Said Meets Ali: Knowledge as a Source of Power and Authority

             In the beginning of the novel, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, Tariq Ali introduces the concept of knowledge and power as a central theme within his historical representation of the Spanish Inquisition. I found myself applying Edward Said’s theory of knowledge and power in colonial imperialism to the way in which the Spanish clergymen first attempted to impose Catholicism on the Semitic religions of Judaism and Islam. In the same way that the imperial powers of Western Europe, especially England, studied the cultural history of the Orient before conquering them and projecting their own ideological beliefs, the leaders of the Inquisition first attempted to study the theological history of Islam in order to persuade Spanish Muslims to convert.

In Said’s notion of Orientalism, he stresses the importance of knowledge as a source of power for England in their conquest of Egypt. As proof that knowledge served to legitimize British occupation in the late 1800s, Said highlights the words of Britain’s Prime Minister Arthur Balfour when he declares, “We know the civilization of Egypt better than we know any other country” (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 56). This knowledge becomes a pretext for domination, where “To have knowledge of such a thing [as Egypt] is to dominate it, to have authority of it… since we know it and it exists, in a sense, as we know it” (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 56). The West’s knowledge and perspective of the Orient becomes a construct born out of the “various disciplines by which they are known by Europeans” (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 57), and such a perspective gave way to the West’s sense of superiority over the East.  This becomes the basis of Said’s understanding of Orientalism, which can also applied to the Inquisition as represented in Shades of the Pomegranate Tree.

At the outset of the novel, Ali gives his readers insight into the historical context of the Inquisition’s Islamic ethnocide by describing the destruction of Islamic texts and the consequent destruction of the Islamic intellectual presence in Spain. The way scholars in the service of the Church urged Ximenes de Cisneros to exclude Arabic texts on medicine and astronomy from the index of banned books provides an example of how Spain was able to use knowledge from the East to their advantage, while simultaneously eliminating any information that would become an obstacle to their authority over the Islamic community, especially cultural or religious texts. Ximenes de Cisneros believed that in order to dominate the Jewish and Muslim population, their culture, as the Spanish perceived it, would have to be “completely erased” (Ali 4).

Before Archbishop Ximenes de Cisneros began dominating the Islamic population, Archbishop Talavera attempted first to accumulate knowledge of Islamic theology and argue for the superiority of Catholicism. This knowledge laid the foundation necessary for Ximenes de Cisneros to later dominate the Islamic presence in Spain. Talavera and his fellow clergymen learned how to read Arabic and use this language as an opportunity to persuade Muslims to convert (Ali 20-21). In the same vein, even Ximenes himself engaged in theological disputes with Islamic scholars (Ali 21). This however ended in violence, when Ximenes started to crush his opposition through torture and forced conversion, thus establishing a Catholic superiority.

Edward Said’s connection between knowledge and power in colonial imperialism provides the framework for understanding how the Inquisition was able to succeed in dominating the Islamic and Jewish community. The knowledge and perspective Spanish clergymen had of Islamic tradition and theology became the basis for their campaign to eradicate it.