[Sparta]

I've heard the Moors were the educated ones in Spain, was this true or more liberal anti-Catholic PC BS?

[Blood of Tyrants]

I don't know. But in 1492 literacy was rare and mostly confined to scolars and the clergy and the Gutenberg Bible was only 40 years old.

[livius]

It's just that: liberal anti-Catholic PC BS.

Islam was a very new religion when Muslims, mostly from Persia - a very sophisticated society, at the time - conquered Spain. Within a couple hundred years in any place it conquered, Islam snuffed out learning, something that happened throughout the Middle East. In the case of Spain, even the more learned and moderate "new" (formerly Middle Eastern pagan or Christian) Muslims who first arrived there were conquered by a more aggressive group of North African Muslims, who set about destroying what the first group had brought from Baghdad.

The Muslims were in Spain for almost 800 years, but their domination was secure only in certain parts of southern Spain - they were driven out of the North very rapidly, and pursued by the Spanish kings all the way to their stronghold in the South.

And the famous "three cultures" (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) that people gush about was the city of Toledo, in Christian territory, ruled over by a Spanish Christian King (Alfonso X).

The only reason there was any luster at all to Moorish Spain is that it was far enough away from some of the hotbeds of Islam to permit the more moderate rulers (the caliphates) to develop some of the things that had been strengths of pre-Islamic Middle Eastern culture (astronomy and medicine, for example), in many cases because of the earlier influence of Greece and Rome.

[xm177e2]

It's true. The Moors were more enlightened, more interested in scholarship, and more tolerant than most of the Europeans. There were many Jews living in Spain at the time, and when the Christians threw out the Muslims, they also threw out all of the Jews.

Some people want to pretend Catholics were always nice nice folks, and that Muslims were always rabid death-loving Jihadis, but that's just not true.

[TopQuark]

When Moors concurred Spain, they brought civilization with them --- from public schools to sanitation. During Renaissance, the West has learned anew the wisdom of the Greeks, and it the Muslims had preserved it for them. Long before, these works had been translated into Arabic and had become core of educational process. It was also their knowledge of astronomy and cartography that has enabled the voyages of Columbus: that knowledge was transmitted in al Andalus and even more extensively used in Portugal since mid-1400.