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The African Foundation of Modern Spain (The Berbers)
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by King_Scorpion: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Horemheb: [qb] Super car, the objection that i posted was the nutty idea that started the thread that there was some sort of 'African Foundation' to modern Spain, this is simply nutty talk. Was there interaction between scholars, yes. Did Europe rediscover much of what was lost classical knowledge through the arabs in spain, yes. That said, to say that Muslims jump started Spainish culture is silly. Spainish culture is European and Muslims made contributions but they were light years away from what anyone would call foundational. Keep in mind that the zenith of muslim civilization was around the year 1000. They went into a steady decline after that that corresponded with an upswing in European power. By the end of the reconquest Europe has regained its footing and poured the foundation for the creation of the modern world we live in today. The arab contribution to this process was the reintroduction of ancient knowledge into Europe that we could say jump started the process. Another thing to keep in mind is that after 1000 the muslim empire began to grow very conservative. As the fundamentalist Muslims grew in power much of what we know as arab scholarship moved away from the centers of power. We also need to remember that while the Moors were very involved in the initial Spainish invasion other arab groups became dominant during most of those years. In short, there is no African foundation in Spain, there is a european foundation. [/qb][/QUOTE]Spain is very much a country with many little influences...the Moors being just one of them. But the effect the Moors had on Spain itself would be practically transparent in today's world (seeing as how it's been over 500 years since they ruled just a portion of Spain). There are many reasons for this...mainly because while the Moors were the invaders, they didn't force their culture on the natives. As many have already stated, Andalusia was a very acceptant society. I'll give you THAT much, but what you're doing is playing down the impact the Moors and the Islamic Empire as a whole had on Europe. Following the separation of Rome into two Empires...Europe was quickly swept into a dark age. Though, I think a lot of people take for granted Rome itself. The vast majority of people who lived under the Romans were still illiterate and unlearned. Rome was very much a slave society...I think many people forget that while their glorifying it. Horemheb, you say all the Moors and Arabs did was translate...well this is where you're DEAD wrong! Translations weren't the only things going on in the halls of the great cities of Toledo and Cordova. Did you know the Moors were the first to introduce Calculus and Trigonometry? For many years prior to the fall of the last Moorish city, even as early as Alfonso X (13th Century) and Archbishop Raimundo a century before him (whose name was really Raimont de Sauvetat, 1125-1152, he was actually a french catholic who settled in Andalus)....there were European "schools" of translators dedicated to re-writing the MOORISH sciences! The sciences of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (otherwise known by the Latin-European academy as the [i]quadrivium[/i]). This was going on for centuries...up until 1492 when the new conquerers came in and burned most of the scrolls. As a matter of fact, it's THESE Latin translations that we even know anything about what the Moors knew themselves. What you Horemheb are doing is what many Western scholars have done for so many years...deny the influence Africa and Asia had on European society. Instead, you opt to create this illusion that you thought it all up yourselves. Aside from Timbuktu, there was the Cairo House of Wisdom built in 1005 with a grant from the Fatimid Caliphs who ruled North Africa. The very word [b]Algebra[/b] is an Arabic word, adopted in Europe to describe some of the new mathematics that the Moors had brought INTO Europe. The very word for algorithm, a mathematical procedure, is a corruption of the name of Al-Khowarizmi, the Persian author of the algebra book that took Europe by storm! Another example of what came out of the Cairo House of Wisdom is Ibn al-Haytham (aka Alhazen in Europe). He wrote a book on Optics that dealt with the important discoveries on the physiology of vision and the theory of reflection and refraction of light...it had a great influence on the development of optics in medieval Europe. Sp advanced was his work that it's translation into Latin and publication in Europe, over 500 years after his death, had a great influence on Roger Bacon and Johann Kepler. Ibn al-Haytham was also the first to obtain a formula for the 4th powers of the first n natural numbers...this was unknown in the earlier Greek period and was not rediscovered in Europe until the 17th century. Ibn al-Haytham also layed the groundwork for the modern non-Euclidean geometries. Haytham used a method utilized by J.H. Lambert in the 18th Century. I can go on and on (giving examples about music as well as poetry), there are tons of examples in the book [b][i]Golden Age of the Moor[/i][/b], I suggest you go pick it up. I'm going to leave you with this one quote (something I also posted on Wikipedia...don't know if it's still there though). [i]Moorish Spain excelled in city planning; the sophistication of their cities was astonishing. According to one historian, Cordova "had 471 mosques and 300 public baths … the number of houses of the great and noble were 63,000 and 200,077 of the common people. There were … upwards of 80,000 shops. Water from the mountain was distributed through every corner and quarter of the city by means of leaden pipes into basins of different shapes, made of the purest gold, the finest silver, or plated brass as well into vast lakes, curios tanks, amazing reservoirs and fountains of Grecian marble." The houses of Cordova were air conditioned in the summer by "ingeniously arranged draughts of fresh air drawn from the garden over beds of flowers, chosen for their perfume, warmed in winter by hot air conveyed through pipes bedded in the walls." This list of impressive works appears endless; it includes lamp posts that lit their streets at night to grand palaces, such as the one called Azzahra with its 15,000 doors.[/i] [/QB][/QUOTE]
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