The Spanish were the main people the Tainos met when Columbus arrived in the Caribbean in 1492.
The Spanish in 1491:
- Population: between 6 and 10 million (England at the time had about 5 million).
- Language: Spanish (Castilian), a Romance language that comes from the street Latin of northern Iberia. The Spanish are never called Romance Europeans.
- Lands: Spain: in the western Mediterranean:
- the Iberian peninsula, except for Portugal in the west and Navarre in the north,
- Balearic Islands,
- Sardinia,
- Sicily,
- Canary Islands (off the African coast).
- Cities and towns: Unlike France, Italy and the Ottoman Empire, it had no city of more than 50,000. Largest cities: Seville, Cordoba, Granada, Valencia, Barcelona. Houses were squarish with triangular roofs and held one extended family (?).
- Government: Ruled by reyes, kings, who received taxes and inherited their position. Nearly all were men.
- Society: nobles and commoners. Property passed through the father’s side. Men had one wife.
- Economy: mostly farming and fishing. Full-time craftsmen. Produced iron, wool and sugar for trade.
- Food:
- grew: wheat, making it into bread, their main food. Grapes, olives, oranges, lemons, sugar.
- raised: cows, sheep, pigs.
- other: fish, wine.
- Religion: gold.
- Sport: pilota, a kind of handball.
- Technology: cities, towns, pottery, farming, sea travel, gold, iron, writing, calendar, plough, compass. Their culture supported millions but was based too much on cities and war to remain in balance with nature (non-ecosystemic). Wheat could only produce half as many calories per hectare of land as maize or cassava.
- Military technology: swords, lances, armoured men on horseback.
- Enemies: the Moors, dark-skinned Muslims who had ruled Spain for hundreds of years.
- Origins: The Tainos thought the Spanish had come from the heavens. This was disproved when it was found that holding them under water killed them and that their bodies would not come back to life, not even days later.
The Spanish wiped out 85% of the Tainos with genocide and disease.
They raped Taino women, took them as sex slaves and wives.They brought in black slaves to take the place of the Taino dead. Today Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic are, genetically and culturally, a mix of Taino, Spanish and African.
In 1494 the pope, their religious leader, divided the Americas in two: the Portuguese got Brazil, the Spanish got the rest. The Spanish overthrew the Aztec and Incan empires. They shipped the silver and gold of the Americas to Europe. They produced 80% of the world’s silver from 1500 to 1800, much of it from the mountain of Potosí in Bolivia (then part of Peru). Most of the silver wound up in China, the Netherlands (their bankers) or was wasted in wars.
In the 1800s the Spanish lost their empire in the Americas, though 40% of the people there still speak Spanish as a native language.
Contributions to the Western world: Discovery of the Americas; racist ideas about its native peoples, whom they misnamed indios (Indians).
See also:
- Tainos – the model for this post
- Spanish language
- Spanish words:
- Potosi
- John Mohawk: Racism: An American Ideology
- Afro-Latinos
- pope
- The British – modelled on a post about the Iroquois, just as this one was modelled on the one about the Tainos
The Moors were those dudes.
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True.
Some while back, I read that Hernan Cortes said he had come to the New World for “God, gold, and glory”.
He forgot about the “God” part first and left the morality of it to the priests and their pens.
Religion played a crucial part in The Conquest as it was the duty of Christians to evangelize the pagan savages and take possession of lands in the name of God and the monarchy. The theology of the time emphasized the soul’s salvation over worldly concerns.
(The Requirement used by the Spanish to justify war crimes, genocide, etc:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requerimiento)
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Interesting.
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“God, gold, and glory”.
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My apologies, I inadvertently hit the ‘Post Comment’ button before finishing my comment.
“God, Gold & Glory”.
“The causes of expansion into the new world”
http://www.academia.edu/1145182/God_Gold_and_Glory_The_causes_of_expansion_into_the_new_world
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The Spanish was one of the first Europeans to actually colonize and conquer the ”New World” as it was known. They colonized and conquered the Caribbean, South America, parts of North America, Mexico, and Central America. They went to the New World to evangelize to Indians, find gold and other riches and find new land to settle on and claim to their country so that way Spain profits from their explorers finding new land. In the process of colonizing the land, these Spanish explorers killed off the Native Indigneous people with diseases and guns and brought African slaves to pick sugarcane and tobacco in the fields. The Spanish was a force to be reckon with back in those days!
And I was shocked that the Spanish even colonized my native country of Jamaica. The Spanish had Jamaica until 1655 when the English took it over.
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Religion: Gold. Well, most Christian mega churches today are about dollars.
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First of the white Europeans to venture out of Europe enmasse – was it the continuous intra-european conflicts that caused them to be so aggressive?
Hernan Cortes said he had come to the New World for “God, gold, and glory”.
what is it about white men that they need a fictional exaggerated version of themselves imposed upon others , primarily via violence?
First the Spanish, then other European societies,ending with the English who then establish America – founded on genocide and slavery by a predominately christian religious population where today has the largest military in the world (spends 10 times the entire world combined on its military)
imprisons a greater proportion (disproportionately its African American and Latino(Spanish speaking native/African/European mix) males) of its citizens then any other country in the world.
Still I think the universe and all its sub components are cyclic just like the planets and suns(stars) we africans went out of africa ,became european
(leaner and meaner) then when “around” the globe(world).
Now one world we will slowly become nicer to ourselves and each other for a duration then some new emergence will start the external cycle again.
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Want to do some reading on the Moors.
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Has Abagond done a post on the Moors? *checking the archives*
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@ Kiwi
That’s a very interesting question you pose. Which racism was/is worse, Anglo or Spanish? I’ve often wondered if my ancestors would have been better off in Puerto Rico or another Spanish speaking country versus the
American South. Don’t get me wrong; slavery was no picnic no matter what the nationality of the slaveowners. In some ways I think the
Anglos were more uptight and more restrictive than the Spaniards.
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Mochasister, from what I have read the Spanish, especially on the islands, were very cruel slave owners that found it cheaper to work their slaves to death than to keep them and indoctrinate them as the English in America did. They also did not demand a total obliteration of their slave’s culture, (mostly because you were not expected to live that long). Slaves only had to know enough of the language to follow directions as far as work was concerned. That is why so many aspects of African culture are more alive on the islands.
At some point in American history importation of slaves was officially banned (although they were still being smuggled in to the country in the same way that drugs are today). The price of slaves was also more expensive. This is why American slaveholders felt it necessary to COMPLETELY OBLITERATE ALL ASPECTS OF AFRICAN CULTURE in their slave stock.
They did not want slaves speaking amongst themselves in their native languages or using drums for fear of the slaves communicating amongst themselves and plotting revolt. In some parts of the country and at different times of their history in America slaves actually outnumbered Whites. So for the reasons stated it behooved White slave owners to totally whitewash the slave population so they could be their own overseers in a sense. Physical chains can only do so much, but hobbling Blacks mentally would keep them slaves longer and proved to be a better solution to ensuring their prolonged captivity.
As for cruelty in slavery I’d have to say the French on the sugar producing islands were the cruelest. It was said that they would roast slaves alive among many other cruel tortures they devised to boost production through terror and try and quell thoughts of rebellion. But, all in all slavery was just bad all the way around…if you were Black.
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Ohh damn! Damn,damn,damn. We’ve just suffered a 911. Terrorists attacked a mall owned by THE SAME GUY WHO CO OWNED THE NY WTC COMPLEX,Frank Lowy. The mall collapsed yesterday-ring any bells? These false flags will go on and on until enough of us wake up.
Can I give you smth on that?
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Abagond,
you do this post a disservice by not discussing the Impact that the Moors had on the “Iberians” — the Moors ruled most of Iberia (Spain) for about 700 years!!
700 years is a long time and needs more than a quick narrative… the Moors affected/ effected the Spanish psyche — the Visigoths (Germanic tribe) lost most of Iberia to the Moors but they survived in northern Asturias, (said to be the “Real Spain”) and other northern regions in Spain.
in order to understand who and what drove the Spanish and their actions in the “New World” — you can’t skip over the biggest event that shaped Spain and impacted their culture — the invasion of the Moors.
The Moors kept Iberia up and running financially when the rest of Europe was in the dark. They brought knowledge in architecture, sciences, medicine, and agriculture–they introduced citrus fruits, figs, pomegranates, sugar cane, cotton, silk and rice.
The Moors were also the driving force that brought the Spanish “Christians” together — the Hatred of the Moors enabled the northern kingdoms of Asturias, León, Navarra, Castilla and Aragón to put aside any dislike for one another long enough to join forces to take back Iberia (Spain) — the Reconquista
that’s why the Basque were fighting to separate themselves from their tainted cousins to the south in Spain.. they want to maintain their “pure white European” blood and heritage and distance themselves from the people who were ruled and intermixed with the Moors.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/spain_1.shtml
Even though this article says the Spanish were never slaves, that was not all together true. Towards the later part of Muslim rules , life got tough (Almoravid- Almohads Era) — they were at the bottom of the totem pole.
The Spanish were enslaved, persecuted, and sometimes massacred for being Christians or Jews; and once these “Christians” finally beat the Infidels, they were ready to make Everyone pay for their subjugation.
This is why they were so CRUEL to the Tainos and other Native people…
the cruelty that was visited upon them by the Moors was in turn passed on to the American “Indians” — after being ruled by the Moors/Arabs, they Spanish walked away with a Dislike, Disdain, Utter contempt for dark-skinned people (but they stilled married and slept with them)
That’s why all the Jews and families with known Moor/Arab blood were “encouraged” to Immigrate to the “New World” and the Spanish proceeded to “whiten up” the population of Spain as fast as possible.
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Kiwi and Mochasister,
the answer to that question is simple: “would you rather die by drowning or by fire?” Two different methods but the end result is the same.
Both the British, white /Anglo Americans, and Spanish were cruel to their slaves, racist, and committed genocide against the indigenous peoples who unfortunately were living on the land masses they desired to steal.
They all marginalized the black population (once slavery ended) and wanted to get “rid of” their black residents at some point in time but went about doing it differently.
So let’s start with the Spanish:
The African slaves did retain a lot of their heritage and traditions in Caribbean and Latin America but their Afro-descendants are also affected by the same “self-hatred” and brainwashing that affects many black Americans — and they don’t wish to be seen as “separate” from their mestizo/ Spanish countrymen.
The Spanish carried (and still do carry) an abiding “contempt” for dark/brown skin because of their history with the Moors — and the Tainos were a “dark” people — they were not fair-skinned like many of the North American native people.
but the Spanish had no qualms about procreating with Amerindian and African women in the New World:
(1) Unlike Gold, Spanish/white women were hard to find, so the men improvised
(2) They had a caste system that allowed their mixed-race children to become non-black.
By accepting their mixed-children into society, in their minds, this would “whiten” up the population and they could “breed out” the darkness.. this was an actual policy in many South/Central American and Caribbean countries … that’s why “la Raza” was pushed as the ideology where a new “race” of people were being made in the New World..
the famous “Casta” paintings highlights just how it was all broken down:
http://globalbrief.ca/alejandrogarciamagos/2011/09/15/%C2%BFmestizo-zambo-prieto-o-saltapatras/
it was a systematic “means to an end” to destroy the “cancer” from within –for those who don’t die fighting in War (they used their African slaves as soldiers), then they could commit “genocide” by breeding the African out — physically and mentally.
and it worked very well — that’s why my fellow Caribbean “Latinos” are so proud to talk about their Spanish ancestry, while denying or downplaying their African ancestry, and only fairly recently, have begun to be “proud” of their Taino or “Boricua” heritage.
The Spanish gave black people an “out” to escape their African roots. They have a reverse “one drop rule” in most of Latin America — 1 drop of white blood is enough to make you no longer “black”
that is the legacy that Spanish “racism” has left on the psyche of the ALL people — Spanish/Hispanic culture continues to carry “contempt” for their African heritage and black people are still looked down on and are practically invisible in history, government, media, etc.
In the last few years, there has a been a change in several South American countries where black, mixed-race, or mestizo people are starting to speak up and are “accepting” and becoming proud of their African and/or Indio heritage — and black people are becoming more vocal about their marginalization in society and fighting for their rights.
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I don’t think the division between Portugal and Spain occurred before 1500, right? Also, Magellan did not land in the Philippines until 1523. Before then it was not known if a transpacific route led to Asia.
