the siege of barbastro: medieval hispano-Arabic love poetry

julia ryskamp

The culturally vibrant, politically tumultuous eleventh century in Iberia marked a turning point in European history: this century saw the fall of the powerful Umayyad caliphate of Cordoba, its fracture into rival Muslim taifas (independently-ruled factions or kingdoms), the disintegration of the convivencia (the culture of tolerance between Iberian Muslims, Christians, and Jews), and the increasing strength of the Christian kingdoms in the north of Spain—all of which worked to usher in the long-desired goals of a Christian reconquista of the peninsula. Muslim Spain—al-Andalus as it was known, established after the Umayyad invasion of Spain in 711 and in its prime until the fall of the caliphate in 1031[1]—was the epicenter of a rich and unique culture that flourished during Islam’s Golden Age. Amongst other things, the cultural identity of al-Andalus, with its intellectual wealth, religious tolerance, and openness to different cultures, produced an abundance of scholarly and philosophical works and distinctively Hispano-Arabic art forms, among which was the love poem, an art form that was long emphasized in Arab culture. Despite the eventual success of the Reconquista in creating a unified Christian Spain, Hispano-Arabic love poetry would come to have a lasting and powerful (although until very recently, largely ignored or denied) influence on the development of medieval European literature and sensibilities—particularly on troubadour poetry and the concept of courtly love.

When discussing the impact of Arabic love poetry on Europe, one event in particular stands out: the 1064 siege of the tiny, Muslim-held city of Barbastro, in the taifa of Zaragosa. This city would unknowingly become the site of a great cultural exchange between Muslim Spain and Western Europe, one that would break down the religious and cultural walls that had formed along the border of the Pyrenees. Although the Crusades and Reconquista would try to eradicate the Muslim identity of Spain, its influence—and that of the events of Barbastro in 1064—persists to this day. The cultural transmission that occurred at Barbastro would be made possible by the vernacular revolutions occurring throughout Iberia, the capture of hundreds of qiyan (singing girls) as spoils of the siege, and, surprisingly, the adaptable, culturally open nature of Barbastro’s conquerors. The ramifications of the siege of Barbastro, and in particular the transmission of Arabic love poetry that resulted from the siege, would have a lasting and integral impact on the development of medieval troubadour poetry. Most notably, Hispano-Arabic poetic forms and views on love—as a deeply spiritual force, ennobling and uplifting yet humbling and maddening—would influence the troubadours’ ideals of courtly love, ideals that persisted even after the troubadours’ prominence faded, subtly pervading European poetry, literature, song-writing, courtship behaviors, and sensibilities to this day.

The Siege of Barbastro

Barbastro—outside of Zaragosa in the east of modern-day Spain, near the border of the Christian kingdoms of Aragon, Navarre, and Castile[2]—during this time was a small yet bustling and prosperous trade center. In 1064 Christian forces besieged the city in a trial run for the Crusades and as an early conflict of the Christian Reconquista to regain Iberia from Muslim rule. The Muslim-held city underwent a forty-day siege from June to August of that year, led by the Aragonese King Sancho Ramirez I, the Normans under Robert Crispin, and the Aquitanians under Duke William VIII.[3] Their victory left Barbastro under Christian rule. Because Pope Alexander II had offered a remission of sins to any knight participating in the siege, later scholars identify the conflict at Barbastro as a “crusade before the crusades.”[4]

Barbastro in many ways was like any other city in Muslim Spain, in that its cultural and artistic output was the legacy of the intellectually vivid and progressively tolerant culture of al-Andalus, in which poetry was a valued and prominent art form that persisted in the taifas as they competed to exert cultural superiority over each other. Taifa kings encouraged literature, science, and the arts as the means of demonstrating the power of their kingdoms, and this period thus saw rich cultural and artistic outputs.[5] The culture of Barbastro that would be transmitted out of Iberia after the siege was representative of the multilingual, multicultural Andalusian society from which it had derived. While there were many means of cultural exchange possible between Muslim Spain, Christian Spain, and Christian Europe—trade and pilgrimage routes, military campaigns, intermarriage, and the outflow of Arabic translations of classical texts[6]—the singularly unique circumstances of the siege of Barbastro allowed for a mass outflow of Andalusian culture on a scale never before seen. This would mark an expansive new era of cultural interaction between Iberia and Western Europe, and initiate the “beginning of the end of the long period during which neighbors, al-Andalus on this side and Latin Christendom beyond the Pyrenees, glimpsed each other rarely, and to little effect.”[7] Barbastro was the marker of a new age, one defined by the breaking down of walls and the opening of pathways that allowed for formative cultural exchange.

