Medieval Spain

1
Medieval Spain

• Andres Quiceno, MD
• Based on A Vanished World
• By Chris Lowney

2

• Jews, Christians and Muslims, as we know, come
  from different religions traditions, but have to
  many ties to each other. In fact, all the
  believers of all these three religions refer back
  to Abraham, for whom they have a profound
  respect, although in different ways, If there is
  not an amiable peace among these religions, how
  can harmony in society be found?
• Pope John Paul II

3

• If we think about, Christianity and Islam are
  sects of Judaism
• Hector Abad Fasciolince (Colombian writer)

4
Medieval Spain

• In 711 C.E (Common Era) ten thousand North
  African Muslims invaded and conquered Iberia.
• Spain become the first and only Muslim states
  establish in mainland Europe.
• Before the Muslim invasion, Spain was controlled
  by the Visigoths who conducted the country into a
  dark age after been one of the most important
  Roman provinces.
• Muslims introduced to Europe cotton, figs,
  spinach and watermelon.

5
Medieval Spain

• Muslims irrigation and aqueducts were more
  advanced than the European counterparts.
• A Muslim chronicler described European hygiene
  as do not keep themselves clean and only wash
  once or twice a year in cold water. They do not
  wash their clothes once they have put them on
  until they fall apart to pieces on them.

6
The Moors conquer Spain

• Tariq ibn Ziyad invaded Spain on the fall of 711
  C.E.
• King Roderic, who was a Visigoth, was defeated in
  part because the poor support he had from the
  populations.
• Despite that Visigoths did not invented
  anti-Semitism, they embraced in a very effective
  manner.
• The Christian leadership took advantage of this
  and the bishop Julian of Toledo, himself
  partially descended of Jews said about Judaism
  had to be cut off, since it was like the
  cancerous part of the body, before this harmful
  disease, could be passed on to the healthy
  parts.

7
The Moors conquer Spain

• The apostle James, Santiago in Spanish, despite
  probably never visited Spain became its patron.
• He was the fist apostle to die, in Jerusalem
  about year 42 C.E.
• The fact that James evangelized Spain is more a
  legend than a fact, there is not archeological
  evidence of his passing there and the sources
  that reports these travels are from the sixth and
  seventh century and in the best case are dubious.

8
(No Transcript)
9
(No Transcript)
10
(No Transcript)
11
(No Transcript)
12
El Camino de Santiago

• Santiago is located in Galicia, in the northwest
  corner of Spain close to Cape Finisterre that
  means end of the earth.
• This became the second most important place of
  pilgrimage in Catholicism.
• The legend of Santiago probably was created to
  keep national pride and slow the growth of the
  Muslim influence.

13
The Pope Who Learned Math

• At the end of the first millennium, those whose
  lived that time thought that they were
  approaching the end of the world. (remember 2YK)
• The pope at that point was Sylvester II, who many
  considered a black magician that learned a bag
  of diabolic tricks in Spain.
• He was French and his name was Gerbert of
  Aurillac, he received his education at a Benedict
  Monastery in Spanish Pyrenees.

14
(No Transcript)
15
The Pope Who Learned Math

• The monks at this monastery recognized the
  intellectual superiority of the neighboring
  al-Andalus (todays Andalusia).
• They did their best to learn from their neighbors
  and became on of the most important learning
  centers in Christendom.
• At the time Gerberts was a student there, in
  this monastery was written what was probably the
  most important technological advance in medieval
  Europe.

16
The Pope Who Learned Math

• Codex Vigilanus is the first documentation of the
  use and the Arabic numbers in western Europe
  but his numerical system was in reality were
  developed by the Indian race.
• The big advance of this numeric system is that
  designate each and every degree of each order of
  numbers.
• This was an incredible advance compared with the
  Roman numeric system that lack this
  characteristic and makes them very impractical
  for even the most simple arithmetic calculations.
• E.g. in Indian-Arabic Super Bowl 334
• in Roman Super Bowl CCCXXXIV

17
The Pope Who Learned Math

• The genius of Pope Sylvester was recognized the
  advantage of this system and spread in western
  Europe.
• He was a fine intellectual man, no only a
  mathematician, philosopher and theologian but
  also and inventor.
• He is credited with the invention of the pendulum
  clock and the pipe organ.
• It was his ability with the Hindu-Arabic numbers
  that created his reputation as a black magician
  and he found great resistance to implement the
  new numerical system.

18
The Pope Who Learnt Math

• The word algorithm and algebra were also
  introduced by the Islamic civilization.
• Algorithm is derived for al-Khwarizmi that wrote
  the first treaties in algebra and who probably
  learnt it from the Hindus.
• The Britons Abelard of Bath and Robert of Chester
  learnt mathematics in Spain.

19
Paper

• In the medieval time all records were kept in
  parchment.
• But in the town of Jativa, in al-Andalus was
  establish the first paper manufactory.
• Muslims in their expand to the East, learnt the
  numerical system from the Indians and learnt the
  manufacturing of paper from the Chinese prisoners
  and introduced to Europe for al-Andalus.
• But with paper also born the loving paper
  bureaucracy and Spain became the first state in
  using paper to preserve its records.

