Discover the Secrets of Muslim Spain
The mystery surrounding Islamβs introduction to Spain is one echoed by many historians. It is openly acknowledged that much of Al-Andalus' history has been either hidden or re-written in the wake of the Spanish Inquisition. This lack of historical transparency continues to inspire researchers, historians, and local Muslims to investigate and reveal the areaβs rich yet shrouded history.Thus, in 2008, the Al-Andalus Experience was founded. We are a collaboration of individuals, professionals, and organizations in Spain, committed to upholding and sharing the legacy of Al-Andalus. We welcome travelers from all over to discover this legacy through our educational tours, workshops, and events. Our services cater to Muslims, offering Halal meals and a healthy, family-friendly environment.Community partnership, research, and local networking is at the heart of the Al-Andalus Experience project. We support local and Muslim businesses, cultural and educational organizations by utilizing their resources in all projects, whenever possible. Likewise, we are always open to networking and collaborating with different individuals, professionals, volunteers, and organizations.
Reviving the ancestral travel routes and lively scenarios around the Silk Road, to awaken the art and expericence of travel through live traditions of Al-Andalus.
A quest for knowledge in spite of narrative, we may call counter-narrative, or a simple quest for truth. Why? Simply to experience it trully.
Why slow?
We are humans and just as in islamic tradition it is said that the soul takes a while to reach you after travelling as high speeds, so it is for knowledge itself. The fast paced expression of our modern time, even regarding knowledge shallows and dilutes the interior experience of it, while we try to invite and enduce a lifetime experience, where everything learned is experienced, and everything experienced is to be taken home, for you to enjoy as an experience in your own life beyond the trip, activity, talks or reads which you take from us.
Our tribute to paper, is a highlight, and hence we highlight the importance of paper as a vehicle for knowledge and its transmission, as a vehicle for the experiencing of that knowledge which is transmitted, and finally as an analog ancestor to the digital supports which move our world today. Paper was there all the time, and it also represents a global world where development came through travelling along medieval trade routes, of which we want to represent and revive the essence of today.
We are not opposed to development or to any of the modern sciences and achivements that humanity has reached today, however as humans, we want to honour the path which led to the developed world we live in today. Honour the masters of our past, the fathers and mothers of modern science, honour the traditions and early sinmple tools and context that brough them through. We see development as a bridge, founded on human traditions, rooted upon the highest of spiritual knowledge and insightful souls, which gave place to early breakthroughs and synergies which we are largely unaware of in our modern time, but we increasingly benefit from and use today. Many of the modern world concerns including the development of artificial intelligence but far before that, computing itself, and technology as we know it, are based on simple foundations, all of which took place in an area of contemplation, curiosity, and sincere human devotion to knowledge itself.
We are not trapped in the past, we simply like to connect to our own roots as human beings, keep our hearts and critical thinking awake, to develop our own narrative, and understanding of the world and ourselves as a manifestation of the seen and the unseen worlds, which our ancestral traditions still carry and lead us to today. There is no other way of understanding reality for us, hence we see Al-Andalus as a fertile time and where the spiritual soil of ancestral traditions merged, knowledge and practice gave way to science, and our modern world nurtured and grew from it since, into today.
To this purpose we are endevoured through real world live experiences, paper, and this whole new realm of digital content, and the current network which the platoform represents. Crafted through time since 2007, all to the same goal and purpose.
Peace,
Ahmad Zaruq Summers
Manager & Administrator
Granada - Andalusia - Spain