While there are very few primary sources existing from the siege, Muslim historian al-Bakri recounts that the victors “massacred the men and took a countless number of Muslim children and women as prisoners.”[8] Chief among the spoils of the Christian victory at Barbastro—and what would have a significant impact on troubadour poetry—were the qiyan, or Muslim singing girls. Qiyan were trained female vocalists and entertainers, usually slaves (captured or indentured servants); they danced, played instruments, knew an abundance of songs and melodies, and in some cases even composed their own songs.[9] Christian sources document that around 2,000 qiyan were captured in the battle; it is probable that William VIII of Aquitaine (or Occitania, modern-day Provençe, in southern France) went home with hundreds of these women as part of his spoils. His son, William IX (considered today to be the first troubadour poet), likely grew up in the presence of these women.[10] More than just being spoils of war, the qiyan transferred out of Iberia were vehicles of cultural transmission, carrying the traditions of Arabic poems, songs, and music into the highest court of Occitania and to the listening ears of its early poets.[11] This not be without its impact on the budding Occitanian genre of lyric poetry and song. One of the song forms transmitted was the muwashshaha, a relatively new, but vitally important, art form that arose during the time of the taifas.

An innovative art form, the muwashshaha broke all the rules of classical Arabic poetry. Their complex rhyme schemes alternated between stanzas, abandoning the mono-end-rhyme of classical poetry.[12] The songs were meant to be enjoyed, sung and danced along to. Most importantly, however, they included a simple refrain repeated at the end of each stanza (similar to the choruses in our modern songs) that was written, not in Arabic, but in the Romance vernacular of its time and place, Mozarabic.[13] These muwashshaha “brought the mother tongues of the Andalusians up to share the stage with classical Arabic poetry, a language and a poetry that had never had to share the stage before.”[14] Not only were these songs representative of the distinctive, multilingual, and hybrid identity of Andalusia, but they were a key part of the vernacular revolutions arising in Iberia. Love is a universal sentiment, and the desire to express love is universal, and this new vernacular poetry allowed for this expression by all people. It is likely that these muwashshaha were an inspiration for William IX of Aquitaine when he began to compose his own poems. Following the lead of the muwashshaha, William IX “rebelled vigorously against the strictures of a Latin that was no longer the mother tongue” and instead wrote his love poems in the vernacular of Occitania, langue d’oc.[15] In doing so, and with other troubadours following his lead, William IX, with his poems that would come to influence medieval and modern European sensibilities, ushered in the new age of European vernacular literature.

The Troubadours and Courtly Love

The troubadour poetry that emerged in Occitania around the year 1100 was a new and dramatically different form of poetry (as opposed to the epic poems and chansons de geste that existed up to this time), never before seen in Europe.[16] They were lyric poems, meant to be sung, dealing almost exclusively with the topic of love—writing of unrequited love for aristocratic, virtuous, beautiful women, and addressing themes such as the ennobling, yet also sickening and maddening, force of love, and the lover as a servant to his beloved (who was usually of a superior social class, and, what’s more, married). The themes addressed in troubadour poetry formed a set of social and literary conventions that would come to be defined by Gaston Paris in 1883 as ‘courtly love’[17] and which would come to influence the medieval code of chivalry.[18] Troubadour poetry is known as the oldest form of all European lyric poetry and modern love poetry; it is a pioneer, not only in its theme of courtly love, but also in its form (the canso, or song, combined with the end rhyme, likely borrowed from Arabic poetry), and thus it held a prestigious and highly-imitated role in Occitanian society.[19]

William IX, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers (1071-1127), is considered to be the first troubadour poet.[20] Most troubadours were courtiers, members of the upper classes, or like William, even nobles, writing poetry in highly refined, feudal, and often religious language to entertain court nobility and visitors.[21] In writing these lyric poems, William IX of Aquitaine and the troubadours of Occitania ushered in a cultural awakening in Europe, likened to a “Renaissance of the twelfth century.”[22] The poems of courtly love would come to have a lasting impact on European literature: from them “derived any number of the distinguishing characteristics of the lyric forms” that are “so vital and so lustrous a part of the literary heritage and makeup of Western Europe’s vernacular traditions.”[23]

Chief among these defining characteristics are the poetry’s depictions of what the troubadours called “fin’ amors,” meaning “fine love” (or, in other words, courtly love), something spiritual and inspiring.[24] There are two key and defining paradoxes in courtly love: even while the lover submits himself to his beloved, his mind and spirit are ennobled; even while the experience of his love brings him intense joy, the unattainability of this love causes him extreme suffering. While William likely penned hundreds of poems, only eleven remain to us today.[25] The following poem, classified as number nine, depicts these paradoxes:

Every joy must abase itself

and every might obey

in the presence of Midons for the sweetness of her welcome

for her beautiful and gentle look;

and a man who wins to the joy of her love

will live a hundred years.

