A botanical itinerary to re-appropriate Andalusian culture in Toledo: “Al-Andalus began here”

Walking inside the Santa Cruz Museum in Toledo now presents a new incentive. A botanical route that takes the visitor to Andalusian Toledo, when this cultural center was part of a large palace complex, a few steps from what today is called the Plaza de Zocodover.

The initiative is part of the Islamic Culture Foundation (FUNCI) to make visible and deepen the social and cultural roots of Toledo, “the city with one culture and three religions” affirms its general secretary Encarna Gutiérrez, beyond the myth of the “Three Cultures that resonate on many tourist routes. “At the time, everyone spoke Arabic. It is time for Toledo to appropriate this important Andalusian heritage and, above all, for the city to be proud of it. “Al-Andalus started here.”

In total, 14 plants, bushes and trees characteristic of this era are now part of the cultural heritage of the museum. “When we plant something living, something that grows and which involves recovering heritage, thanks to institutional and citizen collaboration, we are very excited. Plants do not discriminate, they give their fruits and medicinal benefits to everyone, of any culture or religion. We must take care of this heritage because it is unique,” ​​says Encarna Gutiérrez.

This is the objective set by the management of the Santa Cruz Museum. Antonio Dávila believes that it can become “a learning space for visitors” because, he assures, “museums should not be considered as simple containers”.

Plant species are part of this particular exhibition, an itinerary that its promoters have called “Heritage of sowing: Andalusian botany, in the gardens of the Santa Cruz Museum”, which includes a selection of relevant plant species to better understand the development and experimentation with agronomic disciplines under Islamic rule in the Iberian Peninsula.

The project is the result of institutional, scientific and citizen collaboration. Alongside the project promoter, the Islamic Culture Foundation, are the Santa Cruz Museum and its association ‘Museo de Santa Cruz ¡Vivo!’, the Torretes Biological Station of the University of Alicante and the Botanical Garden of Castilla-La. Stain. And the participation of those who, individually, dedicated themselves to the planting day in the days preceding the opening of the botanical route, was fundamental.

Collect species like myrtle or Moorish myrtle

The proposal is a different tourist route. Both in its outdoor market and indoors, in its noble patio, the visitor is invited to learn more about the taste of vegetables ten centuries ago.

“All the plants of the Andalusian gardens have been lost and the truth is that they have a historical component,” says Segundo Ríos, professor of botany at the University of Alicante and director of its Botanical Garden, who collaborated on the project with his counterpart from the Botanical Garden of Albacete, Pablo Ferrandis.

“There is nothing left of these Andalusian gardens, not even of the Alhambra of Granada. We imagine them, we know what plants they had, but not how they were distributed. We now have the opportunity to collect some sketches and begin an educational practice around this culture for which we sometimes have no reference.

You can walk among olive trees, a bitter orange tree, a yew tree, a peach tree, a Damascus rose, violets, rosemary, lavender, lilies, oleanders… and most strikingly, a myrtle or Moorish myrtle. It is an evergreen shrub, with a very long lifespan, which over the years can become a small tree. In spring, it will present white flowers then berries. It has always been used for decorative but also medicinal purposes, but from the 18th century it practically disappeared from the Iberian Peninsula.

“A large part of its recovery began precisely in the province of Toledo, in El Real de San Vicente. In a private estate, which may have been an ancient Arab farm, they unknowingly kept it for centuries. We managed to recover material from this single specimen and now there are thousands of them,” explains Segundo Ríos.

This shrub was one of the great protagonists in the writings of Andalusian agronomists and it is more than probable that it populated the gardens of the kingdoms of Taifas, city-states that appeared in the Iberian Peninsula after the decomposition of the Caliphate of Cordoba at the beginning from the 11th century.

“It was a moment of political weakness and nevertheless of great cultural splendor,” explains archaeologist Sergio Isabel, who alludes in particular to the role of al-Ma’mun, emir of the taifa of Toledo between 1043 and 1075. “He He made extensive renovations to the palaces which included an important scientific program. He favored a court populated by intellectuals, the elite of the time, in addition to the acquisition of books and the study of what they called the science of the “ancients”, incorporating translations.

It was the time of Azarquiel, an important astronomer and mathematician from Toledo who emigrated to Seville after the Christian conquest of the city around 1085, but in addition and thanks to archaeological research, another type of technical literature in Spanish is preserved of this era. . Arab, among whom the agronomists of Toledo Ibn Wafīd and Ibn Baṣṣāl stand out, teacher and disciple, whose work will allow the creation of the Andalusian Agronomic School. In the 11th century, Toledo was the epicenter of agronomic knowledge.

The two scientists left interesting treatises where Botany, Pharmacy and Medicine were closely linked. In the case of Ibn Baṣṣāl, his contribution to a widely distributed practical agricultural treatise is known. “By the 14th century, it had reached Yemen. In general, this affected the entire Islamic world and also Europe,” underlines Sergio Isabel.

However, the importance of the agronomists of Tulaytula – the name of Toledo in Islamic times – went unnoticed, explains the researcher, despite the projects in which they participated. “Al-Ma’mun designed another twin palace complex in relation to the historic center, in what we call “Huerta del Rey”. He wanted to create an almunia or aristocratic palace with orchards and botanical gardens in which they would acclimate plant species from the other side of the Mediterranean, implementing a whole botanical discipline adapted from the Greco-Latin and Indo-Persian world.

Few Toledoans know about this part of history and those who played a leading role in it. “His memory is lost and few people know that he was at the base of the entire scientific movement in Toledo and that of the School of Translators that Alfonso X the Wise encouraged.”

The project aims to recover this memory, just like another of Toledo’s great museums in the spring. Carmen, director of the Sephardic Museum, explains that the botanical itinerary in this case “will be fully integrated into the content of the museum exhibition. The selected species, between eight and ten, are very diverse and with them we want to highlight what unites us,” he said, to explain the important presence of Sephardic culture (the Jewish and later converts). in Toledo between the 10th and 14th centuries.

“It is a very rewarding project and one of the important stages of the renovation of the museum which is taking place this year and part of next year. “We are in the final phase.”