than as separate regions. indeed, the historian Manuela Marín posits the idea of a fluctuating meaning for al-andalus, since she believes that from the eleventh century on, “the andalusi reality” was always geographically vari-

7. Janet abu-lughod argues that europe arrived late to the international network of trade and exchange established by the Muslims, but that european hegemony was achieved by the sixteenth century [11–12, 15–16]. 8. For examples of alfonso’s descriptions of Muslims in his historiography, see chapters 554 through 559 of the Estoria de Espanna [Prosa histórica 89–100], which include narration about the weakness of the last Visigothic king, rodrigo, in allowing the Muslims access to the peninsula. In this case, alfonso points to the inadequacies of the Visigothic ruler instead of expressing antago-nism or hatred toward the Muslims. For a contrasting view, however, see the general Estoria, part I, book II, chapter 29 [The Electronic Texts and Concordance of the Prose works of alfonso X, ge1, fol. 21v], where alfonso’s scribe narrates the biblical story about Christian and Muslim difference, in which Christians de-rived from Japhet, and Muslims from Cham. as the initial rubric indicates, the writer’s intent is to show that Christians and Muslims are enemies because of their divergent origins [rUB. Donde uino la p<r>i`ncipal enemistad d<e>los fijos de Japhet & d<e>los de Ca<m>]. although the scribe claims that Christians do not err in capturing and enslaving Muslims, the extent to which alfonso converted this disparaging sentiment into a fervent military or political campaign against thirteenth-century andalusis is yet to be confirmed. The scribe’s recounting of the biblical story may be, at least in part, formulaic.

diacritics / fall–winter 2006 17

able and consistent with decreasing territorial power (“La realidad andalusí, por tanto, es un concepto geográficamente variable y sometido a una disminución constante desde el siglo Xi en adelante” [13]). This variation is evident even before the eleventh century in the different ways that al-istakhrK, ibn Habib, and the author of the akhbar majmu’a envisioned al-andalus. al-istakhrK depicted it as a space composed of alternating circle sizes to show the relations of political and cultural power among cities and towns. ibn Habib cast al-andalus as dangerous because of its positioning in the hinterlands, while the writer of the akhbar majmu’a described it favorably as pivotal to Umayyad rule. and in the thirteenth century, espanna for alfonso X was not limited only to Christian realms, but also denoted the peninsula’s Muslim kingdom. alfonso rendered espanna central to his imperial goals, although his concept of empire was less intent on eradicating Muslim people and culture than on accommodating them in his imperial framework. How do i handle from my vantage point in the twenty-first century these multiple ways of describing medieval iberia and the numerous realities they represent? How do i denote and describe it in ways that would do justice to this historical diversity, as well as to iberia’s variable significance and value? i am always edging toward this fullness. i have at my disposal a number of investigative approaches from which to choose, in addi-tion to a selection of names for iberia. Many medievalists today have moved beyond the limited terms of the renowned debate between the scholars américo Castro and Claudio Sánchez albornoz about the role of Muslim culture in contemporary Spain, which domi-nated medieval iberian studies for several decades in the middle of the twentieth century. These scholars theorized about the role of the Visigoths, romans, and Muslims in mod-ern-day Spanish identity and society. Sánchez albornoz believed that modern Spaniards traced their origins to the Visigoths, who succeeded the roman rule on the peninsula prior to the north african incursions in the early eighth century. Sánchez albornoz thus connected Spanish ethnicity to northern European roots, while Castro tried to show how Muslim culture was integrated into modern Spanish culture and identity. Their contest was an effort to explain modern Spanish national identity and does not serve as the basis for any verifiable determination of the Christian-Muslim relationship in iberia.9 Many scholars, including Marín and Menocal, have treated the past in broader, more complex ways since Castro’s and Sánchez albornoz’s debate, and rising interest among Spaniards and others today in al-andalus and the medieval period demonstrate a desire on the part of the general public to understand medieval iberia more fully. awareness of the medieval period’s significance in Spain is evident in numerous university conferences, websites on, for instance, al-andalus or Sefarad (the name that Jews gave iberia), art and cultural exhibits, and a gamut of popular historical novels on medieval topics. Yet, at the same time, intransigent perspectives continue to emerge, such as former Spanish President José María aznar’s belief, as expressed in a speech at georgetown University in 2004, that Spain’s problems with al-Qaeda originated in the eighth century with the Muslim (aznar called them “Moors”) invasion [see aznar]. in order to make his anachronistic parallel between eighth-century iberia and modern Spain, aznar posited the latter’s existence in the eighth century, even though Spain is a modern nation that did not exist before the sixteenth century or later. He suggested that just as Christians finally dominated Muslims in 1492, so would Christians vanquish al-Qaeda in the present. aznar based his logic on the myth of the reconquest and on the misguided idea that north af-ricans left iberia in 1492, a popular idea that contributes to the stigmatizing of current north african immigrants to Spain as “invaders” who were expelled centuries ago. in fact, iberia and north africa have always had mutual relations.