The joy of her can make the sick man well again,

her wrath can make a well man die,

…the courtliest man can become a churl,

and any churl a courtly man…[26]

Fin’ amors requires that even a noble man like William humble and submit himself, serf-like, to “Midons,” or “my lady,” a curious inversion of feudalist hierarchies, but a prominent theme throughout troubadour poetry.[27] Yet it should be noted that the sentiments of courtly love are not just reserved for aristocrats. The conventions of courtly love offer a chance for even men of the lowest classes to elevate and ennoble themselves spiritually through love. In William’s poems can also be seen certain recurring dichotomies, such as life and death, sickness and medicine, delight and torment.[28] These dichotomies arise from a key characteristic of courtly love poetry: the unattainability of the poet’s love. His beloved is almost always married, and because of this his love can only bring him endless suffering in this world. Because of this, too, his love must be kept secret from the outside world, and there is always the danger of discovery by spies.[29] This tormented love is expressed in Can vei la lauzeta mover (“When I see the lark move”), the most famous poem of one of the other great troubadours, Bernart de Ventadorn (1145-1200):

Alas! how much of love I thought I knew
And how little I know,
For I cannot stop loving
Her from whom I may have nothing.
All my heart, and all herself,
And all my own self and all I have
She has taken from me, and leaves me nothing
But longing and a seeking heart.[30]

Even with the pain love can bring, the conventions of courtly love insist on the lover’s faithful devotion to and veneration of his lady. In this way, courtly love poetry reverses traditional gender roles, according women the preeminent position in the activity of courtship.[31]

The poetry of the troubadours flourished for around two hundred years until the Albigensian Crusade beginning in 1209 ruined many Occitanian nobles, making the profession of the troubadour no longer lucrative or necessary.[32] Some troubadours migrated north, but by the onset of the Black Death in the 14th century, troubadour poetry had essentially died out.

Its influence, however, did not die out. Courtly love offered to Europe a refined literary language in which to express love, which would be imitated by many authors and poets to come. Dante, in particular, expressed interest in the poetry of the troubadours. His essay De vulgari eloquentia (“On eloquence in the vernacular”) is often considered the first work of scholarship on the troubadours.[33] At a time in Italy when Latin was the dominant language of literature, Dante, viewing the troubadours as models for the vernacular tradition, defended the writing of literature in the vernacular, as he himself would eventually do in the Divine Comedy.[34] Petrarch would follow suit, using the Italian language for a new purpose: love poetry.[35] In this poetry, Dante expresses his love for Beatrice, and Petrarch for Laura. These women, although unattainable because married, would be their reasons for living, and the poets elevate Beatrice and Laura to spiritual heights—Beatrice, to Dante, being the symbol of salvation and the “Supreme Beloved.”[36]

Beyond Dante and Petrarch, the influence of courtly love permeates much of medieval European literature. The rules of courtly love would become a part of medieval chivalric romances, one of the earliest of which is the story of Tristan and Isolde, and perhaps the most famous of which is the romance of Lancelot and Guinevere.[37] Both romances would be retold in various forms and languages throughout the medieval era and into the present. The knight of the chivalric romances is courteous and noble, he is devoted to his lady, and he fights for love against all obstacles, even if that love is never fulfilled.[38] These themes and motifs persist beyond the medieval period, notably being satirized by Cervantes in Don Quixote’s idolization of Dulcinea.

The theme of unattainable, forbidden love characteristic of the troubadours’ poetry would become perhaps one of the most common themes of literature, from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to the books and movies of modern day. The sentiments of courtly love would have profound cultural effects in Europe, developing into courtship rituals—proscribing proper social interactions between men and women eventually leading to marriage—that persisted into the eighteenth and nineteenth century and perhaps have not completely gone away today.[39]

A modern revival of interest in the troubadours began after the French Revolution, when scholars again began studying Provençal literature and poetry.[40] The fascination with troubadour poetry has continued into more recent times. In the twentieth century Ezra Pound studied and translated troubadour poetry, even referring to them in his Canto VII: “And Poictiers, you know, Guillaume Poictiers, / had brought the song up out of Spain.”[41] Recently renewed interest in Hispano-Arabic influences on the troubadours ensure that this fascination and study will continue.

The origin of troubadour poetry—in particular, whether it was newly invented by the Occitanians or borrowed from some older tradition—is perhaps one of the most debated and contentious topics in Romance studies.[42] Parallels—in rhyme, poetic forms, melodies, characters, themes, and motifs—exist between Arabic love poetry traditions and courtly love, yet a Hispano-Arabic theory of origin has largely been resisted or displaced by a distinctly European origin story that in effect ignores any Arabic influence on European culture.

