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shafique wrote:I missed the history lesson about the Moops though.

Overall, I thought it was very good, though spoiled by gratuitious Catholic-bashing at every opportunity. They put on sinister choirs whenever a church or crucifix came on screen, with lots of doom-laden sequences of penitents carrying crosses whilst portentous commentary spoke of "the march of barbaric Christian hordes" into "civilised, rational, progressive" Islamic Spain. There were times I almost burst out laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of the voiceovers. And there were all the usual tropes of the "Conflict Thesis", including the closure of the Academy by Justinian, the suppression of reason by the Church in Europe which only survived in the middle east, etc, etc, ad nauseam. The shocking thing was, it actually lessened the impact of the really horrific stuff like the Inquisition and ethnic cleansing of the Moors because it was clear that the documentary had set out to condemn the Christian side from the beginning. I'm no fan of repressive medieval religion, but this was just butchery of history.

The tragic thing is that otherwise I thought the program was a very valuable and necessary counterblast to prevailing stereotypes about Muslim civilisation. It's just a tragedy that in doing so they just ended up perpetuating an equally fallacious and damaging set of myths about medieval Europe.

To set up a cartoon golden age of islam in the middle ages contrasted to a cartoon evil and repressive society of christians only begs the question of what happened to the golden age...and make people feel cheated when they realize that the truth, of course, is more complex and more grey than black and white. It is quite possible to find contemporary muslims with attitudes that blend well with the mindset of a modern western public. One does not need to create fictional medieval ones.

Nor to forget that the population of Iberia continued to be Hispano-Romano-Gothic. Small wonder that classic Greco-Roman culture continued to survive there even after the Umayyads took over. (In contrast to North Africa, where the Vandal state acted like, well, Vandals.) The collapse of Cordova into a multitude of quarreling chiefdoms, with muslim and Christian states warring in various combinations -- even El Cid fought for a muslim city state for a while -- led eventually to the arrival of the puritans of al-Murabit. These spent most of their effort purifying the Arab and Berber chiefdoms of infidel influences - like "Greek studies". And the al-Muwayidun were shi'ites out to purify the sunnis. The Spaniards didn't really have that much to do but pick up the pieces.

Overall, I thought it was very good,

though spoiled by gratuitious Catholic-bashing at every opportunity.

.. whilst portentous commentary spoke of "the march of barbaric Christian hordes" into "civilised, rational, progressive" Islamic Spain.

And there were all the usual tropes of the "Conflict Thesis", including the closure of the Academy by Justinian, the suppression of reason by the Church in Europe which only survived in the middle east, etc, etc, ad nauseam.

The shocking thing was, it actually lessened the impact of the really horrific stuff like the Inquisition and ethnic cleansing of the Moors

The tragic thing is that otherwise I thought the program was a very valuable and necessary counterblast to prevailing stereotypes about Muslim civilisation.

It's just a tragedy that in doing so they just ended up perpetuating an equally fallacious and damaging set of myths about medieval Europe.

Nor to forget that the population of Iberia continued to be Hispano-Romano-Gothic. Small wonder that classic Greco-Roman culture continued to survive there even after the Umayyads took over. (In contrast to North Africa, where the Vandal state acted like, well, Vandals.) The collapse of Cordova into a multitude of quarreling chiefdoms, with muslim and Christian states warring in various combinations -- even El Cid fought for a muslim city state for a while -- led eventually to the arrival of the puritans of al-Murabit. These spent most of their effort purifying the Arab and Berber chiefdoms of infidel influences - like "Greek studies". And the al-Muwayidun were shi'ites out to purify the sunnis. The Spaniards didn't really have that much to do but pick up the pieces.

But you get the picture...I think.

When the Moors Ruled in Europe
Post by perplexedseeker on May 10, 2010, 9:58am

I don't know if anyone else from the UK managed to see the recent documentary on the Moorish presence in Spain that was on Channel 4 last week?

Overall, I thought it was very good, though spoiled by gratuitious Catholic-bashing at every opportunity. They put on sinister choirs whenever a church or crucifix came on screen, with lots of doom-laden sequences of penitents carrying crosses whilst portentous commentary spoke of "the march of barbaric Christian hordes" into "civilised, rational, progressive" Islamic Spain. There were times I almost burst out laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of the voiceovers. And there were all the usual tropes of the "Conflict Thesis", including the closure of the Academy by Justinian, the suppression of reason by the Church in Europe which only survived in the middle east, etc, etc, ad nauseam. The shocking thing was, it actually lessened the impact of the really horrific stuff like the Inquisition and ethnic cleansing of the Moors because it was clear that the documentary had set out to condemn the Christian side from the beginning. I'm no fan of repressive medieval religion, but this was just butchery of history.

The tragic thing is that otherwise I thought the program was a very valuable and necessary counterblast to prevailing stereotypes about Muslim civilisation. It's just a tragedy that in doing so they just ended up perpetuating an equally fallacious and damaging set of myths about medieval Europe.

For example, I learnt that some researchers are now saying that the Muslim conquest of Spain may have been less of a war and more of a long, slow process of raiding, colonisation, trade, integration and assimilation that was never directed overall by a central Islamic power (the Caliphate back in Arabia seems to have had little to do with the invasions, which were often carried out by independent tribes of Muslim nomads).

At the other end of the Moorish kingdom's history, they also made a compelling case that the famous "Reconquista" of Spain by Catholic crusaders is actually a later fiction produced in the centuries following the wars. It was suggested that a more accurate representation (backed up by archaeological evidence) of the Reconquista is one of the Muslim kingdoms of Al-Andalus auto-destructing through repeated and ruinous civil wars that crippled the infrastructure and created a power vacuum into which the northern Catholic kingdoms were to some extent sucked. Indeed right up till the end there were apparently many Muslims and Christians fighting on both sides, either for profit or reasons of personal loyalty. There's apparently even some evidence that people who are now venerated as Spanish national heroes on Ferdinand and Isabella's side may actually have been Muslims from North Africa.

There was also some interesting stuff about the collaboration between Christian and Muslim scholars in the university of Toledo in the 10th century to get authoritative Latin translations of Aristotle made and exported to European universities.

Did anyone else see this? I think that it's still available on the UK's channel 4 "on demand" online service.

shafique wrote:^Ahh, the penny drops - sorry, a bit obscure for me - whilst I enjoyed Seinfeld, I guess my recollection isn't as encyclopaedic as yours!

Also the reference to Justinian closing down the Athenian schools of philosophy - that's accurate too (and she cites this as an example only).

Pretty precise and accurate, and describes a specific time.

At 20min she contrasts the Muslim embrace of all knowledge with 'Northern European' Christian suspicion of Greek pagan texts and says initially that these had 'all been but ignored for centuries' in Europe (i.e. not completely ignored, but almost completely). Again factual.

As I said, Hughes was accurate and precise when she used the term Dark Ages in the documentary - not a lie, not a disputed fact. I suggest you re-read her exact words which I typed out.

You make some weird claims in your post above, however Hughes IS a historian

event horizon wrote:

As I said, Hughes was accurate and precise when she used the term Dark Ages in the documentary - not a lie, not a disputed fact. I suggest you re-read her exact words which I typed out.

I suggest you do more reading before you embarrass yourself any further.