Convivencia

Here’s a cool Medieval miniature of two women playing chess: one is Muslim, the other Christian. It relates to a topic of much debate about Spain in the Middle Ages, which is: “what was the relationship among Christians, Muslims, and Jews living in the Iberian Peninsula between the 8th c CE (when Muslims from the Umayyads tool over much of the land) through 1492 (when non -Christians were told to convert or leave)?”

And it turns out, historians have their own label for these three faith groups who lived amidst each other: “convivencia”. What academics have been arguing about is the extent to which their interaction was pro-social and generally positive versus the opposite. The jury is still out — there are tons of examples of positive interaction, and many examples of the opposite.

One relatively new approach to addressing “convivencia” was undertaken by a team of chemists who examined the diets of 44 people who lived in a certain part of Spain (Gandía, Valencia) between 13th-16th centuries. Using an analysis of different types of isotopes of carbon and nitrogen from corpses from this era, the team of scientists concluded that, indeed, Muslims and Christians were eating different foods, perhaps showing less convivencia than others had thought. Muslims ate more fish (perhaps because the Muslim way of killing beef for ritual purity was being gradually outlawed by Christian leaders) and had more sugar in their diet (makes sense, considering that the Valencia Muslims were active in the sugar cane cultivation).

But a question that comes out of this study is whether different eating habits would have signified a true erosion of the convivencia ideal. Play chess over it?