When the Moors Ruled in Europe
by Timothy Copestake
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DVD details
Actor: Bettany HughesDirector: Timothy Copestake
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 101 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-06-10
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Acorn Media
DVD Reviews of When the Moors Ruled in Europe
DVD Review: Politically Correct Garbage.
Summary: 1 Stars
This is just another anti-western apologist piece fitting the revisionist-historian stereotype about how Muslims and their "religion of peace" are all just cute, cuddly fuzzballs and why we, as club-dragging barbarian Westerners, should thank our lucky stars to have been soo "enriched" by the whole experience. Yawn. We've heard it all before. This video seems to have been hatched by the same crowd who want to blame "Yankee Imperialism" for the 9/11 attacks. I recomend purchasing El-Sid El Cid (Two-Disc Deluxe Edition) (The Miriam Collection)starring Charleton Heston instead of this dvd because atleast El Cid is an honest work of fiction:
In terms of historical accuracy, this film overlooks important issues like the fact that MOST of the technology and innovations supposedly "introduced" to Spain by Moors was, infact, INVENTED by the ancestors of these Christain Europeans in the first place. If you've ever been to Rome, then you will see ancient aqueducts built by Western Europeans many centuries before Mohammed was ever born. This irrigation technology was imported into Iberia by the Roman legions BEFORE the Western Empire fell apart in 476 AD. So there's no way Muslims, who arrived in 711 AD, can take credit for "introducing" this technology to Iberia. The same can be said for thought-provoking Greek philosophy and other Roman/Byzantine engineering technology.
The truth is that, during the dark ages, Europeans lost much of their Roman technological and cultural heratige BECAUSE savage Muslim hordes began raping and pillaging Christian lands. Afterall, it's hard to ponder the abstract meaning of Aristotle, or repair your own aqueducts, while a foreign army is trying to murder your son and rape your daughter. Christain Europe developed a seige mentaility in response to Muslim invasions and this same seige mentaility explains why Westerners lost so much of their cultural and technological heritage in the first place. So the Muslim armies simply stole these ideas from their western and Asian victims--whom they murdered and enslaved along the way.
CHRISTAINS VOLUNTARILY CONVERTING TO ISLAM??: This is simply not true. It did not happen this way. The truth is that many Spanish Christains found it advantageous to convert to Islam because the Muslim ruling class discriminated against their Christain subjects in ways similar to modern South Africa's Aparteid. If someone tells you that they will let you die if you don't cooperate with them, and you subsequently cooperate with them, then is this really voluntary? Ofcourse not. It is still coersion. Yet the producers of this trash would have you believe that Christains were eager to embrace this wonderful new religion and live happily ever after. While the Muslims rarely gave Christains an outright ultimatum to convert or die, refusal to convert always came at a price. At a minimum, Christians would be taxed more for keeping their religious views. Refusal to convert often lead to slavery, and occasionally death, for christain Europeans.
DVD Review: Impressive, but I feel some misgivings...
Summary: 4 Stars
In the domain of documentaries of ancient history, this seems to be the hour of Bettany Hughes. Until I watched another of her productions, The Island of the Minotaur, I was unaware of the big splash she was making as a celebrity historian. I was quite bowled over by her performance in that documentary. Yes, I say "performance" even though supposedly she was only the narrator/commentator. With her charming British accent and an articulate and self-assured way of utilizing it, I think it fair to say that her presence accounted for a good deal of the appeal of the documentary, although it was very well done on all levels. But Ms. Hughes vividly dramatized some of her revelations about that ancient culture with a manner that suggested she revels in being an iconoclast. It is one thing to reveal that the much-admired Minoan civilization practiced human sacrifice and quite another to suggest that there has been a huge conspiracy to belittle the achievements of the Moors in Europe. The difference is that most of us today have no ego-stake in whether the Minoans sacrificed people to their gods or not, and if archaeology can prove it, so be it. But unfortunately the issue of the Moors in Spain and France during Europe's dark ages is likely to hit a nerve because of the current animosity between Christianity and Islam. My perception is that in her documentary of the Moors, Ms. Hughes practiced iconoclasm with a vengeance. I am not saying that she is necessarily wrong about any of the views she espoused in this program. But I do think she may have gone overboard in her methods of setting the record straight. In this study, almost every reference to Christians was a disparaging one, and almost every reference to the Moors was an admiring one. Obviously, this type of emphasis is bound to please some groups more than others. The truth needs to be told, but I question whether this activist form of presentation is going to contribute more to enlightenment or to an increased perception of grievances. The visual aspect of this program