As I write this, the ABC is showing the second and final part of, When The Moors Ruled Europe, a fascinating documentary on the Moors in Andalusia. It’s worth watching as it contains more than a few surprises. For example, who knew that Spanish hero Guzman el Bueno was, according to evidence uncovered by his contemporary ancestors, a Muslim?
English historian Bettany Hughes presents the second of a fascinating two-part series on the contribution the Muslims made to modern Europe during their 700-year reign in Spain, which ended with the Spanish Inquisition in the 14th century.
Hughes continues to unfurl the stunning Spanish travelogue of Part One of When the Moors Ruled in Europe, as she reveals the compelling history of the rise and fall of Islam in the West.
Al Andalus, as the Islamist Moors called their Spanish settlement, was the centre of massive intellectual and cultural revolution and many modern practices in mathematics, architecture and chemistry stem from knowledge developed there.
And along the way, Hughes reveals some surprises in the complicated and messy relationship between Islamic and Catholic Spain, shedding some shocking new light on the brutal Holy War between the two.
For those who missed it, you can watch it over the fold.
21 comments ↓
That is the first part isn’t it?
Je zakka Allahu khairan.
The show is actually quite misleading and is, unfortunately, what passes for research these days.
I don’t have an agenda to minimise the achievements of what was a great and exotic empire but it’s been shown conclusively that, for example, the great works of Greek scholars, while making their way into the Muslim world, were already well known in Europe beforehand. i.e. Muslims were not a necessary thoroughfare that led to the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution.
In fact, the literacy rate among the high caste Muslims was quite low and there were very few translations actually done.
The Muslims relied on the skills and talents of those they had conquered in order to progress socially. At the end of the day, the uninquisitive, statist nature of Muslims is what brought the empire down.
It’s revisionist mythology of the highest order to ascribe to Islam any part of Western scientific advances.
Jack,
I think you have added a lot in to this that probably did not deserve to be in there. To say that there was or is) an “…uninquisitive, statist nature…” of Muslims is a very long bow to draw. Many empires have fallen in the past - of all religions - so this cannot be unique to any one religion.
I would agree that this is a possible reason why the Ottoman empire fell, but to say that this is in some way “Muslim” is IMHO, just plain wrong.
As for the “necessary thoroughfare” bit - much of the learning came from India as well as the Greeks, and, with the addition of algebra (indisputably Muslim in origin) modern mathematics was really put together as a discipline under Muslim rule - and, at least in part, by Muslims. I, for one, am very glad they adopted, modified and transmitted the “Arabic” numeral we all know and love today. Roman numbering (to put it brutally) sucked.
Much of the knowledge of the Greeks had been lost in Europe. To ascribe no role to Muslims, as you have done, is truly “revisionist mythology”.
This may be a fair comment on the latter stages of the Ottoman decline but it certainly can’t be generalised to all Muslims or medieval Muslims in particular. On the contrary, Islam should and has encouraged Muslims to study the world around them (i.e. be inquisitive).
Perhaps the Muslim contribution to the preservation of Greek philosophical texts is overrated but there is a tremendous amount of evidence of Muslim contribution to the sciences such as the work of al-Khawarizmi or al-Haitham’s study of catoptrics; and much of this evidence comes from the writings of European non-Muslims.
Speaking of which, this book - Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers and Artists by Michael Morgan, was published by the National Geographic Society recently (19 Jun 2007).
Also:
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.co.....cience.htm
Amir
Thanks for the post. It always a good thing to reevaluate the received wisdom of what we were taught. Henry Ford did have a point, a lot of what we learn as “history” is bunk.
Islam had a huge impact on the high middle ages in Europe. While in the Muslim camp the Crusades were not remembered fondly , the Latins learned much from their misadventure in the Levant.
The Muslims lived in Europe for 700 years, there is no way that Europe was not affected by that long interaction. For many in Europe in medieval times the Arabic learning of Ancient Greece was the there first brush with Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras et al.
That learning was transmitted via the great abbeys to the rest of Europe. A big part of that transmission was done by the great abbey of Cluny. Those were Clunic monks who were visiting Toledo. And it was the Clunic monks, who on returning home looked in their great manuscripts for further knowledge about the “pagan” Greeks and all manner of things.
From that investigation came a new birth of humanism. St and St Francis of Assisi are just two example of that movement in Europe. People do not live in isolation, cultures do more than clash-they cross pollinate.
Well put, James.