9. See Castro and Sánchez albornoz. For recent discussions on this debate, see Marín 17–20; Menocal, arabic role 19–20n5, 23n18; and Pym 14–15.

18

despite aznar’s simplistic connection between the Middle ages and the twenty-first century, scholars have myriad choices about how to deal with and describe medieval iberia today. aznar chose “Spain” to refer to iberia’s medieval past in order to link that era to modern Spanish identity and the nation-state in a similar way as Sánchez albornoz did. in the same way that aznar’s choice of “Spain” was related to his political objec-tives, so will scholars’ choice of a name for medieval iberia have consequences for their investigative methodology. i indicated earlier that in my view the terms “medieval Spain” and “Hispania” are woefully lacking, leaving me with the equally limited term “iberia,” which i want to signify broadly, but which cannot be separated fully from its modern meaning as the geographic peninsula that contains Spain and Portugal. The shortcomings and complexities of this word are apparent nowadays because iberia usually designates the peninsula, which contains the two sovereign nations, and does not only refer to Spain. additionally, it does not include all of modern Spain, since Melilla and Ceuta are located on the northern coast of africa, and the balearic and Canary islands clearly are not part of the mainland. where does modern “iberia” begin and end? does it include andorra, which is surrounded by Spain and France in the Pyrenees? not to my knowledge. andorra truly resides at iberia’s edge, and in the middle, between Spain and France. and where exactly was the medieval border in the Pyrenees between gaul and iberia? it was never absolute. in fact, northeastern iberia fell to Frankish control from 780 to 801 and is com-monly known as the frontier space of the Spanish March, or the marca hispánica, which bordered al-andalus. Paul Freedman remarks that it is difficult to know what to call this area around the Pyrenees from the ninth to eleventh centuries, since “Catalonia” was first used in the twelfth century and is thus anachronistic [761]. The complex political and cul-tural alliances of this region demonstrate that the Pyrenees are deceptive “as any kind of stable line” or territorial border between iberia and gaul, or between Muslims and Chris-tians [Pym 15]. battles and skirmishes between andalusi and Frankish troops continued well into the ninth century, and did not end as is popularly believed with the eighth-century Muslim defeat in the battle of Tours or Poitiers. Furthermore, evidence suggests that from 890 until the tenth century, andalusi Muslims occupied a fort at Freinet, near Saint-Tropez, indicating serious doubt about the Pyrenees as a demarcation between the “Christian north” and the “Muslim south” [Marc bloch 13–16]. iberia’s limits and very definition often are indeterminate when trying to mold them into modern categories of place, knowledge, or identity. Shifting borders and political configurations throughout the medieval iberian period defy monolithic modern catego-ries of “Spanish” nationhood or national identity. although Christians began to consoli-date their power in 1085 with the capture of Toledo, and then again in 1212 with their victory at Las navas de Tolosa, the “Spanish” nation-state only began to emerge in the late fifteenth century with the homogenizing efforts of the Catholic Kings (1479–1516). The Jewish and Muslim expulsions and conversions from 1492 on constituted an ef-fort toward religious and cultural hegemony by the Castilian-aragonese Crown, even if such uniformity was only achieved over the following two to three centuries. benedict anderson’s idea of the modern nation as an imagined community not only applies to na-tion-states of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also to the premodern Spain of the Catholic monarchs and the subsequent Hapsburg dynasty, which struggled to achieve social and political homogeneity [Casey 1, ruiz 11]. observations by outside visitors to iberia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries demonstrate the commingling of cultural habits, rather than the traditionally assumed late medieval, early modern Christian hege-mony. For example, people related to the court of Enrique iV were well known for their affinity to Muslim culture:

