Dark Ages, An Age Of Light: Islamic Magnificent Art (Waldemar Januszczak Documentary) | TRACKS

paper was light gold in medieval times i want tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong [Music] this is a series about the dark ages when civilization was said to have stopped and ignorance flooded the world i've been trying to convince you that it didn't happen that the dark ages were a fine era for art but in this film i'm going further the art we'll be looking at in this film is some of the most sophisticated ever made if any art challenges the myth of the dark ages it's the art of islam [Music] [Music] [Applause] this is cordoba in spain that's the great mosque of kodaba up there and this handy little dark age gadget is an astrolabe some people call this the first computer and what this thing does is calculate exactly where you are by using the stars [Music] islamic stargazers perfected the astrolabe in the dark ages to work out the direction of mecca so they always knew which way to pray and it filled their art with cosmic patterns [Music] later on i'll be showing you how to use one of these i hope but first we need to travel back in time to the beginnings of islam to the first fascinating creations of islamic art and architecture so right now we're here in cordoba in spain and to go back to the beginnings of islamic art we need to go right across the mediterranean to here the heart of the religious dark ages what huge dramas have been enacted here what important art has been created most of it's gone unfortunately but not all of it some of it has survived notably that magnificent golden dome on the horizon the dome of the rock it's one of the most significant buildings ever put up a piece of architecture that changed history you couldn't really ask for a more dramatic location could you and if you think it looks good from up here on the mount of olives just wait till we get closer muhammad died in 632 a.d and for the first 50 years or so after his death islam was preoccupied with conquest the speed at which the islamic empire expanded was remarkable in just a few decades it went from nothing to gigantic it was the most dramatic most aggressive and fastest feat of empire building the world has seen this is the islamic empire just a hundred years after muhammad's death up here the whole of spain all of north africa the entire middle east as far across as the borders of india [Music] but all this astonishingly successful conquest didn't leave much time for art almost nothing survives from the first years of islam clearly art wasn't a priority and then out of nothing as if by magic this appears the dome of the rock nothing in islamic art prepares us for this it's just suddenly there a definitive islamic creation seemingly conjured out of thin air it's like a flying saucer or something that's landed out of nowhere and something you sense immediately even from this distance is the powerful geometry of it that air of mathematical clarity and that's something that continues in islamic architecture [Music] as you can see it's an octagon it's got eight sides and octagons have a special symbolic presence because they combine the geometry of a circle with the geometry of a square i'll show you if i draw a circle here [Music] and then two intersecting squares here and here the shape they form shape in the middle that's the octagon the octagon is a surprisingly popular dark age shape with powerful sacred meanings if the earth is a square that heaven is a perfect circle the octagon is a symbolic bridge between the two all the proportions of the dome of the rock are meaningful so these walls here the walls of the octagon each of those is about 20 meters long and the dome in the middle the height of that is again about 20 meters and the diameter of it is also 20 meters so all these proportions have been carefully calculated and have a purpose it's as if the entire building has been shaped by a divine mathematics and those divine mathematics have given it a sacred meaning this location temple mount is the holiest spot in jerusalem this is where king solomon built the first jewish temple the one destroyed by nebuchadnezzar and then herod the infamous king herod built the second temple here as well herod's temple was made entirely from white marble and was so huge it covered 67 acres of this sacred location so grand so pompous and to my eyes so inelegant so the dome of the rock sits on layer upon layer of crucial religious history and when the muslims conquered jerusalem in 638 a.d and claimed this site for islam they took possession of what is probably the most loaded religious spot on earth and that's just the outside [Music] for me this mysterious interior is one of the most atmospheric achievements of the dark ages there's something so haunting about the way the light works in here the shimmer of the mosaics the whispers of the calligraphy [Music] basically it's a circular shrine it's not a mosque it's a place of pilgrimage that's been built around a sacred site and the site that's all been built around is the site of this holy rock here the jews believe this is the rock on which abraham prepared to sacrifice his son isaac and the ark of the covenant is thought to lie hidden somewhere underneath as well islam has a different tradition islam believes that this is the holy rock from which the prophet muhammad set off on its great night journey to heaven the angel gabriel came to visit muhammad in mecca and brought him here to jerusalem and from this rock the prophet ascended to heaven and there in paradise he met god and god instructed him on the muslim duty of prayer [Music] so this holy rock like the architecture around it is a point of contact between man and god and that's the religious message of the whole building if you saw the first film in this series you'll recognize this shape because we've seen it before this type of encircling architecture built over a precious sight it's something we found in the round churches of byzantium remember san vitale in ravenna and santa constanza in rome [Music] the muslim caliph abnal malik who built the dome of the rock was deliberately taking on the architecture of the christians this round shape the proportions none of it is an accident also added an explicit inscription which runs all the