is sumptuous, with a major focus on the truly amazing Moorish architecture that still remains. There is much discussion of the Moorish regard for learning, where even the common people were encouraged to become literate and study. The Moors had irrigation and sewer systems and a successful agriculture. Their cities were pleasingly laid out, with harmoniously proportioned buildings and exotic and fragrant fruit trees to delight the senses. They practiced an advanced form of medicine for the time, and excelled at mathematics and astronomy. According to Ms. Hughes the Moors were responsible for the Renaissance in Europe which came after the end of their rule in Spain. This is because the conquering Christians appropriated the Moorish heritage of knowledge and made it their own. All of this may be true, but I have a hard time believing that this is the whole story. For instance, I watched another documentary called Byzantium: The Lost Empire, in which it was stated that Christian Byzantium preserved the learning of the ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians during the dark ages of Europe and transplanted that knowledge back to the Christian West towards the end of the Byzantine empire. There has been a book written which claims that Irish monks preserved manuscripts of Classical learning during the dark ages- How the Irish Saved Civilization. Perhaps there was more than one source for the ideas of the Renaissance, but this concept is given no consideration by Ms. Hughes. Really, the point is that Christian Europe is portrayed as being inferior in all the aspects in which the Moors were excelling. This is probably true, but there is a strong connotation given off that the Christians were morally inferior and blameworthy for bringing about the downfall of Moorish Spain. That I do not buy. It seems likely that internal weaknesses also contributed to the downfall. And, it seems to me that the Christians are being retroactively held as reprehensible in light of a current fashionable way of viewing history. Christian Europe had not too long before, in terms of the history of civilization, been barbaric tribes and had not achieved the enlightened discernment that certain of their descendants now use to condemn them. It seems to have been a common practice that civilizations advanced by conquering and absorbing others. I don't say that is praiseworthy, but that seems to be the way it worked. It is indeed lamentable when the ignorant destroy what is refined and beautiful, but ignorance is somewhat of a mitigating circumstance. In other words I wonder if Ms. Hughes has oversimplified the picture of admirable Moors and reprehensible Christians for the sake of making an iconoclastic fashion statement. If the Moors of that particular time and place were more enlightened than their Christian neighbors, that could be a result of many factors, both evolutionary and circumstantial, rather than a sign of inherent superiority, moral or otherwise. Ms. Hughes shows such obvious relish for her role as iconoclast that I wonder if I can trust her objectivity. But it can certainly be said that she possesses a flair for adding zest to the study of history.DVD Review: Too Common Selective Reading of History
Summary: 3 Stars
Historian Bettany Hughes gives a decent, sometimes too politically correct overview of the influence of Islam on Medieval Spain. Ms. Hughes starts her journey with the conquest of the Visigoth Kingdom by the Moors coming from North Africa at the beginning of the 8th century C.E. She ends this journey with the fall of the Moorish Kingdom of Granada at the hands of the armies of the Catholic Monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand at the end of the 15th century C.E. Ms. Hughes introduces her audience to the splendors of Moorish architecture in cities such as Grenada, Cordoba, and Toledo. Ms. Hughes rightly reminds viewers about the decisive but often-ignored contribution of Moorish Spain to the European Renaissance in domains such as medicine, mathematics, and astronomy. Italy is usually credited as the key driver for the European Renaissance. To her credit, Ms. Hughes emphasizes that the Christian Reconquista of Moorish Spain often was about gaining land, prestige, and wealth under a veneer of religious fervor. The Reconquista turned out to be a civil war rather than the black-and-white antagonism between Christianity and Islam that has carried the day in the popular imagination. Many inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula converted to Islam for a variety of reasons in the centuries following the arrival of the Moors. Ms. Hughes rightly compares the expulsion of many Muslims from Spain after 1492 C.E. with what is today understood as ethnic cleansing. Ms. Hughes is at her weakest when she almost completely ignores the important contribution of the Jewish community to the splendor of Moorish Spain. This lapse of judgment is somewhat surprising because Ms. Hughes rightly denounces again and again the selective interpretation that has been given to the contribution of Moorish Spain to this day.DVD Review: Hughes Shows Islam as Once a Great Progressive Force
Summary: 4 Stars
"When the Moors Ruled in Europe," is a British television documentary made for BBC4, the experimental channel, by that remarkable young woman, Bettany Hughes. It is a real eye-opener as she travels Spain, thinking and talking about those seven centuries when the Moors, as they were known then, we would now call them Moslems, ruled the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal.