Arabic Love Treatises and Poetry

To understand the influence of Arabic love poetry on the troubadours, it is important to provide background on the Arabic views on love, which shine through in all of the profuse works of Arabic love poetry from this time. The Andalusian views on love are brought together in the seminal 1022 work of Ibn Hazm, the Tawq al-Hamāma (also known as The Ring of the Dove or The Dove’s Neck-Ring). Ibn Hazm (994-1064), born in Cordoba, was a leading Andalusian philosopher, theologian, and historian.[43] During his life he witnessed the fall of the caliphate, and a sense of longing for an unattainable, lost love—“our beloved Andalusia”— subtly pervades his work.[44] Combining both prose and poetry, this treatise on the nature of love, in which Ibn Hazm describes every aspect, form, cause, and means of love, became a “handbook of sorts” of the “phenomenon” and “elaborate codes” of love in Andalusian culture.[45] It includes thirty chapters considering such issues as “The Signs of Love,” “On Falling in Love at First Sight,” “Of Breaking Off,” and “Of Fidelity.” Throughout The Ring of the Dove, a cast of characters appears who are consistent players in any love affair: the (often tormented) lover, his beloved, “the helpful brother” (the lover’s trusty friend), the spy, the slanderer, and the reproacher (these last three working to impede the union of the lovers).[46]

Almost all Hispano-Arabic love poems share themes with Ibn Hazm’s treatise and anticipate the basic motifs of courtly love poetry, “fidelity, suffering, secrecy, servitude, and submission.”[47] Ibn Hazm reminiscences of when he had “trodden the carpets of caliphs, and attended the courts of kings,” but yet never has he “seen reverential awe equal to that which the lover manifests to his beloved”[48]—the beloved is so highly elevated in the lover’s mind, and because of this the “lover submits to his beloved, adjusts his own character by main force to that of his loved one.”[49]

To Ibn Hazm, true love is deeply spiritual; it does not ignore physical beauty, but rather transcends it. Love in itself is divine and sinless: it “is neither disapproved by Religion, nor prohibited by the Law; for every heart is in God’s hands.”[50] Ibn Hazm pictures love as a “conjunction between scattered parts of souls that have become divided in this physical universe.”[51] True love is something “within the soul itself;”[52] it is “life renewed, pleasure supreme, joy everlasting, and a grand mercy from God.”[53] Often the union of two lovers is never achieved—the beloved is already married, or else a slanderer or spy puts insurmountable obstacles in the way—and this is deeply devastating and agonizing for the lover—but at the same time it elevates his life. Love is ennobling:

“How often has the miser opened his purse strings, the scowler relaxed his frown, the coward leapt heroically into the fray, the clod suddenly become sharp-witted, the boor turned into the perfect gentleman, the stinker transformed himself into the elegant dandy, the sloucher smartened up, the decrepit recaptured his lost youth…and all because of love!”[54]

This is one of the most important themes later to be found in courtly love.

Along with this spiritual aspect of love, there is a deep religious subcurrent in Ibn Hazm’s treatise and much of Arabic poetry. Ibn Hazm’s reverence for the Quran and Muslim values are prominent throughout the text. These religious values blend with Ibn Hazm’s spiritual understanding of love to create an Islamic framework for human love as a religious act.

Perhaps one of the most influential Andalusian poets was the scholar and mystic Ibn Arabi (1165-1240).[55] His collection of poems, the Turjuman al-Ashwaq (The Translator [or Interpreter] of Desires) evinces many similar themes as described in The Ring of the Dove. In his poem “Gentle now, doves” can be seen the transformation of love into a religion:

I profess the religion of love.

Wherever its caravan turns

along the way, that is the belief,

the faith I keep.[56]

The beloved becomes a deity—Divine—and the lover remains faithful both in his love and his religion of love. The theme of the longing lover also recurs throughout Ibn Arabi’s poems, in the figure of Qays, a seventh-century Bedouin poet said to have gone insane out of his thwarted love for his beloved, Layla (and from which he received the name Majnun Layla, or ‘mad for Layla’).[57] This longing lover evokes similarities with Dante’s and Petrarch’s loves for Beatrice and Laura. The dichotomies of love presented in Ibn Arabi’s poetry—enrichment and distress, delight and torment, medicine and sickness, freedom and slavery, life and death—can be found in troubadour and later medieval European poetry.[58]

The French counterpart to The Ring of the Dove is Andreas Capellanus’s De amore (known in English as The Art of Courtly Love). Little is known about Andreas Capellanus (or, Andrew the Chaplain) except that he wrote his treatise and rule-book around the end of the twelfth century to describe the codes and conditions of love that prevailed at the royal court of Countess Marie de Champagne (a granddaughter of William IX of Aquitaine), of which he was a courtier.[59] While hardly a literary masterpiece, its importance lies in it being “one of the capital works which reflect the thought of a great epoch, which explain the secret of a civilization”[60]—in this case, the thoughts and secrets of courtly love (what Andreas deemed “pure love”[61]), whose ideas had been first spread throughout France by the troubadours. Andreas in many ways mocks the concept of courtly love, but his work nonetheless preserves the ways in which it was regarded and practiced in 12th-century French courts. Evidence of translations into Italian, Catalan, and German during the medieval period attests to the fact that it was widely read throughout various parts of Europe.[62]

