Al-Andalus ( ) was the
Arabic name given to the parts of the
Iberian
Peninsula
and Septimania
governed by Arab and North African Muslims
(given the generic name of Moors), at various
times in the period between 711 and 1492.
Following
the conquest, al-Andalus was divided into five administrative areas
roughly corresponding to Andalusia
, Galicia
and Lusitania, Castile and Léon
, Aragon
and Catalonia
, and Septimania
. As a political domain or domains, it
successively constituted a province of the
Umayyad Caliphate, initiated by the Caliph
Al-Walid I (711–750); the Emirate of Córdoba (c.
750–929); the
Caliphate of
Córdoba (929–1031); and the Caliphate of Córdoba's
taifa (successor) kingdoms.
In succeeding centuries, Al-Andalus became a province of the
Berber Muslim
dynasties of the
Almoravids and
Almohads, subsequently fragmenting into a number of
minor states, most notably the
Emirate of Granada.
For large parts of its
history, particularly under the Caliphate of Córdoba, Al-Andalus
was a beacon of learning, and the city of Córdoba
became one of the leading cultural and economic
centres in both the Mediterranean basin and the Islamic
world.
For much of its history, Al-Andalus existed in conflict with
Christian kingdoms to the north.
In 1085,
Alfonso VI of León
and Castile captured Toledo
,
precipitating a gradual decline until, by 1236, with the fall of
Córdoba, the Emirate of Granada remained the only Muslim-ruled
territory in what is now Spain
.
The
Portuguese
Reconquista culminated
in 1249 with the conquest of the Algarve by
Afonso III. In 1238,
Granada officially became a
tributary
state to the Kingdom of Castile, then ruled by
Ferdinand III. On January 2, 1492,
Muhammad XII surrendered
complete control of Granada to
Ferdinand and
Isabella,
Los Reyes Católicos, "The
Catholic Monarchs".
Etymology of al-Andalus
The
etymology of the word "al-Andalus" is
disputed. Furthermore, the extent of Iberian territory encompassed
by the name changed over the centuries. As a designation for Iberia
or its southern portion, the name is first attested by inscriptions
on coins minted by the new Muslim government in Iberia circa 715
(the uncertainty in the year is due to the fact that the coins were
bilingual in Latin and Arabic and the two inscriptions differ as to
the year of minting).
At least three specific etymologies have been proposed in Western
scholarship, all presuming that the name arose after the
Roman period in the Iberian Peninsula's
history. Their originators or defenders have been historians.
Recently, linguistics expertise has been brought to bear on the
issue. Arguments from
toponymy (the study
of place names), history, and language structure demonstrate the
lack of substance in all preceding proposals, and evidence has been
presented that the name predates the Roman occupation rather than
postdates it.
A major objection to all earlier proposals is that the very name
Andaluz (the equivalent of
Andalus in Spanish spelling)
exists in several places in mountainous areas of Castile.
Furthermore, the fragment
and- is common in Spanish place
names, and the fragment
-luz also occurs several times
across Spain.
Older proposals
The name was traditionally believed to be derived from "
Vandal" (the
Germanic
tribe that colonized parts of Iberia from 407 to 429), however,
there is no historical evidence to support this. This proposal is
sometimes associated with the 19th century historian
Reinhart Dozy, but it predates him and he
recognized some of its shortcomings. Although he accepted that
"al-Andalus" derived from "Vandal", he believed that geographically
it referred only to the harbor from which the Vandals departed
Iberia for Africa—the location of which harbour was unknown.
Another proposal is that "Andalus" is an Arabic language version of
the name "
Atlantis". This idea has recently
been defended by the Spanish historian
Vallvé, but purely on the grounds that it is
allegedly plausible phonetically and would explain several
toponymic facts (no historical evidence was
offered). In Modern Standard Arabic, the name for "Atlantis" is
aţlānţis.
Vallvé writes:
Arabic texts offering the first mentions of the island
of al-Andalus and the sea of al-Andalus become extraordinarily
clear if we substitute this expressions with "Atlántida" or
"Atlantic".
The same can be said with reference to
Hercules and the Amazons whose island, according to Arabic
commentaries of these Greek and
Latin legends, was located in jauf
al-Andalus—that is, to the north or interior of the Atlantic Ocean
.
The "Island of al-Andalus" is mentioned in an anonymous Arabic
chronicle of the conquest of Iberia composed two to three centuries
after the fact. It is identified as the location of the landfall of
the advance guard of the
Moorish invasion
of Iberia. The chronicle also says that "Island of al-Andalus"
was subsequently renamed "Island of Tarifa". The preliminary
invasion force of a few hundred, led by the Berber chief, Tarif abu
Zura, seized the first bit of land that is encountered after
crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in 710. The main invasion force
led by Tariq ibn Ziyad followed them a year later. The landfall,
now known in Spain as either Punta Marroquí or Punta de Tarifa, is
in fact the southern tip of an islet, presently known as Isla de
Tarifa or Isla de las Palomas, just offshore of the Iberian
mainland.
This testimony of the Arab chronicle, the modern name "Isla de
Tarifa", and the above mentioned toponymic evidence that "Andaluz"
is a name of pre-Roman origin taken together lead to the
supposition that the "Island of Andalus" is the present day Isla de
Tarifa, which lies just offshore from the modern day Spanish city
of Tarifa. The extension of the scope of the designation
"Al-Andalus" from a single islet to all of Iberia has several
historical precedents.
In the 1980s, the historian Halm, also rejecting the "Vandal"
proposal, originated an innovative alternative. Halm took as his
points of departure ancient reports that Germanic tribes in general
were reported to have distributed conquered lands by having members
draw lots, and that Iberia during the period of
Visigothic rule was sometimes known to outsiders
by a Latin name, Gothica Sors, whose meaning is 'lot Gothland'.
