Andalus: Unlocking the Secrets of Moorish Spain (Paperback)

Jason Webster, who speaks Arabic and Spanish and has a Spanish wife, starts off on his journey around Spain with the idea that 800 years of Moorish identity must have left many traces in Spain beyond the obvious ones of architecture and language. For many years this was suppressed; the Moors had always been the enemy, the other. After the Reconquest in 1492, they were first forced to convert and then expelled from Spain.

Webster sees Moorish Spain as an idyllic place where Jews, Muslims and Christians lived happily together in tolerance, bringing knowledge and sophistication to benighted Europe. This has not been the view of most Spaniards over the centuries, but he makes a good argument for it in the book. A scholar of Moorish Spain would not learn much from this book (but would still be amused by the travelogue) but most of us have a lot to remember about how much the Moors gave us: sugar, cotton, paper, oranges, and of course the crucial zero.

The second thread in the book happened accidentally. While secretly interviewing slave laborers on a farm near Valencia, Spain, the writer is rescued from violent farmers by an illegal Moroccan immigrant named Zine. Jason feels an obligation to Zine and ends up taking him with him around Spain, trying to find Zine a job. Zine seems mostly interested in sleeping with as many Spanish women as possible, but surprises himself by falling in love with Lucia, a friend of Jason's wife. The theme of Spain and the Moors perfectly illustrated, it seems! But as in history, there is no happy ending.

The most interesting parts of the book, for me, were the flashes of Moorish life still alive in Spain. Who knew that "Hola" and "Hala" come from the ubiquitous "Allah"? Once I saw a North African male troupe of dancers using many of the same gestures and movements as a woman flamenco dancer in Granada in Spain. Even some typically Spanish dishes turn out to come from the Moors. The author interviews two experts on Moorish Spain, who have opposite points of view, a flamenco dancer, a Spanish convert to Islam, and a scion of an ancient royal family. He has a way of spotting the revealing detail, of seeing the vulnerability in even the most obnoxious person. He must be a bizarrely good listener. I for one could not sit and nod while someone told me that the Americans bombed the World Trade Center themselves.

My two main criticisms of the book are that, first of all, the author does not show the respect for Christian culture that he lavishes on Moorish Islam-- every mention of a church or priest or religious custom seems to be snide. He never asks the question: how did the Spaniards keep the fight NOT to be Moorish alive for 800 years?

The more important criticism is that the most devastating difference between Christian Spain and Muslim Morocco (seen as the heirs of the Moors) is passed over in silence: women. In the book, Westerners and Muslim men speak. Muslim women, of course, do not. A Queen Isabella of the Reconquest could never have happened in Andalus. The fact that Zine pursues the freer Spanish women like a randy animal is seen as a lovable quirk, rather than a commonplace consequence of his Islamic upbringing, in which women are either to be exploited or dominated. Yet this common and ancient Muslim male attitude is one of the biggest problems facing not just modern Spain but the world. I believe that the author thinks he has said something, in subtle fashion, on the subject; but considering his passion while describing the golden age of Andalus and the prejudices Moroccans face in Spain today, he could have been a little less subtle about one of the main reasons those prejudices exist.

Still, a fine book. I hope to see many more from Jason Webster.

The problem is that he travels occupy so short a period that he gives himself no time for the type of proper research that might give him a chance to actually discover something worthwhile. Instead we are treated to a parallel narrative, the story of an illegal Moroccan worker called Zine who Webster picks up when visiting a mafia controlled fruit farm. These unlikely adventures consist largely of a shag-fest, a visit to a pox clinic, the discovery of a corpse on a beach and an unplanned pregnancy of a lover which ended in a miscarriage. It seems to me that this is just filler material, trying to compensate for the authors lack of insight into his chosen subject. Even that doesn't explain why he chooses the pox clinic visit as the touchstone of his visit to Servile; neither does it excuse his ghastly description of participating in a bizarre nativity tableau at a lap dancing club. The book reads like a good idea gone wrong. If Webster wishes to pursue the travel narrative genre, he should reconcile himself to some hard work.