Why is it that the Spanish had a rennaissance after the Arabs left Iberia? Surely, the 500 year Arab occupation of Spain contributed to European technology and culture. So, why is it that the occupation of Arab lands by Europeans left the Arabs shattered and in economic turmoil?

If you look at the Arab states as a whole and Iberia today, I don't think you can say that Arabs were responsible for the surge in technological and cultural advances. My guess would be that of the opposite, that Arab states actually held Spain back.

Originally posted by Alvaro da Luna
Why is it that the Spanish had a rennaissance after the Arabs left Iberia? Surely, the 500 year Arab occupation of Spain contributed to European technology and culture.

Because the Arabs at the time valued preserving and advancing culture and knowledge while the West was suffering under fuedilistic theocratical governments.

So, why is it that the occupation of Arab lands by Europeans left the Arabs shattered and in economic turmoil?

Because the Europeans at this time value preserving and advancing culture and knowledge while the Arabs are suffering under fuedilistic theocratical governments.

How?

and that spanish inqusition was certinaly a freind of science...

Originally posted by rmsharpe
If you look at the Arab states as a whole and Iberia today, I don't think you can say that Arabs were responsible for the surge in technological and cultural advances. My guess would be that of the opposite, that Arab states actually held Spain back.
Yeah, while the rest of the European kingdoms were arguing over whether women were human or not :rolleyes:

Originally posted by EzInKy
Because the Arabs at the time valued preserving and advancing culture and knowledge while the West was suffering under fuedilistic theocratical governments.

Because the Europeans at this time value preserving and advancing culture and knowledge while the Arabs are suffering under fuedilistic theocratical governments.

Thats what I call hitting the nail on the head :)

The Byzantine scholars were a major source of the surge in Western culture. The West had recovered from the fall of Rome.

The Arab knowledge was fused with the European knowledge (yes the Europeans did have some very helpful knowledge at that time). The Europeans did some important things in the Middle Ages with regards to technology and philosophy. The Slavic lands and Greek lands were quite advanced. The new Western nations were just getting established also.

Ezinky,

Do you not think the Arab empire was based largely on the Islamic religion and its laws? Byzantium seemed to be doing quite well under its government. It was partly the Mongol invasions that broke down Arab culture. There were numerous causes of the rises and falls of each civilization.

The Arabs didn't treat Spain as a colony, they actually ruled Spain. As in there was Arab princes of Spain (AFAIK). It wasn't just a case of a token presence living there to make sure the locals got on with making cheap produce for back home.
Also the Arabs were kicked out of Spain so that Arab institutions would have left with them. The Europeans gave independence to the modern day Arab nations(?) leaving behind some kind of structure to suit their (our) needs.

When the Arabs came to power Europe was still in the (relative) dark ages. The Arabs actually saved some European knowledge that might have been otherwise lost.

Think of mathematics, art, science, literature when you think about the Islamic influence in Spain.

Civilizations rise and fall. What can be said of the Arabs can also be said of the Greeks who although their golden age has long gone has left an idelible mark on the current world.

There are cycles though eg China which after a real trough in the last couple of centuries seems ready for a resurgence.

Originally posted by EzInKy
Because the Arabs at the time valued preserving and advancing culture and knowledge while the West was suffering under fuedilistic theocratical governments.

Because the Europeans at this time value preserving and advancing culture and knowledge while the Arabs are suffering under fuedilistic theocratical governments.


The West valued preserving knowledge too in the "medieval" period, which is why there is just as much ancient Latin literature in existence as ancient Greek. But to talk of "preserving" is to misunderstand these societies...the Latin West was the successor to the western Roman Empire, just like Byzantium was to the East...except the Byzantines valued Greek literature more. Both of these "medieval" civilizations saw a continuity with the Roman past, which Renaissance and later western writers distorted by creating an artificial distinction between "ancient" and "medieval". The Arabs preserved almost nothing of the classical canon that was not otherwise preserved. If we want to thank anyone for preserving our ancient literary heritage, then it is the churches of the Latin West and the Byzantine bookmen...not the Arabs, who got many of their Greek texts via Syriac translations anyway. Crediting the Arabs for this is one of the biggest lies in modern popular history!
:eek:

Originally posted by rmsharpe
If you look at the Arab states as a whole and Iberia today, I don't think you can say that Arabs were responsible for the surge in technological and cultural advances. My guess would be that of the opposite, that Arab states actually held Spain back.