Halm thereupon speculated that the Visigoths themselves might have
called their new lands "lot lands" and done so in their own
language. However, the Gothic language version of the term
Gothica Sors is not attested. Halm claimed to have been
able to reconstruct it, proposing that it was
*landahlauts
(the asterisk is the standard symbol among linguists for a
linguistic form that is merely proposed, not attested). Halm then
suggested that the hypothetical Gothic language term gave rise to
both the attested Latin term, Gothica Sors (by translation of the
meaning), and the Arabic name, Al-Andalus (by phonetic imitation).
However, Halm did not offer evidence (historical or linguistic)
that any of the language developments in his argument had in fact
occurred.
The Emirate and Caliphate of Córdoba
Under the
orders of the Great Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid
I, Tariq ibn-Ziyad led a small
force that landed at Gibraltar
on April 30, 711. After a decisive victory
at the
Battle of Guadalete on
July 19, 711, Tariq ibn-Ziyad brought most of the Iberian Peninsula
under Muslim occupation in a seven-year campaign.
They crossed the
Pyrenees
and occupied parts of southern France, but were
defeated by the Frank Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732.
However
Poitiers did not stop the progress of the Berber Arabs and in 734
Avignon
was
occupied, Arles
was looted
and the whole of Provence was
overrun. In 737, the Muslims reached
Burgundy, where they captured a large
quantity of slaves to take back to Iberia.
Charles Martel
responded with continuous campaigns against the Muslims in the
south of Gaul between 736 and 739 and twenty years later, in 759,
the Franks under the leadership of Pepin
the Short expelled the Muslims from Septimania
which was one of the five administrative areas of
Al-Andalus .
The Iberian peninsula, except for the
Kingdom of Asturias, became part of the
expanding
Umayyad empire, under the name of
al-Andalus.
The earliest attestation of this Arab name
is a dinar coin, preserved in the
Archaeological Museum in Madrid
, dating from
five years after the conquest (716). The coin bears the word
"al-Andalus" in Arabic script on one side and the Iberian Latin
"Span" on the obverse.
At first, al-Andalus was ruled by governors appointed by the
Caliph, most ruling for periods of under
three years. However, from 740, a series of civil wars between
various Muslim groups in Iberia resulted in the breakdown of
Caliphal control, with
Yūsuf al-Fihri, who
emerged as the main winner, effectively becoming an independent
ruler.
In 750, the
Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads
for control of the great
Arab
empire.
But in 756, the exiled Umayyad prince
Abd-ar-Rahman I (later titled
Al-Dākhil) ousted Yūsuf al-Fihri to establish himself as
the Emir of Córdoba
. He refused to submit to the Abbasid caliph,
as Abbasid forces had killed most of his family. Over a thirty year
reign, he established a tenuous rule over much of al-Andalus,
overcoming partisans of both the al-Fihri family and of the Abbasid
caliph.
For the next century and a half, his descendants continued as emirs
of Córdoba, with nominal control over the rest of
al-Andalus and sometimes even parts of western
North Africa, but with real control,
particularly over the marches along the Christian border,
vacillating depending on the competence of the individual emir.
Indeed, the power of emir
Abdallah
ibn Muhammad (circa 900) did not extend beyond Córdoba
itself.But his grandson
Abd-al-Rahman
III, who succeeded him in 912, not only rapidly restored
Umayyad power throughout al-Andalus but extended it into western
North Africa as well.
In 929 he proclaimed himself Caliph, elevating the emirate to a
position competing in prestige not only with the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad
but also the Shi'ite
caliph in Tunis
—with whom he
was competing for control of North Africa.
The period of the Caliphate is seen by Muslim writers as the
golden age of al-Andalus. Crops
produced using irrigation, along with food imported from the Middle
East, provided the area around Córdoba and some other
Andalusī cities with an agricultural economic sector by
far the most advanced in Europe.
Among European cities, Córdoba under the
Caliphate, with a population of perhaps 500,000, eventually
overtook Constantinople
as the largest and most prosperous city in
Europe. Within the Islamic world, Córdoba was one of the
leading cultural centres. The work of its most important
philosophers and scientists (notably
Abulcasis and
Averroes)
had a major influence on the intellectual life of medieval
Europe.
Muslims and non-Muslims often came from abroad to study in the
famous libraries and universities of
al-Andalus after the
reconquista of Toledo in 1085. The most noted of these was
Michael Scot (c. 1175 to c.
1235), who took the
works of Ibn Rushd ("Averroes") and
Ibn Sina ("Avicenna") to Italy
. This
transmission was to have a significant impact on the formation of
the European
Renaissance.
The First Taifa Period
The Córdoba Caliphate effectively collapsed during a ruinous civil
war between 1009 and 1013, although it was not finally abolished
until 1031.
Al-Andalus then broke up into a number of
mostly independent states called
taifas.
These were generally too weak to defend
themselves against repeated raids and demands for tribute from the
Christian states to the north and west, which were known to the
Muslims as "the Galician nations", and which had spread from their
initial strongholds in Galicia
, Asturias
, Cantabria
, the Basque country and the Carolingian Marca Hispanica to become the Kingdoms
of Navarre
, León
, Portugal
, Castile and
Aragon
and the County of
Barcelona. Eventually raids turned into conquests, and
in response the
taifa kings were forced to request help
from the
Almoravids, Islamic rulers of the
Maghreb. Their desperate maneuver would
eventually fall to their disadvantage, however, as the Moravids
they had summoned from the south went on to conquer many of the
taifa kingdoms.
