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Convivencia In Medieval Spain

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With the established stable social environment, the religious tolerance towards the minorities as a brilliant political tactic created a positive loop in Al-Andalus: the economic prosperity was built upon frequent trading between people of different religious beliefs, and resulted prosperity continued to promote the communication and more frequent economic activities, making Al-Andalus unlikely to incur violence. When people lived in comfort and participated in mutually beneficial economic activities, it was hard to have internal conflicts. The 100,000 shops and homes in Córdoba and the creation of mints during Abd al-Rahman III’s reign confirmed the prosperous circumstances. Therefore, the religious coexistence between Islam, Judaism, and …show more content…

The peaceful and prosperous Convivencia in Medieval Spain suggests the possibility how Muslims, Jews, and Christians were able to create a culture of tolerance, shedding light on the many contemporary issues about the unrest in the Middle East. The constant bloodshed from external and internal wars in Islamic Spain corroborates the impossibility of having permanent allies, but the possibility of having permanent interests between political entities. It is more of the political strife than the religious one that showed great manifestation in Medieval Spain, particularly the transition from the Islamic Spain under the Umayyads' rule to Christian Spain under the Christian kingdoms’ rule. During the 782 years of Muslim-Christian rivalry, the Iberian Peninsula flourished to a great extent with technological and cultural advances from intercultural communication. The power was gained and lost by the two externally as well as internally competing political religious entities.
The ancestry of Abd-al-Rahman III suggested that the religious divide was not a major concern in society. Interfaith marriages were common, obvious since Abd-al-Rahman III’s mother was a Christian, and his paternal grandmother was a Christian princess from Pamplona. Therefore, because of his mixed ancestry, it became arbitrary to argue that his conflicts were caused by religion

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