Some scholars believe De amore to be the first work to put into writing the rules of courtly love (the troubadours never produced any type of treatise on the art of courtly love, although its ideas pervade their poems),[63] yet in his book can be seen many of the themes of love earlier described in The Ring of the Dove. Again one of the most important themes is the ennobling nature of love. Compare Andreas’s belief in the transformative power of love to Ibn Hazm’s:

“Love causes a rough and uncouth man to be distinguished for his handsomeness; it can endow a man even of the humblest birth with nobility of character; it blesses the proud with humility; and the man in love becomes accustomed to performing many services gracefully for everyone. O what a wonderful thing is love, which makes a man shine with so many virtues and teaches everyone, no matter who he is, so many good traits of character!”[64]

True love makes the lover a better man, bringing out all of his good qualities and inducing him to noble (even chivalric) activities and displays of love in order to attain his beloved.

Andreas delineates twelve chief rules of love. Among these include “thou shalt keep thyself chaste,” “thou shalt not have many who know of thy love affair,” and “thou shalt ever strive to ally thyself to the service of Love.”[65] In these rules appear the cornerstones of courtly love, such as chastity of soul, secrecy, servitude, and submission, that are also present in The Ring of the Dove. Even in its format does The Art of Courtly Love resemble The Ring of the Dove, breaking descriptions of love into chapters like “What Love Is,” “In What Manner Love May be Acquired,” “In What Ways Love May Be Decreased,” and “If One of the Lovers is Unfaithful to the Other.”

Parry suggests that Andreas’s De amore found its largest source of influence in Ovid’s Ars amatoria (“The Art of Love”) and Remedia amoris (“The Cure for Love”).[66] Indeed, Andreas does quote and allude to Ovid several times throughout his book. While it is likely that Ovid was an inspiration for Andreas, there are key differences between Andreas’s and Ovid’s ideas of love—differences that are not distinct to Andreas, being also found in Ibn Hazm’s Ring of the Dove. The spiritual nature of love (the reunion of souls) that is so distinctive in Ibn Hazm and Ibn Arabi is not seen in Ovid, whose view of love is sensual, unromantic, extramarital, and even warlike.[67] Furthermore, while Ovid believes that love “levels all ranks,”[68] Andreas’s and the troubadour’s courtly love defines the beloved as superior to her submissive lover—a distinction that can be similarly interpreted as between the worshipper (lover) and God (as the beloved); this is also key in Hispano-Arabic poetry. This is what makes Arabic ideas of love stand out as so original: they deviate from the classical views of love and women articulated by Ovid, making their influence on troubadour and courtly love poetry that much more pronounced.   

Back to Barbastro

It is an interesting question, why the Arabic ideas of love and their forms of love poetry had such an appeal for and impact on European audiences. Perhaps the answer is simple; as Menocal remarks of the cultural exchange that occurred at Barbastro, it “may well turn out that a moving love song captivates the men who have come to capture a city.”[69] A famous account of the aftermath of the siege describes a Jewish merchant’s shock upon visiting the home of a Muslim gentleman in Barbastro, which had been taken over by a Norman nobleman, to find this Christian nobleman arrayed in Arab clothes, married to the Muslim gentleman’s daughter, and requesting performances of the songs of the qiyan.[70] The chronicler describes that “even though he knew no Arabic, and could not understand the song, he wept at the beauty of the singing.”[71] The Normans (and not just in their siege of Barbastro, but also equally evident in their conquests of Sicily and England)[72] were a remarkably adaptable people. As Menocal describes, these Normans “walked into this first Andalusian city they had ever seen and immediately went native...with alacrity and ease adopt[ing] the ways and unexpected pleasures of this previously unknown land.”[73] The absorbing, assimilating, and mobile nature of the Normans—who, importantly, set boundaries between politics and culture, realizing that political enemies were not cultural enemies—played a pivotal role in familiarizing Western Europe with Islamic Europe. The Normans were entranced by the beauty of the love poetry of Andalusia; they were also able to recognize the superiority of the Arabic art and culture that they encountered, and thus they embraced this cultural interaction. William IX displays a similar “optimism in the outcome of such interaction,” depicting as he does love between people of different races, cultures, and languages in his poems.[74] The Hispano-Arab love poets present love in all its moving beauty and rawness: love ennobles and enriches the lover; it is created by God and thus cannot be wrong; it is available to everyone in the world, each person being connected in soul to another. Ibn Hazm, in The Ring of the Dove, describes love stories between noblemen and cheesemonger’s daughters or slave girls, painting love as something that can bridge social classes and unite even the most different of people.

