Recovering

Andalusia and Recovering the Spirit Of ‘Convivencia’

11 October 2007 | Domestic Policy

As I write these words in the garden of the Cordoba Mosque in Spain, the centuries-old memory of Andalusia goes through my mind. Andalusia was the scene of the remarkable experience that medieval Spanish scholars called “convivencia,” or coexistence. Embracing diversity as a constructive challenge of fulfillment was the hallmark of Islamic Spain and the Andalusian culture embodied this spirit in the widest sense of the term.