diacritics / fall–winter 2006 19

During the reign of enrique IV (1454–1474), the Constable of Castile had been observed at early mass “all got up as a Moor, and very nice too,” while at his master’s court both French and Bohemian visitors had encountered the Chris-tian monarch guarded by Moorish warriors from granada (not to mention ne-groes), clothed and worshipping “in the heathen manner,” and seated on the ground with his queen to receive them. [Linehan 40]

what name captures this political and cultural fluidity over so many centuries? However limited, the term iberia is attractive because, like the varying political and social configurations on the medieval peninsula, “iberia” and “iberians” have been multi-valent since their appearance in greek writings starting in the fourth century bCE, when the greeks began to have a significant commercial impact on the peninsula’s Mediterra-nean coast [Tuñón de Lara 105–06]. The greeks used “iberians” in an expansive way to refer to all the inhabitants of the peninsula, and not only to the iberian people of the east-ern and coastal areas of the Levant [105, 133]. “iberians” had multiple meanings, since at times it designated the inhabitants of the peninsula’s Mediterranean coast, along with Murcia, while on other occasions it comprised the peoples of andalusia [133]. because of this polyvalence, historians today such as Fernando garcía de Cortázar and José Manuel gonzález Vesga recognize the iberians as a combination of various peoples in diverse regions of the peninsula, which comprise the Levant, the Ebro valley region, andalusia, and Catalonia, and not necessarily as a delimited ethnic group [78–84]. These scholars reinforce the diverse referents of iberia and its inhabitants and suggest that the terms rarely denoted categories of modern-style identity and social order regarding nations, ethnicities, or religious attachments. because “iberia” does not denote only one culture, group, place, or thing, it is the most useful and comprehensive expression i have found. Yet “iberia” is as incomplete as any other term if we use it only to signify a place, that is, the peninsula bordered by coastal waters and the Pyrenees, as isidore of Seville used it in his seventh-century etimologías. For isidore, “iberia” derived from the Ebro river (río ibero) and was the name of the geographic peninsula before its denomination as Hispania [chap. 14, 4.28]. but medieval iberia was so much more, since its peoples, trade routes, and cultural impact extended to north africa and Europe and throughout the Mediterranean. For my purposes, iberia is better understood as a theoretical concept that designates a space of interaction between different groups of people. in some instances it signifies a bordered land mass, even a peninsula, but it is also more. if Iberia is deemed deficient, perhaps scholars could find an alternate word, although the options are less than appealing. The most common term, Hispania, has not been embraced by colleagues in the US and seems even more inadequate than Iberia. rafael Lapesa averred that Hispania predated the roman introduction of Latin and may have derived from Phoenician, meaning “land of rabbits” [15], while P. E. russell posited its origin in an iberian place-name, Hispalis, which was received through an arabic form as Sevilla [4].10 in his etimologías, isidore traced Hispania to Híspalo, which was Hesperia, the name the greeks gave iberia and italy in relation to Héspero, the western star that served as their point of navigation in the Mediterranean. The greeks settled parts of the peninsula from the seventh to the third centuries bCE. isidore believed that they called it-aly Hesperia, and referred to iberia as la última Hesperia, or the final Hesperia [chap. 14, 4.19].11 isidore wrote that the romans then changed Hesperia to Hispania ulterior and