Almoravids, Almohads and Marinids
In 1086
the Almoravid ruler of Morocco Yusuf ibn Tashfin was invited by the
Muslim princes in Iberia to defend them against Alfonso VI, King of Castile and León
. In that year, Yusuf ibn Tashfin crossed the straits to
Algeciras
and inflicted a severe defeat on the Christians at
the az-Zallaqah.
By 1094,
Yusuf ibn Tashfin had removed all
Muslim princes in Iberia and annexed their states, except for the
one at Zaragoza
. He regained Valencia
from the Christians.
The
Almoravids were succeeded in the 12th
century by the Almohads, another Berber
dynasty, after the victory of Abu
Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur over the Castilian Alfonso VIII at the Battle of
Alarcos
. In 1212 a coalition of Christian kings under
the leadership of the Castilian Alfonso VIII defeated the Almohads
at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa
. The Almohads continued to rule Al Andalus
for another decade, but with much reduced power and prestige; and
the civil wars following the death of
Abu Ya'qub Yusuf II rapidly led to
the re-establishment of taifas. The taifas, newly independent but
now weakened, were quickly conquered by Portugal, Castile and
Aragon.
After the fall of Murcia
(1243) and
the Algarve (1249), only the Emirate of Granada survived as a Muslim
state, but only as a tributary of Castile. Most of its tribute
was paid in gold from present-day Mali
and Burkina Faso
that was carried to Iberia through the merchant
routes of the Sahara.
The last
Muslim threat to the Christian kingdoms was the rise of the
Marinids in Morocco during the 14th
century, who took Granada into their sphere of influence and
occupied some of its cities, like Algeciras
. However, they were unable to take Tarifa
, which held
out until the arrival of the Castilian Army led by Alfonso XI. The Castilian king, helped by
Afonso IV of Portugal and
Pedro IV of Aragon, decisively
defeated the Marinids at the
Battle of
Salado in 1340 and took Algeciras in 1344.
Gibraltar
, then under Granadian rule, was besieged in
1349–1350, Alfonso XI along with most of his army perished by the
Black Death. His successor,
Pedro of Castile, made peace with
the Muslims and turned his attention to Christian lands, starting a
period of almost 150 years of rebellions and wars between the
Christian states that secured the survival of Granada.
In 1469 the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile
signaled the launching of the final assault on the Emirate of
Granada (Gharnatah). The King and Queen convinced the Pope to
declare their war a crusade.
The Christians crushed one center of
resistance after another and finally, in January 1492, after a long
siege, the Moorish sultan, Muhammad XII, surrendered the
fortress palace, the renowned Alhambra
, itself.
Society
The society of Al-Andalus was made up of three main religious
groups: Christians, Muslims and Jews. The Muslims, though united on
the religious level, had several ethnic divisions, the main being
the distinction between the
Berbers and the
Arabs.
Mozarabs were
Christians that had long lived under Muslim rule and so had adopted
many Arabic customs, art and words, while still maintaining their
Christian rituals and their own Romance languages. Each of these
communities inhabited distinct neighborhoods in the cities.
In the
10th century a massive conversion of Christians took place, so that
muladies (Muslims of ethnic Iberia
origin) comprised the majority of the population of
Al-Andalus by the century's end.
The Berbers, who made up the bulk of the invaders, lived in the
mountainous regions of what is now the north of Portugal and in the
Meseta
Central, while the Arabs settled in the south and in the Ebro
Valley in the northeast. The Jews worked mainly as tax collectors,
in trade, or as doctors or ambassadors. At the end of the fifteenth
century there were about 50,000 Jews in Granada and roughly 100,000
in the whole of Islamic Iberia.
Non-Muslims under the Caliphate
Treatment of non-Muslims
The non-Muslims were given the status of
ahl al-dhimma (the people under protection), adults
paying a "
Jizya" tax, equal to one Dinar per
year with exemptions for old people, women, children and the
disabled, whenever there was a Christian authority in the
community. When there was no Christian authority, the non-Muslims
were given the status of
majus.
The treatment of non-Muslims in the Caliphate has been a subject of
considerable debate among scholars and commentators, especially
those interested in drawing parallels to the coexistence of Muslims
and non-Muslims in the modern world.
María Rosa Menocal, a specialist in
Iberian literature, has argued that "tolerance was an inherent
aspect of Andalusian society". In her view, the Jewish and
Christian
dhimmis living under the Caliphate,
while allowed fewer rights than Muslims, were much better off than
in other parts of Christian Europe.
Jews constituted more
than 5% of the population. Jews from other parts of Europe
emigrated to Al-Andalus, where they were treated with dignity, as
were Christians of sects regarded as
heretical by various European Christian states.
Al-Andalus was a key center of Jewish life during the early
Middle Ages, producing important
scholars and one of the most stable and wealthy Jewish communities.
But there is no consensus among scholars that the relationship
between Jews and Muslims was indeed a paragon of interfaith
relations.
Bernard Lewis takes issue
with this view, arguing its modern use is ahistorical and
apologetic. He argues that Islam traditionally did not offer
equality nor even pretended that it did, arguing that it would have
been both a "theological as well as a logical absurdity."
Rise and fall of Muslim power
The Caliphate treated non-Muslims differently at different times.
The longest period of tolerance began after 912, with the reign of
Abd-ar-Rahman III and his son,
Al-Hakam II where the Jews of Al-Andalus
prospered, devoting themselves to the service of the
Caliphate of Cordoba, to the study of
the sciences, and to commerce and industry, especially to trading
in
silk and
slaves, in
this way promoting the prosperity of the country. Southern Iberia
became an asylum for the oppressed Jews of other countries.