Finally, later on, they divided the trade routes up by geography. The Portuguese travelled to Asia via Cape of Good Hope and the Indian Ocean. The Spanish were restricted to Trans-pacific passage from the Americas.
Maybe the division of the world into Spanish and Portuguese sections took about a century to finalize.
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@ Jefe
Thanks for the correction about the Philippines. I updated the post.
The Treaty of Tordesillas was signed in 1494:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas
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you totally missed the expulsion of jews from spain in 1492, along with thousands of executions and murders in the years before the final expulsion:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/expulsion.html
i like your article but you really need to include this— and change ‘gold’ to ‘catholicism’. i get the implication but it completely dismisses the fact that the spanish catholics murdered and tortured jews.
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@ Linda
Excellent comment. Thanks. I agree, the bit about the Moors needs work. And a post on the Moors is way overdue.
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I, like a lot of other black folks used to think the moors were black Africans. But my research on them has led me to believe that while some moors were black, like those in Mali, the moors were for the most part white Berber speakers and Arabs who generally hated black Africans.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong
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North africans (berbers+arabs) are brown not white, you can easily tell them apart from europeans as they look really nothing alike.
Many of us also have black ancestry.
The only white looking people you’ll find in north africa that are not european tourists/”expatriates” are the sephardic jews (like André Azoulay, senior adviser to the king of Morocco, politician Jacques Attali, actor Alain Chabat, Jean Pierre Bacri and his wife Agnés Jaoui).
btw, I am north african. (from Algeria)
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Thank you.
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@amara,
Is there any truth to what I posted about lighter skinned Berber speakers and African Arabs having a great disdain for black Africans? I ask because this is what I’ve been reading. Especially in Mauritania and Morocco.
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That’s a bit complicated to answer, because western north africa (morocco+Algeria+Tunisia) is a former French colony, and there is quite an ugly legacy from the french (le code de l’indigéneat that was the colonial law is based on the code noir) and french colonial rule was quite brutal and savage.
North africans can be quite xenophobic towards foreigners.
There is some racism against black men, especially if they are poor, but not really against black women,
Morocco and Mauritania (especially the later) are still very feudal in their social structures, and poor people regardless od colour can be enslaved in some case.
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Some of the moors were blacks, from southern Sahara and Senegal, as the North Africans brought along with them soldiers, craftsmen and merchants from that area.
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“Religion: gold” is funny, but it sort of leaves out the whole Inquisition, which is an important part of Spanish history and certainly tells us something about the culture, specifically in regard to the attitude towards minority groups. Catholicism is a huge part of all Hispanic societies even today, due in large part to the religious fanaticism of the Spaniards during the Age of Exploration. They used their goal of spreading Christianity as a front for their other goals of political domination and economic gain in the Americas. To not mention Catholicism while describing the conquistadors seems strange to me.
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The inhumane treatment of Jews, Arabs, homosexuals, and Protestants in Spain during the Inquisition set the stage for the inhumane treatment of the Native Americans in the “new” world.
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Funny how when Christians spread their religion by the sword, its merely expansion and missionary work.. but Muslims are radical, extremists..idk seems like ( to use white folks favorite term…) A double standard
“Gasps” DUM DUM DUMMMMMMMM
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The mistreatment of all of these groups was justified with Catholicism.
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@mussandrad Don’t forget the Crusades, and the “War on Terror” that little Bush called a crusade. Religion can help people do great things, and terrible things too.
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@ mussandrad
The difference is in what century these things happened.
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Except i’ve heard plenty of stories about Black women from various parts of Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mali, etc.) going into North African countries to work as governesses and maids and being brutally killed, assaulted or mistreated at the hands of the Berber or Arab women they work for…
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They dont work as maids in north africa, but used to in the gulf countries before they switched to cheaper south east asian labor.
The average north african family is quite poor and there is no real middle class like in the middle east (Libya used to be the exception), but there is a very small french speaking comprador plutocracy.
The north african oligarchs have enough impoverished rual underage north african orphan girls to exploit, If you read french fluently you can find those several news scandals on north african child maid slavery, now they are getting filipinas and indonesians to avoid scrutiny, and as a status symbol.
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Yeah…we shall agree to disagree, because there ARE numerous accounts of Black women from different parts of Africa who go to the Arab world (North African countries are considered a part of the Arab world), who do not fare well at the hands of lustful Arab men (a shameful secret that many Arab women like to keep) and Arab women.
But i’m getting too off topic as this thread is about the Spaniards.
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Seriously Phoebebrunelle, you should know better than using those stereotypes and hear and say, “lustful” arab men, huh? hello?
Don’t that remind you of another racist cliché about another group of men?
I know that in the west it’s popular to badmouth arab (berber) people, but still…
Morocco and Tunisia are rather affordable tourist destinations, so feel free to visit and form your opinions from your own experience rather than relying on second hand rumours.
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I find it problematic that you list “Discovery of the Americas” under Spanish contributions. It would be more like “Contact”, not “Discovery”. It’s not a discovery if there are already people there.
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Donatella, you must remember that things in history only count when white folks do it.
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Or… the statement could be understood to mean that the Arab men to which she was referring to as “bad actors” in this scenario, are lustful. It needn’t be a racial description of all Arab men.
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“mussandrad,
I, like a lot of other black folks used to think the moors were black Africans. But my research on them has led me to believe that while some moors were black, like those in Mali, the moors were for the most part white Berber speakers and Arabs who generally hated black Africans”
Linda says,
“Muslim Spain was not a single period, but a succession of different rules.
•The Dependent Emirate (711-756)
•The Independent Emirate (756-929)
•The Caliphate (929-1031)
•The Almoravid Era (1031-1130)
•Decline (1130-1492)”
The “Moors” were indeed a mixed bag racially /ethnically because the term is actually describing their religion — which was Islam. So the Spanish called the Muslims, “Moors” in reference to their religion.
With each change of Rulers, the race/ethnic composition of the officers and Army changed as well. The early Moors were Syrians/middle East Arabs (Emirate to Caliphate), and then north Africans /Arabs after (Almoravid to Almohads)
–but the early Moors were considered “fair-skinned” but still “darker” than the Visigoths. The native Iberians were considered dark in comparison to the Visigoths but the later Moors were dark enough so that they changed the population landscape of southern Spain
The group that black Americans talk about and perceive to be “black Africans” are the Almoravid north African Moors.
the Almoravid Moors were made up of several ethnic groups: ( Berbers: Sanhaja, Lamtuna, Zenata; Non-Berbers: Soninke, Mandinka, Hausa) – with the largest group being the Sanhaja.
Here is a picture of modern day Sanhaja (in Morocco):
http://people.kzoo.edu/ggregg/moroccotour/somorpic11.htm
The definitely would not be considered “white” — they would be considered “brown” by today’s racial standards and a few of them would be one-dropped into the “black’ category. I think it safe to say some share African genes with their “black African” brethren (even though most north African “Maghreb” deny it –the late Gaddafi used to play up this connection)
Picture of modern day Mandinka people (Bambara of Mali):
http://kwekudee-tripdownmemorylane.blogspot.com/2013/08/bambara-bamana-people-malian-ancient.html
but as you know, Colourism is a b’tch and in most societies, the lighter-skinned people have always felt “superior” to darker-skinned people. This is common in north Africa, India, Asia and many other countries (like the US)
The so called “whitening” of north Africa (the Arabs and Berbers) probably occurred with the rule of the Ottoman Turkish Empire (1400’s -1900’s), where they imported thousands of white European slaves and had a large military that included converted Christian (white Balkan/Slav) soldiers
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Impressive comments Linda, thank you.
Is it true that the Ottomans took white European as slaves? I had heard about the Janisaries, slave soldiers taken from Christian families, but do you think they were white too?
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Linda, excellent commentary. 😀
To Abagond you said:
Agreed. More on the Moors!
But, was it all down to racial payback and hate retention?
May I add this: you cannot tackle the history of Iberia without bringing in the European fight for Christendom. Let us be clear then on this point, it was not only their whiteness that was at stake, it was also, crucially, their religious identity.
The 2 things are intertwined and cannot be separated.
Do you suppose for a moment that the Popes during the Middle Ages did not watch the region of Iberia with great interest? Or, that their greatest minds, like St Augustine or Aquinas, did not seek to formulate a religiously justifiable theory of Just War?
As for the Spanish, note these 2 examples:
1. The the cult of Santiago (St James),
2. The canonization of Saint Pelagius of Cordova.
Cult of Santiago: It was visions of James, one of the apostles of Christ, that the Spanish generals saw when the fought the Moors.
St James became the Protector of Soldiers in the Reconquista.
He is no other than Matamoros (Moor-slayer), and Spain’s patron saint. How is portrayed in Spanish dignity: http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/giovanni-battista-tiepolo/st-james-the-greater-conquering-the-moors-1750
St Pelagius: the young Christian lad held hostage by the Moorish ruler who offered him his freedom if he would agree to convert to Islam.
The youngster refused and released him. However, the politicians of the time produced another narrative:
the Moor fell in love with the child’s perfect beauty wanted to rape the child, but he repelled his advances. As punishment, the Moor subjected him to hours of torture and, finally, indescribably horrible dismemberment.
Such was the nature of the Moor and Islam, polar opposite to the Christian European. I believe it was Pope Urban I or II, or appealed to the Reconquistadores to stay at home to fight the Moors rather than go on a Crusade to Jerusalem.
Note too, the politicking of pious Isabela and hard-ass Ferdinand, monarchs of Spain during the time of Columbus. Why have the Borgias in the Vatican popes meddling in Spanish affairs, when their very own Spanish Inquisition would strengthen their authority throughout their Spain?
In walks Isabela’s father-confessor, Thomas of Torquemada, and right on cue, so begins the fanatical hunt for heretics!
Spy on marranos (Jew converted to Christianity), he urges, for they are proselytizing our Christian communities!
Thousands were tortured and burned at the stake between 1480 and 1530.
I think cultures differ in hate retention, it takes different forms and the reasons can be complex…
*
Then, ask what role did economics play? Was it a coincidence that the expulsion of Moriscos (former Muslims converted to Christianity) and Moors during the Spanish Inquisition concentrate its efforts in the East of Spain, where the Christian locals saw them as their business rivals?
And what about the use of Latifundia? These are sizable lands/properties that would be given to the Militia Christi, the Reconquistadores as reward for their soldiering. Latifundia became known as “Hacienda”, basically plantations, farms run on slave labour…sounds familiar?
*
The Basques were never motivated by maintaining only their whiteness.
They were in the Region before Hispania was Romanized, and, before the Ibero-Celts. The Visigoths didn’t conquer them, so why would the Moors?
They didn’t even adopt Catholic religion until it suited them, and then they founded the Jesuits. These are stubborn and independent people with a long history of rebellion.
Linda, I believe Europe during the Middle Ages was an unstable and warring place, and Iberia stood out for its forever-shifting borders. Religion and religious wars were constant, but as the Spanish Christians and Jew suffered massacres at the hands of the Moors, didn’t the Christian kingdoms also battle among themselves or ally with Moorish kings?
Didn’t the Moorish kings often have Christian-born wives or mothers themselves?
http://www.iep.utm.edu/justwar/
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Comment riddled with typos (ugh), but still understandable, I hope.
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Thank you Linda
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@ Linda, Riverside_Rob,
This ^^ answers Riverside_Rob’s question:
“I had heard about the Janisaries, slave soldiers taken from Christian families, but do you think they were white too?”
More detail on that:
.,.It should also not be forgotten that Circassian Caucasians ran Egypt’s Mamluk Empire from the 14th century onwards and their presence in North Africa never faded away.
The point is that during the time the word was invented {Caucasian} and became a descriptor for white people, the Circassian-Caucasian played a crucial role as PROVIDER for ELITE SLAVES in the Eastern Mediterranean’s political economy. After all, “Mamluk” literally means “slave”:
Male Circassians served initially as military-slaves before they took power in Africa. Female Circassians were sought after as wives of high level players in empires of the near East, acquired at great expense. A number of Circassian-Caucasian women came to wield real power as the mothers and wives of sultans, and many were bought at extremely high prices in the slave markets. Therefore, the notion of the superior, beautiful Caucasian is part and parcel of the white European Orientalist fantasy…
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/caucasian/#comment-192367)
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“Moors” is a catch-all term that the Christians used to mean Muslims living in Islamic parts of the peninsula. Talking about people being “white” doesn’t make much sense given the complications of historical identities but here is my attempt.
