The early twentieth century American novelist and historian Washington Irving is one of those authors who is a pleasure to read over nearly two centuries after he penned his most famous stories such as ‘Rip van Winkle’ and ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'.
What is of concern to us here is Irving’s few comments on the subject of jews and Islam. These occur in only of one of his works ‘The Alhambra’ and are not subjects that generally concerned Irving. Since his youth and early work are dominated by the American war of independence, the Anglo-American War of 1812 and the broader Napoleonic wars, which had engulfed most of the world for two decades or so.
Even his later life was dominated by the reaction against the ideals of the French Revolution in both Europe and North America in addition to the tensions that later exploded into the American Civil War.
It was thus only when Irving was living in Spain between 1826 and 1829 that he wrote on the twin subjects of the jews and Islam.
In ‘The Alhambra’ Irving notably omits to comment disapprovingly about the boasts of Spanish peasants that he encountered about being of pure ‘old Christian’ stock and thus without the taint of jewish blood or former adherence to Islam in their bloodline.
This rather implies that – since Irving didn’t take the trouble to disagree – that Irving likely approved of the boasts of Spanish peasantry in their fervent proto-anti-Semitism and anti-Islamic sentiment.
We can locate a source for this in the fact that – as a man who had studied many of the source manuscripts for medieval Spanish history – Irving well knew that the jews had been in close alliance with the forces of Islam in the drawn out and bloody battles against the Christians. (1)
He was also aware – as he mentions in ‘The Alhambra’ – that Muslims around the world still consider Spain as Islamic land and that Christian Spain will eventually decay so much that they will be able to launch the re-conquest of the land and undertake the worship of Allah at the Alhambra.
In essence; Irving saw that the forces of Islam and Judaism had historically been united in their desire to drive Christians out of the Iberian Peninsula, which could be still said to exist at some level.
References
(1) Eliyahu Ashtor, 1973, 'The Jews of Moslem Spain', Vol. I, 1st Edition, Jewish Publishing Society of America: Philadelphia, pp. 10-16