The Rise and Fall of Paradise

Arabs and Jews together once built an elegant kingdom in the southern half of Spain, named Cordoba. A thousand years ago, some called this land paradise because no one went hungry, because the poor had opportunity for riches and the slaves could hope for freedom, because there was an urbane acceptance of differences; most significantly because Jew and Arab came together in a brotherly manner. Elmer Bendiner describes Cordoba at its zenith in the beneficent reign of Abdar Rahman III and his Jewish diplomat and physician, Hasdai ibn Shaprut. He gives us the tastes and smells of Cordoban banquets and the sounds of music that accompanied them. Here is Ziryab, the setter of fashions who taught women how to wear their hair and how to set their tables. Here also are the scholars, rabbis, poets, pirates, conniving eunuchs and the women who wielded a power that was never formally granted to them. And here are Andalusian troubadours, both Jews and Arabs, who sang of wine and sacred and sensual love.