Was this time period really “Tolerant”?
Short answer: it depends on your definition. Compared to the rest of Medieval Europe? Absolutely. By modern standards? No.
The long answer is much more nuanced. Medieval Iberia was far more religiously and ethnically diverse than the rest of Europe. While pagan faiths did still exist in Scandinavia, Ireland and much of Northeastern Europe, they did not have written languages, and were clearly separate from the Christian world. (If anything, there is evidence that there was more religious diversity in pagan Europe, than the other way around.)
In contrast, Iberia had been under Islamic rule for centuries, and this influence was woven into the culture of both Islamic and Christian lands. The collaboration between different faiths was as common as the tragedies that occurred when extremists lashed out.
To understand Iberia's uniqueness, it's helpful to compare it to major shifts happening elsewhere in Europe and Western Asia, during the same period:
Mosaic details of Byzantine icons from Hagia Sophia. Muhur / Getty Images - Learn Religious
The Great Schism (When Christendom Broke Up): For centuries, Christendom was led by 5 relatively equal church “patriarchates” in Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople and Jerusalem. But in 1054 after years of friction over theological, cultural, and political differences, Christianity was split between the East and the West, primarily over Rome’s claim of supremacy over the other patriarchates.
14th-century miniature of the Battle of Dorylaeum (1147), a Second Crusade battle, from the Estoire d’Eracles - Wikipedia
The Crusades (Wars between Faiths): The first crusades began in 1095 when the Roman Pope sent Christian warriors to take Jerusalem while it was in flux between the Islamic Seljuk and Fatimid dynasties. Subsequent crusades would also bring war against other Muslim kingdoms and fellow Christians in the Levant and across Europe. The Fourth Crusade culminated in Western Christians attacking and pillaging Constantinople, the center of Eastern Christianity.
Part of Al-Ghazali’s autobiography in MS Istanbul Shehid Ali Pasha - Wikipedia
Islamic Shift in Philosophy (Logics to Revelations): Typified by the rise of the Persian philosopher Al-Ghazali (1058-1111), Islamic thought outside of Iberia shifted away from the focus on classical Greek Aristotelian logic and natural science in theological applications, towards endeavors that aligned with Quranic revelation and Sufi mysticism. Meanwhile, Neoplatonic philosophy, an increased focus on moral hierarchy, and the pursuit of societies based on “natural hierarchy” would see a rise in Iberia and the Maghreb at this time.
Compared to these political-religious movements sweeping across Europe and Asia, the different faiths in the Iberian Peninsula danced between collaboration and conflict for 400 more years, with more conflicts recorded within the individual faiths than between them.
This era of religious and cultural complexity dwindled and rapidly ended once the famous, or perhaps infamous, Ferdinand and Isabella unified Spain. They expelled the entire Jewish population from the peninsula, and began the Spanish Inquisition to ensure religious conformity under the Catholic church. In many ways, the “Reconquest” of Spain was less of an accurate description of centuries of conflict, collaboration, and nuanced politics, and more of a political label to give purpose and legitimacy to the line of kings who eventually became the “Catholic Monarchs.”
This game helps fill in the missing history of the Reconquista, and broaden the stories told of the time of the Crusades.