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Thanks for your comments, James.
One thing that I was surprised to learn from this documentary and reading about the period is that the so-called Fall of Andalusia more resembled a civil war than a simple case of Muslim versus Christian. For example, there were Christian rulers aligning themselves with Muslims (and vice versa) and people such as the famous El Cid who were more or less mercenaries selling their services to rulers of any faith.
There is a great book called “The Fall of the Caliphate of Cordoba: Berbers and Andalusis in Conflict” which discusses the fragmentation of the Umayyad caliphate in to townships and city-states. It is very interesting reading.
Amir,
That is the fun of history, the story behind the story. Peel back the myth and the facts are almost always more interesting.
What was interesting and what I always suspected was that the conquest of Spain was a lot less violent than advertised. The Visigothic kingdoms in Spain were the true interlopers. When the Islamic armies arrived many of the populace were more than glad to see the back of their soon to be former rulers. Read the history of the “Dark Ages” the Visigoths were a Germanic people in conflict with their Latin subjects. They believed in a “heretical” form of Christianity known as Arianism. The land was broken in to numerous tiny squabbling states run by robber-baron aristocracy. The culture , state and religion were seriously broken.
Into this failed state rode the Islamic armies. Islam was still young and filled with fire. Islam was dynamic, curious, adventurous and committed. It offered a clear message and a clear faith. It offered something that had been missing for long time-stability. Only two things put a halt to Islams’ advance; The Pyrenees and Charles Martel.
Looking back, one wonders about how Islam made such inroads into “Christian” Spain. In the High Middle ages, most of Andalusia was Muslim. A great deal of ink has been spilled over how this was an effect of taxation. Leave it to our material view of the world to put this explanation front and center. But I wonder how many people converted to Islam because they were tired of being oppressed for being the “wrong” type of Christians.
In the high middle ages the Muslims were much more relaxed about religious matters than the Christians. If you doubt that Wiki the “Albigensian Crusade.” I wonder how many people in medieval Hispania decided to give Christianity a miss and join the more rational religion of the time, Islam.
There’s a difference between muslim and muslim-ruled, James. According to Richard Fletcher in Moorish Spain there came a point in the ninth century AD when conversion to islam became less common than one would expect statistically if a conquest was accepted. There even seems to have been a deliberate poloicy of provoking christian martyrdom [see the martyrs of Toledo] to discourage it. Furthermore, the muslims depended on reinfocement form Morocco and the christians from elsewhere in Europe in their fights with one another, and the internal problems, both between Spanish muslims and Moroccan and between berbers and arabs and spanish muslims, seem to have been much more disruptive than those between christian statelets and their immigrant fighters.
Islam is probably less inherently intolerant than christianity, but conditions in mediaeval Spain encouraged toleration for purely practical reasons. It was only after Spain was entirely ruled by one christian state that religious persecution really began.
Wow! While this site can sometimes be infuriating, it is generally such a boon to Muslims and the wider community. What a beautiful discussion, above. I did not see the programme, but I am enjoying reading all of you, in comments, very much. Thank you. I have looked, but I have not found an equivalent site anywhere else.
I know it’s slightly off topic (apologies), but i particularly regret the absence of such a site for women. There are the blogs that range from disaffected Saudi girls, to the ultra religious politcal moderates in Canada, and the once delightfully subvrsive personal blog of a young Tunisian woman living in the US. But I haven’t yet found the same callibre of political discussion that exists here in a comparable site run by a woman or women. I wonder if there are such women in Australia (politically astute and moderate) with an online presence. I am particularly interested inthose with a background out of Dar el-Islam, as opposed to converts. Not that I have anything against converts, it’s just that the life experiences differ so greatly.
If anyone knows of anything I should check out, please alert me.
Sorry for the ramble.
Back to Andalus!
Cinna,
We will have to wait for the full election results on that won’t we? Richard Fletcher has a study, that is a beginning isn’t it? Having not seen the study or the statistics all I can add is “meh.”
Statistical studies can shed light or they can add confusion on a subject. There is a great book that has been out for ages called “how to lie with statistics”
Now maybe this study by Mr. Fletcher is solid research or maybe there are some flaws that didn’t catch his eye. Foolishly believing in the innate goodness of all humans, I’ll give Mr. Fletcher the benefit of the doubt and assume that this was serious research and not a hatchet job.
