Departures

Over last weekend and this I've recorded the two programmes comprising the BBC's An Islamic History of Europe. They've got a lot going for them - wonderful photography of Spain, especially Cordova and Toledo, Sicily and Paris, and a most personable presenter in Rageh Omar. But they were not entirely to my tastes, incorporating an awful lot of repetition and a rather corny frame story of Rageh conducting a kind of personal search and all that stuff. I suppose in an era of short attention spans this is sadly necessary. Having said that, some of the personal elements worked rather well simply on the level of reminding the viewer that the notion of an Islamic presence in Europe is not the stuff of academia but is about what is taking place now. In the simplest terms of all, it's impossible to buy into all that clash of civilisations guff when a self-evidently amiable bloke like Rageh represents the alien Other.

Of course, the two programmes have made for deeply sad viewing. The autumnal, elegiac note has been prominent. The sense of opportunities being lost has been palpable. There was a moment towards the end of the second programme when the fate of Spain's Jews in the newly unified Christian Spain, following the fall of Granada, was lamented that cut very deep. It's remarkable how rarely we are reminded that the peoples of the Jewish faith have almost invariably faired better under Islamic rule (frequently thriving) than in Christian lands, though we seem to be told with increasing frequency that Muslims and Jews cannot live together.