The Fall of Advanced Civilizations

(I'm still on my little trip - but I'll be back soon. Here's what I wrote when I came back from Spain last summer)

Is this entry about the eventual fall of the west?

Perhaps not directly.

Although wedding plans loom large, the people and places from our last trip to Iberia keep coming back to haunt me.

No this entry is about the demise of the Andalus Caliphate. From an article in today's NY times about Medina Azahara, the summer home of the Andalus Caliphate, whose capital was in the nearby Cordoba:

Medina Azahara, also known as Madinat al-Zahra, was an Islamic metropolis built in the 10th century as a testament to Spain's proclamation in 929 that it was the true caliphate of the Muslim world.

The construction of the city, which began around 940, was a singular moment in history, when the most vibrant intellectual and cultural force in Europe was rooted in Islam, and when the heart of Islam was in many ways rooted in Europe.

And how could the Moors of Spain build this city?

Maria Rosa Menocal, a professor of Spanish at Yale and author of "Ornament of the World," a book about Muslim Spain, said that Al Andalus and its capital, Cordoba, were probably justified in considering themselves the center of the known universe when Medina Azahara was built. "There was no comparison between Cordoba and anything else in Europe in the 10th century - like New York versus well, a rural village in Mexico," she said in an e-mail interview.

Many think of Islam as technologically backwards, but in those days it was the Islamic countries that were tolerant, and technologically advanced.

Cordoba had running water, paved and lighted streets, and, when large collections of books were scarce in Europe, some 70 libraries, the biggest containing 400,000 volumes, according to some accounts.

Al Andalus introduced Western Europe to paper, algebra, advanced irrigation techniques and Latin translations of many of the classic works of Greek philosophy.

But Cordoba, and eventually Granada fell. But was this solely due to the foreign, uneducated, barbarian Christian invaders from the North?

...around 1010, Medina Azahara was sacked by Islamic purists from North Africa who considered the Muslim culture it represented far too liberal in its interpretation of the Koran. The raid effectively wiped the city off the map for a millennium.

Hmm. So the fall of this advanced empire, was due to foreign and inner foes - many uneducated and moved by religious zealotry. What was ironic was that the Umayyad Dynasty that conquered the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa and Iberia (and eventually used Cordoba then Granada as their Capitol) used religion as a political tool rather than a life guiding philosophy.

Once the Umayyad dynasty was over, religious ideology took over in Spain (in the form of fanatical Christianity) and spread through out the Muslim world (in the form of fanatical Islam). In both places these forces squashed tolerance, education and technology. Spain (despite it's American "empire") became a backwater where prosperity from the New World was funneled out to enrich the other more technological neighbors (such as France and theHapsburgs) ... and the once advanced Islamic world became the technological backwater it is today.