There is something incredibly appealing and beautiful about this equalizing, difference-dissolving nature of love; this ideal of love would appear in the later courtly love poetry. Prominent among both Hispano-Arabic love poems and courtly love poems is the exaltation of women. The Arab poets, as Bogin notes, “had been worshipping their ladies for at least 200 years;” when the troubadours followed suit, their courtly love poems gave to women a new and more elevated status in society that had never before been seen in Europe.[75] More than that though, courtly love extended to all men the possibility of loving a noble woman and becoming enriched through her. Any man could achieve love and nobleness if he were ‘courtly.’ As an enriching, ennobling, equalizing force, courtly love was attainable to all men, and the troubadours writing of this love “extended to their audience an intuition of equality and freedom that was unheard of in the Middle Ages,” although long codified in works such as The Ring of the Dove.[76] Who knows how different the outcome of the siege of Barbastro, and the literary history of Europe, would have been if the Normans and Aquitanians had not been the ones to conquer the city, and had not been so open to the culture they discovered there.

The Hispano-Arabic Origin Theory of Courtly Love—and its Controversies

The origin of troubadour and courtly love poetry has been a hotly-contested debate among Romance scholars for centuries. Nonetheless, the influence of Spain’s Arab poets on courtly love and the troubadours has long been recognized. The first scholarly work to suggest a Hispano-Arab theory of origin of troubadour poetry was Dell’origine della poesia rimata by the Italian historian Giammaria Barbieri, written in the sixteenth century but not published until 1790.[77] Its publication was followed by a host of scholarly works reiterating Barbieri’s theory. Scholars including Juan Andrés, Simonde de Sismondi, and Stendhal all supported the idea that the origins of the troubadour’s poem lay in the courts of Andalusia. The Hispano-Arabic theory reached the height of its support in the mid-nineteenth century, even becoming a “conventional maxim of criticism.”[78]

At the same time, other origin theories were popping up that denied firmly the legitimacy of the Hispano-Arabic theory. According to Menocal, two French works—Madame de Staël’s De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (1800) and François-René de Chateaubriand’s Génie du Christianisme (1802)—laid the groundwork for a distinctly European origin theory.[79] According to them, troubadour poetry was a Christian European creation that also had influences in the Greeks and Romans, notably Ovid. Medieval Andalusia, on the other hand, was considered a hostile and opposing culture “with marginal connections or no connections at all with what was clearly becoming the ‘real Europe.’”[80] These nineteenth-century scholars were firmly and unchangeably opposed to the idea of a Hispano-Arabic origin, even going so far as to say that “Arab society was too repressive toward women to have produced courtly love.”[81] Menocal cites two main causes factoring into academic denials of Muslim Spain’s influence on courtly love: a belief that, “as an appendage of the Oriental world of Islam, the civilization of Spain did not constitute an integral part of Europe,” compounded by an “anti-Semitic prejudice…that does not admit the possibility of an important Oriental component” in such a founding branch of European literature.[82]

Many challengers to the theory suggest that the parallels between Arabic love poetry and courtly love poetry are purely coincidental.[83] Others affirm that contact between troubadour poets and Arab poets would have been near impossible.[84] However, the siege of Barbastro, along with the existence of intermarriage and trade routes across the Pyrenees, makes evident that cultural diffusion was indeed occurring. For many of those who adhere to the belief that courtly love has distinctly European origins, there is a certain pride in the notion that the troubadour’s courtly love poetry, being the influential first of its kind in the history of medieval and modern European lyric poetry, is a “pure” Western European literary innovation and tradition.[85] As Menocal states in The Arabic Role in Medieval History (one of the revolutionary works to argue for this Hispano-Arabic origin theory) there exists a notion that the Western world has a “distinctive cultural history” that is in “necessary and fundamental opposition to non-Western culture and cultural history.”[86] Traditional literary history depends on the ‘Westernness’ of European literature and the ‘Otherness’ of non-Europeans, denying the influence of, in particular, the Islamic world on the cultural foundations of Europe. Menocal’s theory shatters the very notions of what it means to be “European,” suggesting as it does that Western literary culture derived from the culture of medieval Muslim Spain, and displacing ingrained Western concepts of cultural lineage. It illuminates the fundamental and long-standing tension between Christian Europe and an Islamic ‘Other.’

