Teaser: History illustrates how the Islamic wave disrupted commercial sea trade routes so it is NO coincidence that the Reconquista kicked off simultaneously with Columbus' effort to seek an eastern sea route to China. If Al Andalus were really the tolerant paradise of coexistance under Islamic rule - the Reconquista would make no sense. If the rise of Islam was so generous and tolerant and willing to safeguard ancient science and literacy . . .why have Islamic societies consistently remained overwhelmingly illiterate in third world lifestyles?
Read Baron Bodissey's review of Emmet Scott's book to begin piecing together this civilizational puzzle for yourself.
You mean the conclusion of the reconquista kicked off the voyages of discovery? I hope that is what you meant.
Actually, it was the conquest of Constantinople that was the trigger. No Constantinople, no access to the Spice Road, pressing desire to go the long way around.
That's anywhere from the late 500s to the early 700s ~ actually before the Moslems showed up in the South.
The earlier non-Celtic kingdoms simply weren't up to the problem and collapsed.
Time moved slower in those days, and then there was that problem of some serious depopulation going on in Northwestern Europe starting in 535AD. That too has a Cornish component. They began relocating to a now empty Brittany ~ and in fact had to replant all the grapes there and in the upper reaches of the Rhone Valley ~ a climate anomaly had pretty much wiped out agriculture in the area ~ just follow the trail of the fellows who told the tales of immediate post Roman Britain ~ they left their stories, their names, and their cultural legacy all over the place.
Then there were plagues, periods of warming, periods of cooling, too much rain, too little rain, war, rumors of war, and probably more than one comet involved PLUS volcanoes in Iceland went off several times.
As they say just one thing after another. It was sufficiently brutal to allow the Arabs at Mecca and Petra to slip out of their desert fastness into the civilized world and begin to 'Takeover'.
Thank you, wtd
" And then there was the concept of Holy War, which did not exist in Christianity until it was borrowed from Islam (pages 240-242):
We have found that in the years after 600 classical civilization, which was by then synonymous with Christendom, came into contact with a new force, one that extolled war as a sacred duty, sanctioned the enslavement and killing of non-believers as a religious obligation, sanctioned the judicial use of torture, and provided for the execution of apostates and heretics. All of these attitudes, which, taken together, are surely unique in the religious traditions of mankind, can be traced to the very beginnings of that faith. Far from being manifestations of a degenerate phase of Islam, all of them go back to the founder of the faith himself. Yet, astonishingly enough, this is a religion and an ideology which is still extolled by academics and artists as enlightened and tolerant. Indeed, to this day, there exists a large body of opinion, throughout the Western World, which sees Islam as in every way superior to, and more enlightened than, Christianity.
Muslim conquests in the Near East, Africa, Turkey, and Europe itself disrupted trade connections and the sense of Europe or the West or Christendom centered on the Mediterranean. The way was open for Charlemagne and a new empire in the Frankish territories. Rome had finally fallen and Northern Europe came into its own as the core of Christendom.
I certainly hope the book gives Henri Pirenne the credit due him, but it's not really a crude who-done-it with a predictable Muslim villain. Something definitely happened to Rome before the Muslims came along. People didn't theorize about the change or seriously begin to build something new until circumstances made the.
History illustrates how the Islamic wave disrupted commercial sea trade routes so it is NO coincidence that the Reconquista kicked off simultaneously with Columbus' effort to seek an eastern sea route to China.
Clearly Columbus can be tied to the decline of Muslim power in Spain. You needed to have ports to make the trip, but this was all 700 or so years after Muslim conquests disrupted those routes to begin with.
If Al Andalus were really the tolerant paradise of coexistance under Islamic rule - the Reconquista would make no sense.
First, in the real world tolerance is a relative thing. A political order can be much more tolerant than another, while it's less tolerant than a third system.
Secondly, politics are about power. Indeed, much of religion was about power in those days. What rulers and clerics did wasn't always a reflection of how they were treated by others, but of what their aspirations were and what they thought they deserved.
Constantinople...today it is known as Istanbul. I had a fellow I worked with (he was with a supplier company) who was from there...I took great liberties with him in referring to his ‘home town’ as Constantinople. He did not like it much...kept trying to tell me it was ‘Istanbul’. :)
Thanks for this thread and for all the knowledgeable comments. Fascinating stuff and grist for future research.