Possibly. Spain was an intellectual powerhouse in late antiquity, before the Berber-Arab conquest. Spain (meaning Iberia) had no rival in those days. Isidore of Seville and Orosius - to name a couple - were its product. Spain has never since produced so many great thinkers/writers in so short a time.

Originally posted by calgacus
The West valued preserving knowledge too in the "medieval" period, which is why there is just as much ancient Latin literature in existence as ancient Greek. But to talk of "preserving" is to misunderstand these societies...the Latin West was the successor to the western Roman Empire, just like Byzantium was to the East...except the Byzantines valued Greek literature more. Both of these "medieval" civilizations saw a continuity with the Roman past, which Renaissance and later western writers distorted by creating an artificial distinction between "ancient" and "medieval". The Arabs preserved almost nothing of the classical canon that was not otherwise preserved. If we want to thank anyone for preserving our ancient literary heritage, then it is the churches of the Latin West and the Byzantine bookmen...not the Arabs, who got many of their Greek texts via Syriac translations anyway. Crediting the Arabs for this is one of the biggest lies in modern popular history!
:eek:

Being that my college essay days are long past, I gave a simple answer to a simple question. Though it is true a few monastaries did preserve some ancient writings the efforts were haphazard at best compared to the Andalusian libraries and universities and there were many Arab contributions to western knowledge, particularly in mathematics.

Originally posted by rmsharpe
If you look at the Arab states as a whole and Iberia today, I don't think you can say that Arabs were responsible for the surge in technological and cultural advances. My guess would be that of the opposite, that Arab states actually held Spain back.

Please go read some history before making such comments.

Originally posted by andrewgprv
Please go read some history before making such comments.

Hey, you need to say more than that (possibly he does as well). You have no idea how much or little history he has read. :o

Originally posted by Free Enterprise


Ezinky,

Do you not think the Arab empire was based largely on the Islamic religion and its laws?

Yes, but not the extreme fundamentalist form that is practiced in many Arab countries today.

EDIT: Or possibly it was, but Christian theocracy was even more oppressive than Islamic theocracy at the time.

Moved to History.

Because to Arabs the European world was a place to rule and live, not a colony. To the Europeans, the arab countries were but colonies to expand their interest and resources.

And the Arabs holding Spain back is utter crap. Certain people should stick to politics, anybody can argue that. History actually requires knowledge and study, not just semi-thought out comments to suit your view of the modern world. Spain under the Arabs reached a level that at it's height easily surpassed the Byzantine Empire of the time. Constantinople was largely responsible for the rennaisance yes, but it's golden age came long before Cordoba reached hers. Europeans rulers asked for their heirs to be educated at the university of Cordoba. That Spain had some worthy intellectuals before the Arab conquest might be true, but then again much of Europe had a few names here and there. In the long run it didn't amount to much. Considering how science and intellectualism was in Muslim Spain, to say that the Arabs held Spain back would mean saying that without Arab interference Iberia would have been on the same level as Constantinople, something I think many of you would be far less eager to argue.

Originally posted by Free Enterprise
Do you not think the Arab empire was based largely on the Islamic religion and its laws? Byzantium seemed to be doing quite well under its government. It was partly the Mongol invasions that broke down Arab culture. There were numerous causes of the rises and falls of each civilization.

The difference is that despite the tremendous role religion played in the Muslim caliphates, it was still allowed to flourish, contrary to the European kingdoms where the church used religion to halt scientific progress.

Originally posted by aaminion00
The difference is that despite the tremendous role religion played in the Muslim caliphates, it was still allowed to flourish, contrary to the European kingdoms where the church .

Sorry aaminion, that is complete hokum. The Church never "used religion to halt scientific progress". In actual fact, religious groups like the Franciscans and Jesuits did more to help scientific progress than any other institutions until the advent of the Reformation Universities.