Christians, braced by the example of their coreligionists across
the borders of
al-Andalus, sometimes asserted the claims
of Christianity and knowingly courted
martyrdom, even during these tolerant periods. For
example, 48 Christians of Córdoba were decapitated for religious
offences against Islam. They became known as the
Martyrs of Córdoba. These deaths
played out, not in a single spasm of religious unrest, but over an
extended period of time; dissenters were fully aware of the fates
of their predecessors and chose to protest against Islamic
rule.
Under the
Almoravids and the
Almohads there may have been intermittent
persecution of Jews, but sources are extremely scarce and do not
give a clear picture, though the situation appears to have
deteriorated after 1160.
During
these successive waves of violence against non-Muslims, many Jewish
and even Muslim scholars left the Muslim-controlled portion of
Iberia for the then-still relatively tolerant city of Toledo
, which had been reconquered in 1085 by Christian forces.
Some Jews joined the armies of the Christians (about 40,000), while
others joined the
Almoravids in the fight
against
Alfonso VI of
Castile.
The 11th century saw Muslim pogroms against Jews in Spain; those
occurred in Cordoba in 1011 and in
Granada in 1066.
The
Almohads, who had taken control of the
Almoravids' Maghribi and Andalusian territories by 1147, far
surpassed the
Almoravides in
fundamentalist outlook, and they treated the
dhimmis
harshly. Faced with the choice of either death or conversion, many
Jews and Christians emigrated. Some, such as the family of
Maimonides, fled east to more tolerant Muslim
lands, while others went northward to settle in the growing
Christian kingdoms.
Medieval Spain and
Portugal was the scene of
almost constant
warfare between Muslims and
Christians. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus
to ravage the Christian Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms, bringing
back booty and
slaves.
In raid against
Lisbon
in 1189,
for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child
captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack
upon Silves in 1191, took 3,000 Christian
slaves.
The last
Muslim bastion, Nasrid Granada
fell around 1492. By this time the
Moors in
Castile numbered "half a million
within the realm, 100,000 had died or been enslaved, 200,000
emigrated, and 200,000 remained as the residual population. Many of
the Muslim elite, including
Muhammad XII, who had been given the
area of the Alpujarra mountain as a principality, found life under
Christian rule intolerable and passed over into north Africa"
Culture
C.W. Previte-Orton writes in his Cambridge medieval history,
The brilliant Saracenic
civilization of Moslem Spain rendered the Moors, even during their declines under the Reyes
de Taifas, the most cultured people of the West.
Many tribes, religions and races coexisted in al-Andalus, each
contributing to the intellectual prosperity of Andalusia. Literacy
in Islamic Iberia was far more widespread than any other country of
the West.
From the earliest days, the Umayyads wanted to be seen as
intellectual rivals to the Abbasids, and for Córdoba to have
libraries and educational institutions to rival Baghdad's. Although
there was a clear rivalry between the two powers, freedom to travel
between the two Caliphates was allowed, which helped spread new
ideas and innovations over time.
In the
10th century, the city of Cordoba
had 700 mosques, 60,000
palaces, and 70 libraries, the largest of which had up to 600,000
books. In comparison, the largest library in
Christian Europe at the time had no more than 400 manuscripts,
while the University
of Paris
library still had only 2,000 books later in the
14th century. In addition, as many as 60,000
treatises,
poems,
polemics and
compilations were published each year in
Al-Andalus. In comparison, modern Spain
published 46,330 books
per year as of 1996.
Philosophy
Andalusian philosophy
The historian
Said Al-Andalusi
wrote that Caliph
Abd-ar-Rahman
III had collected libraries of books and granted patronage to
scholars of
medicine and "ancient
sciences". Later,
al-Mustansir (
Al-Hakam II) went yet further, building a
university and libraries in Córdoba. Córdoba became one of the
world's leading centres of medicine and philosophical debate.
However, when Al-Hakam's son
Hisham II
took over, real power was ceded to the
hajib,
al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir. Al-Mansur
was a distinctly religious man and disapproved of the sciences of
astronomy,
logic and
especially
astrology, so much so that many
books on these subjects, which had been preserved and collected at
great expense by
Al-Hakam II, were
burned publicly. However, with
Al-Mansur's death in 1002 interest in philosophy revived. Numerous
scholars emerged, including
Abu
Uthman Ibn Fathun, whose masterwork was the philosophical
treatise "
Tree of Wisdom". An
outstanding scholar in astronomy and astrology was
Maslamah Ibn Ahmad al-Majriti
(died 1008), an intrepid traveller who journeyed all over the
Islamic world and beyond, and who kept in touch with the
Brethren of Purity. Indeed, it is said to
have been he who brought the 51 "
Epistles of the Brethren of
Purity" to
al-Andalus and who added the compendium to
this work, although it is quite possible that it was added later by
another scholar of the name al-Majriti. Another book attributed to
al-Majriti is the
Ghayat
al-Hakim "The Aim of the Sage", a book which explored a
synthesis of
Platonism with
Hermetic philosophy. Its use of
incantations led the book to be widely dismissed in later years,
although the
Sufi communities kept studies of
it.
A prominent follower of al-Majriti was the philosopher and geometer
Abu al-Hakam al-Kirmani. A
follower of his in turn was the great Abu Bakr Ibn al-Sayigh,
usually known in the Arab world as
Ibn
Bajjah, "
Avempace"
The Andalusian philosopher
Averroes
(1126–1198) is considered the father of secular thought in Europe
and possibly the most important among them. He was the founder of
the
Averroism school of philosophy, and
his works and commentaries had an impact on the rise of
secular thought in
Western Europe. He also developed the concept
of "
existence precedes
essence".
