This is an article written by prince Charles. Of course I am quoting him because he goes my way... Thanks to a muslim spain, europe could see the light.. This si Prince's Cahrles own words
HRH, The Prince of Wales, Islam And The West
http://media.isnet.org/off/Islam/basics/IslamsContribution.html
. . . we have underestimated the importance of 800 years of
Islamic society and culture in Spain between the 8th and 15th
centuries. The contribution of Muslim Spain to the preservation of
classical learning during the Dark Ages, and to the first
flowering of the Renaissance, has long been recognized. But
Islamic Spain was much more than a mere larder where Hellenistic
knowledge was kept for later consumption by the emerging modern
world. Not only did Muslim Spain gather and preserve the
intellectual content of ancient Greek and Roman civilization, it
also interpreted and expanded upon that civilization, and made a
vital contribution of its own in so many fields of human endeavour
-- in science, astronomy, mathematics, algebra (itself an Arabic
word), law, history, medicine, pharmacology, optics, agriculture,
architecture, theology, music. Averroes and Avenzoor, like their
counterparts Avicenna and Rhazes in the East, contributed to the
study and practice of medicine in ways from which Europe benefited
for centuries afterwards.
Islam nurtured and preserved the quest for learning. In the words
of (the Prophet's) tradition "the ink of the scholar is more
sacred than the blood of the martyr." Cordoba in the 10th century
was by far the most civilized city of Europe. We know of lending
libraries in Spain at the time King Alfred was making terrible
blunders with the culinary arts in this country. It is said that
the 400,000 volumes of its ruler's library amounted to more books
than all the of the rest of Europe put together. That was made
possible because the Muslim world acquired from China the skill of
making paper more than four hundred years before the rest of
non-Muslim Europe. Many of the traits on which Europe prides
itself came to it from Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free trade, open
borders, the techniques of academic research, of anthropology,
etiquette, fashion, alternative medicine, hospitals, all came from
this great city of cities. Mediaeval Islam was a religion of
remarkable tolerance for its time, allowing Jews and Christians to
practice their inherited beliefs, and setting an example which was
not, unfortunately, copied for many centuries in the West. The
surprise, ladies and gentlemen, is the extent to which Islam has
been a part of Europe for so long, first in Spain, then in the
Balkans, and the extent to which has contributed so much towards
the civilization which we all too often think of, wrongly, as
entirely Western. Islam is part of our past and present, in all
fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe.
It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart.
HRH, The Prince of Wales, Islam And The West
http://media.isnet.org/off/Islam/basics/IslamsContribution.html
. . . we have underestimated the importance of 800 years of
Islamic society and culture in Spain between the 8th and 15th
centuries. The contribution of Muslim Spain to the preservation of
classical learning during the Dark Ages, and to the first
flowering of the Renaissance, has long been recognized. But
Islamic Spain was much more than a mere larder where Hellenistic
knowledge was kept for later consumption by the emerging modern
world. Not only did Muslim Spain gather and preserve the
intellectual content of ancient Greek and Roman civilization, it
also interpreted and expanded upon that civilization, and made a
vital contribution of its own in so many fields of human endeavour
-- in science, astronomy, mathematics, algebra (itself an Arabic
word), law, history, medicine, pharmacology, optics, agriculture,
architecture, theology, music. Averroes and Avenzoor, like their
counterparts Avicenna and Rhazes in the East, contributed to the
study and practice of medicine in ways from which Europe benefited
for centuries afterwards.
Islam nurtured and preserved the quest for learning. In the words
of (the Prophet's) tradition "the ink of the scholar is more
sacred than the blood of the martyr." Cordoba in the 10th century
was by far the most civilized city of Europe. We know of lending
libraries in Spain at the time King Alfred was making terrible
blunders with the culinary arts in this country. It is said that
the 400,000 volumes of its ruler's library amounted to more books
than all the of the rest of Europe put together. That was made
possible because the Muslim world acquired from China the skill of
making paper more than four hundred years before the rest of
non-Muslim Europe. Many of the traits on which Europe prides
itself came to it from Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free trade, open
borders, the techniques of academic research, of anthropology,
etiquette, fashion, alternative medicine, hospitals, all came from
this great city of cities. Mediaeval Islam was a religion of
remarkable tolerance for its time, allowing Jews and Christians to
practice their inherited beliefs, and setting an example which was
not, unfortunately, copied for many centuries in the West. The
surprise, ladies and gentlemen, is the extent to which Islam has
been a part of Europe for so long, first in Spain, then in the
Balkans, and the extent to which has contributed so much towards
the civilization which we all too often think of, wrongly, as
entirely Western. Islam is part of our past and present, in all
fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe.
It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart.