10. lapesa concurs with russell about the origin of the toponym Seville, although he does not link Hispalis to Hispania [140]. 11. even Isidore, who conceptualized iberia as bordered by mountains and water, did not define Hispania in such a rigid way as the physical peninsula. Instead, he expanded its borders when he claimed that one of its six provinces, Tingitania, was in north africa [chap. 14, 4.29]. I

20

citerior [chap. 14, 4.19, 28], and historical linguists today, such as José Manuel Fradejas rueda [103] and ralph Penny [30, 64], generally agree that Hispania descends from Latin, while recognizing its possible pre-roman roots. This connection may account in part for Hispania’s neglect by medievalists in the US, who probably associate it with crit-ics’ traditional focus on texts in Castilian romance and Latin to the exclusion of cultural production in, for instance, arabic, Catalan, galician-Portuguese, or Hebrew. as is well known, the concentration on Castilian romance texts and cultures has predominated in medieval iberian studies until very recently. in addition, modern historians sometimes have dignified “Hispanic” in contrast to disparaged terms such as “arab” or “Muslim” in an effort to negate or criticize the impact of al-andalus and the Muslim presence on the peninsula from the early eighth to the early sixteenth centuries. Thus, for many, Hispania and Hispanic have become associated ethnically or culturally with iberia’s pre-Muslim Visigothic and roman peoples, to the exclusion of Muslim cultural contributions. in ad-dition, for many in the US, “Hispanic” harks back to its first major public appearances in the news media during the nixon era in the early 1970s, an administration often consid-ered averse to a majority of Latinos in the US [“Hispanic,” Oxford english Dictionary Online]. it is clear that Hispania fails to represent the medieval iberian Muslim territory of al-andalus, which was the vehicle for the distribution of a plethora of manuscripts and learning throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. Furthermore, the Latin Hispania generated españa, which refers today to the modern nation-state. although numerous medieval chronicles and other writings in romance mentioned espanya, espanna, and additional forms of the word during the period of Christian expansion in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, medievalists nowadays often view these terms as anachronistic and narrow in scope when designating medieval iberia as a whole, since they were employed by romance scribes and not by writers from other linguistic and cultural traditions.12 José antonio Maravall investigated the meaning of España in medieval historiography in el concepto de españa en la edad Media, arguing for a constant knowledge of España on the part of Hispanic historiographers starting with isidore of Seville and continuing through the chronicles of, for instance, Sancho iii el Mayor, alfonso Vi, alfonso i el batallador, alfonso Vii, and alfonso X. although Maravall considered the concept of españa dynamic and changing (for example, early historiographers focused on the lives of kings, while later ones linked españa to the common people [26–27], he also sought a commonality in the use of the term, according to the following definition: “Spain is, for our medieval historians, a human entity located in a territory that defines and char-acterizes it, and to which something happens in common, an entire history of its own” (“España es, para nuestros historiadores medievales, una entidad humana asentada en un territorio que la define y caracteriza y a la cual le sucede algo en común, toda una his-toria propia” [43]). although Maravall does not define españa as a modern nation, and in fact elsewhere considers the concept an abstraction [557], he seems intent on linking medieval people to “the Land,” españa [556–57], and thus to the creation of a common community throughout the medieval period. This common, essential thread that would connect medieval “Hispanic” people over many centuries is dubious, due to the vicissi-tudes in medieval iberia. More recently, another scholar, anthony Pym, uses Hispania to designate “a series of attachments to the history of the iberian peninsula as a frontier space” [15], a definition

am unaware of any scholarship that deals with this contrasting definition of Iberia and Hispania in Isidore’s Etimologías. 12. as we have seen, in the early years of Christian expansion, España referred to Muslim Iberia and later extended to the entire peninsula, until finally designating the early modern nation-state of the Catholic kings in the late fifteenth century [Penny 30].

