Convivencia

Convivencia (Spanish: [kombiˈβenθja], "living together") is an academic term, proposed by the Spanish philologist Américo Castro, regarding the period of Spanish history from the Muslim Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the early eighth century until the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. It claims that in the different Moorish Iberian kingdoms, the Muslims, Christians and Jews lived in relative peace. According to this interpretation of history, this period of religious diversity differs from later Spanish and Portuguese history when—as a result of expulsions and forced conversions—Catholicism became the sole religion in the Iberian Peninsula.

However, some voices have challenged the historicity of the above view of intercultural harmony, depicting it as a myth, and claiming that it is a "politically correct" anachronism.^[1][2] According to The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, "Critics charge that [the term 'convivencia'] too often describes an idealized view of multi-faith harmony and symbiosis, while supporters retort that such a characterization is a distortion of the complex interactions they seek to understand."^[3]