La convivencia, la mezquita and al-Andalus: An Iqbalian vision

Abstract

This article offers a critical close reading of the Urdu poet philosopher Muhammad Iqbal’s poem “Masjid-e Qurtaba” (The Mosque of Cordoba), written in 1933 when the poet travelled to Spain. He was officially invited there to pray, a unique occurrence since the mosque’s conversion into a cathedral. The poem is illustrative of the period known as al-Andalus, celebrated for its cross-cultural spirit of la convivencia (coexistence) under the sovereignty of the Umayyad dynasty. The article argues that the secular and the religious are not diametrically opposed ideas in the Indo-Islamic tradition of Urdu, and that Iqbal’s poem articulates a historic cultural conversation at a time of political national identification in the 1930s.

Keywords:

• al-Andalus
• Iqbal
• la convivencia
• Cordoba Mosque
• Urdu poetry
• Indo-Islamic

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Professor Donna Landry for her insightful feedback on the first draft of this essay, and to current and former students on the Imagining Pakistan: Nation, Gender, Culture course at SOAS. I also wish to thank Muneeza Shamsie, editor of this special issue, and Aamer Hussein, for their encouragement to write this article. Thanks are also due to the Muslims, Trust and Cultural Dialogue project for providing the intellectual space and stimulating research questions that underpin this paper.

Notes

1. Translations from the work of Altaf Husain Hali are by Christopher Shackle and Javed Majeed. See Hali ([1886] 1997).

2. Translations of the poetry of Muhammed Iqbal are by D J. Matthews. See Iqbal (1993).

3. The disagreement over ownership of the mosque as cathedral was recently reported in The Guardian. See Kassam (2014).

4. For online introductions to Ibn Rushd, see Leaman (n.d.) and Hillier (n.d.).

5. By cross-cultural I mean from two or more different cultures. I am indebted here to Bennett (2013).

6. Iqbal published a range of poems on Spain in his collection Bal-e Jibreel, including a dua (prayer) that precedes “Masjid-e Qurtaba”; “Hispania”, “Tariq ki dua” and a translation of verses from Abd Al-Rahman.

7. Here I am using the term “intercultural” from a communication perspective, something that Milton Bennett describes as “how collective worldviews interact across cultural contexts” (2013, 14). See also the comparative analysis of interculturalism and multiculturalism by Modood and Meer (2012) and Cantle’s (2012) research on interculturalism.

8. However, in view of the recent interest in the Iberian Peninsula and al-Andalus from postcolonial scholars seeking examples of multicultural tolerance, it should be noted that Robert Young’s (2012) suggestion that Islam is a new issue for postcolonial studies is not entirely accurate. As there is strong evidence from scholars working on colonial discourse analysis of a longer engagement with Islam, such as Nabil Matar and Gerald Maclean’s (2011) excellent edited volume on Britain and the Islamic World 1558–1713. Donna Landry (2015) has pointed out the significance of comparative imperial contexts such as the Ottoman Empire for a sustained historical understanding of toleration and cosmopolitan communities. Also see Maclean and Matar (2011), Mufti (1991), Brennan (1992), Suleri (1989) and Lewis (2004) for further comparative contexts.

9. Christopher Shackle (1996) is of the view that Hali’s representation of Spain was borrowed from his readings of English textbooks on the topic and part of his deliberate move from a Persianate style to make his mark as a poet of note after Ghalib. To illustrate this argument, he refers us to Hali’s qasida or ode addressed to Queen Victoria, in which he writes: “Although every people is richly endowed by the favour of the Empress / It is Islam which is the most deeply indebted to her / We know what happened to the Moors in Spain, When Isabella was crowned Queen there” (244).

10. Javed Majeed (2009) has examined the tensions between the national and global in Iqbal’s early poetry, suggesting a transnational transportation of the sacred space of Hijaz and the Prophet Muhammad to other parts of the world. Iqbal also drew on the imagery of the Persian rose garden as part of his aesthetic, reflecting patterns of tradition and innovation (1–18). While geographic remapping was one part of Iqbal’s poetic repertoire, the majority of his musings were concerned with establishing the notion of khudi (the self) through the medium of Urdu poetry.

11. Lee (1997) uses the lens of authenticity to interrogate the “dominant elites who [ … ] use elements of authentic thought to sustain their hold on power and reinforce their nation-states. Senghor drew on negritude, Nyerere on African Socialism and democracy, Nasir on Arab Socialism, and Khomeini on the idea of the Islamic state” (19). He undertakes a close analysis of key Islamic thinkers Mohammad Iqbal, Sayyid Qutb, Ali Shari’ati and Mohammed Arkoun to complicate that binary division between tradition and modernity, liberal democracy and civil religion.

12. Bahrawi (2013) explains Ibn Rushd’s middle position between al-Ghazali and Ibn Sina’s (Avicenna) debate on secularity and free will.

13. A helpful explanation of the different forms of Persian, Arabic and Urdu poetry can be found in Houtsma et al. (1987).

14. I am particularly drawn to Miriam Cooke’s (1999) essay “Mediterranean Thinking: From Netizen to Medizen”, where she puts forward the idea of aquacentric thinking that challenges the homogenization of interregional diversity in the Mediterranean.

15. However, as critics have noted, Iqbal’s development of the idea of khudi (the self) responds critically to Ibn ‘Arabi’s pantheistic model. See Iqbal’s (1915) Asrar-e khudi (The Secrets of the Self) and Rumuz-e Bekhudi (The Mysteries of Selflessness; [1918] 1953).

16. See Iqbal’s letter to Dr R.A. Nicholson (dated 24 January 1921, Lahore) quoted in Zafar M. Iqbal (2015).

17. Due to constraints of space I have not been able to delve into a critical definition of cosmopolitanism. I am aware of the complexities that surround this term and have touched on it in an earlier article, “Cosmopolitan Ventures during Times of Crisis: A Postcolonial Reading of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s “Dasht-e tanhai” and Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers” and the Introduction to the Special issue entitled, 'Faiz Ahmed Faiz: The Worlding of a Lyric Poet' (Yaqin 2011, 2013).