ISLAM'S CONTRIBUTION TO EUROPE'S RENAISSANCE

HRH, The Prince of Wales, Islam And The West

 . . . we have underestimated the importance of 800 years of
 Islamic society and culture in Spain between the 8th and 15th
 centuries. The contribution of Muslim Spain to the preservation of
 classical learning during the Dark Ages, and to the first
 flowering of the Renaissance, has long been recognized. But
 Islamic Spain was much more than a mere larder where Hellenistic
 knowledge was kept for later consumption by the emerging modern
 world. Not only did Muslim Spain gather and preserve the
 intellectual content of ancient Greek and Roman civilization, it
 also interpreted and expanded upon that civilization, and made a
 vital contribution of its own in so many fields of human endeavour
 -- in science, astronomy, mathematics, algebra (itself an Arabic
 word), law, history, medicine, pharmacology, optics, agriculture,
 architecture, theology, music. Averroes and Avenzoor, like their
 counterparts Avicenna and Rhazes in the East, contributed to the
 study and practice of medicine in ways from which Europe benefited
 for centuries afterwards.

 Islam nurtured and preserved the quest for learning. In the words
 of (the Prophet's) tradition "the ink of the scholar is more
 sacred than the blood of the martyr." Cordoba in the 10th century
 was by far the most civilized city of Europe. We know of lending
 libraries in Spain at the time King Alfred was making terrible
 blunders with the culinary arts in this country. It is said that
 the 400,000 volumes of its ruler's library amounted to more books
 than all the of the rest of Europe put together. That was made
 possible because the Muslim world acquired from China the skill of
 making paper more than four hundred years before the rest of
 non-Muslim Europe. Many of the traits on which Europe prides
 itself came to it from Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free trade, open
 borders, the techniques of academic research, of anthropology,
 etiquette, fashion, alternative medicine, hospitals, all came from
 this great city of cities. Mediaeval Islam was a religion of
 remarkable tolerance for its time, allowing Jews and Christians to
 practice their inherited beliefs, and setting an example which was
 not, unfortunately, copied for many centuries in the West. The
 surprise, ladies and gentlemen, is the extent to which Islam has
 been a part of Europe for so long, first in Spain, then in the
 Balkans, and the extent to which has contributed so much towards
 the civilization which we all too often think of, wrongly, as
 entirely Western. Islam is part of our past and present, in all
 fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe.
 It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart.

Akbar S. Ahmed, Living Islam

 It is well to recall that Islam not only caused Islamic
 civilization to develop but also enabled the European Renaissance
 to take root and grow. The time when Islam was most strongly
 established was also the time when art, culture and literature
 flourished, whether in Spain or, later, under the Ottomans, the
 Safavids and the Mughals. Christian Europe was enveloped in
 darkness until Islam came to the Iberian peninsula. For centuries
 Islam fed Greek, Sanskrit and Chinese ideas into Europe. Slowly
 and steadily Europe began to absorb those ideas. In England,
 France, Germany and Italy society began to explore literature and
 art with a new perspective; thus the seeds of the Renaissance were
 sown. -- p. 15

Washington W. Irving, Tales Of The Alhambra

 As conquerors [Muslims], their heroism was equaled only by their
 moderation, and in both, for a time, they excelled the nations
 with whom they contended. Severed from their native homes, they
 loved the land given them as they supposed by Allah and strove to
 embellish it with everything that could administer to the
 happiness of man. Laying the foundations of their power in a
 system of wise and equitable laws, diligently cultivating the arts
 and sciences, and promoting agriculture, manufactures and
 commerce, they gradually formed an empire unrivaled for its
 prosperity by any of the empires of Christendom . . .

 The cities of Arabian Spain became the resort of Christian
 artisans, to instruct themselves in the useful art. The
 Universities of Toledo, Cordova, Seville, Granada, were sought by
 the pale student from lands to acquaint himself with the sciences
 of the Arabs and the treasure lore of antiquity. -- p. 52

John Edwards, History Today

 On the second day of January [1492] I saw Your Highnesses' royal
 banners placed by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra . .
 . and in the same month . . . Your Highness, as Catholic
 Christians and princes devoted to the holy Christian faith and the
 furtherance of its cause, and enemies of the sect of Mohammed and
 of all idolatry and heresy, resolved to send me, Christopher
 Columbus, to the . . . regions of India. -- vol. 42