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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.