A Christian world under Islam’s rule
17th April 2009
Christopher Howse is surprised to discover that for 400 years, a half of the world’s professing Christians lived under Muslim rule.
As virtual slaves.
In place of knowledge a series of myths has grown. One is of a cultural golden age in Islamic Spain, with Muslims, Christians and Jews living in harmony. Yet Americo Castro, who coined the word convivencia to describe the life of the three faiths in the caliphate of Cordoba, wrote, in his book The Structure of Spanish History: “Each of the three peoples of the peninsula saw itself forced to live for eight centuries together with the other two at the same time as it passionately desired their extermination.”