Another influential Andalusian philosopher who had a significant
influence on
modern philosophy was
Ibn Tufail. His
philosophical novel,
Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, translated into
Latin as
Philosophus Autodidactus in 1671, developed the
themes of empiricism, tabula rasa,
nature versus nurture,
condition of possibility,
materialism, and
Molyneux's Problem. European scholars and
writers influenced by this novel include
John
Locke,
Gottfried Leibniz,
Melchisédech
Thévenot,
John Wallis,
Christiaan Huygens,
George Keith,
Robert
Barclay, the
Quakers, and
Samuel Hartlib.G. J. Toomer (1996),
Eastern Wisedome and Learning: The Study of Arabic in
Seventeenth-Century England, p. 222,
Oxford University Press, ISBN
0198202911.
Jewish philosophy and culture
With the relative tolerance of
al-Andalus and the
decline of the previous centre of Jewish thought in Babylonia,
al-Andalus became the centre of Jewish intellectual
endeavours. Poets and commentators like
Judah Halevi (1086–1145) and
Dunash ben Labrat (920–990) contributed to
the cultural life of
al-Andalus, but the area was even
more important to the development of Jewish philosophy. A stream of
Jewish philosophers, cross-fertilizing with Muslim philosophers,
(see
joint Jewish
and Islamic philosophies) culminated in a widely celebrated
Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages,
Maimonides (1135–1205), though he did not
actually do any of his work in
al-Andalus, as, when he was
13, his family fled persecution by the
Almohads.
Sciences
Astronomy
In the 11th-12th centuries, astronomers in Al-Andalus took up the
challenge earlier posed by
Ibn
al-Haytham, namely to develop an alternate non-Ptolemaic
configuration that evaded the errors found in the
Ptolemaic model. Like Ibn al-Haytham's
critique, the anonymous Andalusian work,
al-Istidrak ala
Batlamyus (
Recapitulation regarding Ptolemy),
included a list of objections to Ptolemic astronomy. This marked
the beginning of the Andalusian school's
revolt against Ptolemaic astronomy, otherwise known
as the "Andalusian Revolt".
In the late 11th century,
al-Zarqali
(Latinized as Arzachel) discovered that the orbits of the
planets are
elliptic
orbits and not circular orbits, though he still followed the
Ptolemaic model.
In the 12th century,
Averroes rejected the
eccentric deferents introduced
by
Ptolemy. He rejected the
Ptolemaic model and instead argued for a
strictly
concentric model of the
universe. He wrote the following criticism on the Ptolemaic model
of planetary motion:
Averroes' contemporary,
Maimonides, wrote
the following on the planetary model proposed by
Ibn Bajjah (Avempace):
Ibn Bajjah also proposed the
Milky Way
galaxy to be made up of many stars but that
it appears to be a continuous image due to the effect of
refraction in the
Earth's atmosphere. Later in the 12th
century, his successors
Ibn Tufail and
Nur Ed-Din Al Betrugi
(Alpetragius) were the first to propose planetary models without
any
equant,
epicycles or eccentrics. Al-Betrugi
was also the first to discover that the planets are
self-luminous. Their configurations, however,
were not accepted due to the numerical predictions of the planetary
positions in their models being less accurate than that of the
Ptolemaic model, mainly because they followed
Aristotle's notion of perfect circular
motion.
Earth sciences
In the late 11th century, Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ma'udh, who
lived in Al-Andalus, wrote a work on
optics
later translated into Latin as
Liber de crepisculis, which
was mistakenly attributed to
Alhazen.
This was a short work containing an estimation of the angle of
depression of the sun at the beginning of the morning
twilight and at the end of the evening twilight,
and an attempt to calculate on the basis of this and other data the
height of the atmospheric moisture responsible for the refraction
of the sun's rays. Through his experiments, he obtained the
accurate value of 18°, which comes close to the modern value.
In the early 13th century, the Andalusian-
Arabian biologist Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati developed an
early
scientific method for
botany, introducing
empirical and
experimental techniques in the testing,
description and identification of numerous
materia medica, and separating unverified
reports from those supported by actual tests and
observations. His student
Ibn al-Baitar published the
Kitab al-Jami
fi al-Adwiya al-Mufrada, which is considered one of the
greatest botanical compilations in history, and was a botanical
authority for centuries. It contains details on at least 1,400
different
plants,
foods,
and
drugs, 300 of which were his own original
discoveries. The
Kitab al-Jami fi al-Adwiya al-Mufrada was
also influential in
Europe after it was
translated into
Latin in 1758.
Medicine
Córdoba alone was reported to have had as many as 50
Bimaristan hospitals at the time of
Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis).
Sir
John Bagot Glubb wrote:
Muslim
physicians from Al-Andalus
contributed significantly to the field of
medicine, including the subjects of
anatomy and
physiology.
Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi
(Abulcasis), regarded as the "father of modern surgery",
contributed greatly to the discipline of medical
surgery with his
Kitab
al-Tasrif ("
Book of Concessions"), a 30-volume
medical
encyclopedia which was later
translated to
Latin and used in European and
Muslim
medical schools for centuries.
He helped lay the foudations for modern
surgery, with his
Kitab al-Tasrif, in which he invented numerous
surgical instruments, including
the first instruments unique to women, as well as the surgical uses
of
catgut and
forceps,
the
ligature,
surgical needle,
scalpel,
curette,
retractor, surgical
spoon,
sound, surgical
hook, surgical
rod, and
specula, and bone
saw.
From the 10th century, Muslim physicians and surgeons were applying
purified
alcohol to wounds as an
antiseptic agent. Surgeons in Islamic Spain
utilized special methods for maintaining antisepsis prior to and
during surgery. They also originated specific protocols for
maintaining
hygiene during the
post-operative period.
