The Moor’s Last Sigh

Abstract

Rushdie has spoken of ‘the incredible psychic and physical disruption of the early period’ after the fatwa and the fact that ‘for a few years [he] didn’t have the capacity, the singleness of purpose, to attempt a large piece of architecture’.¹ That is why The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995) is his first novel in seven years. But it underwent a much longer period of gestation, beginning with his visit, in his undergraduate days, to the Alhambra palace at Granada, Moorish Spain’s red fort, mirrored in those of Mughal India at Delhi and Agra. The famous sigh, to which the title refers, was breathed in 1492 by Muhammad XI (Boabdil), the last sultan of Andalusia, looking back at Alhambra and bidding farewell to his kingdom, ending Arab-Islamic dominance in Iberia. Moorish Spain was important to Rushdie as an example of multiculturalism, the Muslims, Catholics and Jews coexisting. Yet 1492 was also the year when the Jews were offered the choice of baptism or expulsion. It was Spain’s fissiparous hour. Thus, a phase of Spanish history provides a defining metaphor for India, the subject of Rushdie’s novel. In addition, 1492 was the year when Columbus, financed by Boabdil’s royal conquerors, Ferdinand and Isabella, sailed forth to seek a new route to the East. It was left to Vasco da Gama to find one in 1497.