The Legacy of the Moors in Spain

The Legacy of the Moors in Spain

• The Moors were Muslim invaders who created a civilization called Al-Andalus in Spain and part of France in 711 AD.
• The Moors created a multi-racial melting pot of Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and their civilization became a Golden Age of Islam from the 8th to the 15th century.
• In Al-Andalus, art, culture, landscaping, and ideas flourished in a climate of religious tolerance.
• The Moors mastered the techniques of irrigation and created landscapes and gardens that are oases of shade and bounty.
• The patios or private interior gardens of Cordoba are still to be seen today, especially in the Juderia, Cordoba's Jewish neighborhood.
• Cordoba had half a million inhabitants in the 10th century and was Europe's intellectual center, with the largest mosque in the world.
• Granada, the capital of the Moorish Nazrid dynasty, is fabulously set in the midst of the snow-capped mountains of the Sierra Nevada, with gardens and fortress of the Alhambra.
• The study of the Koran triggered a thirst for knowledge and learning, which led to amazing advances in astronomy, medicine, botany, philosophy, and mathematics.
• The Arabic numeral system was transmitted to Europe via Spain, and the Moors opened their first hospitals and understood the importance of quarantining sick people.
• The Moor Averroes was a universal scholar who helped keep alive the Greek heritage of Aristotle and bring it to the West.
• The Moors introduced all kinds of exotic plants and foods to Southern Europe, such as almonds, citrus fruits, sugarcane, cumin, saffron, nutmeg, pomegranates, persimmons, and palm trees.
• The Moors were defeated in 1492, and the two Catholic sovereigns unleashed the Inquisition, which directed against the Jews and the Moors, but the traces of the Moorish civilization are still to be found in Spain.