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Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain
Over a thousand years ago, the sun-washed lands of Southern Spain were home to Muslims, Christians and Jews living together and flourishing. Their culture and beliefs intertwined, and the knowledge of the ancients was gathered and reborn. Here were the very seeds of the Renaissance. But this world too quickly vanished. Greed, fear and intolerance swept it away. Puritanical judgments and absolutism snuffed out the light of learning. Within a few centuries the fragile union of these people dissipated like smoke and the time of tolerance was lost forever. Brought to life by powerful feature-film style re-creations
Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain
explores the causes that destroyed the one civilization of pluralism and interfaith cooperation that for a few centuries lit the Dark Ages in Medieval Europe.
This two-hour documentary film is an engaging, informed journey into one of the most important periods of world history. The story of Islamic Spain blends high culture with high drama, historical interest with contemporary relevance. It is filled with remarkable individuals whose life stories illuminate a fascinating time and whose crossroad decisions offer lessons to the world. The major theme of this story—how three great traditions interacted and ultimately faltered in one country—applies directly to our current situation. It helps us understand how Islamic Spain is being used today as a rallying cry for Al Qaeda. It even offers an opportunity to correct and reclaim that history.
Supported by a diverse group of scholars, this film will make an important contribution to our understanding of history—what once occurred and what might happen again—and will advance our self-reflection about what America stands for and where we are going as a nation and in the world.
Scholars
Lourdes Maria Alvarez
- Director of the Center for Catalan Studies and a professor of Spanish at Catholic University in Washington, DC.
Brian Catlos
-Associate Professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Ahmad Dallal
- Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies and Chair of the Arabic and Islamic Studies Department at Georgetown University.
D. Fairchild Ruggles
- Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf
- Founder and CEO of the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA Society) and Imam of Masjid Al-Farah, a mosque in New York City, twelve blocks from Ground Zero.
Mustapha Kamal
- Currently a lecturer in Arabic, Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies, at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he focuses on instruction of Arabic language and literature.
Chris Lowney
- Former Jesuit and author of
A Vanished World: Muslims, Christians and Jews in Medieval Spain
.
David Nirenberg
- Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of the Humanities in Medieval History at Johns Hopkins University.
Raymond P. Scheindlin
- Professor of Medieval Hebrew Literature at The Jewish Theological Seminary and Director of JTS's Shalom Spiegel Institute of Medieval Hebrew Poetry.
For reviews, descriptions and more information on the film:
www.islamicspain.tv
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