Books Should Be Free Loyal Books Free Public Domain Audiobooks & eBook Downloads |
|
The Moors in Spain By: Stanley Lane-Poole (1854-1931) |
---|
![]()
THE STORY OF THE NATIONS THE MOORS IN SPAIN BY
STANLEY LANE POOLE, B.A., M.R.A.S. AUTHOR OF "THE BARBARY CORSAIRS,"
"TURKEY," "SALADIN," ETC. WITH THE COLLABORATION OF
ARTHUR GILMAN, M.A. AUTHOR OF "A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE," "THE STORY OF
ROME," "THE STORY OF THE SARACENS," ETC. NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
1903 COPYRIGHT
BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
1886 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
BY T. FISHER UNWIN [Illustration]
PREFACE.
The history of Spain offers us a melancholy contrast. Twelve hundred
years ago, Tarik the Moor added the land of the Visigoths to the long
catalogue of kingdoms subdued by the Moslems. For nearly eight
centuries, under her Mohammedan rulers, Spain set to all Europe a
shining example of a civilized and enlightened State. Her fertile
provinces, rendered doubly prolific by the industry and engineering
skill of her conquerors, bore fruit an hundredfold. Cities innumerable
sprang up in the rich valleys of the Guadalquivir and the Guadiana,
whose names, and names only, still commemorate the vanished glories of
their past. Art, literature, and science prospered, as they then
prospered nowhere else in Europe. Students flocked from France and
Germany and England to drink from the fountain of learning which flowed
only in the cities of the Moors. The surgeons and doctors of Andalusia
were in the van of science: women were encouraged to devote themselves
to serious study, and the lady doctor was not unknown among the people
of Cordova. Mathematics, astronomy and botany, history, philosophy and
jurisprudence were to be mastered in Spain, and Spain alone. The
practical work of the field, the scientific methods of irrigation, the
arts of fortification and shipbuilding, the highest and most elaborate
products of the loom, the graver and the hammer, the potter's wheel and
the mason's trowel, were brought to perfection by the Spanish Moors. In
the practice of war no less than in the arts of peace they long stood
supreme. Their fleets disputed the command of the Mediterranean with the
Fatimites, while their armies carried fire and sword through the
Christian marches. The Cid himself, the national hero, long fought on
the Moorish side, and in all save education was more than half a Moor.
Whatsoever makes a kingdom great and prosperous, whatsoever tends to
refinement and civilization, was found in Moslem Spain. In 1492 the last bulwark of the Moors gave way before the crusade of
Ferdinand and Isabella, and with Granada fell all Spain's greatness. For
a brief while, indeed, the reflection of the Moorish splendour cast a
borrowed light upon the history of the land which it had once warmed
with its sunny radiance. The great epoch of Isabella, Charles V., and
Philip II., of Columbus, Cortes, and Pizarro, shed a last halo about the
dying moments of a mighty State. Then followed the abomination of
desolation, the rule of the Inquisition, and the blackness of darkness
in which Spain has been plunged ever since. In the land where science
was once supreme, the Spanish doctors became noted for nothing but their
ignorance and incapacity, and the discoveries of Newton and Harvey were
condemned as pernicious to the faith. Where once seventy public
libraries had fed the minds of scholars, and half a million books had
been gathered together at Cordova for the benefit of the world, such
indifference to learning afterwards prevailed, that the new capital,
Madrid, possessed no public library in the eighteenth century, and even
the manuscripts of the Escurial were denied in our own days to the first
scholarly historian of the Moors, though himself a Spaniard. The sixteen
thousand looms of Seville soon dwindled to a fifth of their ancient
number; the arts and industries of Toledo and Almeria faded into
insignificance; the very baths public buildings of equal ornament and
use were destroyed because cleanliness savoured too strongly of rank
infidelity. The land, deprived of the skilful irrigation of the Moors,
grew impoverished and neglected; the richest and most fertile valleys
languished and were deserted; most of the populous cities which had
filled every district of Andalusia fell into ruinous decay; and beggars,
friars, and bandits took the place of scholars, merchants, and knights... Continue reading book >>
|
This book is in genre |
---|
History |
eBook links |
---|
Wikipedia – Stanley Lane-Poole |
Wikipedia – The Moors in Spain |
eBook Downloads | |
---|---|
ePUB eBook • iBooks for iPhone and iPad • Nook • Sony Reader |
Kindle eBook • Mobi file format for Kindle |
Read eBook • Load eBook in browser |
Text File eBook • Computers • Windows • Mac |
Review this book |
---|