When
you think of European culture, one of the first things that may
come to your mind is the renaissance. Many of the roots of European
culture
can be traced back to that glorious time of art, science, commerce and
architecture. But did you know that long before the renaissance there
was a
place of humanistic beauty in Muslim Spain? Not only was it artistic,
scientific and commercial, but it also exhibited incredible tolerance,
imagination and poetry. Muslims, as the Spaniards call the Muslims,
populated Spain for nearly 700 years. As you’ll see, it was their
civilization that enlightened Europe and brought it out of the dark ages
to usher in the renaissance. Many of their
cultural and intellectual influences still live with us today.
Way back during the eighth century, Europe was still
knee-deep in the Medieval period. That’s not the only thing they were
knee-deep in. In his book, “The Day The Universe Changed,” the historian James
Burke describes how the typical European townspeople lived:
“The
inhabitants threw all their refuse into the drains in the center of the narrow
streets. The stench must have been overwhelming, though it appears to have
gone virtually unnoticed. Mixed with excrement and urine would be the soiled
reeds and straw used to cover the dirt floors. (p. 32)
This squalid society was organized under a feudal system
and had little that would resemble a commercial economy. Along with other
restrictions, the Catholic Church forbade the lending of money - which didn’t help
get things booming much. “Anti-Semitism, previously rare, began to increase. Money
lending, which was forbidden by the Church, was permitted under Jewish law.”
(Burke, 1985, p. 32) Jews worked to develop a currency although they were
heavily persecuted for it. Medieval Europe was a miserable lot, which ran high
in illiteracy, superstition, barbarism and filth.
During this same time,
Muslims entered Europe from the
South. Abd al-Rahman I, a survivor of a family of caliphs of the Muslim
empire, reached Spain in the mid-700’s. He became the first Caliph of
Al-Andalus, the Muslim part of Spain, which occupied most of the Iberian
Peninsula. He also set up the Umayyad Dynasty that ruled Al-Andalus
for over
three-hundred years. (Grolier, History of Spain). Al Andalus means,
“the land
of the vandals,” from which comes the modern name Andalusia.
At first, the land
resembled the rest of Europe in all its squalor. But within two-hundred
years the Muslims had turned Al-Andalus
into a bastion of culture, commerce and beauty.
“Irrigation systems
imported from Syria and Muslimia turned the dry plains... into an agricultural
cornucopia. Olives and wheat had always grown there. The Muslims added
pomegranates, oranges, lemons, aubergines, artichokes, cumin, coriander,
bananas, almonds, pams, henna, woad, madder, saffron, sugar-cane, cotton, rice,
figs, grapes, peaches, apricots and rice.” (Burke, 1985, p. 37)
By the beginning of the ninth century, Muslim Spain was
the gem of Europe with its capital city, Cordova. With the establishment of Abd
al-Rahman III - “the great caliphate of Cordova” - came the golden age of
Al-Andalus. Cordova, in southern Spain, was the intellectual center of Europe.
At a time when London was a tiny mud-hut village that “could
not boast of a single streetlamp” (Digest, 1973, p. 622), in Cordova…
“…there were
half a million inhabitants, living in 113,000 houses. There were 700 mosques
and 300 public baths spread throughout the city and its twenty-one suburbs. The
streets were paved and lit.” (Burke, 1985, p. 38)
“The houses had marble balconies for summer and hot-air
ducts under the mosaic floors for the winter. They were adorned with gardens
with artificial fountains and orchards”. (Digest, 1973, p. 622) “Paper, a
material still unknown to the west, was everywhere. There were bookshops and
more than seventy libraries.” (Burke, 1985, p. 38).
In his book titled, “Spain In The Modern World,” James
Cleuge explains the significance of Cordova in Medieval Europe:
“For there
was nothing like it, at that epoch, in the rest of Europe. The best minds in
that continent looked to Spain for everything which most clearly differentiates
a human being from a tiger.” (Cleugh, 1953, p. 70)
During the end of the
first millennium, Cordova was the
intellectual well from which European humanity came to drink. Students
from France and England traveled there to sit at the feet of Muslim,
Christian and Jewish scholars, to
learn philosophy, science and medicine (Digest, 1973, p. 622). In the
great
library of Cordova alone, there were some 600,000 manuscripts (Burke,
1978, p.
122).
This rich and
sophisticated society took a tolerant view
towards other faiths. Tolerance was unheard of in the rest of Europe.