There are a number of different groups: You have the native Andalusi Muslims who were a mix of Syrian Arab aristocracy and Berber clans and who intermarried with the Visigoths. The leadership favored Visigoths for their harems and this eventually led to a “whitening” of the leadership (similar process to that of Mexico’s elite following the revolution in the 20th century-see Vicente Fox as an example). This happened on top of a largely fair Arab/Berber population base (I’m talking relative to southern Berbers and Nilo-Saharans, not Visigoths when I say “fair”). The greatest of the Ummayad caliphs, Abd-ar Rahman III, was three-quarters non-Andalusi in terms of his ancestry, due to the sheer number of Christian females in his family tree. He had blue eyes and had to darken his beard.
The last Ummayad ruler, the dictator Al-Mansur, brought in a number of southern Berbers as mercenaries to strengthen his power. He used them to disenfranchise the Andalusi elite and then to deal his Christian neighbors devastating blows. There was a contingent of swordsmen from Senegal in this army, and despite the fact that the vast majority of the mercenaries were southern Berbers ( who were not civilized according to the Andalusi and could not speak Arabic) the Senegalese swordsmen were the most visibly different and became the source of contempt in literary works. This is the origin of the phrase “A certain Kaffir, blacker than Satan,” that would be recycled into Andalusi-influenced later Iberian Christian literature.
The Almoravids only enter “Spanish” history post 1085, 200 years later. They were called in by the taifa king of Sevilla because the latter was worried that with Alfonso VI of Castille’s capture of Toledo, the entire peninsula would soon be his. They were only valued as mercenaries. Their Almoravid religious movement was seen as vicious, primitive, and barbaric by many of the more cultured Andalusi, but they were encouraged to check the advance of the Christians. Once the frontier had stabilized, however, like so many nomad forces then then imposed their rule on the peoples they were brought in to protect. They were initially hated for their primitive culture. Later on they were hated for being libertines as the Almoravid warriors very quickly abandoned their strict Islamic practice and began to degenerate (in the eyes of the Andalusi).
The Almohads are an even later version of the Almoravids- same kind of fundamentalist movement of southern Berbers.
In the old days all Berbers were classed as non-Negroids, due to their fairer skin, hair texture, facial features, colored eyes, etc. There can be a claim they are black- you can claim anyone is black, like pharoahs with red hair and fair skin. I could claim I’m black if we go by these racialized arguments. I’m 1/16 black and 1/4 Choctaw, yet visibly I’m 90% white.I have blue eyes and only my facial structure is American Indian. I very much doubt many of these types going on about “pretendians” or whatever online would accept me as an Indian. My brown relatives count me as Indian. Who is what race can be used for political reasons.
.
Further up along social hierarchies,no matter where we are looking fairer skin predominates. That includes medieval Islamic societies, from whom the west inherited its colorism. That’s a nasty fact that many leftists can’t sit with- the idea that a non-Western culture can be at fault for a serious contemporary problem. Medieval Islam laying the roots for later demonization of dark West Africans due to economic and military encounters, and the slave trade.
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Read a fun fact that might have some correlation to this thread, I read that a couple of Columbus’s colleagues, Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, saw natives in Cuba forming the leaves into the shape of a musket with a palm or corn shuck wrapper, lighting one end on fire, putting the other to their mouths, and drinking the smoke. I was confused how one drinks smoke. I guess it means they inhaled the smoke. Jerez tried it, got hooked, and took the habit back to Spain. The smoke billowing from his mouth frightened his neighbors, and they reported him to the Spanish Inquisition. Jerez spent seven years in prison. I saw this in one of my reference books, World History for Dummies. I was excited to read this today.
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@ Linda&Bulanik: Thanx for the information. That was awesome.
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“I know that in the west it’s popular to badmouth arab (berber) people, but still…”
– – –
Arabs and Berbers are not necessarily one and the same.
(That said, Iberia / the Iberian Peninsula also doesn’t consist of Spain only….)
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Exactly King!
Like i said earlier, i felt i was getting too off topic to go into the rape, dehumanization and sometimes murder that Black women in North African and other Arab countries face. A comment up thread suggested that racism was reserved only for Black men in North Africa. When in all honesty, the truth is a google search away.
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“Bulanik,
But, was it all down to racial payback and hate retention?
May I add this: you cannot tackle the history of Iberia without bringing in the European fight for Christendom. Let us be clear then on this point, it was not only their whiteness that was at stake, it was also, crucially, their religious identity.
The 2 things are intertwined and cannot be separated.”
Linda says,
You are absolutely right but historians always play up the Religious aspect of Spain’s occupation and reconquering era.
History loves to highlight the Crusades as the battle of “good versus evil” but to me, since the oppressors were dark people, this battle definitely had a racial undertone.
So to me, yes, the whiteness/ European-ness of the Spanish was at stake because the righteous path and the “Light” was symbolized by the body of Christ and his worshipers; and the Moors symbolized the foreign “black devil” who was the polar opposite of Christ.
(Notice how the Europeans turned Jesus “white” even though he came from the same region/racial group of the people the Spanish despised)
The Spanish were practically Fanatical… the Hatred of the Moors was manifested itself in their fervent ties to the Church and their fervent belief in the righteousness of their war with the devil (Moors)
To me, the Moors inspired the Europeans to be “all they could be” — the Spanish (and other European’s) used the Church to become “kamikazes” for the cause. (and to be fair, the Almohads had been Fanatics as well)
The Spanish Inquisition occurred because of 700 years of subjugation. The Frustration they felt, had manifested itself into a Deep, ideological belief in the supremacy of Christianity, with the Europeans being the “messengers of God”
As they say, Payback is a b’tch and the Spanish let anyone they labeled “inferior, heretics, or heathens” feel it, using their Religious piousness as a weapon, with the Church blessed the tips of their swords.
it was the Native Americans and black Africans who were labeled “Godless or Soul-less Heathens”, with the Jews and Iberian moors bringing up the rear and holding down the “Heretic” fort (because they all were considered Inferior in the eyes of the Spanish since God allowed the Spanish to be victorious in their fight against the “darkness”)
It’s easy to use religious symbolism to downplay the racial aspect of Spain’s history. My goal here is to make sure the Racial aspect doesn’t get missed.
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This is proving to be one of the most educational post I have ever read on this site,not just a expansive and through history lesson,but how to write about it in a through and engaging manner ,and many if not most of the best contributions coming from female commentators as well.
I need to reread this post and comments several times just to list all the profound factual points I’ve learned here.
I must admit I’m no match in terms of knowledge nor prose on any part of this subject – I feel like a very fortunate freshmen at prestigious collage being taught by some of the best professors and senior class members.
I very grateful and appreciative of this post and its commentator,may I graduate one day to be a contributor of equal standing.
Thank you.
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Mary,
Thanks for bringing the story of about Columbus’s shipmates.
Here’s one for you, one of his financial backers was the Niño brothers, African/Iberian moors aka “black” who owned the ship, the Niño and piloted the “Santa Maria” —
Juan Niño, piloted the “Nino” (which he owned); his brother, Pedro Alonso Niño piloted the “Santa Maria”.
most people don’t know about them because the Niño brother’s best friends, the Pinzon brothers (Spaniards) get the most pen strokes in history.
and for those of you posters who are confused and wish to “whiten” the African Moors, here is a painting of Pedro A. Niño:
http://globedivers.org/2012/08/01/bonaire-history-the-story-behind-the-discovery-of-bonaire-the-negro-per-alonso-nino-and-the-cauchietos-1499-1500/
He sure doesn’t look like a light skinned “Berber” to me, maybe he had a bad sunburn.
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mussandrad, Mbeti,
you’re welcome. I do my best to pass on what little I’ve learned over the years because too much misinformation is out in the world.
White western historians and teachers (Asplund) choose to whiten the “players” coming out of Africa that actually participated in Europe’s history — how can they perpetrate the myth that they (white Europeans) accomplished everything “important” in the world, if they include a group of people they claimed were ignorant savages.
Ignorance does help to control the masses and it’s evident that most people in the world are clueless — even though the information is only 1 click away (back in the day, the library was king)
but such is the way of the world we live in but black people of the diaspora don’t have to play along and continue to be ignorant.
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For some reason, the Spanish always get off scot free when we discuss colonialism. The conversation always revolved around “evil White people from England. Why is this? Is it because the Spanish are romanticized? I’ve heard a lot of brothas from the US like the Spanish girls, but there is a stigma about being with White women. Not that I agree with the latter reality, or any stigma in any way, shape, or form; just out of curiosity, what’s with that disconnect, in regards to selective historical oppressor identification?
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Linda-
How have I “whitened” them? I merely described their “whitening” of themselves through marriage with Visigoths, which they did not me. I don’t really get why that’s relevant because the Muslim Iberians weren’t even “black” to start with. Their elite came from Syria and the rank and file were Berbers. Most Iberians, whether Christian or Muslim, resembled the natives of those regions today.
It’s like with Egypt. People assume, wrongly, that the modern population looks dramatically different from the ancient population. Not true. Pre-modern conquests often involved relatively small numbers of conquerors. That’s why the idea that Arabs “whitened” Egypt” is silly. The bulk of regions tends to be immobile throughout history, even when regions change hands. It’s only in the era of oceanic travel that you start to see such extremes in demographic changes, like Dutch in South Africa.
Y’all need to quit making me out to be some kind of clansman just because I’m not into lying about Beethoven being black. I’m only 3/4 white for Christ’s sake.
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That last comment was from me. My girl had the computer last.
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And for the record, no I don’t support her views about black women. My ex keeps threatening her, thus her anger. For that I apologize.
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@ Kiwi
I am late to this one. My opinion is that they were both terrible enough that such questions are besides the point. But if I had to pick, I would say the Anglos were worse – but that might be just because I know more about them. From what I understand, though, Anglos had a harder colour line (the One Drop Rule) with fewer rights in the law for slaves, since they were seen more as property than as people.
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@ donatelloturtle
I named that a contribution “to the Western world”, which in relation to them it was a discovery. In relation to the human race, Asians discovered the Americas.
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“Riverside_Rob
Impressive comments Linda, thank you.
Is it true that the Ottomans took white European as slaves? I had heard about the Janisaries, slave soldiers taken from Christian families, but do you think they were white too?”
Linda says,
R_Rob, I didn’t forget you — I have news that will please your little “race realist” heart — yes, the north Africans and Turks took white Europeans as slaves.
It’s said that the North Africans did this in retaliation for the Moors being kicked out of Spain in 1492, but slaves taken by north Africans could be black, brown or white, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish or Muslim — they didn’t care.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the Barbury pirates (haven’t met race realist who hasn’t) — you all love to play tit for tat — “see, we were slaves too” but at least some writers try to be honest when their doing their “slavery comparison” shopping:
estimates conclude that “between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.
Over the course of four centuries, the Atlantic slave trade was much larger – about 10 to 12 million black Africans were brought to the Americas. But from 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slaves to the Americas, according to Davis.”
The Muslims attacked ships and enslaved sailors or they attacked towns on the shores of in places like “Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland,” he said.”
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/whtslav.htm
The Turks took their slaves from the Balkans and the Caucasus region (those famous Circassians, the people Racist scientists found ‘beautiful’ and hijacked their heritage in order to claim that the “white” western European race comes from that region but he Russian “Slavs” disagree with that assessment)
“Davis said the vast scope of slavery in North Africa has been ignored and minimized, in large part because it is in no one’s agenda to discuss what happened.
The enslavement of Europeans doesn’t fit the general theme of European world “conquest and colonialism” that is central to scholarship on the early modern era, he said.
Many of the countries that were victims of slavery, such as France and Spain, who would later conquer and colonize the areas of North Africa where their citizens were once held as slaves.”
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The French invaded Africa in order to stop white slavery because they got tired of paying:
“Europeans sometimes attempted to buy their people out of slavery, but no real system emerged before around 1640. Then the attempts became more systematic and were sometimes state subsidized, as in Spain and France. Almost all the actual work was carried out by clergy.
Compared to Catholic Europe, Protestant states could be lax and disorganized in freeing their subjects. Thousands of Dutch, Germans and British ‘languished for years in the chains of Barbary,’ without the aid of organized clergy or state funds for their release.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_01.shtml
well at least the Muslims were willing to negotiate and take the money, the black Africans didn’t even get that luxury.
