Moorish Culure in Spain
by Titus Burckhardt
Fons Vitae, Louisville, Kentucky © 1999 228 pp.
"Nothing brings us into such immediate contact with the culture of a bygone age as certain works of art. Whether it is a sacred image, a temple, a cathedral, or a mosque, it represents a focal point within the culture and expresses something essential. It gives us an insight which neither arguments of history nor analyses of social and economic circumstances can capture. The only other source that is equally as informative about a culture is its writings, particularly those writings dealing with the spiritual life. But such works are often very complex and frequently not intelligible to the modern reader, without the aid of detailed commentaries. However, a work of art, unencumbered by distracting intellectual digressions, immediately communicates and provides much information about the nature of a particular culture. For example, it is much easier to comprehend the intellectual and ethical characteristics of a Buddhist culture if one is familiar with the image of the Buddha. Similarly, the religions and social life of the Middle Ages is more readily comprehended by someone who has explored the architecture of a Romanesque abbey or Gothic cathedral.
A building such as the Great Mosque of Cordoba is characteristic of Moorish culture in its full flowering, at the time when the Spanish-Islamic empire was united under the rule of the Ummayyads. We are most fortunate that it still exists, for little else has survived of the former great capital of the empire, which was unrivaled by any city in the West, apart from Constantinople." (p. 9)
--submitted by Jennifer Knight