But in Muslim Spain, “thousands of Jews and Christians lived in peace
and harmony
with their Muslim overlords.” (Burke, 1985, p. 38)
Unfortunately, this period of intellectual and economic
prosperity began to decline. Shifting away from the rule of law, there began
to be internal rifts in the Muslim power structure. The Muslim harmony began
to break up into warring factions. Finally, the caliphs were eliminated and
Cordova fell to other Muslim forces. “In 1013 the great library in Cordova was
destroyed. True to their Islamic traditions however, the new rulers permitted
the books to be dispersed, together with the Cordovan scholars to the capital
towns of small emirates.” (Burke, 1985, p. 40) The intellectual properties of
the once great Al-Andalus were divided among small towns.
…the Christians to the North were doing just the
opposite. In Northern Spain the various Christian kingdoms united to expel the
Muslims from the European continent. (Grolier, History of Spain) This set the stage for the final act of the Medieval period.
In another of James
Burke’s works titled “Connections,”
he describes how the Muslims thawed out Europe from the Dark Ages. “But
the
event that must have done more for the intellectual and scientific
revival of
Europe was the fall of Toledo in Spain to the Christians, in 1105.” In
Toledo the Muslims had huge libraries containing the lost (to Christian
Europe) works of
the Greeks and Romans along with Muslim philosophy and mathematics.
“The
Spanish libraries were opened, revealing a store of classics and Muslim
works
that staggered Christian Europeans.” (Burke, 1978, p. 123)
The intellectual plunder of Toledo brought the scholars
of northern Europe like moths to a candle. The Christians set up a giant translating
program in Toledo. Using the Jews as interpreters, they translated the Muslim
books into Latin. These books included “most of the major works of Greek
science and philosophy... along with many original Muslim works of
scholarship.” (Digest, p. 622)
“The intellectual community which the northern scholars
found in Spain was so far superior to what they had at home that it left a
lasting jealousy of Muslim culture, which was to color Western opinions for
centuries” (Burke, 1985, p. 41)
“The subjects covered by the texts included medicine,
astrology, astronomy pharmacology, psychology, physiology, zoology, biology,
botany, mineralogy, optics, chemistry, physics, mathematics, algebra, geometry,
trigonometry, music, meteorology, geography, mechanics, hydrostatics,
navigation and history.” (Burke, 1985, p. 42)
These works alone however, didn’t kindle the fire that
would lead to the renaissance. They added to Europe’s knowledge, but much of
it was unappreciated without a change in the way Europeans viewed the world.
Remember, Medieval Europe was superstitious and
irrational. “What caused the intellectual bombshell to explode, however, was
the philosophy that came with (the books).” (Burke, 1985, p. 42)
Christians continued
to re-conquer Spain, leaving a wake of death and destruction in their
path. The books were spared, but Moor
culture was destroyed and their civilization disintegrated. Ironically,
it
wasn’t just the strength of the Christians that defeated the Muslims but
the
disharmony among the Muslims’ own ranks. Like Greece and Rome that
proceeded
them, the Muslims of Al-Andalus fell into moral decay
and wandered from the intellect that had made them great.
The translations
continued as each Muslim haven fell to
the Christians. In 1492, the same year Columbus discovered the New
World, Granada, the last Muslim enclave, was taken. Captors of the
knowledge were not keepers of
its wisdom. Sadly, all Jews and Muslims that would not abandon their
beliefs
were either killed or exiled (Grolier, History of Spain). Thus ended an
epoch
of tolerance and all that would remain of the Muslims would be their
books.
It’s fascinating to
realize just how much Europe learned from the Muslim texts and even
greater to see how much that knowledge has
endured. Because of the flood of knowledge, the first Universities
started to
appear. College and University degrees were developed (Burke, 1985, p.
48). Directly
from the Muslims came the numerals we use today. Even the concept of
Zero (a
Muslim word) came from the translations (Castillo & Bond, 1987, p.
27). It’s
also fair to say that renaissance architectural concepts came from the
Muslim
libraries. Mathematics and architecture explained in the Muslim texts
along
with Muslim works on optics led to the perspective paintings of the
renaissance
period (Burke, 1985 p. 72). The first lawyers began their craft using
the new
translated knowledge as their guide. Even the food utensils we use
today come
from the Cordova kitchen! (Burke, 1985 p. 44) All of these examples show
just
some of the ways Europe transformed from the Muslims.
