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By Mushfiqur Rahman Posted September 23, 2001
To appreciate Prince Charles' remark, we mention the following brief story for those who may not be aware of the Muslim rule in Spain.
Muslims conquered Spain in 711 AD and ruled it for about 800 years. These Spanish Arabs later became known as the “Moors”. When Europe was still going through the “Dark Ages”, the Moors established a golden civilization of science and culture. One historian remarks,“The
Moors organized that wonderful kingdom of Cordova, which was the marvel of
the Middle Ages, and which, when all Europe was plunged in barbaric
ignorance and strife, alone held the torch of learning and civilization
bright and shinning before the Western world.”
Cordova (Arabic Kurtuba) was the capital of that
civilization. This city was ten miles long with a twenty-four-mile suburb
and a million population (almost twice the current population of
Washington, DC) . It is said that it had 60,000 palaces and mansions,
200,000 houses, 80,000 shops, 3,800 mosques and 700 public baths. Among
many libraries, the largest was the Imperial Library of the Emir
containing 400,000 books. The city’s University of Cordova was
famous which attracted students from all over the world. There were many
free elementary schools for the poor. A historian remarks,
“In
Spain almost everybody knew how to read and write, whilst in Christian
Europe, save and except the clergy, even persons belonging to the highest
ranks were wholly ignorant.”
Religious tolerance is another shinning example that these Spanish
Muslims established. Christians and Jews flourished under their rule. As a
matter of fact, the Jews had their cultural renaissance while they lived
in Spain under Muslim rule.
The last remnant of Muslim rule in Spain was finally vanquished in
1492 by a combined force of Ferdinand and Isabella. What
followed then was a dark chapter in the history of Spain. Muslims and Jews
were massacred and driven out of Spain. It was then that the infamous
“Spanish Inquisition” was established by the Church to crush the
“infidels”. They were forced to change religion or burnt to death. No one
was spared, not even the children. Changing religion was not enough – they
were forced to transform into being Spanish:
“The
infidels were ordered to abandon their picturesque costume, and to assume
the hat and breeches of their conquerors, to renounce their language,
their costumes and ceremonies, even their very names, and to speak
Spanish, behave Spanishly, and re-name themselves Spaniards.”
It is interesting to note that the Spanish Christians were against
bathing and washing. They must have been angry at the building of the
public bathing places by the Muslims. In order to “reform” these Arabs,
they ruled that “neither themselves, their women, nor
any other persons, should be permitted to wash or bathe themselves either
at home or elsewhere; and that all their bathing-houses should be pulled
down and destroyed.”
It is also extra-ordinary to see that the tolerance that the
Muslims showed to other religious communities was considered an offense by
the Church. The Archbishop of Valencia in recommending the
expulsion of the Muslims from Spain writes, “[the
Moors] commended nothing so much as that liberty of conscience in all
matters of religion, which the Turks, and all other Mohammedans, suffer
their subjects to enjoy.”
And so a golden period in the history of Spain came to an end. The
glow of that golden era was still visible for a while under the rule of
Ferdinand and Isabella but it was soon exhausted and Spain went back to
darkness. Historian Stanley Lane Poole writes,
“The
Moors were banished; for a while Christian Spain shone, like the moon,
with a borrowed light; then came the eclipse, and in that darkness Spain
has groveled ever since. The true memorial of the Moors is seen in
desolate tracts of utter barrenness, where once the Moors grew luxuriant
vines and olives and yellow ears of corn; in a stupid, ignorant population
where once wit and learning flourished; in the general stagnation and
degradation of a people which has hopelessly fallen in the scale of
nations, and has deserved its humiliation.”
Such is the story of Spain. The lesson we take from this is the
lesson that the Prince of Wales has taken: a shinning example of science
and civilization, and tolerance, and not the example of the dark period
that followed.
