medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
In medieval Spain, it would seem to
> have been the norm for people to bathe, and nuns would use public bathhouses
> on certain days of the week in, for example, Toledo. This would seem to
> suggest that bathing was not necessarily mixed. The early kings of Oviedo
> had a bath-house/sauna built into their palace. The view of Christians being
> unwashed compared to their perfumed Muslim adversaries is probably due to
> the account of the rendition of the city of Toledo to Alfonso VI in 1085:
> the defeated Muslim governor noted how the Christian king stank and
> scratched continuously because of the lice he had not had washed from
> himself. But then he’d been in the field beseiging the city for eight
> months, so perhaps his lack of grooming shouldn’t have been too surprising.
> The baths of medieval Rome, or ‘stufe’, were, on the other hand, very wicked
> places indeed. They were also, therefore, very popular. The ideal was,
> however, to smell nice afterwards.
>
>
> The current practice in the bath houses or, "hamam," of the Arab lands is that
certain days are for women and certain days are for men. Since the Qur'an
prohibits the exposing of one's pubic area, both men and women bathe with their
boxers/panties on. An argument from silence, since I can find no reference to
the practice being different anytime since Mohammad, would indicate that this
is the historical practice and would be what bathing in non-Christian Spain was
like. The Roman ruins in Rabat, Morocco are virtually the same architecture for
bathing and toileting as exists today in the medina (old city) at Fez. These
bath houses are more like saunas than swimming pools. The dirt and dead skin
is scraped off.
As for Alfonso VI, being in the field beseiging the city for eight straight
months seems a poor excuse for not bathing. One is not exactly out of touch
with civilization when beseiging a city. I doubt that the view of Christians as
being unwashed would come from a single report such as this. In Andalus/Spain
and Portugal Christians and Muslims were in daily contact with each other for
centuries before and after the fall of Toledo.
V. K. Inman
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