When the ravages of Alzheimer’s leave an elderly woman marooned in painful memories of October 1950, her grandchild comes up with a creative strategy.
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Bare bones of a culture under threat
Animal remains and cooking implements excavated in what was Islamic Granada reveal the history of the Catholic ‘reconquest’ of Spain in the 15th century
DECORATIVE: Andalusian Muslim ataifores, late 11th century. The epigram on the right one means ‘health’
[Angel M Felicisimo/Creative Commons]
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GRANADA, in southern Spain’s Andalusia region, was the final remnant of Islamic Iberia known as al-Andalus — a territory that once stretched across most of Spain and Portugal. In 1492, the city fell to the Catholic conquest.
In the aftermath, native Andalusians, who were Muslims, were permitted to continue practising their religion. But after a decade of increasingly hostile religious policing from the new Catholic regime, practising Islamic traditions and rituals was outlawed.
But recent archaeological excavations in Granada have uncovered evidence of Muslim food practices continuing in secret for decades after the conquest.
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