This is a bit of prehistory to set the stage for Arón Abaroa, a character in my novel, born in 1308. His Jewish father, Moise haBachur, had been expelled from England and France before finally fleeing to Toledo, Spain, a city where Arabs, Jews, and Christians lived side by side in relative harmony. However, Christian kings began reclaiming parts of Spain from the Moors, and because of old hostilities toward Jews, Moise decided to become a converso, changing his name to Manuel Abaroa.
In 711, Muslim invaders led by Tariq ibn Ziyad conquered the Visigoth kingdom of Hispania and set up centers of learning in Toledo, Xàtiva, Girona, and Córdoba. They introduced philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and geography, as well as their music, architecture, and culinary arts. The Moors (and later the Christians) were responsible for preserving the West’s classical heritage, as the writings of Aristotle, Hippocrates, Euclid, Archimedes, and other Greek scholars were translated into Arabic during the height of the Arab empire, and while the rest of Europe was virtually illiterate, Al-Andalus, as they called it, eventually had seventeen universities, seventy libraries, and education was available for all. The etymology of the name al-Andalus has traditionally been derived from the name of the Vandals (vándalos in Spanish).
When Christians reconquered parts of Al-Andalus, known as the Caliphate of Córdoba, they seized many libraries, and the process of translating the valuable Arabic texts to Latin began. Alfonso VI recaptured Toledo in 1085, and in 1126 Archbishop Francis Raymond de Sauvetât created the Escuela de Traductores de Toledo (Toledo School of Translators), employing Mozarabic Toledans, Jewish scholars, Madrasah teachers, and monks from the Order of Cluny to translate the wealth of knowledge of the vast Arabic libraries to medieval Latin, and later into Old Spanish, thus continuing the preservation of centuries of knowledge that the Moors had begun.
My alchemist, Elias Dorn, travels to Toledo to visit Ibn Shushan Synagogue, also known as the Sinagoga de Santa María La Blanca, or Synagogue of Saint Mary the White, which housed a large collection of alchemical treatises. He sees young Arón Abaroa studying the Emerald Tablet by Hermes Trismegistus, thus starting a relationship, for better or worse, that spanned twenty years.
My wife Joanne and I briefly visited Toledo in 2018. We stayed very close to the Bisagra Gate at the northwest end of town, through which Dorn passes to get to the ruins of the old Roman circus where Arón helps him build a laboratorium. We visited the Plaza de Zocodover where Arón runs into his old boss, the tanner. But I’m very sorry to say that we did not visit the Ibn Shushan Synagogue. Next time.
The Synagogue is now a national memorial site and a museum.