The influx of these European slaves along with the Turks (Ottoman) empire lent itself to the “whitening” of north Africa. Many of these slaves did not go home.
So for every “blue /light colour eyed, light- skinned” north African Berber that likes to claim they are pure indigenous African “Caucasian”, there’s a European ancestor hiding in the closet right next to the black African one.
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THE SLAVE TRADE IN THE CARIBBEAN WAS EXTREMELY BRUTAL. Just from two documentaries I have seen over the last few years…
One practice implemented to instil fear to prevent attempted escapes was to tie multiple chains to various parts about the body of the recaptured slave (Black man or woman), to two horses, one horse on the right, one horse on the left. They would gather all the slaves of that particular plantation to stand and watch, (children included), to make an example of the recaptured slave. Then they would repeatedly whip and beat the horses until the horses were hysterical with panic, and charged off in opposite directions… this would tear the body of the slave limb from limb.
The gang rapes of Black girls and women was particularly horrific. In one documentary, there was a discovery of the journal entries of a slave owner, where there was account after account of his past time of gang raping his Black female slaves. There would be dozens of male participants (slave owners and their male friends and family). He bragged about the details in his entries. The women were raped one at a time, every orifice, while being beaten, spat on, punched, kicked. And there was something, like, thousand plus, of these journal entries. And this practice was very common, not limited to this one particular slave owner.
I can assure you that the slave trade in the Caribbean was unbelievably horrific.
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Re: Spanish religion
They were bigoted Catholic zealots, among the worst in history. But given their actions in the Americas, I think Hatuey’s assessment that gold was their religion is more on mark. Their Catholicism was fake, an excuse for evils that shocked most Catholics of the time.
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@ Linda
You’re absolutely right: the racial element is not only downplayed, it actually omitted from Spain’s history writing.
For this insight, Linda, your commentary is vital to our understanding.
It is also my opinion that the Spanish harbour an abhorrence about the dark-skinned people of the world, and you gave some pretty good reasons why!
However, I hope my comments was NOT interpreted as also downplaying the “racial” element of common historical narratives about the Spanish.
That wasn’t what I said.
What I said was that race and religion was INTERTWINED in the way the Spanish reasoned, felt, and acted. I mentioned other elements to the Spanish historical context, which is also necessary to clear understanding.
*
You take the example of the White Christ: just as the Europeans turned the most likely very “swarthy” Jesus into a blue-eyed blond in their depictions of him. I took the example that the Spanish appropriated for themselves because they wanted someone holy to kill the Moor: James, their Patron Saint. Someone white+Christian, like them, to be inspired by before and during their killing sprees: a white-washed Jew, essentially.
This was the same James the Apostle, the same dark-skinned Levant Jew who was James, son of Zebedee.
Also, the Spanish used political spin — under the guise of religious conviction — to characterize the Moor as lustful, predatory and sexually perverted. A homosexual child-rapist, basically: someone to hate.
Those stereotypes are highly racialized: we have all heard of the “black-brute/rapist” and the “lustful Arab”, haven’t we?
How persistent these stereotypes are. Do they ever go away? Clearly not.
The suffering of St Pelagius at the hands of the swarthy and Muslim pervert was used as propaganda for centuries, gathering popular support, righteous indignation that provided political strength not only for the Reconquista, but survive as racist references to this day.
*
The religious element cannot be step-around, because it conflates with the racial politics of race in Spain.
I had wanted to detail the way that religion was used as political weapon by the Spanish monarchs to further their ends, but that would’ve made my comment too long. There are few things to add, though.
Firstly, religion then, in Europe, was BIG. This was before the rational age of Enlightenment seeped in. These weren’t secular societies, we are talking about, like the ones today, with clear boundaries between Religion and State. In the Medieval world, Religion was the defining passion for the masses, it was life-blood. Relgion mobilized the bodies and moved hearts of the Medieval European.
To the Spanish monarchy, to practice another religion was eventually aligned with an act against the Spanish state, treason, and treason is the crime of disloyalty to one’s sovereign or nation. What then, could have been more binding and defining than religious nationalism? Would it have been enough to say “our race”, or “we whites” to mobilize a fragmented people at that time?
No. They used the tools at their disposal to meet their ends and acted out their racism in the process.
Much has been written about the Spanish Inquisition, how deadly and evil it was. Thousands were killed, it’s true, but over the 400-plus years of its existence, the numbers executed did not exceed 12,000. Not like witch-hunting in places like Scotland, the principalities of what later became Germany and Switzerland, which relied on moral panic and an inherent horror and hatred for women’s sexuality. Witch hunts in Spain were confined to the Basque region, and the Inquisitors tended to take a sceptical stand to what was put before them…the repressed fantasies of Germans.
In the Spanish context, the Catholic Church has been much maligned and discredited because it was used as a weapon of state — as nationalism — rather than a tool of religion.
Over time the Spanish systematically erased the presence of the Moors from their knowledge. The expunged their land and their memory.
In the last century, General Franco, the fascist dictator, came on the scene and made damn sure that any of that foreign, darkie crap was bleached out of the history of his magnificent white Spain.
There’s more I’d like to say about this cultivated national amnesia, but I’ll return to it after my meeting.
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“Naija Girl
Linda-
How have I “whitened” them? I merely described their “whitening” of themselves through marriage with Visigoths, which they did not me. I don’t really get why that’s relevant because the Muslim Iberians weren’t even “black” to start with. Their elite came from Syria and the rank and file were Berbers. Most Iberians, whether Christian or Muslim, resembled the natives of those regions today.”
Linda says,
Naijagirl answered for Asplund to my comment — very interesting.
Anyway Naijagirl and/or Asplund — whoever you are:
I already touched on the early rulers Ummayad caliphs:
“ With each change of Rulers, the race/ethnic composition of the officers and Army changed as well. The early Moors were Syrians/middle East Arabs (Emirate to Caliphate), and then north Africans /Arabs after (Almoravid to Almohads)
but the early Moors were considered “fair-skinned” but still “darker” than the Visigoths. The native Iberians were considered dark in comparison to the Visigoths but the later Moors were dark enough so that they changed the population landscape of southern Spain”
so what’s your point in making it seem like there were no black Africans amongst the Moors except for the Senegalese? and only in 1 era.
if you weren’t trying to “whiten up” the Moors, then why are you trying to act like the Sanhajalese (aka Senegalese) soldiers didn’t go back to Spain during the Almoravid invasion.
and I’m sorry but many of the Spanish historians at the time described the Moors, and many journals in French describes the north Africans they met — the distinction between the north Africans and the Syrian Arabs was duly noted.
and look what I found — your Nigerian peoples were busy discussing this same subject. They even brought in DNA work:
“BERBERS are predominately ”African” in admixture and remain an indigenous African group.
Nuclear DNA
Note that Moroccans are the Berbers with the most ‘’Eurasian’’ admixture.
Moroccans = 62% African + 38% Eurasian (20% Asian + 18% European)
41.3% Northwest African
17.9% Mediterranean
16.2% Southwest Asian
14.6% West African
05.6% East African
03.6% Caucasus
00.4% South Asian
00.1% Far East
00.1% Siberian
00.1% Northern European
00.1% Southeast Asian
http://www.nairaland.com/1270416/somali-military-history/2
the information they brought in was interesting.
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Linda, comment to you in moderation.
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Linda
“Naija girl” aka Rose is my current gf. I introduced her to this site. Her views are her own.
The fact that these populations were who they were doesn’t have anything to do with me “whitening” people up. Not everything is some weird conspiracy by the “man” to remove ” brothas” from the history books.
Some Nigerian people online may have noted Sub-Saharan African genes in Berbers. Only an idiot would deny that. Obviously the Berbers are more closely relatped to sub-Saharan Africans than Europeans are. I don’t get how that makes them “black” if our standard for blackness is West Africa, which contained populations of the k word according to traditional Berbers. Groups of Berbers like the Tuareg I can see. Then again Benjamin Jealous is “black.” He looks as black as I do Choctaw.
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and just to be clear, there were many Berber ethnic groups back then and they ranged in the colour spectrum of browns but they were never white and did not look like the Visigoths.
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Kinda- why would they be anything but an Aftican group? They lived in Africa. “African” contains a large number of different groups. Mandinkas they were not. And I also never said there were no black Africans in Iberia at other times. I noted the large fir of Senegalese. There were also large sub-Saharan slave populations in North African countries. These processes/conflicts still rage today. I don’t know why anyone would find that surprising.
On a side note, the bs suspicions about my identity are ridiculous. Why would I want to be misleading? I haven’t exactly trolled.
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“Bulanik,
However, I hope my comments was NOT interpreted as also downplaying the “racial” element of common historical narratives about the Spanish.
That wasn’t what I said.
What I said was that race and religion was INTERTWINED in the way the Spanish reasoned, felt, and acted. I mentioned other elements to the Spanish historical context, which is also necessary to clear understanding.”
Linda says,
Oh no, I understood what you were saying — I just wanted to explain why I breezed by religion the first time by emphasizing how it has been used traditionally in history in order to downplay the racial aspect.
To me, everything you said is right on point. The Spanish “psyche” is almost hard to sum up in one go because their history is complex.
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Linda-
Of course they were never “white.” They referred to themselves as white relative to sub-Saharan peoples, but that has no scientific value. I never said they looked like Visigoths. The Visigoths were Germanic/Latin! Over time elites next “whitened,” to more closely resemble Visigoths, but that was due to a preference for Visigothic women.
I find it funny that the evil Whitney Spaniards in this post were, ironically those most closely mixed with Muslim populations (the Spaniards of the Americas were predominately southern Andalucuans).
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The evil “whitey” you’re describing stayed behind to make sure that the tainted ones left.
The Spaniards made a point to Expel the Andulasans and “Any” Spaniard from anywhere in Spain with Jewish and Moor ancestry (regardless if they converted)…
and with discovery of Gold, Spanish “explorers” and fortune seekers came from all over Spain
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Also I don’t know why you value the Almoravids and Almohads so highly. I interests me that you do.
The Almoravuds were rough and I cultures by Andalusi standards. They were not major contributors to Western high culture. They were militarily skilled- ie temporarily able to check Christian advances, but not great civilizers. The glory of Islamic Spain seems to lie with the Andalusi, who were an Arab/Berber/Visigoth mixture ethnically and culturally at one point, there are even Normans and groups of Slavs in Iberia.
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and why is it so important for you to downplay the Almoravids and Almohads in favor of a group of people they conquered? was it because they put their foots on the necks of the Andalusi and back-sliding Moors.
Must of not hurt too much since the Local ethnically mixed “Andulusi” managed to further intermix with black and brown Almoravids
Sorry Asplund, I don’t intend to let you hijack the role these last groups played in Spain because you prefer to “remember” the light, bright, almost white Ummayad.
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@ Linda, the deliberate and cultivated cultural/historical amnesia about Spain’s past is breath-taking. The Spanish don’t only have a tradition of state-sponsored religion, you become an enemy of the state if you do not follow it.
The Spanish will blatantly — to your face — deny they have an Islamic, African past.
Why has it taken so long to recognize that the Renaissance was fed and begun by Muslims of Africa? It’s only now that archaeologists and historians are piecing together the jigsaw deliberately buried by the Spanish of the past, which was this: that the Moors were responsible for the revival of the Classics (and European civilization?) The Spanish monarchy did its utmost to destroy all of this early evidence. In the century after Isabela and Ferdinand, 300,000 Moors were persecuted and expelled from Spain’s shores, and about one Million books in Arabic were burned. One million.
Look at the Alhambra Palace. All the archives housed in the building were incinerated by the Spanish during the Inquisition. But could the Spanish bring themselves to demolish the structure? No, they preferred instead to keep it standing and say it was the offshoot of Visigoth and Roman genius!
I have heard this with my own ears!
Note in this video, the Spanish interviewees can barely countenance “the touristic notion” that this building could be made and designed by Muslims out of Africa:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS07hDVoJcM)
The harmony of this building, as a construction, originated in the geometry of the Ancient world. Antonio Fernandez-Puertas, in his book about the Alhambra, says that the architecture and decorations the Africans built are centred on one geometric code, a proportional system not based on fixed units such as inches or millimetres. It is invention of another order.
And as such, It is an achievement of both mathematics AND aesthetics.
But how this building been recognized by the Spanish? As an isolated and mysterious fairy tale place. An anomaly, even. Something that just appeared.