Their success rate was so high that
dignitaries throughout Europe came to Córdoba
, Spain
, to be
treated at what was comparably the "Mayo Clinic
" of the Middle Ages.
Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) was the earliest known
experimental surgeon. In the 12th
century, he was responsible for introducing the
experimental scientific method into surgery, as he was
the first to employ
animal testing in
order to experiment with surgical procedures before applying them
to human patients. He also performed the first
dissections and postmortem
autopsies on humans as well as animals. He also
established
surgery as an independent
discipline of medicine, by introducing a
training course designed specifically for future
surgeons, in order that they be qualified
before being allowed to perform operations independently, and for
defining the roles of a
general
practitioner and a surgeon in the treatment of a surgical
condition.
In Islamic Spain,
Abu al-Qasim and
Ibn Zuhr, among other Muslim surgeons,
performed hundreds of
surgeries under
inhalant
anesthesia with the use of
narcotic-soaked
sponges which were placed over the face. Muslim
physicians also introduced the anesthetic value of
opium derivatives during the
Middle Ages.
Ibn Sina
(Avicenna) wrote about its medical uses in
The Canon of Medicine, which later
influenced the works of Paracelsus.
Sigrid Hunke wrote:
During the
Black Death bubonic plague in 14th century Al-Andalus,
Ibn Khatima and
Ibn al-Khatib
hypothesized that infectious diseases are caused by minute
"contagious entities" which enter the human body.
Psychology and sociology
Abu al-Qasim (Abulcasis), the father of
modern
surgery, developed material and
technical designs which are still used in
neurosurgery.
Ibn Zuhr
(Avenzoar) gave the first accurate descriptions on
neurological disorders, including
meningitis, intracranial
thrombophlebitis, and
mediastinal germ cell tumors,
and made contributions to modern
neuropharmacology.
Averroes suggested the existence of
Parkinson's disease and attributed
photoreceptor properties to the
retina.
Maimonides
wrote about
neuropsychiatric
disorders and described
rabies and
belladonna intoxication.
Said Al-Andalusi (1029–1168) stated
that people in all corners of the world have a common origin but
differ in certain aspects: "
ethics,
appearance, landscape and language".
He treated the
history of Egypt as part of the
universal history of all humanity,
and he linked Egypt and Sudan
to the
history of the Arabs through a common
ancestry. They linked ancient Egypt to
Muslim history through
Hajar (Hagar), the wife of
Ibrahim (Abraham) and mother of
Ismail (Ishmael), the
patriarch of the Arabs, thus making Hajar the mother of the
Arabs.
Translation movement
Contributing to the growth of European science was the major search
by European scholars for new learning which they could only find
among Muslims, especially in Islamic Spain and
Sicily. These scholars
translated new scientific and philosophical texts from
Arabic into
Latin.
One of the most productive translators in Spain was
Gerard of Cremona, who translated 87 books
from Arabic to Latin,including
Muhammad ibn
Mūsā al-Khwārizmī's
On
Algebra and Almucabala,
Jabir
ibn Aflah's
Elementa astronomica,
al-Kindi's
On Optics,
Ahmad
ibn Muhammad ibn Kathīr al-Farghānī's
On Elements of
Astronomy on the Celestial Motions,
al-Farabi's
On the Classification of the
Sciences,the
chemical and
medical works of
Razi,the works of
Thabit
ibn Qurra and
Hunayn ibn
Ishaq,and the works of
Arzachel,
Jabir ibn Aflah, the
Banū Mūsā,
Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn
Aslam,
Abu al-Qasim, and
Ibn al-Haytham (including the
Book of Optics).
With the fall of Islamic Spain in 1492, the scientific and
technological initiative of the Islamic world was inherited by
Europeans and laid the foundations for Europe's
Renaissance and
Scientific Revolution.
Agriculture and cuisine
As early as the 9th century, an essentially modern agricultural
system became central to economic life and organization in the Arab
caliphates, replacing the largely export driven Roman model. Cities
of the Near East, North Africa, and Moorish Spain were supported by
elaborate agricultural systems which included extensive irrigation
based on knowledge of
hydraulic and
hydrostatic principles, some of which
were continued from Roman times.
The introduction of new crops transforming private farming into a
new global industry exported everywhere, including Europe, where
farming was mostly restricted to wheat strains obtained much
earlier via central Asia. Spain received what she in turn
transmitted to the rest of Europe; many agricultural and
fruit-growing processes, together with many new plants, fruit and
vegetables. These new crops included sugar cane, rice, citrus
fruit, apricots, cotton, artichokes, aubergines, and saffron.
Others, previously known, were further developed. Several were
later exported from Spanish coastal areas to the Spanish colonies
in the New World. Also transmitted via Muslim influence, a silk
industry flourished, flax was cultivated and linen exported, and
esparto grass, which grew wild in the more
arid parts, was collected and turned into various articles.
Restaurants in medieval Islamic Spain
served three-course meals, which was introduced in the 9th century
by
Ziryab, who insisted that meals should be
served in three separate courses consisting of
soup, the
main course, and
dessert.
As a result of the improved agriculture and cuisine, the average
life expectancy of the
scholarly class in Islamic Spain increased to 69–75
years by the 11th century.
Economics
The systems of
contract relied upon by
merchants was very effective. Merchants
would buy and sell on
commission, with money
loaned to them by wealthy
investors, or a joint
investment of several merchants, who were often
Muslim, Christian and Jewish. Business
partnerships would be made for many
commercial ventures, and bonds of
kinship enabled
trade
network to form over huge distances.