The Orthodox history/myth of Moorish Spain is that Islam was a foreign, despotic rule imposed on the poor Christians who after 700 years threw off the Muslim yolk finally liberating Hispana from the evil interlopers.
The revisionist history may give overemphasis to the notion that Islam actually was deeply ingrained into the lives of the people of Andalus, that might be a good point. But the revisionist history is offering new Thesis.
Don’t want to get too Hegelian here but sometimes the writing of history does follow the pattern of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis.
Understanding the difference between Muslim rule and Islam is important. I seriously doubt there is anything in the Holy Quaran nor the Hadiths that lead the Umyyads to use Mercenaries to protect their rule.
But this was not an uncommon arrangement in the 8th Century. Mercenary armies were used right up to the French Revolution. Mercenary armies are always messy and if you don’t pay them they can get quite nasty. As they are in for the pay only, they can and are riven by class, race, ethnic and sometimes religious differences. History is full of dynastic collapses brought about by disgruntled mercenary soldiers who turn on their employer when the gold ran out.
It is a very subjective business of figuring out witch band of brigands was “the worst.” The Islamic Brigands? The Christian Brigands? Hard to say without a program to figure out who all the players are. Hard to say which team they are on at any given time.
The overarching idea though is not so hard. In the high middle ages Islam was the more cultured and more civilized governance. For the times, Islam was light-years ahead of Christendom. For every jihad of the Muslims there seems to be 10 or so Crusades or some other form of nastiness perpetrated by the Latins. Remember it was the Latin Crusaders that sacked Constantinople and laid low the Byzantine Empire.
“The Orthodox history/myth of Moorish Spain is that Islam was a foreign, despotic rule imposed on the poor Christians who after 700 years threw off the Muslim yolk finally liberating Hispana from the evil interlopers. ”
No, James, that’s the Catholic history/myth. The orthodox history/myth in English-speaking countries, derived from Washington Irving and others, is that for seven hundred years muslim Spain was an astonishingly tolerant and civilised place far in advance of the rest of Europe that for some mysterious reason was overthrown by barbarous and intolerant Spaniards who didn’t want to be ruled in a tolerant or civilised way.
In fact, the ummayad dynasty- the “golden age of islamic Spain”- fell in the early eleventh century and the next four centuries weren’t quite so golden for anyone. It’s a myth that ignores the ta’ifas and the activities of the almoravids and the almohads who were imported from Morocco as allies in the fight against christian statelets and who each usurped power in their turn. The division between arab and berber existed- still exists- in North Africa and affected politics and warfare there and in Spain- both the almoravids and the almohads were Berber by origin.
You could say that “In the high middle ages Islam was the more cultured and more civilized governance.”. It would be more accurate to say it was the less uncultured and less uncivilised in fact, and only at its best at that. Cerainly the almohads were so unpleasant as rulers that many muslims preferred rule by christian states. However, as I said, at that time Spanish christians were also comparatively tolerant religiously for entirely pragmatic reasons.
To echo Cinna’s last point: it was only after Grenada was virtually gone that the Inquisition was set up. Before that strict religious orthodoxy, as interpreted by the Roman Catholic church of the time, was not required. It is perhaps not surprising that Spain was at its most powerful and expansionist when it was relatively tolerant and became less tolerant as it became less powerful - or vice versa.
Though somebody noted my book, go have a look … via www.losthistoryonline.com … the book is lost history: the enduring legacy of muslim scientists, thinkers and artists.
Firstly to begin with the words of Horothswitha the Saxon Princess and Poet who visited Cordoba in the eleventh century. She said Cordoba was the Ornament of the World, please read “The Ornament of the World” by Menocal.
Moorish Spain clearly was one of the reasons why the Western hemesphere became more civilised than it had been before the 15th Century. which is directly connected to print and the proliferation of paper by the Muslims this is why the average house in Andalusia especially in Cordoba had more books in it than the whole of Europe in the eleventh century.
Furthermore if it wasn’t for the introduction of paper into Europe which was the reason why books became more available over parchment the Reformation and the Humanist movement would not have got anywhere it was through print that Martin Luther was able to propogate his attack on the Catholic Church.
Indeed Andalusia was a place that was concord by all the great civilisations that is the Romans, Greeks … etc but what no-one can deny is the effect of the Muslims on the Iberian Peninsula and the World indeed its 900 years of presence is the reason why its monuments can be visited today like the Alhambra Palace a unique building, and the Cordoba Mosque. We can say much more about this but it would take a book.
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