Destroy the evidence and stay silent about that.
Don’t mention the Moors!
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=3674548
The Spanish want to say it is product of the Romans and a remnant of the Visigoths…you know what I mean, a white and European cultural product.
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Linda-
I never “hijacked” anything. Theres no conspiracy to downplay black roles in Islamic Spain or Egypt or anywhere else it’s not 1815. Please do not accuse me if evil intent just because I do not agree.
Two Facts:
1. The Almoravids were soldiers first and foremost. They were not responsible for the cultural achievement of Iberia’s Muslims, such as the Alhambra mentioned by Bulanik. In fact, their fanaticism was detrimental to it, much like Isabella’s in the late fifteenth century Chtistian state. Unlike Isabella, their complete lack of administrative skills prevented their consolidation and effective long-term resistance.
2. Only a minority of the Almoravids were sub-Saharan “blacks” and those largely consisted of lower ranking slave- soldiers. Most of those slave soldiers were not of the elite kind like the Jannisaries and Mamelukes either. Some generals like Abu Bakr were more closely “black.” The majority of southern Berbers were like Yusuf Ibn Tashufin. Brown with straight noses. They became lighter once they started taking Christian wives.
Muslim Spain setting the stage for the Italian Renaissance? That’s not accurate. First of all, Al-Andalus’ glory was centuries before the Renaissance. Secondly, the intellectual movement championed by Andalusi would heavily influence (notice I didn’t say “create” ) the Scholasticism of European philosophers. The Italian Renaissance was actually a rebellion against Scholasticism.
It’s not good to take a scenario in which some roles were played by “blacks” and then distort the scope of their roles. That’s just as much cultural appropriation as what American whites have done with American blacks’ music.
Also, people on the site like to paint people as bad guys just because they don’t go along with cock-eyed theories. The world is not divided between Afrocentrists and Neo-Nazis.
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That came out way too harsh. Apologies.
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@ Asplund
Not accurate? If so, then who made the works of Classical Antiquity available to the Europeans after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire? Who preserved, translated and ensured the transmission of Hellenic and Islamic texts, scholarship and knowledge?
I am not sure if it would fair to say to you that you have taken a narrow view — because I have also heard that the latter Italian Renaissance can be traced to a rejection of Romaneque Art, and, I would also consider that conclusion to be narrow.
AFAIK, the word Renaissance was only used for the first time retrospectively during the 16th century and came into common use centuries after that, in the 19th century, and used particularly by Europeans of the colonial nations.
Personally, I don’t believe any intellectual trend of the past is the result of one element, or that there is no such thing as easy or fixed “periodizations”.
If one believes in such definite period-setting, one might also believe that the Renaissance has a simple and straightforward historiography. It does not.
I can understand that in doing so it is convenient, because it is sets finite timelines to suit a PoV. This is useful for structure, but the determination of where a trend begins and ends is often arbitrary which defy that kind of “block unit.”
Do art historians and Renaissance specialists uphold this idea of the Renaissance being a rebellion against Scholasticism, or even that that is consistent and definitive within your time-frame?
What is this hard and fast delineation of a rebellion against scholasticism at a particular moment that you speak of?
When I said the Moors fed and begun and were “responsible for the revival of the Classics”, I am not alone in believing that, because it is well documented that Spain was one of the great centres of learning for Europeans at that time because of the libraries and universities in existence that Western Europeans visited and learned at.
The Renaissance of the 12th and the civilization of Al-Andalus overlap.
Kenneth Clark, among others, has written extensively about this epoch, that it was time that European civilization began to flower and did so by a cultural revitalization brought to the Continent through the Moors, their centres of learning and their translations of Greek, Arab and Hebrew Classics of science, philosophy, etc.
These texts from Spain (the translations from ancient Greek especially), were as significant to the 15th century Renaissance in Italy as to the 12th century Renaissance. This was never in dispute. The main different between the 2 is that the later Renaissance concentrated on history and literature, whilst the early Renaissance focused on maths and science/philosophy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_School_of_Translators
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Bulanik-
Your talking about two different movements. The twelfth century “renaissance,” if we’re going to use that term, was absolutely propelled by Iberian Muslims. No doubt about it.
The “Renaissance” as it is most often used, ie the fourteenth- fifteenth century humanist philosophical and art movement in Italy, began (my analysis here- not absolute law or anything) with Petrarch’s “Ascent of Mount Ventoux.” That’s the beginning of Humanism and the revolt against Scholasticism. The art styles would grow out of humanist circles.
The Latin works vital to Scholasticism, many of which were transmitted through Muslim Iberia, were objects if scorn by the humanists. They saw these works as backwards bastardizarions and sought a purer firm of Latin prose they believed more similar to the writers of classical antiquity. The outside boost for the Italian Renaissance unlike Scholasticism, wouldn’t come from Spain but directly from Freece after Greek scholars fled the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks.
So yes, Iberian Muslims played a huge role in Western European development. During the twelfth and thirteenth century period of European expansion.
“Moors” is a catch-all term used by the Spanish. It’s like referring to the Iroqois as “Indians.” The reality is much more nuanced.
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My phone dropped spelling errors all through that.
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“Asplund,
Only a minority of the Almoravids were sub-Saharan “blacks” and those largely consisted of lower ranking slave- soldiers. Most of those slave soldiers were not of the elite kind like the Jannisaries and Mamelukes either. Some generals like Abu Bakr were more closely “black.” The majority of southern Berbers were like Yusuf Ibn Tashufin. Brown with straight noses. They became lighter once they started taking Christian wives.”
Linda says,
I was not making a colour distinction of the Moors– I already stated in my first comments (that you did not read) that the Moors were a mixed bag as far as Ethnicities and looks went.
I did not make any distinctions with the Moors until you came along and decided to make the Moor empire all about the 1st three Eras and act like the Arabs from Syria or middle east were “white” like the Europeans.
also please provide the French, Spanish, or any source that states that only ” a minority of the Almoravids were sub-Saharan “blacks”?
there is no such thing as “sub-Saharan” blacks…. everyone who was part of the Almoravid journey were from North and Northwest Africa — so you can drop the white, western euphemism… I already named some of the black African, non-Berber ethnic groups that were part of the army and they were not Senegalese.
Even now, you are doing what most white racist’s do — you are trying to take the “African” from the brown skinned north Africans, who carried black African genes.
Do you think the Berbers and non-Berbers practiced apartheid? — they were trading partners for hundreds of years because the Berbers were Nomads and this was before the Arab invasion.
Many southern “Berbers” carried black African genes regardless of how straight their noses were — there were many different Berbers ethnic groups back then.
Many East Africans have straight noses as well, so are you race realists going to call the Somali’s “brown” too?
and please, drop the act, you are a race realist who is coming here to disrupt — that’s why you were trolling as “Naijagirl” and stirred up trouble on the other post.
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Sock puppet here?
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1. As for my focus on the “Andalusi,” let me say this. You keep talking about “Moors” as if they are all one group. That’s not historical accurate nor is it particularly useful as a descriptor. You had discussed the cultural and intellectual effect the “Moors” had on later Spain. I was pointing out that Spaniards were influenced by the cultural traditions of the Andalusi, not the Almoravids and Almohads. The Almoravids and Almohads were military regimes hostile to the arts and learning, which they considered decadent. Look up “Maimonides” for an example of this. The Almoravids are not the same groups as the Andalusi, and they are not the same group as their black allies to the south, whom they brought into their fold after their conquest of Ghana, ten years prior to their arrival in Iberia.
2. The medieval Berbers made distinctions between groups. “African Genes” is a catch-all just like Moors. That accounts for hundreds of groups. The Berbers at the time certainly made distinctions between themselves and blacks to the south, however. As for Spanish sources, take a look at the illustrations of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. You’ll see a large number of lighter-skinned Berbers, along with a minority of blacks. Same with the Book of Games. Same with every Christian illustration in every illuminated manuscript. Colorism spread into Al-Andalus in part due to the original Berbers who would merge with the Andalusi Arabs and would include references to “The K word, blacker than Satan,” in literary works.
The ultimate sources are from North African Muslims themselves. A Moroccan Berber, the traveler Ibn Battuta, didn’t discuss “blacks” until he arrived at Mali, where he picked up several hundred black slave girls. The Tunisian Arab Ibn Khaldun drew a sharp contrast between the Berbers, Bedouins, and the blacks further to the south, of whom he said:
“Beyond [known peoples of black West Africa] to the south there is no civilization in the proper sense. There are only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings. They live in thickets and caves, and eat herbs and unprepared grain. They frequently eat each other. They cannot be considered human beings.”
and
“Therefore, the Negro nation are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because [Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.”
The distinction between Berbers and sub-Saharan blacks ( a category as real as any other) was emic, meaning noted from within civilization, and etic, meaning observed from without (as in the case of the Christian Spaniards).
Of course, common sense would tell us that the majority of Almoravids and Almohads were Berbers and not black, given the Berbers of today, where they are located in Africa, how they describe themselves, etc.
Calling me a bunch of names and accusing me of this or that doesn’t affect any of the evidence. I prefer to discuss history because I enjoy it, not so that I can get dragged off into a childish, tangential discussion about something irrelevant. That’s for people with no argument.
As for “disrupting” this thread we both have done the exact opposite in my opinion. We’ve contributed to a fruitful discussion.
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Jefe,
What the hell is a “sock Puppet?”
If I have some kind of evil motive, I’m having a hard time trying to figure out what it is. My arguments are long, drawn-out, and readily available to see. I’ve not derailed a single discussion on this thread. To the contrary, I’ve enhanced it.
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Jefe-
That doesn’t apply to me. I won’t let my Rose post here anymore but I really don’t think she said anything more out of line than others on this blog.
As fir my posts, I have not insulted one person nor derailed one thread. Disagreeing with someone isn’t derailing.
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I never said that about you. Why are you getting so defensive. just answered ur question.
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I won’t “let” my blk g.f post on a blk blog for blk people
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Well Jefe you’re right there. Sorry didn’t mean to go off. I’m just a little confused as to how my person is even being an object of discussion, as my interest is solely in historical discussion.
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Mussandrad-
I’m not understanding what you are saying. Can you clarify?
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Who controls the natural resources of Africa today, and who wants to control those of the Middle-East?
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@ Asplund
Certainly.
Both Linda and I, on at least 2 other threads in the past have detailed the origins and differences of the Imazighen (Berber) people at length.
It’s not as though there is only non-awareness of that.
For the purposes of this discussion and avoiding long posts, I’ve used the shorthand of “Moors” in the way the Spanish have.
*
Not quite. You seem to be taking the highly conventional view of European history as far the so-called Dark Ages go.
Agreed, the first humanist revival of Greek learning began with Petrarch.
But, I had to chuckle when you mentioned the input of the Byzantine Greeks, saying that they boosted something “Italian”.
The Italian Renaissance seized Italy by the first half of the 15th century, but the fathers of that country’s Humanism, Petrach and Boccaccio, lived in the previous century, didn’t they? Though both of them knew Barlaam and Leontius Pilatus — Greek scholars from Italy — neither Boccaccio or Petrach could honestly say they had deep knowledge of the work of the Ancient Greeks could they? When Constantinople fell, it strikes me that the Byzantine Greeks that came to Italy were the ones that were behind the rise of interest in Antique Culture.
Thus, it was not familiarity with Classical Antiquity that brought about the Renaissance in Italy! In my view, what probably motivated Petrach was his own view of Dark Age Italy.
*
I wonder about what seems to be a rigid view of what period produced what that you will bend — when it suits — to stress the greatness of the Italian Renaissance “purity” of European thought….
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Bulanik- seems like we’re in agreement on most of it. I agree that the spark of the Renaissance came from inside Italy. I’d say the plague and other 14 century crises had as much to do with turning away from Scholasticisn as anything else.
The refugee Greeks influenced the Renaissance throughout the entirety of the period, with their influence gaining speed after the fall of Constantinople. They had already began influencing Italian thought before then, even dating back to the Latin Empire. From the mid fourteenth century on there were attempts to reconcile east and west and thus created a climate of cultural exchange.
The only problem I initially had was giving the Iberian Muslims credit for the Italian renaissance. The Ottoman Tirjs played a major role but giving them the lion’s share of the credit would be like attributing the Harlem Renaissance( my favorite “Renaissance” ) to white Americans. Crediting the Iberian Muslims would be like crediting J.S. Bach for the “A Train” instead of Duke Ellington and his orchestra. There’s a connection- a chain through history, but it doesn’t have pride of place.