Trigger, 2005Site-specific interactive installation

Pace University Digital Gallery

22

that i find more appealing when applied to iberia because of iberia’s dissociation from an organized political entity or a specific textual tradition. Since Iberia is not attached to a group of people, a political state, or a textual tradition, it has the potential for a wider range of meaning than Hispania. despite my disagreement with his word choice, Pym attempts to broaden our understanding of iberia and wrest it from the limitations of such terms as Spain and españa, or from the insular view of iberia as restricted by coastal bor-ders and the Pyrenees. His expansive notion of Hispania emphasizes the attachments to the history of iberia without denoting a relation to a political organization, even though i believe that Hispania and Hispanic indeed invoke a series of anachronistic and inaccurate associations that can be avoided with the term Iberia. So i settle on Iberia because it is not associated with ethnic groups, empires, or na-tions. but what does this mean for my scholarship? if my choice of Iberia has implica-tions for my research, for my methods and theoretical approaches to medieval studies, where do i go from here? i am still only edging toward iberia and i never entirely capture it. How do i continue to approach its diversity and fullness? Pym highlights two theo-retical concepts that i find useful as i move toward a greater understanding of medieval iberia: the idea of the frontier and the notion of association. These concepts coincide with the openness that iberia allows in my critical efforts to create knowledge about the medieval period. Pym reinforces medieval iberia as a frontier society, that is, as an area without strict limits, borders, and categories of knowledge and identity. Medievalists such as Charles Julian bishko traditionally aligned the frontier with Frederick Jackson Turner’s ideas in the late nineteenth century that wed it to the american west [Line-han 37–38]. Turner’s link has been roundly critiqued for its pejorative use as a division between supposedly barbarous indigenous peoples and civilized whites who conquered them [see Turner]. Medieval historians also usually connected the iberian frontier to the reconquista (reconquest), as a space between Muslim and Christian military forces, or as a site of Christian conquest. but the concept has changed and developed since its treat-ment by historians such as bishko, robert i. burns, and angus MacKay.13 david abulafia and nora berend show that “frontier” is ambiguous in its application to medieval studies in general, since it may be applied in varying ways, including as a site of political conflict or military battles, or as the territory governed by a conquering group of people [1–3].14 abulafia and berend demonstrate that the frontier is understood as more than a site of reconquest. Even in his study from 1989, angus MacKay diverted from this idea of the iberian frontier and instead questioned the supposed antagonism among Christians and Muslims along the fourteenth-century Castilian-granadan border. MacKay showed the frontier’s fluidity and frequent lack of definition, as has Linehan in describing recently how soldiers from Europe arrived on the peninsula in the late Middle ages surprised to find Muslims and Christians sipping orange juice together [39]. Linehan also has demon-strated that divides among Christian kingdoms and dioceses in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries proved greater challenges to Christian sovereignty than the conventional idea of Christian-Muslim rivalry [46, 50]. Linehan rebukes the notion of “frontier behavior” as either reinforcing the goals of crusade or of convivencia, that is, cohabitation among different groups. instead, the medieval iberian frontier permitted both, since it was the space where the “inconsistencies of human behavior” were played out [53]. in addition, Linehan extends the idea of the frontier from iberia to the whole of me-dieval Europe, in suggesting that medieval Europe constituted a frontier space that lacked a stable social order and strict borders between political realms. but, he also asks, if me-

13. For an overview of critical approaches to the term “frontier” from the late nineteenth century, see nora Berend’s preface [x–xv]. 14. In the introduction to Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices, abulafia emphasizes the many meanings that the frontier implies as he explores seven types of ambiguity related to it.

