General Overview of the Private and Public Interreligious Festivals Celebrated in al-Andalus

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the festivals that were celebrated in the Middle Ages in al-Andalus, some of them of agricultural origin, as is natural in a historical period in which agriculture was the economic axis of the State. It could be thought that these festivals have only an Islamic religious component, being the Muslims the predominant identity group in the Iberian Peninsula in Andalusian times. However, nothing could be further from the reality in which other social groups, mainly Christian Mozarabs and also Jews, will share with Muslims their own celebrations in an atmosphere much more united than of simple coexistence. The groups celebrated together private or familiar festivities, they rather carried collective or social festivals of religious nature. I analyze the best known amongst them, using varied bibliography about them and different types of original sources such as the legal, the ḥisba or market regulations, the poetic, the agronomic, and the culinary ones written in al-Andalus. I conclude with the main characteristics of these festivals and with some particular aspects that nowadays are still present in our religious and profane celebrations.