The main idea of this course is to analyze and discuss the image of medieval Iberia as a case of convivencia and conflict among the members of three religious communities, with three different cultures, from the perspective of our problematic of today. Trying to understand the positive and negative aspects of these communities living together, can we learn something from the past, or even from the mistakes of the past?
 
We will try to compare the three cultures in their religious and not religious manifestations: the languages, the writings in poetry and prose, and even the daily life, with its social and economic aspects, of the three main groups of people who lived together in medieval al-Andalus: Muslims, Jews and Mozarabs. They represent three different cultures that are conditioned by a religion -- Islam, Judaism or Christianity-- and are expressed in different languages -- Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and Romance.

• The Kuzari by Yehudah Halevi, translated, and annotated by Avraham Yaakov Finkel.2000.
• Readings from:
• Under crescent and cross: the Jews in the Middle Ages.by Mark Cohen 1994
• The Legacy of Muslim Spain.by S. Kh. Jayyusi 1992 .
• Jews, Visigoths, and Muslims in medieval Spain: cooperation and conflict. by Norman Roth 1994