‘You walk on the water!’ they said to the Sufi Abu Yazid al Bestami.
‘So does a piece of wood,’ Abu Yazid replied.
‘You fly in the air!’
‘So does a bird.’
‘You travel to the Kaaba in a single night!’
‘Any conjurer travels from India to Demavand in a single night.’
‘Then what is the proper task of true men?’ they asked.
‘The true man attaches his heart to none but God,’ he replied.
[From Muslim Saints and Mystics by Farid al Din Attar]
The last sigh of the Moor was not the last sigh of the Muslim. Spain settled her scores with the Arabs, and was content to protect what she had recovered, with brutality if necessary. The Inquisition removed all Muslims and Jews from the Catholic empire; those who stayed, converted. No option was offered. Spain’s Jews found shelter in the Ottoman empire, and lived in comparative peace under the Caliph. Muslims resettled across the Atlantic in north Africa, but nostalgia was their only consolation, for Muslim Africa did not have the energy for another conflict with Europe.
There was however another continent on which the next phase of wars between the nations of Islam and those of Christian Europe would take place, Asia, and in particular the Indian subcontinent and the Indian ocean. Muslim power swept into the heart of India at the beginning of the second millennium. Christian nations began to challenge it halfway through that millennium. The language remained that of a holy war.
On sea, the Portuguese, in caravels and naus, with the authority of the Pope, launched a crusade against Moors, even as they picked up (or looted)
-99-