Networks developed
during this time enabled a world in which money could be promised by a bank
in Baghdad
and cashed in Spain, creating the cheque system of today. Each time items passed
through one of the cities along this extraordinary network, the
city imposed a
tax, resulting in high prices
once the items reached their final destinations. These innovations
made by Muslims and Jews laid the foundations for the modern
economic system.
Geography and exploration
Long distance travel created a need for mapping, and travelers
often provided the information to achieve the task. While such
travel during the medieval period was hazardous, Muslims
nonetheless undertook long journeys. One motive for these was the
Hajj or the Muslim pilgrimage.
Annually, Muslims
came to Mecca in Arabia from Africa, Islamic
Spain, Persia
and
India
. Another motive for travels was commerce.
Muslims were involved in trade with Europeans, Indians and the
Chinese, and Muslim merchants travelled long distances to conduct
commercial activities.
The baculus, used for nautical astronomy, originates from Islamic
Spain and was later used by Portuguese navigators for long-distance
travel. The origins of the
caravel ship,
used for long distance travel by the Portuguese and Spanish since
the 15th century, date back to the
qarib used by explorers
from Islamic Spain in the 13th century.
According to a controversial theory, explorers from Al-Andalus may
have travelled to the
Americas (see
Pre-Columbian
Andalusian-Americas contact theories).
Linguistics and literature
The "
Toledo School" was a famous
center of medieval
linguistics. Members
of this school included; Yehudah ibn Tibbon,
Herman the German,
Adelard of Bath and
Gerard of Cremona.
In the 12th century, the Andalusian-
Arabian philosopher and novelist
Ibn Tufail (known as "Abubacer" or "Ebn
Tophail" in the West) first demonstrated
Avicenna's theory of
tabula
rasa as a
thought experiment
in his
Arabic novel,
Hayy ibn Yaqzan, in which he depicted
the development of the mind of a
feral
child "from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete
isolation from society" on a
desert
island. The
Latin translation of his work,
titled
Philosophus Autodidactus, published by
Edward Pococke the Younger in 1671, had an
influence on
John Locke's formulation of
tabula rasa in
An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding, which went on to become one of the
principal sources of
empiricism in modern
Western philosophy, and influenced many Enlightenment
philosophers, such as
David Hume and
George
Berkeley.
Hadith Bayad wa Riyad
(
The Story of Bayad and Riyad) was a 13th-century
Arabic love story written in Al-Andalus.
The main characters
of the tale are Bayad, a merchant's son and a foreigner from
Damascus
, and Riyad, a well educated girl in the court of an
unnamed Hajib (vizier or minister) of
Al-Andalus who is referred to as the lady. The
Hadith
Bayad wa Riyad manuscript is believed to be the only
illustrated manuscript known to have survived from more than eight
centuries of Muslim and Arab presence in Spain.
Music
A number of
musical instruments
used in
Western music, particularly in
Spanish music, are believed to have
been derived from
Arabic musical
instruments used in Al-Andalus: the
lute was
derived from the
al'ud, the
rebec (ancestor of
violin) from
the
rebab, the
guitar from
qitara,
naker from
naqareh,
adufe from
al-duff,
alboka from
al-buq,
anafil from
al-nafir, exabeba from
al-shabbaba (
flute), atabal (
bass drum)
from
al-tabl, atambal from
al-tinbal,the
balaban, the
castanet from
kasatan,
sonajas de azófar from
sunuj al-sufr,
the
conical bore wind instruments, the xelami from the
sulami or
fistula (flute
or
musical pipe),the
shawm and
dulzaina from the
reed instruments zamr and
al-zurna,the
gaita from the
ghaita,
rackett from
iraqya or
iraqiyya,the
harp
and
zither from the
qanun,
canon from
qanun,
geige (violin) from
ghichak,and the
theorbo from the
tarab. It is also commonly
acknowledged by flamenco performers that the vocal, instrumental,
and dance elements of modern flamenco were greatly influenced by
the Arab performing arts.
Pottery
Hispano-Moresque ware was a
style of Islamic
pottery created in Islamic
Spain, after the
Moors had introduced two
ceramic techniques to
Europe:
glazing with an
opaque white
tin-glaze, and painting in
metallic lusters. Hispano-Moresque ware was
distinguished from the pottery of
Christendom by the Islamic character of it
decoration.
The
tin-glazing of ceramics was invented by Muslim potters in
8th-century Basra
, Iraq
.
The
earliest tin-glazed pottery thus
appears to have been made in Iraq
in the 9th
century. From there, it spread to Egypt
, Persia
and Spain,
before reaching Italy
in the
Renaissance, Holland
in the 16th century, and England
, France
and other
European countries shortly after.
Lusterware was invented by
Geber, who applied it to ceramic glazes in the 8th
century.
After the production of lusterware became
popular in the Middle East, it spread to
Europe—first to Al-Andalus, notably at
Malaga
, and then
to Italy, where
it was used to enhance maiolica.
An
albarello is a type of
maiolica earthenware jar originally designed to
hold
apothecaries' ointments and dry
drugs. The development of this type of
pharmacy jar had its roots in the Islamic Middle
East. It was brought to Italy by
Hispano-Moresque traders by the 15th
century.
Technology
Industrial
water mills were employed in
the first large
factory complexes built in
Al-Andalus between the 11th and 13th centuries.
Fulling mills,
paper
mills,
steel mills, and other mills,
spread from Islamic Spain to Christian Spain by the 12th century.
The first
windmills were built in Sistan, Afghanistan
, sometime between the 7th century and 9th century,
as described by Muslim geographers.