20
A Jewish General in a Muslim Kingdom

• Samuel ha-Nagid (or Samuel ibn Nagrela). It was
  called the David of his age.
• And probably the Spanish Jews were the greatest
  luminaries of Hebrew civilization since the
  Biblical times.
• It is not very clear how Jewish believers arrived
  to Iberia.
• They might arrived and lived before the
  Christians.
• In the year 305 C.E the Bishop of Elvira forbid
  Christians in any house the shelter Jews and even
  proscribed them of eating in their company.

21
A Jewish General in a Muslim Kingdom

• In the sixth century the Visigoths forbid the
  Jewish worship.
• When Spain was conquered by the year 711 C.E. The
  Muslims trusted them over the Christians.
• Samuel lived in Granada and the legend says that
  his eloquence called the attention of King
  Hubbus, the Muslim ruler.
• He became a court officer and at the death of
  King Hubbus he became the King Badis new chief
  vizier.

22
A Jewish General in a Muslim Kingdom

• Muslim chronicler Ibn Hayyan described him He
  was a superior man, although God did not inform
  him of the right religion.
• For twenty years he was the commander of the
  Granadas army, he commanded the expansion of
  Granada and the defeat of Sevilla (Seville)
• He was also a gifted poet but he understood the
  tenuous position of the Jews in the Muslim Spain.

23
A Jewish General in a Muslim Kingdom

• A monarch will not favor you unless he hopes to
  be at easy while your labor and exert yourself in
  his service. You are caught in this tongs with
  one hand he brings you into The Flames,- while
  protecting you from the fire which with hands he
  sets against you.

24
Jihad, Crusades, Cowboys and Sheep

• When the Crusades were order in 1011 by Pope
  Urban II, the Spanish Knights were forbidden to
  participate because they should focus in their
  re-conquest of Spain.
• It is interesting the monk-warriors that
  conformed many of the military orders, the
  Knights of Templar, the Knights of St. James,
  shared many of the same characteristics of the
  Almoravid, Jihad fighters from North Africa, that
  participate in multiple campaigns in Spain.
• Both groups were very disciplined, share
  religious vows and view their role as fighter as
  a divine duty.

25
Jihad, Crusades, Cowboys and Sheep

• In reference with the cowboys, the Almoravid
  and the Knights of St. James settle today
  Castilla (The land of the castles)
• This is a meseta with frigid winters and
  furnace-like summers, a territory very similar to
  the Argentinas pampas or the Texas panhandle.
• Traditional farming made little sense in this
  infertile terrain.
• But sheep and cattle could settle in this kind of
  terrain.
• In medieval Europe, a land not good for farming
  was not good for anything else.

26
Jihad, Crusades, Cowboys and Sheep

• Sheep and cattle ranching became more important
  in Spain than anywhere in the medieval world.
• This Spaniards inventing what become the ranching
  tradition.
• The roundup the vast flocks in the Spring was
  called rodeo in an effort to drive the flocks
  from the southern meseta to summer pastures in
  the north.
• Petty ranching disputes were resolved by
  consulting the distinctive brand burned in the
  animals hindquarter.

27
Jihad, Crusades, Cowboys and Sheep

• After Columbus discovery, many of the
  conquistadores were from this region.
• And many of them settled in the areas that were
  similar to their ancestral land and they
  established the ranchos.
• The areas the share this cowboy traditions
  include Texas with vaqueros, the plains of
  Colombia and Venezuela with Llaneros and the
  Argentinas pampas with gauchos.
• All of them can find their initial roots in
  Castilla, where a group of Jihad fighters and
  Knights settled about a thousand years ago.

28
The Second Moses and the Medieval Medicine

• Moses Maimonides described as the outstanding
  representative of Jewish rationalism for all
  time.
• He was born in Cordoba, his father was Rabbi
  Maimon ben Joseph.
• He fled Spain to Egypt because the prosecution of
  the Almohad dynasty.
• He became the personal physician of al-Fadil, the
  vizier of Saladin.

29
(No Transcript)
30
The Second Moses and the Medieval Medicine

• After Saladins death, he was named the personal
  physician of his eldest son, Afdal Nur al-Din
  Ali.
• As a court physician he was obligated to visit
  the Sultan every day and he was only able to see
  his other patients after.
• Sultan al-Afdal and his court indulged in
  sybaritic pleasures and Maimonides Treatise in
  Cohabitation was the response of a request of the
  court for a regimen that is helpful in
  increasing sexual potential.

31
The Second Moses and the Medieval Medicine

• His medieval Viagra was a wondrous secret which
  no person has described take one liter each of
  carrot oil, and radish oil, one quarter liter of
  mustard oil, combine it all and place therein one
  half liter of live saffron-colored ants placed in
  the sun for a week, then massaged on the member.
• He pioneered new approaches to diagnosis and
  treatment but he also synthesized the ancient
  authorities like Galen and Hippocrates. This
  wisdom was lost in the West but was preserved by
  the Islamic world.

