Persecuted crypto-Muslims craved austere doctrinal certainty over Spain-relevant content

Evidence

As a model of righteous Sunni orthodoxy, ibn al-Jawzi stood against anything that smacked of heresy: against Shiism, against the platonizing Brethren of Purity, against Sufism, against philosophy and philosophers. To call the author of so many books an anti-intellectual would obviously be absurd, but his life’s work was to try to hold together the narrow old Sunni consensus (ijma) and to resist innovations of all kinds. The strictly pious, observant, nonspeculative non-SufiIslam for which he stood, of which he was a principal spokesman at the heart of the caliphate, was likely to appeal to the persecuted crypto-Muslims of Spain living beyond the boundaries of the Islamic world. Ibn al-Jawzi’s writings in no way reflected the realities of the Iberian Peninsula of his day, nor yet did they foreshadow the tribulations to come for the people of al-Andalus. What he dealt in was straightforward doctrinal certainty, and it was for that precisely that so many confused crypto-Muslims in Spain yearned. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 721

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A striking inversion: the appeal of this text to the Moriscos lay precisely in its total irrelevance to their situation — doctrinal certainty as refuge for the displaced.
• CANDY: A fun paradox: persecuted Spanish crypto-Muslims treasured the writings of a Baghdadi preacher who never mentioned their world at all — escapism as orthodoxy.