diacritics / fall–winter 2006 23

dieval Europe was entirely a frontier, where was “the European hinterland or metropolis” [49]? where were the urban centers and the marginal, rural areas? in response to these questions, it may be that the frontier cannot be understood as the edge of “the European hinterland or metropolis,” but as a conceptual, unfixed space. indeed, perhaps we can-not conceive of centers and hinterlands at all in the Middle ages. but ronnie Ellenblum argues that “centers” should replace the border as a determinant medieval quality [111]. Ellenblum agrees that fixed borders were not part of the medieval spatial organization, but instead of describing medieval society as a frontier, Ellenblum believes that medieval political communities “were more easily characterized by their centres or by their com-mon association with a ruler than by their physical space” [108]. according to Ellenblum, central areas had spheres around them with boundaries, but since those boundaries were mutable and changing, historians today find it difficult to determine “well-defined zones.” Ellenblum avers that scholars should focus on “spheres of various degrees of influence,” rather than on bordered political zones [109–10]. Ellenblum makes an important point, but i am not ready to abandon completely the idea of the frontier as a constantly fluid space of human “inconsistencies.” The fron-tier has to be something more than a mere line between varying factions and groups of people, which then surrounds urban centers and their outskirts. abulafia and berend’s book shows how diverse the concept may be, and abulafia goes so far as to call the fron-tier “a state of mind” [34]. but, according to Pym, the frontier cannot be discarded as a theoretical concept because it was crucial in the efforts toward forging hegemony in early modern Spain. Pym believes that as the frontier was pushed out to the americas, so was a homogeneous society increasingly shaped on the peninsula:

Only when the frontier itself moved further away, when the region was no longer properly defined by the line, did the bonds between the groups unravel, ten-sions were unleashed, and some kind of monoculture ensued from the various struggles. The Spain of the great expulsions and the Inquisition could only be triumphant once the frontier had moved outward. [7]

Spain’s eventual monoculture could only be initiated as the other was expelled from ibe-ria and the plural frontier society moved to the americas. despite the many atrocities of European conquest especially in the sixteenth century, which included the extermination of large numbers of indigenous peoples, along with the establishment of the labor system of encomienda that rendered many indigenous people servile to Spanish lords, Pym indi-cates that Spanish america was more fluid than the metropolis in Europe [145]. The inter-dependence between the Spanish metropolis and the “frontier” society in the new world coincided with what i have described elsewhere as the early modern enterprise toward a more categorical ordering of society in which whole groups of people were deemed superior or inferior [1–2]. i have shown that the attempted hegemony or monoculture of the early modern Castilian nation-state did not solely rest on the logic of similitude, that is, that everyone looked and acted the same or believed the same thing, but rather, on hierarchies of difference within society. according to Pym, such an ordering was made possible because the frontier was pushed out to the americas. iberia’s edge moved away. The iberian space of conflict, cohabitation, and working things out was replaced by some-thing else in the form of the Castilian or “Spanish” nation-state. Thus, the shifting, per-meable quality of the frontier championed by Pym and Linehan, a space of struggle and conciliation, matches the political and cultural fluidity of the phrase “medieval iberia,” if not of all of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. despite the fact that the Castilian nation-state was not absolute after the frontier moved out, from the sixteenth century on it is increasingly difficult to conceive of iberia, as in the Middle ages, and instead, it is usually more precise to refer to Spain and Portugal.

24

Edging toward medieval iberia takes on new meaning when considered in conjunc-tion with the frontier. The frontier is at once a border, an edge, a space of conflict and cohabitation, but not merely a line. if iberia is a frontier, an edge, a border, a place on the one hand and a space on the other, when i edge toward it, i am already there. i am already at the edge, in medieval iberia and around it without ever fully encompassing it. That iberia is a frontier, a border, an edge is a paradox. iberia is the edge and what is inside. or iberia is the border but not a line. or it is the border and the line. iberia sometimes has limits, and at other times it does not. as i edge toward medieval iberia, Pym’s second concept of associations helps me understand iberia as a series of varying political and cultural associations among peoples of the peninsula and other regions. Medieval iberia is not an enclosed geographic or tem-poral space, nor even merely a yielding series of shifting kingdoms, but rather a network of interrelated attachments between varying individuals and groups. The idea of associa-tions extends medieval iberia from geographical and temporal boundaries to a series of cultural, economic, or political relationships. if we recognize medieval iberia not as a peninsular terrain bounded by the Pyrenees, the atlantic, and the Mediterranean, but as a series of associations between the peoples who inhabited and ruled the broad area of the peninsula, and communities throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, then we shift our focus from geographical or political domains to dealings among groups of people. Surely at times it is necessary and appropriate to investigate and describe medieval iberia according to political boundaries and geographical limits, but often their imposition does not serve research efforts, nor does it always contribute to a deeper understanding of the medieval period. Just as many critical theorists from gilles deleuze and Félix guattari to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick have emphasized an understanding of the human body through its constantly shifting attachments to other people and things, rather than according to its supposedly inert qualities and absolute characteristics, so too may we study medieval iberia in relation to its varying alliances with other regions and political realms, and not as a straightforward geographical area. This is what i will do. i will continue to search for ways to accurately research and describe medieval iberia, while at the same time recognizing the insufficiency of so many modern terms and concepts on which i must rely. Take the idea of the social itself, which Michael Taussig questioned:

