Review: Under the Pomegranate Tree by Tariq Ali

Tariq Ali’s Under the Pomegranate Tree is a sweeping historical novel that revisits the final years of Muslim Spain, offering a deeply human portrayal of a society on the brink of collapse. Set in late 15th-century Granada, just before the Reconquista reaches its end, the novel forms part of Ali’s Islam Quintet, which reimagines Islamic civilization’s rich and often overlooked cultural legacy.

✍️ Style & Story

Ali’s prose is lush, poetic, and unhurried. He layers the narrative with court intrigue, religious debates, and the emotional lives of his characters—Muslims, Jews, and Christians—who inhabit a world teetering between tolerance and brutal conquest. The story orbits around the fall of the Nasrid dynasty and the shifting allegiances and betrayals that define a society unraveling under external and internal pressure.

What sets Under the Pomegranate Tree apart is its empathy for the complexities of religious coexistence, its lament for lost pluralism, and its sharp critique of fanaticism—whether Christian or Muslim. Ali’s own political background as a historian and commentator lends weight to the novel’s implicit commentary on the dangers of absolutism and the erasure of cultural diversity.

🧠 Themes

• Loss of civilization and cultural memory
• Religious intolerance vs coexistence
• Sex, power, and politics in medieval Andalusia
• The role of art, poetry, and philosophy in Islamic society