Blurred at the edges
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
The Hindu, 25 February
A reference in my last column to Moses Maimonides as a “12th century Arab Jewish theologian” has perplexed some readers.
An Arab and a Jew? Can such a hybrid exist?
Like all ethnic designations, both terms are problematic, blurred at the edges. But in the case of Maimonides, the greatest name in Jewish philosophy, the only doubt is about whether the Arab part of the description is correct.
Moshe ben Maimon (Hebrew) and Abu Imran Mussa bin Maimun (Arabic) and Moses Maimonides (Greek) were one and the same. He was born in Spain, an integral part of Arabo-Andalusian culture (though persecuted by the sectarian Almohads), educated in Fes (at the venerable and prestigious University of Kairouine), then moved to Egypt, where he became court physician and recognised leader of the local Jewish community.
The common language in all these places was Arabic. Maimonides wrote all his scientific and philosophical books as well as most of his works on Jewish law in Arabic. His correspondence was in Arabic. Sometimes he wrote Arabic in Hebrew script, as was commonplace in intra-Jewish communication at the time. Scholars suspect this Arabic may actually reflect more faithfully the Arabic used in the street at the time than the Quran-inflected works composed in Arabic script.
Of course, Arabic and Arabs pre-existed Islam. The Jewish tribes with whom Muhammad contended in Medinah certainly spoke Arabic and were Arabs. In the Quran, there’s no discernible cultural difference between the opposed parties.
Maimonides’ most popular work, The Guide for the Perplexed, drew on the Islamic philosophy of his day in an effort to reconcile the Hebrew Bible with the teachings of Aristotle (religion with reason). The book was widely read throughout the Mediterranean and West Asia, and helped reintroduce the Western world to Greek philosophy.
But the journey was not always smooth. In 1232, 28 years after Maimonides death, the rabbis in Montpelier, southern France, offended by The Guide’s emphasis on the primacy of logic, sought to have it publicly burned by the local Christian authorities, in the shape of the Dominican order. The Dominicans declined and made their own use of the text, which became, in the next generation, a major influence on the Dominican scholar Thomas Aquinas, vastly influential medieval Christian philosopher. In any case, the book faired better than the Jews of Montpelier, who were expelled by royal edict in 1306.
The only reason the conjoining of the words Jewish and Arab surprises anyone is because of events in 20th-century Palestine. The spectrum of human diversity is and always has been multi-dimensional; it has no centre, no periphery. It changes incessantly. Social identities exist in relationship to each other; there’s overlap, interchange, as well as conflict and competition. Boundaries are always being redrawn, not only between groups but between spheres: the religious, cultural, linguistic, political. The Maimonides story is one among the countless facts of life that make a nonsense of the polarities and insularities offered by “the clash of civilisations”, the war on terror, and both Hindutva and Zionism.
My feelings on this were confirmed by two journeys I’ve been lucky enough to make this winter.
The first was to Granada, in southern Spain, where the 14th-century Alhambra was decked with snow: an unexpected sight. This is an architecture of courtyards and reflecting pools, delicate stucco and tile exposed to the elements. By common consent, it’s the most splendid extant relic of Islamic rule in Europe. It’s also one of Europe’s great secular edifices, with an aesthetic that is both sophisticated and approachable, one to which Jewish artisans (who were Arabs and Andalusians) contributed.
In Granada today, thanks to tourism, immigration and cultural politics, “Moorish” heritage is making a comeback, 500 years after it was stamped out by the Catholic monarchs. The chic designers opt for mudejar motifs. With the growth of a Moroccan community, Arab food and Arabic signs have returned to the heart of the city. There’s a new mosque. Young Spanish men sport long dreadlocks, somehow embracing the African in them, as well as reflecting the influence of Jamaican reggae and local anarchist traditions.
The second trip was to Varanasi, where I made a little pilgrimage to the modest house of the late great Bismillah Khan, who turned the recalcitrant shehnai into an instrument as supple and as many-hued as the human voice. A Shia Muslim who venerated Saraswati, refined his art in Hindu temples, and always placed music beyond community, he embodied both secular India and more specifically a syncretic eastern U.P. tradition, much undermined in recent decades.
Bismillah Khan’s house is tucked away in the narrow alleys of the mainly Muslim quarter to the west of Benia Bagh. Not far from here live and work Muslim silk weavers, descendants of the caste that gave birth six centuries ago to Kabir, who waged a bracing lifelong struggle against labels and labellers, and especially against those who exploit labels to divide humanity. I imagine him haunting the galis and ghats of Varanasi, hurling sarcastic challenges to priests and mullahs, deprecating ritual, caste, communalism, sectarianism – all so visible in Varanasi today.
The ferocious street-preacher-poet makes an odd pairing with the polished and worldly Maimonides, and they probably would have detested each other. Nonetheless, both were members of minority groups who, as individuals, embraced and propagated universalist ideas. And neither would recognise or accept the proffered polarities of today’s global arena.