Might not the very concept of the social, itself a relatively modern idea, be out-dated insofar as it rests on assumptions of stability and structure? [17]

if for Taussig “the social” is a modern notion that was outdated at the end of the twenti-eth century, then with great difficulty may it be applied hundreds of years earlier to the Middle ages. if such modern terms are anachronistic or limited in scope, then perhaps a greater confidence in the concepts of the frontier and associations will help me persist in edging toward iberia’s fullness.

worKS CiTEdabulafia, david. “introduction: Seven Types of ambiguity, c. 1100-c. 1500.” In Medieval

Frontiers: Concepts and Practices. Ed. david abulafia and nora berend. burling-ton: ashgate, 2002. 1–34.

abu-Lughod, Janet L. Before european Hegemony: The World System a.D. 1250–1350. new York: oxford UP, 1989.

ajbar machmuâ (Colección de tradiciones). Ed. and trans. Emilio Lafuente y alcantara. Madrid, 1867. Translation of akhbar majmu’a.

diacritics / fall–winter 2006 25

alfonso X. general estoria [gE1]. On The electronic Texts and Concordances of the Prose Works of alfonso X, el Sabio. Ed. Lloyd Kasten, John nitti, and wilhelmina Jonxis-Henkemans. Cd-roM. Madison: Hispanic Seminary for Medieval Studies, 1997.

________. Prosa histórica. Ed. benito brancaforte. Madrid: Cátedra, 1990.anderson, benedict. Imagined Communities: reflections on the Origin and Spread of

nationalism. 2nd ed. new York: Verso, 1991.aznar, José María. “Seven Theses on Today’s Terrorism.” September 21, 2004. george-

town University. http://www3.georgetown.edu/president/aznar/inauguraladdress.html.

berend, nora. “Preface.” Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices. Ed. david abula-fia and nora berend. burlington: ashgate, 2002. x–xv.

bloch, Marc. la sociétè féodale: la formation des liens de depéndance. Paris: albin Michel, 1939.

bloch, r. Howard, and Stephen g. nichols, eds. Medievalism and the Modernist Temper. baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996.

bloom, Jonathan M. Paper before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World. new Haven: Yale UP, 2001.

brown, Catherine. “The relics of Menéndez Pidal: Mourning and Melancholia in His-panomedieval Studies.” la corónica 24.1 (1995): 15–41.

bull, Marcus. Thinking Medieval: an Introduction to the Study of the Middle ages. new York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005.

Cantor, norman F. Inventing the Middle ages: The lives, Works, and Ideas of the great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century. new York: william Morrow, 1991.

Casey, James. early Modern Spain: a Social History. new York: routledge, 1999.Castro, américo. españa en su historia: Cristianos, moros y judíos. barcelona: Critica,

1983.Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of everyday life. Trans. Steven rendall. berkeley: U

of California P, 1984.dagenais, John. The ethics of reading in Manuscript Culture: glossing the Libro de

buen amor. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994.dangler, Jean. Making Difference in Medieval and early Modern Iberia. notre dame: U

of notre dame P, 2005.Eco, Umberto. “dreaming of the Middle ages.” In Travels in Hyperreality: essays. Trans.

william weaver. San diego: Harcourt brace, 1983. 61–85.Ellenblum, ronnie. “borders and borderlines in the Middle ages? The Example of the

Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.” Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices. Ed. da-vid abulafia and nora berend. burlington: ashgate, 2002. 105–19.