Anyway, the idea of progressive, linear history is an invention of the Enlightenment. Such a conception never occcured to the Arab, Byzantine or Latin thinkers of the middle ages.

Originally posted by calgacus
Sorry aaminion, that is complete hokum. The Church never "used religion to halt scientific progress". In actual fact, religious groups like the Franciscans and Jesuits did more to help scientific progress than any other institutions until the advent of the Reformation Universities.

If it wasn't directly halting scientific progress it was steadfast denying it or encouraging an alternative view to suit the bible. There are so many examples I don't know which to point out. The whole earth moving around the sun might be a good start though.

Let's just put it this way, Spain finished driving out the Arabs in 1492. Something else really important also happened in Spain that same year which would was largely responsible for the Spanish renaissance.

Originally posted by rmsharpe
If you look at the Arab states as a whole and Iberia today, I don't think you can say that Arabs were responsible for the surge in technological and cultural advances. My guess would be that of the opposite, that Arab states actually held Spain back.

That is why words like Algebra, Alcohol, Altair, Almanach, Alchimia, Algorithm and Astrolab are arab words :rolleyes:

For a while, Al-Andaluz was certainly a place of great splendor in the arts, sciences or philosophy. The leader in the west at least. However, few people really immigrated here. The large majority of muslims were descendants of converted christian inhabitants, and in fact, it is debatable if there was ever a period when the muslims were the majority. Probably only in the mediterranean shores. Therefor what may have existed was a multi-religious society that combined the best of several worlds (arab, christian, jew).
That said, it is unquestionable that the arabs brought with them many technological advancements. In agriculture particulary, you'd be surprised to know how many portuguese words (and I can guess the same happening for spanish) are of arab origin. The arab language had also a high status, and as an example of it, at the time Toledo was captured, the christians of the city were performing the rites in arab. :eek:

As for the muslims holding Spain back, that's ridiculous. In the popular myths, the arab period is a golden era. All the old legends and stories I heard from my grandparents and older folks concerning the period speak of a time of happy times.

Greetings, McDread - haven't seen you in a while.

An important aspect about the Islamic presence in Iberia is its relationship with the rest of the Islamic world. Not long after Abd al-Rahman managed to subjugate most of Iberia in the mid-8th century he established Ummayad rule there, at a time when the Ummayads had just been violently booted from power elsewhere. Al-Rahman himself had fled from Syria when the Abbasid caliphate took over. Islamic Iberia was very isolated politically from the rest of the Moslem world, and indeed Cordoba flourished at a time when the Moslem learning centers to the east were in severe decline, being suppressed by clerics who were alarmed by scholasticism and subordinated it to faith. Only Iberia held out as a major learning center in the Islamic world centuries after Baghdad's study centers had fallen silent. The Moorish Moslem state was unique in the Islamic world.

An excellent book I recommend on this subject is Bernard Lewis' c. 1982 book, The Moslem Discovery of Europe, which explores European-Islamic relations through history from the Moslems' perspective.

The Islamic period of Spain's (and Portugal's) history is a relatively happy one, certainly for the most part a prosperous one. In its later years the single city of Cordoba (as a Moslem city) had more libraries and schools than all of Christian Europe combined. Cordoba in this same period was something like the 2nd largest city in the world, second only to the Chinese capital at the time; no city in Christian Europe could begin to compare to Cordoba's population size. It also served as an important cultural meeting place for three cultures (Moslem, Christian, Jewish) to interact and exchange technologies and philosophies. The great mosque in Cordoba was built on the ruins of a Roman temple, an apt analogy for how all great civilizations build their greatness by borrowing heavily from neighboring civilizations, past and present. There is another great book by Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam, that explores how early Moslem scholars studied and expanded on old Greek and Roman texts they found, and what impact that had on Islamic civilization. And of course, as others have already mentioned Europe itself re-discovered much of its Classical heritage through the Moslems and Sephardic Jews. Some of the basic elements that fueled the Renaissance in Italy in the 13th and 14th centuries were born of Classical texts re-discovered from the Moslems, such as Aristotle, etc.

The Christian and Islamic civilizations have had a long and mostly mutually-hostile history but nonetheless there has been an amazing level of cultural exchange and impact between the two that has (mostly) benefitted both, despite their animosity. Islamic Iberia was a crucial component in that exchange.

