By: Kevin Barrett | June 24, 2025 | kevinbarrett.substack.com We are traveling the length of historic al-Andalus, from Barcelona to Zaragoza to today’s Andalusia (southern Spain) asking ordinary people about convivencia. What is convivencia? It’s a friendlier term for “coexistence” that was originally used to describe the strikingly positive relationship between Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities in Islamic Spain a.k.a.…
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By Dr Nathaniel Miller | May 24, 2025 https://classyarabic.substack.com/p/why-medieval-muslims-travelled-so The notion that one should travel in pursuit of knowledge is deeply embedded in Arabic and Islamic culture. The Arabic word for “student”, ṭālib, means seeker, an abbreviation of ṭālib al-ʿilm, or “knowledge-seeker.” That this seeking implies travel is evident in the Prophetic statement (hadith) uṭlubū al-ʿilm wa-law bi-ṣ-ṣīn—”seek knowledge (al-ʿilm),…
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PALACE OF THE ALHAMBRA From Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving TO the traveller imbued with a feeling for the historical and poetical, so inseparably intertwined in the annals of romantic Spain, the Alhambra is as much an object of devotion as is the Caaba to all true Moslems. How many legends and traditions, true and fabulous,—how many songs…
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