I didn’t get your last paragraph. I’m currently banned so I may not be able to reply rapidly. I’m enjoying our discussion though.
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@ Asplund
contd..this might be a longer post than I wanted, but a few thoughts have occurred to me since my post above, as your interpretation of this history is narrow and over-Europeanized. Have you asked whether your analysis might have been highly influenced and become subsequently lopsided by Eurocentrisim?
It has an air-like quality, wouldn’t you say? 😀
The Byzantine Greeks did far more than “boost” anything! Really.
So much of what the Greeks wrote has been appropriated as essentially “European” and “white”, and I believe that became more and more so in Western Europe.
Not that different to the way the contribution of the Moors, the Arabized Africans, the Muslims — whatever we call them — has been left out, downplayed and ignored in the civilization of white Europe.
(When I heard lectures/read about this stuff years ago, the stress was on how the Greek’s work was like an “add on” to the Roman and later Italian thought. There was no thorough examination of the Moors, or the Golden Age of Islamic knowledge bringing “light” to the European Dark Age, either.
I imagine that’s changed now, at least, I hope it has.)
The knowledge provided to Medieval Europe by the Moors was much, much more far-reaching than you wish to admit, it seems.
For instance, the study of Aristotle never ceased throughout the Medieval times due to St. Thomas Aquinas’s work. He attempted to reconcile the philosophy of Aristotle with Christianity, and Aristotle’s teachings dominated the Logic and Natural Philosophy of Medieval universities: his sources were Moorish. Yes, his scholastic approach DID change because of the impact of Humanist thought, but that does not change the basis of the discussion. Scholasticism became neo-Scholasticism, an incorporation of different approaches.
*
But, let’s backtrack a bit, and widen this out for a moment:
What about the first Crusades and their impact? We’re talking Europe in around 1100. This was when the science from the “Muslim Renaissance” (because there were a number of Renaissances even though you seem to favour the Italian above all else…why?) began to come to Europe with all their effects. In the court of the Norman kings in Sicily, there were numbers of Muslim scientists and writers, doctors, etc. who worked for the Norman kings. (Many of these had escaped from the Islamic oppression after the religious tendencies attacked freedom of science in the Islamic world.)
What about the Holy Roman Emperor Fredrik II, Stupor Mundi, whose dominion stretched from Sicily, through Italy to Germany during the Middle Ages? He spoke Greek and Arabic and his court was full of Muslim scientists and scholars. What are we to make of that?
Didn’t Frederik make Italian the official language and founded Italian Literature.? Dante loved him! And Dante was a pillar of the Italian Renaissance.
Are you saying that Frederik II’s approach and thought had little influence on Italian approach and thought? Just because the Popes didn’t like him and wiped out his great work, that makes Moorish influence negligible in the Italian context?
The Church labelled him a heretic — pretty damning, but that’s what Catholics like to label dissenters.
This Emperor had enemies all over the place, but nobody could deny him since he was able to crown himself as the King of lost Jerusalem by negotiating with the Muslims controlling the Holy Land.
As fond of one may be of the fixed-nature of the period of Italian Renaissance and the supposed “purity” of its birth and origins, I doubt if it is – or was ever — as clear cut as many might wish.
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You’re banned?
Sorry to hear. I don’t follow everything on this, read really, really slowly and was bogged down with work most of yesterday, only responding to your post in the last hour, so this is surprising news.
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@ Asplund, look, I don’t know if your overview IS “Euro-centric”, but I thought you seemed to taking an approach which seems to be consistent with the way I have seen these questions approached.
I may be wrong about this, of course.
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@ Linda
Spain and Morocco are separated by the 9 mile stretch of sea, the Strait of Gibraltar. The way I was taught about that was that the anything North of the Strait was “dominant”, and that anything South of it was completely Other.
Unconnected.
Isn’t this like the way Africa is divided into North Africa on one side, and the dreaded “Sub Sahara Africa” system on the other?
A thousand years ago, people traveled by sea and over vast landmasses, but I always get the feeling that we are encouraged to see:
1. the isolation of peoples, and,
2. the special advancement of the European.
This is a special brand of CULTIVATED closed minded-ness that favours one people over another.
This is why I have the problem with periodical headlines and deadlines such as “Renaissance” because we are made to believe there was a point or one place were it all began. That is not how life or history goes.
The commenter, Sam, made the observation about Japan and how things actually work. The Japanese took their letters, the alphabet, from Chinese, along with many other cultural features, but turned them into Jjapanese.
Later, they borrowed from Westeners in 1500’s and made those things Japanese. After the Second World War, and well before it, they borrowed ideas and technology from all over but somehow they all became Japanese.
The Spanish, in particular, and the Europeans IN GENERAL, do this.
The Spanish have invented — cleaned up and white washed — their history to reflect the greatness of their white, Christian heritage.
‘There are other examples, but let’s look at Guzman el bueno, aka, Alson Perez de Guzman:
This is probably Spain’s great heroic icon,
who captured Gibraltar from the Moors,
who defended the town of Tarifa for Sancho of Castile,
who protected Tarifa’s castle against the siege of the Moors,
who founded the line of the Dukes of Medina Sidonia and so many of Spain’s statesmen, generals and colonial viceroys…so proud to say this man was their ancestor.
Now, it turns out he was a Moor, an African.
Evidence was also found in the same historicl archive that it was Moorish sailors also discovered America before Columbus.
(Oops, how inconvenient…but let’s ignore that. 😀 )
http://gazules.blogspot.ie/2011/11/red-duchess-luisa-isabel-alvarez-de.html
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* I mean Alonso, not Alson.
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Bulanik, hope you don’t interprety reply as hostile. I appreciate your response. It’s hard to not sound dismissive and sarcastic over a computer.
All historical categories are constructed by historians. To a certain extent that makes them all arbitrary. They’re necessary in my opinion. First of all they aid in understanding. Secondly they allow us to focus on what was vital and significant to a particular period.
I agree with you that Iberian muslims contributed greatly to the development of medieval European thought. Without them, some Greek works would have been lost completely. I hope I’ve never minimized the impact of Andalusi philosophy on Scholasticism. Thus they indirectly influenced the Italian Renaissance because humanism was in part a revolt against scholasticism. I don’t believe their contributions deserve pride of place in discussing the roots of the Italian Renaissance, however. That’s too over-reaching. That’d be like blaming Song China for WW I because they invented gunpowder. We might not as well make any distinctions at that point.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I minimized the impact of the Greeks. The fall of Constantinople created a cross-cultural flowering.
I don’t understand why Fred. II and Sicily is relevant. Sure huge impact in the Middle Ages, but we’re talking about a period two- three hundred years later with a different philosophical background.
Just my thoughts. Enjoying the thread.
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@ Linda, perhaps I need to set down a few points before I forget them and get involved in my life outside here? 😀
Here a couple more thoughts that come to mind.
Note that it was not only necessary to see the presence of the Moors exclusively as INVASION, violent and unwanted. That is probably as famous as painting the Reconquista as a “Holy War”, rather than a civil war — a brutal Real-politik –between Spaniards of different faiths.
It is simply traditional to characterize the Moors in Spain as predatory hordes.
And probably for the reasons you have stated above.
*
According to Spanish archaeologists (example: Lauro Olmo Encisco from Madrid’s Alcala University), this idea of the Visigoths being overrun and assaulted — in every instance — by these African foreigners is not true.
What findings from digs have uncovered is that the Visigoths were in decline and crisis.
In fact, the Visigoth civilization had collapsed by the time the Moors arrived, and their leader Tudmir (or Theudimer) signed over control to the Moors, by treaty, in exchange for Moorish protection. There is also the question — in some cases — whether there was even violence involved at all. There WERE battles, absolutely, but not everywhere or in every instance.
http://www.worldcat.org/title/moors-at-the-height-of-empire/oclc/182765100
What seems is also coming clearer, is that the Moors were encouraged to stay in Spain because the Visigoths wanted them to reverse the disarray, poverty and shambolic condition of their landscape.
I’m thinking of the examples of the Roman Bridge of Cordoba. When the Moors came to Spain, the Bridge was ruined, and it was the Moors who rebuilt and embellished it, and the parts around it. Another example: the walls of Madrid: http://www.gomadrid.com/sights/city-walls.html
And, how did parts of Spain that had been arid and dry, flower into the food-basket of wealthy nation that was known for its agriculture — after the Moors’ arrival? The Moors didn’t just bring irrigation, but also reared fine horses, sheep and were excellent cultivators of orchards, experts at botanical grafting and cross-breeding of new plants. The land reforms that were brought to Spain were unlike the rest of Europe: strikingly they did not rely on the model of serfdom and slave labour.
The Moors were not imperial colonizers in the sense we now understand.
They could have stripped the land, plundered, enslaved and raped their way through it, squeezing as much wealth out of land and the Visigoths as possible, then shipped all of that back home over the Straits of Gibraltar, yet, I’ve never encountered any narrative of Spain, or by the Spanish, that reflects that.
What I have heard is that other Western Europeans were inclined to be imitative and looked covetously at the Spanish: didn’t Hrosvitha of Gandersheim (a German writer) say what she saw of Moorish Spain was “The Ornament of the World”?
I’d doubt if so much was achieved through sheer brutality.
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@ Asplund
I believe you know as well as I do that historians cherry-pick, foreground or ignore, exaggerate factors that endorse their own conceits.
They also dismiss an idea as “over-reaching”, or some such, as it suits them, or pretend they don’t “understand” what is clear, changing goal posts willy-nilly.
When I said “..let’s backtrack a bit, and widen this out for a moment:
What about the first Crusades and their impact”, I looked at Frederik II’s huge significance on the Italian language and the founding of Italian Literature — and Dante, who loved Frederik II and was not alone in being immensely influenced by his contribution.
You, however, cannot understand how this factor is relevant.
It is not for me to convince you if you have no wish to understand — no matter what material or argument is presented to you.
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@ Linda, contd.
It’s not unknown but rarely mentioned that it was Spanish Moors who provided the cornerstone what we know think of Western Romance.
A prince of Europe, known as The First Troubadour, the Duke of Aquitaine, inherited vast numbers of Moorish women and girls who had been kidnapped by his father, King William VIII in an 11th century siege.
These girls and women were not only useful as female slaves, they were highly valued for their musical ability, and their love songs in particular.
It was during the same century that Spain became the biggest manufacture of musical instruments throughout the European market, spreading gradually throughout France, influencing French troubadours, and eventually reaching the rest of Europe.
The French Duke became known as the First Troubadour because he adopted the Moorish music he had been taught by the many women in his capture.
But, it wasn’t just music he was transfixed by, but a Code of Conduct FOR and BETWEEN men and women in the Islamic Tradition: it was about chivalry.
Over time, those concepts — what a courtly gentleman should be — became synonymous with the ideal of how love and romance should be conducted between the sexes. Think of knights and princesses, kings and queens, and highly formative of what we even now understand as relationships between men and women. (There are many references to that, and one that comes to mind is in the book “Medieval Woman’s Song: Cross-cultural Approaches”, edited by AM Rasmussen.)
This First Troubadour became the founder of a tradition that would culminate in Dante, Petrarch and others in the Italian Renaissance.
Therefore, what was distinct and the essence of art production to the Muslim women among Spain’s Moors, became a French tradition — that later spread to Germany — which then influenced the Sicilians, as well as Petrarch and Dante. Scholars have speculated about the Canterbury Tales — perhaps Geoffrey Chaucer had met Petrach and Dante and they had given him ideas about what to write? Perhaps Chaucer had copied Boccaccio, the Renaissance writer? But had Boccaccio copied what he had heard about the songs of Spain’s Moors?
Chaucer spent time in Spain, in Castile, at the court of King Peter, in the romantic settings of Alcazar in Seville, and Chaucer is famous for writing about courtly love after he returned to England..
Either way, Moorish Andalusian Spain was on many levels the high water mark of European civilization leading to the Renaissance of Italy.
http://www.gypsysguide.com/2009/01/art-and-love-in-renaissance-italy.html
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Bulganik-
I agree with you on all the details. It’s just your over- arching premise ( or at least the original one) that Iberian Muslims were the primary sourcees of the Italian.
Of course historians create categories and these creations reflect their biases. I don’t think I denied that anywhere.