Side note: The modern Moslem immigrants who perpetrated the recent bombing of the train line in Madrid claimed to want to revive the old Islamic state in Spain but I strongly suspect that were they transported back to Cordoba in its Moslem golden years, they would find themselves arrested and in deep trouble; Islamic Iberia did not suffer radicals or fanatics, preferring to emphasize prosperity and justice instead. These fundamentalist Moslems want an Taliban-style Islamic state, not an Ummayad-style.

Interesting link here (http://www.themodernreligion.com/quotations_moorish.htm) on Moorish Iberia.

The arabs were more advance in science and technology than the spanish in the middle age. Spain was feudal until the XVIII century. They were backwards because they kept the catholic church commanding culture, they kept the perspective of the middle age man, they didn't see free commerce as a good thing. They didn't have manufactured production and were dominated by England and Holland in economical terms. They imported manufacture, paying it with the gold from the colonies. Their production was not competitive enough, it was not because of the arabs.

Originally posted by MCdread
For a while, Al-Andaluz was certainly a place of great splendor in the arts, sciences or philosophy. The leader in the west at least. However, few people really immigrated here. The large majority of muslims were descendants of converted christian inhabitants, and in fact, it is debatable if there was ever a period when the muslims were the majority. Probably only in the mediterranean shores. Therefor what may have existed was a multi-religious society that combined the best of several worlds (arab, christian, jew).
That said, it is unquestionable that the arabs brought with them many technological advancements. In agriculture particulary, you'd be surprised to know how many portuguese words (and I can guess the same happening for spanish) are of arab origin. The arab language had also a high status, and as an example of it, at the time Toledo was captured, the christians of the city were performing the rites in arab. :eek:

As for the muslims holding Spain back, that's ridiculous. In the popular myths, the arab period is a golden era. All the old legends and stories I heard from my grandparents and older folks concerning the period speak of a time of happy times.

McDread, I bellieve that the christian people in all muslim Iberia used the arab in their rites (mozarabes in Spanish)...

Side note: we wrote Al-Andalus.... do you write Al-Andaluz?

Originally posted by rmsharpe
My guess would be that of the opposite, that Arab states actually held Spain back.

the arabs helped plant the seeds of the renaissance, Cordova had running water and huge gardens at the time of Arab rules, while in many other european cities were not doing so well

i agree with mazzz, muslim Iberia (and it was muslim Iberia and not arab Iberia because the emigration, as Macdread told before me, was minimum and most of the population was iberan converted to islam) was a place for science and culture, at least until the second and third wave of north african attacks.

Aristoteles and Plato´s philosophy were rescued by the Arabs, maintained and developed in a new philosophy called Falsafa. This was a fundamental factor for the European renaissance.
In fact, in 12th century the Falsafa reaches its maximum splendor in Al-Andalus precissely. While, in the christian Europe they didnt even know who in hell Aristoteles was.

Originally posted by yaroslav
McDread, I bellieve that the christian people in all muslim Iberia used the arab in their rites (mozarabes in Spanish)...

Side note: we wrote Al-Andalus.... do you write Al-Andaluz?

Yes, Al Andaluz. The old province of Lusitania is roughly Garb Al-Andaluz. Oh, and we write moçárabes. :)

Originally posted by Thorgalaeg

In fact, in 12th century the Falsafa reaches its maximum splendor in Al-Andalus precissely. While, in the christian Europe they didnt even know who in hell Aristoteles was.


Hmm... I'd say if there was anyone they knew in the cultivated circles of Europe, it was Aristotles.

Before 12th century? Well, maybe in some lost monesteries they kept some Aristotles books. But even there Aristoteles was no very well considerated.

It was AFTER Aristotles books traduced from arabe to latin come from Middle Orient to Al Andalus and then to the christian Europe, when Aristotelic philosophy was adopted by Thomas de Aquino and the scolastics.

Deleted by moi

alot of people here are giving credit to the Arabs for the European Renaissance this is wrong the Byzantine Empire had much more influence on Europe then the Arabs

the Arabs did however have more influence on Iberia then the Byzantines had.