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Spain: Muslim Spain
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Muslim Spain was wealthy and sophisticated under Islamic rule. Cordoba was the richest and most sophisticated city in all of western Europe. It was not until the 12th century that western medieval Christiandom began to reach comparable levels of sophistication, and this was due in part to the intellectual and commercial stimulus coming from Muslim Spain. Mediterranean trade and cultural exchange flourished. Muslims imported a rich intellectual tradition from the Middle East and North Africa, including knowledge about mathematics and science, and they helped revive in Europe the Greek philosophical tradition, which they continued to build upon in Spain. Crops and farming techniques introduced by the Arabs, including new irrigation practices, led to a remarkable expansion of agriculture, which had been in decline since late Roman times.
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Spain is much more than just a holiday destination. It has a colourful history and like the UK has undergone many invasions and occupations during its existence. The longest occupation was that of the Moors (the common name for Muslims from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula), the evidence of which is still seen throughout most of Spain today in the architecture and some of the customs.
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Spain is cut off by the Pyrenees mountains from all other countries of Europe except Portugal, and ... has had a history notably different from those countries. In the 8th century Arabic-speaking Muslims from North Africa, called Moors, conquered most of the Iberian peninsula. During the Middle Ages Christian kingdoms of northern Spain waged wars to reconquer the peninsula from the Moors.
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Spain, influenced throughout many centuries by occidental and oriental cultures, is a country with a surprising variety of landscapes and ways of living. Its richness has been built up by Iberians, Celts, Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans, Goths, Moors, Jews, Muslims and Christians.
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There were two main kingdoms throughout Spain after the Reconquest, Castilla in the north, and Aragon in the east. The Spanish middle ages were similar to those of other European countries, characterized by a feudal society, a growing interest in international relations, and monarchies of varying power. In 1469, Ferdinand of Aragon married his cousin Isabella of Castilla and created a mostly unified Spain, and in 1492 they reconquered the remaining cities still under Muslim rule... ending the Reconquest. The new Spanish rulers, in stark contrast to the relative tolerance shown by the Muslim rulers, believed that true Spanish unity would only come from a Spain pure in colour and religion, and so a ruthless purification project known as the The Spanish Inquisition was undertook. Though the religious purification was successful, and by 1525 all residents of Spain were officially Christian, Spain never became a country of only one race.
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In the same year, in their zeal to achieve religious unity, the Catholic rulers expelled the Jews from Spain. Until 1492 the Jews and the Muslims had been allowed to live in reconquered territory. From the time of the Spanish Inquisition (1478)... attempts at conversion were made more forcibly, often including confiscation of property, torture, or murder, usually by auto-da-fé. The Inquisition was not restricted to Jews and Moors, and even those who did convert were often persecuted. The expulsion of the Jews deprived Spain of part of its most useful and active population. Many went to the Levant, to the Americas, and to the Netherlands, where their skills, capital, and commercial connections benefited their hosts.
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Muslim Spain