These were vertical
axle windmills, which had
long vertical
driveshafts with rectangle
shaped
blades. These were introduced to Europe
through Spain. The bridge mill was a unique type of water mill that
was built as part of the
superstructure of a
bridge. The earliest record of a bridge mill is from
Cordoba in the 12th century. The first
forge
to be driven by a
hydropowered water mill
rather than
manual labour, also known
as a
finery forge, was invented in 12th
century Islamic Spain.Adam Lucas (2006),
Wind, Water, Work:
Ancient and Medieval Milling Technology, p. 65,
Brill Publishers, ISBN 9004146490
Stamp mills were first used by miners in Samarkand
from as early as 973. They were used in
medieval Persia
for the
purpose of crushing ore. By the 11th
century, stamp mills were in widespread use throughout the Islamic
world, including Islamic Spain.Adam Robert Lucas (2005),
"Industrial Milling in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: A Survey of
the Evidence for an Industrial Revolution in Medieval Europe",
Technology and Culture 46 (1): 1–30 [10–1
and 27]
Many
dams, acequia and
qanat water supply
systems, and "Tribunal of Waters" irrigation systems, were built during the Islamic
Golden Age and are still in use today in the Islamic world and in
formerly Islamic regions of Europe such as Sicily and the Iberian Peninsula
, particularly in the Andalusia
, Aragon
and Valencia
provinces of Spain. The Arabic systems of
irrigation and water distribution were later adopted in the
Canary
Islands
and Americas due to the
Spanish
and are still used in places like Texas
, Mexico
, Peru
, and
Chile
.
Muslim cities such as Cordoba had advanced
domestic water systems with
sanitary sewers,
public baths, drinking
fountains,
piped drinking water supplies, and widespread
private and
public toilet and
bathing facilities. The first
street lamps were built in the
Arab Empire, especially in Cordoba, which also
had the first facilities and
waste
containers for litter collection.S. P. Scott (1904),
History of the Moorish Empire in Europe, 3 vols, J. B.
Lippincott Company, Philadelphia and London.
F. B. Artz (1980),
The Mind of the Middle Ages, Third
edition revised,
University
of Chicago Press, pp 148–50.
(
cf. References, 1001 Inventions)
In 9th century Islamic Spain,
Abbas Ibn
Firnas (Armen Firnas) invented a primitive version of the
parachute. John H. Lienhard described it
in
The Engines of Our Ingenuity as follows:
Ibn Firnas was also the first to make an attempt at controlled
flight, as opposed to earlier
gliding attempts in ancient China which were not
controllable. Ibn Firnas manipulated the
flight controls of his
hang glider using two sets of artificial
wings to adjust his
altitude and to change his direction. He
successfully returned to where he had lifted off from, but his
landing was unsuccessful. According to
Philip Hitti in
History of the Arabs:
Ibn Firnas' glider was possibly the first
hang glider, though there were earlier
instances of manned
kites being used in ancient
China. Knowledge of Firman and Firnas' flying machines spread to
other parts of
Europe from
Arabic references. Ibn Firnas' hang glider
was also the first to have artificial
wings,
though the flight was eventually unsuccessful.
See also
Footnotes
- "Para los autores árabes medievales, el término al-Andalus
designa la totalidad de las zonas conquistadas — siquiera
temporalmente — por tropas arabo-musulmanas en territorios
actualmente pertenecientes a Portugal, Espana y Francia" ("For the
medieval Arab authors, al-Andalus designates all the conquered
areas — even temporarily — by Arab-Muslim troops in territories now
belonging to Portugal, Spain and France"), José Ángel
García de Cortázar, V Semana de Estudios Medievales:
Nájera, 1 al 5 de agosto de 1994, Gobierno de La Rioja,
Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 1995, p.52.
- "Los arabes y musulmanes de la Edad Media aplicaron el nombre
de al-andalus a todas aquellas tierras que habian formado parte del
reino visigodo : la Peninsula Ibérica y la Septimania
ultrapirenaica." ("The Arabs and Muslims from the Middle Ages used
the name of al-Andalus to all those lands that were formerly part
of the Visigothic kingdom: the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania"),
Eloy Benito Ruano, Tópicos y
realidades de la Edad Media, Real Academia de la Historia,
2000, p.79.
- "Andalus, al-" Oxford Dictionary of Islam. John L.
Esposito, Ed. Oxford University Press. 2003. Oxford Reference
Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed 12 June 2006.
- Joseph F. O'Callaghan, A History
of Medieval Spain , Cornell University Press, 1983, p.142
- Bossong 2002[online]:1
- Bossong 2002
- The village of Andaluz (41°31', -2°49') lies at the foot of
Andaluz Mountain on the Duero River in the province of Soria, and
within 10 km of it are the villages of Torreandaluz and
Centenera de Andaluz. A brook named Andaluz is said to flow in the
province of Guadalajara out of the Cueva de
la Hoz (41°00', -2°18'). Bossong[online]:10-11, but the
coordinates given are according to Google Maps and differ slightly
from those in Bossong.
- Dozy, Reinhart P. 1881. Recherches sur l'histoire et la
littérature des Arabes d'Espagne pendant le Moyen-Age.
- Bossong 2002[online]:2
- Vallvé Bermejo, Joaquín. 1986. The Territorial Divisions of
Muslim Spain. Madrid: CSIC ( Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas).
- Bossong[online]:3. The document in question is the Akhbar
Majmu'a fi fath al-Andalus, "Collection of traditions on the
conquest of al-Andalus". It was published in Spanish translation in
1867 by Emilio Lafuente y Alcántara. Its subtitle indicates it
dates from the 11th c., but several historians today say the 10th
c. instead, during the rule of caliph 'Abd al-Rahman III.
- Punta de Tarifa
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Cardini, Europe and Islam , Wiley-Blackwell, 2001,
p.9
- Halm 1989:254
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Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England, p. 227,
Brill
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Films
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