Whay I’ve stated is that the intellectual ferment of the “Moors” occured two centuries previously and only indirectly influenced the Italian Renaissance in that the latter was a rebellion against the former’s proto- scholastic ideas. That’s based on fact and fairly straightforward.
Your response to that is to get rid of the concept if the Italian Rennaissance. I don’t see why that would affect anything, let alone why such a useful construct with such a powerful explanatory framework should be discarded.
I never denied that the Byzantine Greeks, Sicilian Greeks, Muslins from all over, or the Hohenstaufen didn’t have a huge affect in European philosophy. They are centuries before the period in question, however, had radically different views, and only indirectly influenced the Italian Renaissance. There’s a huge Islamic I fluence on Frederick, but first of all that’s not the only influence with him, second of all Sicilian Muslims were not the same people as Iberian Muslims, third just because Dante liked him doesn’t make him the driving figure behind Renaissance humanism.
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Asplund, fair enough. Let us disagree.
But could you show me where I said “we must get rid of the very concept of the Italian Renaissance”?
I have no problem disagreeing with you, but I’d prefer if you didn’t put words into my mouth…
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Bulganik
Step back fur a minute and look at how wild your conclusions are:
Frederick II had contact with Islamic Sicilians culture as a Sicilian. Dante admired Frederick. That means Frederick is responsible for Dante’s humanism. Dante was a renaissance humanist, therefore Iberian Muslims were responsible for the European Renaissance. The Sicilian Muslims can’t be given but partial credit for influencing Frederick, let alone the Iberian Muslims.
Your doing the same thing with courtly love and Chaucer, though there is more basis there. The fact that Andalusi Muslims crafted romantic tales that influenced the bardic tradition that later influenced the troubadours and courtly love, doesn’t mean that “courtly love” is an Islamic tradition, or even primarily derived from one (though again, that poetry played a huge role). Now you taken the leap that because Chaucer visited Spain therefore the Iberian Muslims somehow deserve credit fir the Cantevury Tales.
Do you see what I’m getting at? You’re taking influential factors and turning them into causal factors based on very tenuous connections.
That’s like claiming Spurnik during black history month because the Diviet scientists stopped at a traffic light invented by an African-American.
And that last quote about Al-Andus being the height of European civilization? Sure it was glorious but that is just over the top. I love Al-Ansalys probably more than you, but just because they influenced European history(after all they were in a geographic sense an actual part of it), doesn’t mean they are responsible for it, and Spanish history is not the Spaniard’s to claim.
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Bulganik-
Apologies in advance for my butchering your name. Didn’t mean to.
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Sputnik/ Soviet. So many errors I can’t think straight.
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Bulanik-
I interpreted your statement to mean we should dismiss the Renaissance as a category. Maybe I read it wrong. Certainly possible.
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Bulanik-
I’ve enjoyed our discussion. I think we can both agree that Al-Andalus was extremely important and influential for European history.
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@ Asplund,
I beg your pardon? I think you were simply caught unawares. You appear to have no precise counter-arguments other than your conservative Eurocentrism. I have a habit of questioning my own Eurocentric learning and exposure to it.
And don’t you have a tendency to be unquestioningly accepting of the usual approach whilst regurgitate Western academia’s self-affirming habits and political intellectualism? I mean….where’s the ambition?
But that if that is your comfort zone, then that’s okay, too.
*
“Sputnik”?
Stop exaggerating, please. My reasoning was quite precise and I did say let’s go wider for a moment or such.
Further, I’m not an American, I don’t know what you mean about the African-American thing and nor am I familiar with traffic light technology stuff you are referring to. So I don’t get your analogy, and neither do I appreciate it or your habit of putting words into my mouth.
It sounds more like you’d want me to sound “foolish” because you haven’t presented solid counter-arguments.
Perhaps YOU need to reflect on the narrowness of your perspective.
Perhaps my teachers traveled to different places and it influenced how they taught Chaucer, et al, and European history. I will confess that much.
Perhaps my own research and exposure to the cultures I have alluded to here have made me draw different conclusions to yours.
And, perhaps we should leave it there.
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Also, I addressed those posts to Linda, in response to her arguments, which present a PoV which is not only relevant but important.
I hope that she has the time and interest to respond.
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Bulanik,
I promise I will get back to the conversation but time is at a premium for me at the moment.
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Understand, my dear. I shall be here less in the future, but will always look out for commentary. 😀
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YOUR commentary, that is!
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I can see that my diplomatic tone has earned me contempt. My goodwill is not being reciprocated.
“I beg your pardon? I think you were simply caught unawares. You appear to have no precise counter-arguments other than your conservative Eurocentrism. I have a habit of questioning my own Eurocentric learning and exposure to it”.
Caught unawares by what? Your illusory, baseless assertion that Iberian Muslims sparked the Italian Renaissance?
Here is my counter-argument in a hopefully clearer format: Here are four arguments that debunk your assertion.
A. You offer zero evidence that Iberian Muslims influenced the Italian Renaissance other than the fact that Dante admired Frederick II, who had some cultural ties to Sicilian Muslims. Nothing about Dante drawing the Lion’s share of his inspiration from any muslims, let alone Iberian ones. That is not sufficient for your claim. You have to have historical facts to make those kinds of arguments. Circumstantial speculation isn’t permitted.
B. The apogee of Andalusi culture occurred two centuries prior. Don’t you think a lot of intervening stuff occurred in between then and Petrarch’s career? I’ve seen Iberian muslims credited with the European Enlightenment! As if Montesquieu was drawing inspiration from Averroes.
C. The Renaissance thinkers were actually in revolt against the scholasticism inspired by Andalusi muslims, which again, is a sign of their lasting influence. It’s not a sign of their sparking the Italian Renaissance. Quite the opposite, in fact.
D. According to your argument, Chaucer visited Spain, therefore medieval Iberian muslims gave him the idea for the Canterbury Tales. No analysis of any of his work. No comparison with Islamic medieval literature to prove that based on form. No analysis of Chaucer’s work. Just an indirect link to Spain due to Chaucer’s visit. From my point of view it seems like a loose claim treated as fact with no evidence, and only supported by an emotional claim about “questioning Eurocentrism.” In history we are supposed to strive for a semblance of objectivity, or at least dress it up as such, no matter how difficult that might be.
“And don’t you have a tendency to be unquestioningly accepting of the usual approach whilst regurgitate Western academia’s self-affirming habits and political intellectualism? I mean….where’s the ambition? But that if that is your comfort zone, then that’s okay, too.”
My comfort zone is facts and analysis of the primary sources, also more than a little knowledge if you haven’t noticed :).The reason “Western Academia” attributes the Italian Renaissance to Italian people is taken from the sources.
Also, do you not see any problems with your seeming obsession with Eurocentrism? We are talking about European history after all. “Eurocentrism” is a more applicable term when we are talking about judging Asian or African history by European standards. Not European history.
““Sputnik”?
Stop exaggerating, please. My reasoning was quite precise and I did say let’s go wider for a moment or such.”
It’s not an exaggeration, your reasoning was not precise and you went way too far in tying things together. What are we going to do next? Credit ancient Egypt with the modern abolition movement?
“Further, I’m not an American, I don’t know what you mean about the African-American thing and nor am I familiar with traffic light technology stuff you are referring to. So I don’t get your analogy, and neither do I appreciate it or your habit of putting words into my mouth.
It sounds more like you’d want me to sound “foolish” because you haven’t presented solid counter-arguments.”
1. Our respective nationalities are irrelevant. 2, You missed the point of my analogy. My argument is that you are claiming that because there is a tenuous link somewhere between to cultures that means you can make bold claims about the origin of historical phenomenon. Your claim that Iberian Muslims are responsible for the Canterbury Tales is like claiming African-Americans are responsible for Soviet space technology, because an African-American invented the traffic light, and the Soviet scientists drove to work.Same kind of tenuous claim. Not backed up by anything really.
“Perhaps YOU need to reflect on the narrowness of your perspective.
Perhaps my teachers traveled to different places and it influenced how they taught Chaucer, et al, and European history. I will confess that much.
Perhaps my own research and exposure to the cultures I have alluded to here have made me draw different conclusions to yours.
And, perhaps we should leave it there.”
I reflect on my perspective for a living. That’s great that you are well-traveled but I have no earthly idea why that is relevant?
You can’t make up facts, merge centuries of history together wildly, and totally ignore literature and virtually all scholarship because you are questioning “Eurocentrism.”
Also, why are you developing such a hostile tone? Did I say something insulting on accident?
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Bulanik-
I went back over your thread to see if there was something I was missing, and instead I noticed all of your evidence in one post was just you asking yourself speculative questions. If you go back and read this you’ll see what I’m talking about regarding providing evidence based on historical sources.
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@asplund:
“You offer zero evidence that Iberian Muslims influenced the Italian Renaissance other than the fact that Dante admired Frederick II, who had some cultural ties to Sicilian Muslims.”
I have nothign on iberian influence BUT are you kidding me about Fredrik? Some cultural ties?
If there is an individual who can be seen as the starting point of the whole renaissance it was Fredrik II. He was all for reason over any religion. He actually said that the world was fooled by three men, namely Moses, Jesus and Muhammed. He was the first ruler of any kind in Europe who openly dismissed religious world explanations and encouraged people to use their heads and thinking.
He founded the oldest university in Europe, that of Naples and he demanded that all practicing doctors had at least three years of study in his medical univerisity. He made italian the official language over latin or french or any other and was very much influenced by muslims.
He did not visit Germany at all, despite being the emperor, his traveling entourage included camels and he also had his own harem. He lived all his life in Sicily and southern Italy, that was his homeland, and he employed many former muslims,arabs and others as scientists and traders etc. He was more influenced by arabs than anything “european”. In one of his gowns, actually it was his wedding gown, had an arabic quote from koran.
He was cursed by the popes, whom he made fun of and he was always pointing put that the reason is the only way. We could say he was for enlightment few centuries before the Enlightment.
Naturally he was not a humanist. On the contrary. He was more of a nazi type of reasonist. He did experiments on humans, like feeding twins with same food and sent the other to excercise and the other to rest and afterwards had them cut open to prove that twins do not share a common intestine system in sync.
But if you say that he had zero impact on renaissance, I wonder what or who did. And trough his sicilian court, sicilian arabs and muslims, the islamic world had its impact on italian future and culture. His court has been described by some historians as being “Oriental”. That is a bit more than some cultural ties.
The very idea that there was a nature and logic beyond religion and its doctrine was truly revolutionary in 1240’s. The very idea that a man could think outside the church was revolutionary. As was his idea that man could use his reson to guide him trough the life.
Fredrik II Stupor Mundi was machiavellian before Machiavelli, he wrote a book about falconry and falcons, he read books, he loved arts, he was violent, he was international, and he did not let religion to get into his way. To put it shortly, he was a renaissance man before the so-called renaissance.
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“I have nothign on iberian influence BUT are you kidding me about Fredrik? Some cultural ties?”
That was what the original argument was about. Thank you for admitting that.
Yes, Frederick had some cultural ties. He had a harem in Islamic fashion, like you stated, he was an ardent falconer, which was transmitted to Europeans from southwestern Asia. I think it’s a gross misrepresentation to portray him as a semi-Islamic ruler, however. You may not being arguing that. I don’t want to put words in your mouth. That’s just my interpretation of what you are arguing.
His conflict with the Papacy was ultimately based on his claims as Augustus, not on Islamic precedent or a desire to promote muslims over Christians, and despite his excommunications, he remained a Christian throughout his life. He was not in any way unique in battling against the pope as a Holy Roman Emperor, nor was he unique in maintaining ties to muslim communities as a ruler of Sicily. His direct predecessors had conflict against the Roman Pontiff also, and his maternal Norman ancestors allied with some muslims in Sicily.
But I think none of that matters for our purposes. It’s true Frederick had ties to Islamic culture. I never denied that, so I apologize if I gave that impression. Some of your facts are wrong, i.e. that he founded the first university in Europe, but he was a man of great learning compared to most secular rulers of his age. Most of your facts are correct.
That doesn’t establish your premise, though. I never denied that Islamic civilization influenced Europeans. My argument is that we cannot attribute the lion’s share of European culture development to anyone except Europeans, same as most civilizations- the people writing the works and doing the thinking should get the credit. You want to attribute the Italian Renaissance to attempts to imitate medieval muslims. It’s not enough that they had some influence. It’s to the point that even Chaucer imitated Muslims because he visited Spain. You’re making very broad claims based on very tenuous links.
