Thursday, February 25, 2021

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The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, #2, by Dario Fernandez-Morera

The myth is just part of the attack on Christainity.

by Ferdinand III


 

Link to first article.

The Muhammadan empires carved out of Christian civilisation, including Spain called Andalusia by academics, invented very little.  One can investigate any area of human endeavour from 632 AD to 1492 AD and view the obvious fact that Muslims simply used the vastly superior intellectual, technological, scientific and social constructions of far more advanced Christians states, which were occupied and plundered by the Muslim Jihad.  Much to his credit, Morera has investigated this historical fact thoroughly.  To wit:

 

‘A good example is medicine.  In 854 the Nestorian Christian Stephanos had translated the medical works of Dioscorides into Arabic.  Muslims used this translation as their medical text for more than a century.’ (Nestorians had built the world’s first public hospitals and medical-training academies by the 4th century).

 

‘In 948 the Christian emperor of the Greek Roman Empire, Armanius, gave Abd-al-Rahman III, the Umayad caliph of Cordoba, Disocordes’s works in the original Greek.  But Muslims in Cordoba did not have anyone who knew Greek.  As a result, the Roman emperor also sent a Greek monk, who instructed the Muslim ruler’s slaves in Greek.’ (p. 66)

 

‘…Nor does one learn of the immense scientific knowledge, including Greek medical knowledge, that fell into Muslim hands upon the military conquest of Greek Christian Alexandria in 642.’  (Alexandria was the richest city in the Mediterranean world, with large libraries, public works, academies and a culture of technological innovation).

 

‘Famously, Muslims adopted the Visigoth horseshoe arch, seen in many Islamic buildings.  Of course the horseshoe arch was itself of Greco-Roman origin, and even before conquering Spain, Islam had imitated the architecture and construction techniques of the Christian Greek Empire in the Middle East and North Africa.’ (p. 67)

 

‘..Ibn Khaldun (celebrated Muslim-Tunisian historian) pointed out that that in North Africa the constructions built by the Arabs themselves did not last very long because of the Arabs’ sloppiness, poor materials, and lack of knowledge of building techniques….Celebrated ‘Muslim’ crafts, such as that of leather, existed before the invasion, with pre-Islamic Cordoba being an exporter to Europe.’

 

‘The famous mosque of Cordoba offers a particularly good example of how Muslims incorporated Hispano-Roman-Visigoth art into their own work.  In reputedly tolerant Muslim Cordoba, Abd al-Rahman I demolished the stately Christian basilica of Saint Vincent to build upon it his mosque.  (Perhaps with poetic justice, in 1236 King Ferdinand III turned the mosque back into a Catholic church: it is now the Cathedral of Cordoba, although tourists, tour guides, and many Spaniards and even scholars call, quite contrary to fact, ‘the mosque’ of Cordoba.)  The Islamic conquerors used the church of Saint Vincent’s main façade for the façade of their mosque.  They also cannibalised columns and other building materials from Hispano-Roman and Visigoth churches.  They adopted a Roman technique (opus vittatum mixtum) in alternating red brick and white stone in the arches, that alternating pattern is still visible today in some Roman aqueducts of Spain....’

 

‘In fact, the Greek-Roman culture of water and baths was part of the Hispano-Roman life of southern Spain, which has a warm, Mediterranean climate.  The Visigoths inherited the bath culture, which Muslims from arid Arabia happily took over when they encountered it.’

 

From these cursory summaries a pattern is evident.  Visigothic Christian Spain was a rich, lively civilisation, with the Goth elite ruling over a few million Hispano-Romans. Medicine, science, writing, culture, technology, engineering, art, public works and water usage, was common-place and advanced.  The Muslims brought very little to Spain when they invaded.  Perhaps some plants and vegetables from other conquered Christian territories of North Africa.  In reality even this is debateable.  Christian Spain in the 8th century was tied to the trading patterns of the Western and even Eastern Mediterranean.  There were strong cultural and commercial linkages between Spain and Byzantium, from plants, fruits and raw materials to manufactured consumer goods.  Advanced Christian civilisations abutted the coast, and the trade of products and services was both complicated and extended.  Culture, mores and learning would likewise have been eagerly transmitted and filtered. 

 

It is recorded and accepted that Jewish and Christian tradesman, artisans, craftsmen, and public officials were used by the Muslims within their Spanish domains, to erect a Muhammadan cultural layer on what already existed.  This included building Muhammadan sites and managing public affairs.  There is no archaeological evidence anywhere in Spain of great Muslim projects, building, or expansion of infrastructure, certainly none by ‘Muslims themselves’.  Edifices such as the mosque in Cordoba were built from, or with the materials of existing Christian structures, by Jews and Christians using well known Roman-Visigoth engineering techniques.  We can conclude from the evidence that the Muslim Golden Age of Spain is not only a myth, but as usual, a calumny, slander and debasement of Romano-Visigothic-Christian Spain.