Toobaa

“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth." --- Malcolm X

"Geometry is grasping space..." --- Freudenthal Hans, 1905-1990, German Mathematician

"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)

"Mathematics, astronomy, botany, history, philosophy and jurisprudence were to be mastered in Spain, and Spain alone. Whatever makes a kingdom great and prosperous, whatever tends to refinement and civilization, was found in Muslim Spain." --- Stanley Lane-Poole, The Moors in Spain

"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.)

"These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century, - is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Granada! I said, the Great man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame..." --- Thomas Carlyle, 'Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History'

“Khalif (Caliph) Al-Ma'mun's period of rule (813 - 833 C.E.) may be considered the 'golden age' of science and learning. He had always been devoted to books and to learned pursuits. His brilliant mind was interested in every form of intellectual activity. Not only poetry but also philosophy, theology, astronomy, medicine and law all occupied his time. [...] By Mamun's time medical schools were extremely active in Baghdad. The first free public hospital was opened in Baghdad during the Caliphate of Haroon-ar-Rashid. As the system developed, physicians and surgeons were appointed who gave lectures to medical students and issued diplomas to those who were considered qualified to practice. The first hospital in Egypt was opened in 872 AD and thereafter public hospitals sprang up all over the empire from Spain and the Maghrib to Persia.” --- Sir John Bagot Glubb (Photograph: Eduard Widmer)

Bertrand Russel, ‘History of Western Philosophy,’ London, 1948

"When Columbus set out on his momentous journey to what he thought was Asia, the significance of the year, 1492, was not lost on him. He wrote at the head of the first journal of his travels:

The year that is often regarded as marking the birth of Western modernity was one symbolized by the expulsion of Internal Others and the beginning of the conquest and pillage of those beyond the Christian, 'civilized' world." --- Ali Rattansi, Racism, Oxford 

"Judaism probably welcomed the conquest of Spain by the Muslims in 711. With the Muslim conquest began a Golden Age of freedom and tolerance for Jews. They freely entered the fields of government, science, medicine, and literature." --- Lewis Hopfe, 'Religions of the World', New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998. (Image: The Spanish Synagogue was built in 1868 on the site of the oldest Prague Jewish house of prayer ("the Old Shul"). It was designed in a Moorish style by Vojtěch Ignátz Ullmann.)

"Muslims entered Spain not as aggressors or oppressors, but as liberators. In this multicultural society, many Jews and Christians held government positions. Moreover, the Golden Age of Jewish history is in fact known as the period of Muslim rule in Spain. Islam allowed the Jews to flourish in Spain, with the example of the renowned philosopher Moses Maimonides, (Musa ibn Maymun) who wrote Guide to the Perplexed." --- Maryam Noor Beig

(Image: Ceiling Detail, Synagogue of the Transit, Toledo, Spain. The Synagogue of the Transit incorporates amazing details of wood, gilded with golden ornaments. Its head-board and high parts are decorated with nazarí plaster (Muslim dynasty that ruled in Granada from the 13th cent. to the 15th cent.), with Hebrew inscriptions.)

"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.'

"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, 'The Spanish Inquisition.'

"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'

"The culmination of the Crusades was the defeat of the Islamic dynasties that had ruled over the Iberian Peninsula for 700 years. Muslim rule had created tolerant, culturally mixed, vibrant cities, the most famous being Cordoba, Seville, and Granada. Jews had thrived in the new climate of cultural dialogue, scholarship, and trade. But on 31 March 1492, the triumphant Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, signed the edict expelling Jews. Expulson from Spain led to a new scattering with Jewish communities dispersing to other Muslim-ruled territories in the Mediterranean." --- Ali Rattansi, 'Racism', Oxford University Press