"Indeed it was the Moors who brought Jews to Al-Andalus, Spain and Portugal and frequently welcomed them when they suffered persecution elsewhere. Morocco has an ancient Jewish population which dates back to at least the dissolution of the Jewish state by the Romans around 70 AD." --- Dáithaí C (Image: Jewish women in Morocco)
"As a result of his (Cardinal Ximenes' coercive) endeavours, it is reported that on 18th December 1499 about three thousand Moors were baptized by him and a leading mosque in Granada was converted into a church. 'Converts' were encouraged to surrender their Islamic books, several thousands of which were destroyed by Ximenes in a public bonfire. A few rare books on medicine were kept aside for the University of Alcala [...] (Ximenes) claimed [...] the Moors had forfeited all their rights under the terms of capitulation (of Granada). They should therefore be given the choice between baptism and expulsion [...]. At Andarax the principal mosque, in which the women and children had taken refuge, was blown up with gun-powder [...] all books in Arabic, especially the Qur'an, were collected to be burnt [...] Cardinal Ximenes [...] was reported during his conversion campaign among the Granada Moors in 1500 to have burnt in the public square of Vivarrambla over 1,005,000 volumes including unique works of Moorish culture." --- H. Kamen (Image: Tilework at the Feather Palace, Sintra, Portugal. Photograph by Toobaa.)
"The land deprived of skillful irrigation of the Moors, grew improvished and neglected, the richest and most fertile valleys languished and were deserted, and most of the populous cities which had filled every district in Andalusia, fell into ruinous decay; and beggars, friars, and bandits took the place of scholars, merchants and knights. So low fell Spain when she had driven away the Moors. Such is the melancholy contrast offered by her history." --- Stanley Lane-Poole (Image: A small water fountain of Islamic design in Sintra, Portugal. Photograph by Toobaa.)
"It was by means of art combined with faith that, with its most magnificent places of worship, slender minarets pointing to the realms beyond, sacred designs and intricate patterns carved in marble each of which served as a distinct message, diverse kinds of calligraphy, brilliant gildings, and embroideries as beautiful and fine as butterfly wings, this once magnificent world of Islam became a gallery of invaluable beauty." --- Fethullah Gülen (Image: Islamic tilework over a small water fountain in Sintra, Portugal. Photograph by Toobaa.)
"tailors were not to make garments nor silver-smiths jewels after their [Moorish] fashion; their baths were prohibited; all births were to be watched by Christian midwives to see that no Moorish rites were performed; disarmament was to be enforced by a rigid inspection of licences; their doors were to be kept open on feast-days, Fridays, Saturdays, and during weddings, to see that Moorish rites were abandoned and Christian ones observed [...] no Moorish names were to be used and they were not to keep 'gacis' or unbaptised Moors either free or as slaves." --- H.C. Lea, 'The Moriscos of Spain.'
"Yet there were knowledge and learning everywhere except in Catholic Europe. At a time when even kings could not read or write, a Moorish king had a private library of six hundred thousand books. At a time when ninety-nine percent of the Christian people were wholly illiterate, the Moorish city of Cordova had eight hundred public schools, and there was not a village within the limits of the empire where the blessings of education could not be enjoyed by the children of the most indigent peasant, [...] and it was difficult to encounter even a Moorish peasant who could not read and write." --- S.P. Scott, 'The History of the Moorish Empire in Europe'