To sum it up about Frederick: He had many influences, some of them Islamic. The Italian Renaissance emerged in a historical context shaped in part by Frederick II, but also by other factors. I’m getting the impression that you’re trying to taking a segment of the first link in the chain and use it to name the chain itself. See what I’m saying?
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@ sam, I asked about Iberian influence when I widened the discussion but there is yet little published. What Spanish scholars and researchers are finding is surprising even them, that’s for sure. It seems that what we take for granted about the Spanish and the Europeans in general will need to be rewritten and re-examined in the future.
@ Asplund, it seems you take great offence at being identified as Eurocentric, and have become irrational, accusing me of all manner.
No one said Europeans weren’t involved in Europe, and no one said the lion’s share of European cultural development was non-European. I didn’t want to go into reams and reams about Chaucer (The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, in particular, since you ask) on a thread about the Spanish!
You have to hold your horses and STOP EXAGGERATING and putting words into people’s mouths because everything you say isn’t being obediently accepted as the be all and end all. You are shutting your mind down, and getting upset and feeling ENTITLED because you can’t have it your way.
You simply don’t want to see the assertions made about the Spanish that were raised (by Linda especially), or how they would be absolutely relevant to the the discussion. If you did, you wouldn’t be carrying on like this.
I don’t have “contempt” for you. I don’t feel strongly about YOU at all.
That said, I don’t believe I was being as unkind as you imagine.
You don’t know me, so why talk about “wild” or “obsession”?
Also, I understood your analogy about black Americans. But I didn’t like it, because you did it to demean.
You see, even though I am not a black American myself, I didn’t like that you had to mention “black American” in the way you did, using “them” to diminish an argument by using what feels like the White Inventor Argument in a backhanded slap kinda way. It speaks volumes that you can’t see that but somehow you think you’re a diplomatic kinda guy!!
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Next, I don’t have any interest in your job. Not sure why you’d bring it up.
Perhaps you feel you do something “impressive”: perhaps you’re a young, desk-bound “expert” or whatever, who wants to prove his “smarts” here.
It doesn’t matter much, either way.
Many of us who visit this blog-site are thinking people who “reflect” on our perspective for our work — or in our personal lives — so, I’m not sure what is so unusual or special about you, or yours.
Then, if you want to be “diplomatic”, it also helps if you’d recognize the limits of your perspective and not overestimate your “authority” on the subject.
Thus, telling any of us what is, or isn’t “permitted” in a discussion about the Spanish and the Moors isn’t your ENTITLEMENT, okay?
This is NOT school, and you are not the school prefect, right? Thank you.
You are not some kind of gatekeeper on historical discussions, nationalities and methods of enquiry. You have only appointed yourself in that capacity… 😀
In addition, I hope you won’t think it necessary to list your qualifications and credentials, because as much as I or anyone might respect the effort involved in learning/researching ANYTHING — it doesn’t mean non-specialists, in your subject are going to be “awed” or “shut up” under the force of your brain cell, surely? I mean, why would you say this:
Ugh. Oh dear.
Don’t pat yourself on the back too much, will you.
I blush under my tan for you.
Facts and analysis are fantastic, but I don’t believe that your approach deals with all of the various historiographies that are relevant to a broader interpretative or analytic synthesis.
A friend of mine told me that ^^ some while ago, and he also pointed out that many modern historians, especially North Americans, are a mixed up bunch because their post-modern perspective closes them off to any real synthesis . Synthesis, he said, is not set in stone, so something like “causation”, what to include or exclude, etc. — are not fixed. You are trying otherwise!
From what I have gathered on this thread (I haven’t read any of your other comments on any other threads) you repeat pretty much the standard view and if you depart from it, I sense a very, um…”traditional” kind of racism from you, an implication that you feel that blacks are inferior and wish to prove it one way or another.. That’s certainly my impression and you keep backing it up.
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Now, back to The Spanish. >>
Are you Spanish and do you have Spanish ancestry?
Have you, or do you live there? These are ONLY questions.
–First, I don’t wish to imply that if you’re not Spanish or have lived in Spain, your comments are unworthy.
–Second, I am not personally interested in knowing your nationality or whereabouts. Let’s be clear about that now.
However, thinking that another commenter’s nationality and exposure to more than one culture is “irrelevant” in a discussion about nationality and culture — is quite revealing. Especially as you believe that the thinking involved in your job give YOU some special pass. Is it any surprise, then, why your outlook is so narrow?
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As we are talking about the Spanish, we have every entitlement to wonder about how Eurocentric the history of Spain and the Spanish became.
Isn’t that obvious?
Surely you know that, because Spanish historians and archaeologists are now unearthing evidence which CONTRADICTS what so many were so sure of before — about the Spanish, and also about the Europeans. Many Spaniards are in the the disagreeable position of having to face the incredible horror that so much of Spanish history has been covered up, twisted, white-washed and remains untold. It’s embarrassing! Imagine that, Asplund, for a moment. That could be you in years to come LOL!
These Spanish people were ALSO accustomed to primary sources, profoundly reliant in fact, deeply fond of their boxed in periodizations, very sure of what to include and exclude, leaning utterly on the facts and analysis that had been handed down, and were misguided by their own smugness and bigotry of Eurocentrism, in Europe, as Europeans.
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Just a side note, but Asplund sounds Nordic. Very Nordic.
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Bulanik-
I
You should have let me know that you were going to ignore all my evidence and just call me a racist from the get-go. I have no idea how you came to that conclusion, but you could have saved us both some effort.
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@asplund:
Well, you said yourself that Fredrik had some cultural ties. I say he had more cultural ties to islamic tradition than to the northern european tradition. He grew up in the mixed culture of sicilian normans, which in itself was a mix of arabic and norman culture. So not a small thing.
Arabs and muslims held southern Italy for couple centuries. You think they had zero impact on the culture and people? They raided the whole northern shore of mediterannean for couple of centuries. There were arab raids into Geniva, Marseilles etc. There were muslims in southern France in 700/800’s. Things were not so clear cut at all.
Actually the normans of southern Italy were originally brought down there as mercenaries to fight the arab rulers of that area by the church and the local burgundian dukes etc. They came, they conquered and decided that they take over. F the mainland italians, the church and those local rulers. After all, that is what their fore fathers the vikings had done in the past in the west and in the east, so these guys did the same in the south.
Fredrik was a decendant of those normans. Those guys who came to push the arabs and muslims out but who ended up taking over the whole lot. Normans were not dummies. They knew they needed the arab officials to run their state. Normans were not pencil pushers. They bashed heads. They gave orders. They commanded. They ruled. And they needed those arabs and muslims who could read and write both in arabic and latin. They needed those guys who could count, who could act as ambassadors in islamic world etc. And they employed them.
One of the, by the way, was geographer called Al Idris who actually was the first to write it down in 1100’s that there was three towns/cities in Finland. Now even today most historians immersed into the western history tradittion dispute this, even though it was well known fact in 1100’s in Sicily. Why? Because the western history writing and canon presents its version of history even today. Nothing more.
Yes, Fredrik was naturally nominally christian but to say that he was a christian is just like saying Vladimir Putin is a christian. He is, no doubt about that, but how big an influence that religion is in his life? Does mr Putin spend his morning and noon with the bible? I doubt it very much. Neither did Fredrik.
Fredrik was the first ruler who actually did not give a damn about the pope and the church. Later rulers, such as the kings of France did the same (since their regal rights came directly from god) but not one medieval ruler did argue for reason over religion as Fredrik did.
I did not say he was the catalyst to renaissance but I say if there was any individual who put the ball rollin, it was him. 200 years before the event. Naturally it took the great plague to un tie whole societies and release the intellectual underground that had been there all along and bring forth the renaissance as its usually understud.
And yes, of course the people of Europe had cultures and such BUT they did not develop in vacuum. The idea of isolationist cultures developing on their own is ridicilous. People have always been on the move and mixing, culturally and biologically. Western european culture was and still is a product of mix between the Roman latin culture and the cultures of the migrating peoples of the 400’s up to 800’s. The tin miners of Cornwall were trading with the jews in Palestine well before the birth of one guy named as Yeshua.
Eastern european cultures were influenced by the greeks, their religion, and by the mongols. Russia was but a mongol vassal state for a long time. Their national hero Alxander Nevski who defeated the western invaders was nothing but a vassal of the mongol khans.
And lo behold, in Spain there was a bit of a similar guy who is now a national hero. El Cid was and is The hero of early reconquista struggles. Yet the guys official and better known name El Cid is directly from arabic. He fought under the muslim rulers too. He fought on both sides.
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Sorry, not burgundian but lombardian rulers that is. Lombardians were previously the langobards.
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@ sam
Absolutely.
This simple but extremely important factor in the history of the Spanish — and Europeans — seems to be lost on Asplund.
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To the ears of many, Spanish Flamenco sounds a lot like the music of India, and to some eyes, the dance movements of Flamenco resembles at least one of the dance forms of India, North India especially.
That connection has rarely been recognized, because Flamenco has always been seen as quintessentially Spanish and Gypsy-Spanish at that.
The notion has been that if the Spanish are “Gypsy”, then it can not be Asian, it must be African, or North African to be exact.
Afaik, it is only in recent years that the “Gypsies” — or Gitanos — of Spain have been identified as a people of the Indian Diaspora. They belong to an original culture now more commonly known as the Roma or Romanis.
In the Basque country, they are known as the Erromintxela.
Indians started arriving in Spain in around 1447, at least officially.
The accounts I have read or heard over time, though, point out that this population left South Asia much earlier than that, and have been part of Spain since the 11th century. The Indians that became Spanish Gitano were a nomadic people — and were incorrectly thought to be from Egypt, and hence misnamed “gypsies”. In fact, they originated from an area around the Thar desert in Rajasthan in India’s Northeast.
During the Reconquista, the Spanish monarchs identified them as another non-Spanish group they wanted flushed away from their country, and this made exclusion and persecution in Spain official for centuries afterwards. The Gitano were often compelled to inter-marry, forbidden to speak their languages, confined to ghettos, etc.
The legacy of that treatment is ambivalent:
– On the one hand, a Gitano is is associated with the lowest strata of Spanish society.
– On the other, Gitano culture IS most essentially and profoundly “Spanish”.
It is as though an ethnic stigma is attached to a Gitano, but yet, their culture has been appropriated as that which most represents “Traditional Spain” and more specifically, Andalusia. It is almost ironic that because they were ghetto-ized, so much of their culture was conserved!
What this shows, or emphasizes, is that Spanish identity is a hybrid, an unhappy one historically, and thus one that is based on denial, marginalization and cultural appropriation.
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On November 16, 2010 UNESCO declared Flamenco one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
A brief report from Indian TV, on the connection between India and Spanish cultural identity.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA-aXAiv4LU)
A closer look at the similarity between the 2 styles:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_OAphHLXvo)
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Regarding the “Decree of Expulsion of the Moriscos” (a kind of ethinc cleansing very similar to that which is done nowadays against the Palestinians), it was motivated also because the Crown’s Castilian-Andalusian landowning aristocratic olygarchy insisted on the king to expel the Moriscos; particularly those from the Kingdom of Valencia and Aragon, which were the only countries in Iberian Peninsula with a really important Muslim population (forget Andalusia [which has nothing to do at all with true Al-Andalus] and all the ridiculous myths regarding post-Reconquista Andalusians “being descended of the Moors”). And they insisted so much in it on the king because they saw Valencian and Aragonese nobles and bourgeoise as very dangerous socio-economic competitors who, as feudal landowning lords of Morisco peasants the former, and as to a some degree beneficiaries of the nobles’ rents as well as beneficiaries of Morisco craft industry gains the latter; would make wobble too much the Castilian landowning ruling class’ supremacy in Spain at that time. With the elimination of the foundations of Aragonese-Valencian economy, the worst danger to Castilian aristocracy’s socio-economic supremacy in the Crown disappeared.
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@ the other 60% since 40% speak Spanish as their ‘Native Tongue’
I guess that other 60% would comprise of mostly Portuguese speakers in Brazil?
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Anyone of Spanish descent is considered Hispanic (“Latinx”), and thus, a minority in America.
By the standards of the left, criticizing the Spanish is a racist micro aggression against Latinx POC.
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