Hughes shows us their surviving, stunning architecture, in Cordoba, their capital city, Granada, even Madrid, and gives us a look at the surviving irrigation systems, by which they encouraged the arid peninsula to bloom, creating a rich agricultural economy. She proves that, at that time and place, Islam was a great progressive force: she shows us their leadership in translating and keeping alive the Greek and Roman classics, science, medicine, marine navigation, and astronomy, and reminds us that many words in our vocabulary come from the Arabic. She touches upon the fact that they welcomed Jews, and their knowledge. Most important of all, she reminds us that we currently use Arabic numerals, and that the great leaps forward in bookkeeping that underlay the businesses that bankrolled the famed Renaissance of the 16th century, could never have occurred if clerks were still struggling with those clumsy Roman numerals. Nor, of course, could Europe have rediscovered the Roman and Greek classics, another major ingredient of the Renaissance, had the Moslems not preserved them.
The presenter explains how the united monarchy of Spain in the late 15th century, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, drove the Moslems out, culminating in that great celebration of 1492, when they sent Christopher Columbus off, they thought, to find a western sea route to Asia (though, of course, it turned out America was in the way). What's even more interesting, she shows us the costs of this long, epic battle. Less sophisticated Moslem troops poured in to fight from North Africa: they vandalized the beautiful statuary progressive Islam had created in its 700 year rule: fundamental Islamism, as Judaism, Forbids representation of human beings, and so these troops destroyed the statues' faces. Progressive Islam was never actually fully to recover from the know-nothingism of these soldiers; until the current day the religion, most would agree to its detriment, is dominated by fundamentalists.
But the cost to Spain was also high: it has denied and misrepresented its own history through generations of the royal family, down even to the late dictator, Francisco Franco, to minimize Arab contributions and influence. And it created the Inquisition, to sniff out secret Arabs and Jews, marranos and moriscos, as they were called, torture and burn them alive at the stake, and, finally, expel them. Many of these people went to the Netherlands, then a Spanish colony, where they spearheaded a great intellectual and medical flowering, another important precursor of the Renaissance, giving us such leaders as Erasmus, and Spinoza. And many people will tell you that Spain never recovered from the forced expulsion of its best and brightest intellectual lights.
Hughes does a good job of making all this ancient history come alive, interviewing interesting people (thank goodness, the Spanish-speaking interviewees have subtitles, but I wish the whole program had), and showing us and explaining such remarkable and beautiful sights as the Arabic palace of Alhambra. She's quite a gal, showing an interest in ancient history when she was four, studying Latin and Greek as a teenager, going to Oxford on scholarship, and going from strength to strength now. Atta girl, Bettany.
DVD Review: relativity
Summary: 5 Stars
We are accustomed to analyze the history according to our world perspective. Many westerners wont enjoy this documentary as they will accuse it of being one sided. It is almost certain that they will produce counter-arguments such as "Muslim did this or that, they werent that perfect" etc... Yes, Ms. Hughes may be very enthusiastic about Muslim accomplishments but is there anything false in her story? We need to look at things in a relative sense because every era has its way of life that we might not be able fully appreciate. Muslims of course killed people when they were conquering lands but their atrocities were nothing compare to the prevailing attitudes of their time. They did not burn cities, books, libraries but assimilated and improved upon them.
It is also important to be very assertive about Islamic history in Europe, as Ms. Hughes did, especially because of systematic denial and manipulation of these facts.Muslims and those who know the real history are frustrated by deceptions. Whether right or wrong, Ms. Hughes, at the very least, will spark some debate surrounding this vital issue.
Description of When the Moors Ruled in Europe
How Islamic civilization tamed Western Europe"Inspiring" --The Observer (U.K.)
Join British historian Bettany Hughes as she examines a long-buried chapter of European history--the rise and fall of Islamic culture in what is now Spain and Portugal. Although generations of Spanish rulers have tried to expunge this era from the historical record, recent archaeology and scholarship now shed fresh light on the Moors who flourished in Al-Andalus for more than 700 years.
This fascinating two-part documentary explodes old stereotypes and offers shocking new insights. You'll discover the ingenious mathematics behind Granada's dazzling Alhambra Palace, trace El Cid's lineage to his Moorish roots, and learn how the Iberian population willingly converted to Islam in droves.
Through interviews with noted scholars, you'll see how Moorish advances in mathematics, astronomy, art, and agriculture helped propel the West out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance. What emerges is a richly detailed portrait of a sensuous, inquisitive, and remarkably progressive Islamic culture in Christian Europe.
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