Fradejas rueda, José Manuel. Fonología histórica del español. Madrid: Visor, 1997.Freedman, Paul. “Spanish March.” Medieval Iberia: an encyclopedia. Ed. E. Michael

gerli. new York: routledge, 2003. 761–62.Funes, Leonardo. el modelo historiográfico alfonsí: Una caracterización. London: de-

partment of Hispanic Studies, Queen Mary and westfield College, 1997.garcía de Cortázar, Fernando, and José Manuel gonzález Vesga. Breve historia de es-

paña. Madrid: alianza, 1995.Harley, J. b., and david woodward, eds. The History of Cartography. Vol. 2. bk. 1. Chi-

cago: U of Chicago P, 1992.“Hispanic.” Oxford english Dictionary Online. oxford: oxford UP, 15 June 2006. http://

dictionary.oed.com.s4.tcs.tulane.edu:2048/cgi/entry/50106528?single=1&query_ type=word&queryword=hispanic&first=1&max_to_show=10.

26

ibn Habib, abd al-Malik, and Jorge aguadé. Kitab al-Ta’rK j (la historia). Madrid: Con-sejo Superior de investigaciones Científicas, instituto de Cooperación con el Mundo Árabe, 1991.

isidore of Seville. etimologías. Vol. 2. Madrid: biblioteca de autores cristianos, 1994.Lapesa, rafael. Historia de la lengua española. Madrid: gredos, 1985.Linehan, Peter. “at the Spanish Frontier.” The Medieval World. Ed. Peter Linehan and

Janet L. nelson. new York: routledge, 2001. 37–59.MacKay, angus. “religion, Culture, and ideology on the Late Medieval Castilian-grana-

dan Frontier.” Medieval Frontier Societies. Ed. robert bartlett and angus MacKay. oxford: Clarendon, 1989. 217–43.

Maravall, José antonio. el concepto de españa en la edad Media. Madrid: instituto de Estudios Políticos, 1954.

Marín, Manuela. al-Ándalus y los andalusíes. barcelona: Cidob/icaria, 2000.Menocal, María rosa. The arabic role in Medieval literary History: a Forgotten Heri-

tage. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1987.________. “Visions of al-andalus.” The literature of al-andalus. Ed. María rosa Menocal,

raymond P. Scheindlin, and Michael Sells. new York: Cambridge UP, 2000. 1–24.Meyerson, Mark d. Introduction to Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and early

Modern Spain: Interaction and Cultural Change. Ed. Mark d. Meyerson and Ed-ward d. English. notre dame: U of notre dame P, 1999. xi–xxi.

Penny, ralph. History of the Spanish language. 2nd ed. new York: Cambridge UP, 2002.

Pym, anthony. negotiating the Frontier: Translators and Intercultures in Hispanic His-tory. Manchester: St. Jerome, 2000.

ruiz, Teofilo F. Spanish Society, 1400–1600. new York: Longman/Pearson, 2001.russell, P. E. Spain: a Companion to Spanish Studies. London: Methuen, 1973.Safran, Janina M. “From alien Terrain to the abode of islam: Landscapes in the Conquest

of al-andalus.” Inventing Medieval landscapes: Senses of Place in Western europe. Ed. John Howe and Michael wolfe. gainesville: UP of Florida, 2002. 136–49.

Sánchez albornoz, Claudio. españa: Un enigma histórico. buenos aires: Sudamericana, 1956.

Spiegel, gabrielle M. The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiog-raphy. Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.

Taussig, Michael. The nervous System. new York: routledge, 1992.Tuñón de Lara, Manuel. Historia de españa. Tomo i. barcelona: Labor, 1980.Turner, Frederick Jackson. “The Significance of the Frontier in american History.”

Where Cultures Meet: Frontiers in american History. Ed. david J. weber and Jane M. rausch. wilmington, dE: Scholarly resources, 1994. 1–50.

Turner, Howard r. Science in Medieval Islam: an Illustrated Introduction. austin: U of Texas P, 1995.