It is important to note that these European origin theories of courtly love were emerging at the same time as the European empires were colonizing the Middle East and Africa. The study of the Arab world, which was becoming popular amongst European scholars of Orientalism, reinforced the ideologies of colonialism and imperialism in the nineteenth century.[87] European views on the Arab world were defined by misconceptions and stereotypes that persisted for centuries to come, and even today have not been completely eradicated. Orientalists, fueling their own narratives of European cultural superiority, retained deep anti-Arab and anti-Islam prejudices, and viewed Arabs as irrational, vengeful, depraved, and even childlike.[88] Cultural differences between Europe and the Middle East were used to justify the division between the two, allowing Europe to define itself as superior to the Oriental ‘Other.’[89] During this time, the Hispano-Arabic origin theory became “virtually taboo,”[90] and remained that way into the twentieth century. Added to this, the Francoist regime in Spain (1939-1975) promoted an ideal of Spanish nationalism that suppressed the country’s cultural history and diversity, and institutionalized a “forgetting of the presence and contribution” of the Muslims in Spain.[91] Only beginning in the mid-twentieth century did scholars (including A. R. Nykl, Ramón Menéndez Pidal, and Menocal herself) initiate a revitalization of Hispano-Arabist theory.

Conclusion

The parallels between courtly love poetry and the Arabic love poetry transmitted out of Barbastro and to the first troubadours of Occitania are profound, even if the Hispano-Arabic origin theory is still rejected by some. Yet the effects of this influence and transmission on Europe cannot be understated: the ideas of courtly love, even after troubadour poetry faded in the thirteenth century, would have an impact on later European writers, from Dante to Shakespeare; it would shift medieval attitudes towards women, and would help shape later European lyrical poetry, modern song-writing, and European sensibilities on love (especially the courtship rituals that form the subject of much of Western literature and would define societal interactions and norms). The singular circumstances of that fateful 1064 siege of Barbastro, a city molded by the complex and unique history and culture of al-Andalus—the adaptable and culturally-open nature of its conquerors, the transfer of thousands of qiyan out of Iberia and into Southern France, and the increasing desire for both literary and social vernacular revolutions throughout Iberia—would allow for this influential cultural exchange. In studying both the short- and long-term results of this cultural exchange at Barbastro, as well as the influence of Hispano-Arabic love poetry on European literature, Barbastro reminds us of the failures of the Reconquista to eradicate Arabic influence and identity; even further, it serves as a multicultural example for modern times—and in this way, Arabic love poetry will continue to have lasting impacts into the modern day.    

To understand the relationship between medieval Islamic and European literature and the influence of the Arabic culture on the West requires a paradigm shift in the basic perceptions of Western European culture, and especially of the foundations of that culture. Studying Barbastro and Hispano-Arabic love poetry, and understanding the influence of Arabic culture on European literature and sensibilities, provides a historico-cultural necessity to this shift in how we view ‘Eastern’ versus ‘Western’ civilizations, criticizing the notion of Eastern cultures as ‘Other’ and reconciling Islamic and European cultures by realizing and emphasizing their similar building blocks. We currently live in a time of increasing racial and cultural prejudice, nationalism, and isolationism—a time obsessed with building both literal and figurative walls to keep other peoples and cultures out, without regard for the ways in which those peoples and cultures could enhance our own lives and cultures. In our current time, the 1064 siege of Barbastro, although rooted in the anti-Muslim and intolerant goals of the Crusades and Reconquista, stands out as a moment when walls were broken down between religions, ethnicities, and cultures—a moment when military and political leaders were so moved by the love songs of their enemies as to adopt and absorb the artistic traditions they encountered—a moment of cultural exchange that would lead to a transmission of ideas, art forms, languages, and people that would have lasting impacts on European literary history. Within the enmity and hatred that fueled the siege emerged a model of the lasting value of cultural exchange and of the importance of writing non-binary history.

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——————————————————————————————————————————————————

[1] “Al-Andalus,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/place/Al-Andalus.

[2] Jesús Brufal, Map 2.2: The taifa’s kingdoms in Al-Andalus and the Christian kingdoms and counties in the North of the Iberian Peninsula in mid-eleventh century, in The Crown of Aragon: A Singular Mediterranean Empire, ed. Flocel Sabaté (Boston: Brill, 2017), 61.

[3] Clifford J. Rogers, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology Volume 1 (New York: University Oxford Press, 2010), 123.

[4] Ramón Menéndez Pidal, quoted in Rogers, 123.

[5] John Jay Parry, introduction to The Art of Courtly Love, ed. Austin P. Evans (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), 7.

[6] Magda Bogin, The Women Troubadours (New York: Norton, 1980), 46.

[7] María Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (Boston: Back Bay Books, 2002), 124.

[8] Lynn Tarte Ramey, Christian, Saracen and Genre in Medieval French Literature: Imagination and Cultural Interaction in the French Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2001), 20.

[9] Reynolds, “Interview: Dwight Reynolds.”

[10] Dwight Reynolds, interview by Banning Eyre, “Interview: Dwight Reynolds: Al-Andalus 1: Europe,” Afropop Worldwide, 2004, http://afropop.org/articles/interview-dwight-reynolds-al-andalus-1-europe.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Menocal, The Ornament, 126.

[15] Ibid, 125.