32
The Second Moses and the Medieval Medicine

• This is his description of pneumonia acute
  fever, sticking pain in the side, short rapid
  breaths, serrated pulse and cough, mostly with
  sputum.
• During the medieval times medicine in Europe
  regressed and no single original writer was
  produced over a thousand years.
• But some light started to shed from the Muslim
  Spain to the rest of Europe.
• Gerard of Cremona, arrived in Toledo and unlock
  the Greco-Arabic medicine to Italy.

33
The Second Moses and the Medieval Medicine

• Hermman the Dalmatian settled in northeast Spain
  and did the first translation of the Quran into
  an European Language.
• Plato of Tivoli translated and elaborated
  astronomical and mathematical tests in Barcelona.
• Toledo was the most sophisticated scholarly
  center and had one of the more diverse ethnic and
  cultural mixes.
• In Toledo, Gerard of Cremona provided Europe with
  the first translation of the Cannon of Medicine,
  written in eleventh century by the Persian doctor
  Ibn Sina (Avicenna in the West).

34
The Second Moses and the Medieval Medicine

• An interesting phenomenon is that all bright
  physicians of the medieval times were also
  philosophers.
• Avicenna, Maimonides and a Spanish Muslin,
  Averroes.
• One of the major contributions of Maimonides was
  his holistic approach to medicine, he promoted
  that a healthy life paid equal attention to body,
  environment and spirit alike.
• Maimonides warned against the health risk of
  endemic to city living Comparing the air of
  cities to the air of deserts and forests is like
  comparing thick and turbid waters to light waters
  and if you cannot emigrate from the city, at
  least try to live on the outskirts.

35
The Second Moses and the Medieval Medicine

• But perhaps the most revolutionary contribution
  was to the Jewish thought.
• The sacred tradition of Judaism is anchored in
  the Torah that means Law.
• The Torah comprises the Hebrews Bible first five
  books.
• The oral tradition was orally passed from
  generation to generation an eventually became the
  Talmud that means teaching or learning in the
  fifth and sixth centuries.
• In Jewish tradition law is celebrated in a
  positive dimension.

36
The Second Moses and the Medieval Medicine

• Maimonides sought to teach the Jews the Talmud.
• In his Misneh Torah (Repetition of the Law) he
  tried to interpret the Jewish Law.
• Maimonides believed that God created a rational
  world, with a rational law and gifted humans with
  intellectual prowess to decipher Gods ordered
  design of nature.
• He believed that Genesis should be understood
  metaphorically, not literally.
• He believed that revelation was reasonable and
  would not contradict what logic or science could
  discover independently.

37
The Second Moses and the Medieval Medicine

• Maimonides taught us that faith need not fear
  reason.
• He thought that the use of intellect did not
  affront the creator, but praises God.
• But at the same time, he taught the limits of our
  intellectual capabilities.
• This struggle to marry faith and reason has
  challenged Judaism, Christianity and Islam even
  today.

38
Sufism

• Suf means wool
• Sufism is rooted in Islams earliest history.
• They believed in a life of meditation and
  self-sacrifice.
• The Sufi ultimate aims to die to self.
• Their disciples practiced meditation to obtain a
  transcendent experience.
• This experiences are shared by Christians,
  Muslims and Jews.
• Despite that Sufism was born in the east, it
  flourished in Spain.

39
Sufism

• Ibn Arabi from Cordoba, spread this philosophy in
  Spain writing biographic portraits of the Muslim
  Spanish mystics.
• He believed that God and creation needed each
  other.
• He believed in ecumenism and one of his poems
  said
• My heart has become capable of every form, it is
  a pasture for gazelles and a convent for
  Christian monks, And a temple of idols and the
  pilgrims Kaba and the Tables of the Torah and
  the book of the Quran. I follow the religion of
  Love

40
The Kabbalah

• Moses de Leon was born in 1240 C.E.
• Kabbalists were looking to rescue Jewish
  spirituality from the rationalism of Maimonides.
• Moses de Leon was influenced by Ibn Arabi and
  several of his writings share many of the thesis
  expressed in Sufism and are also found in the
  Christian medieval mystics St. Teresa of Avila
  and St. John of the Cross.

41
Alfonso the Learned King

• Alfonso was called ElSabio, The wise or the
  Learned.
• He was the King of Castile but he was more
  interested in obtain all the available
  astronomical knowledge available in the medieval
  world.
• He included Muslim and Jewish scholars in his
  inner circle.
• He wasnt a very skill politician but his
  cultural agenda was implemented in a very
  effective way.

42
Alfonso the Learned King

• Alfonso revolutionized arts, sciences and law.
• He was the master of the first law code that was
  consulted across the globe.
• Alfonso is commemorated at US supreme court as
  one the most influential worlds law givers.
• This code of law was the first to be composed in
  a vernacular dialect, in Caitlin that is todays
  Spanish.
• He created the Alfonsine tables that were maps
  of the night sky, very helpful for centuries for
  sailors.