[16] Reynolds, “Interview: Dwight Reynolds.”

[17] Ian Ousby, ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 213.

[18] Reynolds, “Interview: Dwight Reynolds.”

[19] María Rosa Menocal, The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 71.

[20] Matthew Steel, “Troubadours and Trouvéres,” Medieval Studies, Oxford Bibliographies, 2014, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396584/obo-9780195396584-0148.xml.

[21] “Provençal Literature,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/art/Provencal-literature.

[22] Bogin, 37.

[23] Menocal, The Arabic Role, 71.

[24] Bogin, 38.

[25] “Provençal Literature.”

[26] William IX of Aquitaine, quoted in Bogin, 38.

[27] Michael Barry, “In the Worlds of Nizāmī of Ganjeh: Layli and Majnūn and the riddle of courtly love,” in The Routledge Companion to World Literature and World History, ed. May Hawas (London: Routledge, 2018), 102.

[28] Ousby, 213.

[29] Ibid, 212.

[30] Bernart de Ventadorn, quoted in Todd Tarantino, “Bernart de Ventadorn: Can vei la lauzeta mover,” Todd Tarantino, 2012, http://toddtarantino.com/hum/ventadorn.html.

[31] “Courtly Love: Medieval View of Love: General,” adapted from A Guide to the Study of Literature: A Companion Text for Core Studies 6, Landmarks of Literature, English Department, Brooklyn College, 2000, http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/love.html.

[32] “Provençal Literature.”

[33] Menocal, The Arabic Role, 71.

[34] Ibid, 74.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Roger Boase, The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love: A Critical Study of European Scholarship (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977), 66.

[37] Barry, 101.

[38] Laura Ashe, “Love and chivalry in the Middle Ages,” Discovering Literature: Medieval, British Library, 2018, https://www.bl.uk/medieval-literature/articles/love-and-chivalry-in-the-middle-ages.

[39] Ibid.

[40] “Provençal Literature.”

[41] Ezra Pound, The Cantos of Ezra Pound (New York: New Directions Books, 1996), 32.

[42] Reynolds, “Interview: Dwight Reynolds.”

[43] A. J. Arberry, preface to The Ring of the Dove (1951), http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/hazm/dove/ringdove.html, 2-3.

[44] Ibn Hazm, The Ring of the Dove, trans. A. J. Arberry (1951), http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/hazm/dove/ringdove.html, 8.

[45] Menocal, The Ornament, 116.

[46] Ibn Hazm, 8.

[47] Boase, 65.

[48] Ibn Hazm, 71.

[49] Ibid, 42.

[50] Ibid, 8.

[51] Ibid, 9.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Ibid, 58.

[54] Ibid, 14.

[55] Michael A. Sells, Stations of Desire: Love Elegies from Ibn ‘Arabi and New Poems (Jerusalem: Ibis Press, 2000), 28-29.

[56] Ibn Arabi, quoted in Sells, 73.

[57] Sells, 144-45.

[58] Boase, 68.

[59] Parry, 17.

[60] Robert Bossuat, quoted in Parry, 4.

[61] Parry, 22.

[62] Ibid, 23.

[63] Ibid, 6.

[64] Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, trans. John Jay Parry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), 31.

[65] Ibid, 81.

[66] Parry, 4.

[67] Ibid.

[68] Ibid.

[69] Menocal, The Ornament, 124.

[70] Ibid, 120-21.

[71] Reynolds, “Interview: Dwight Reynolds.”

[72] Menocal, 124.

[73] Ibid, 119.

[74] Ramey, 22.

[75] Bogin, 45.

[76] Ibid, 56.

[77] Menocal, The Arabic Role, 79-80.

[78] Ibid, 80.

[79] Menocal, 80-81.

[80] Ibid, 81.

[81] Ibid.

[82] María Rosa Menocal, "Close Encounters in Medieval Provence: Spain's Role in the Birth of Troubadour Poetry," Hispanic Review 49, no. 1 (1981), doi:10.2307/472655, 50-51.

[83] George T. Beech, “Troubadour Contacts with Muslim Spain and Knowledge of Arabic : New Evidence Concerning William IX of Aquitaine,” Romania 113, no. 449-450 (1992), doi: https://doi.org/10.3406/roma.1992.2180, 15.

[84] Ibid.

[85] David A. Wacks, “María Rosa Menocal’s Ornament of the World, courtly poetry, and modern Nationalism,” David A. Wacks, Research and Teaching in Medieval Iberian and Sephardic Culture, 2013, davidwacks.uoregon.edu/tag/troubadour/.

[86] Menocal, The Arabic Role, 1-2.

[87] Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 41.

[88] Ibid, 40.

[89] Ibid, 5.

[90] Menocal, The Arabic Role, 82.

[91] Reynolds, “Interview: Dwight Reynolds.”