way around and which gives the date in which the dome was finished 691 a.d and it also includes a stern message to the christians oh you people of the book it says meaning the bible jesus is only a messenger of god god is only one god [Music] it's a deliberate challenge to the christians jesus is just a prophet there's only one god and gods don't have sons this entire building is taking on christianity look at that from floor to ceiling it's covered in the most exquisite mosaics gold and green there's a palm tree and these beautiful jewelled crowns and all the pieces of the mosaic are set at different angles so they reflect the light differently at different times of day and all this all these glorious mosaics are intended to evoke a vision of paradise [Music] when you look there in paradise says the quran you will see delights that cannot be imagined fruits of every kind and all that you ask for at a stroke islam had invented for itself an unmistakable new architecture and at the center of this new architecture was a vision of paradise the islamic paradise is a green and verdant alternative to the harsh desert landscape in which islam was born these are lands where water is precious and so is hope [Music] just a few years after the dome of the rock was finished the umayyad caliphs in damascus gave the world another wonderful islamic structure the damascus mosque i think it's one of the most exciting buildings i've ever been in look what's on the walls inside the fabulous damascus mosque the umayyad caliphs set out actually to describe paradise and to surround the islamic pilgrim with delightful and irresistible visions of it it's one of islam's most dramatic artistic moments these are the joys that await us in heaven these are the beautiful cities in which we'll live and this is the water the cool and endless water that we will drink those magnificent images of paradise in the great mosque at damascus are like images of a wonderful oasis in the desert with water palm trees flowers everything that's so hard to find out here and the islamic paradise promises so many pleasures in the next life to the true believer all you can drink all you can eat and all you can dream of this is kazir amra it's one of the desert palaces which the umayyad rulers of damascus built out here to get away from the city its heat and its pressures [Music] no one certain which of the umayyad princes chose this distant desert location was it the caliph al-walid the first or al-waleed ii what is sure is why they chose this particular spot [Music] is built in a wadi the wadi al-batum and wadies are desert valleys that fill up seasonally with water so when it rains in the desert the precious water floods through the wadi and fertilizes it [Music] around the back of the building over here are various contraptions for channeling this water through the palace because believe it or not what you have before you hear is a bath house [Music] kasiramra is a bathing establishment in the desert one of the earliest surviving secular buildings of islam [Music] the reason we've driven all this way across the desert to find it is because this fabulous bath house in the sands has something remarkable inside it something you'd never expect to find here floor to ceiling islamic frescoes a troop of acrobats gives a busy performance and there's a bear strumming a loot there's so much going on in here and a group of statuesque female dancers show off their figures and their beauty [Music] the dancing girls are particularly surprising we're just not used to islamic imagery as abandoned as this but it's important to remember that this is just as old and just as traditional as everything else we've seen this too is a precious islamic heritage a negative way to understand kaziramara's remarkable frescoes is to see them as signs of moral relaxation away from damascus deep in the desert a wayward umayyad prince is indulging an appetite for wine and music and women but i don't think that is what it's about if we go back to the many descriptions of paradise in the quran there are constant references to the pleasures available there rivers of wine served in crystal cups beautiful flowers beautiful jewels and beautiful girls for the righteous says the quran there shall be gardens and vineyards and high bosomed virgins for companions dark-eyed and bashful as fair as corals and rubies inside here is the caldarium the hot room and in here the umayyad prince would soak himself in hot water heated up by all those gubbins we saw outside and as he lay here in his bath the umayyad prince would stare up at the dome where he'd see something wondrous an evocation of the stars at night this is the earliest known islamic star chart painted onto the dome at kaziramra around the edge are the 12 signs of the zodiac and in the middle frescoed representations of the constellations the great bear the little bear [Music] what a thing to find in an 8th century bath house a fabulous image of the heavens at night above your head it's as if someone's taken the roof off the dome and looked out into the sky at night in the desert full of twinkling stars what a beautiful idea [Music] it takes a bit of getting to kazeramra but i wanted to make it clear right from the start that islamic art from its beginnings in the dark ages has this sensuous dimension to it a relationship to pleasure that you just don't find in other art [Music] scattered across this great syrian desert are the remains of fantastical umayyad palaces filled once with beautiful mosaics and marvelous colonnades what tangible sensuousness you find here in this first islamic art [Music] these 8th century desert palaces must once have been filled with the accoutrements of pleasure vases hangings plates and cups almost all of which have disappeared [Music] but in 1986 here in jordan they dug up this it's an 8th century islamic brazia and it gives us a tiny hint of what life was like in the khasiramra bath house [Music] the brazier was used to heat up the prince's room and for burning incense originally there were wheels on it and it could be wheeled around from room to room to fill them with sweet smells it's made of iron and bronze and at the front here as you can see there are these arches a little bit like the ones in kazaramra and inside the arches are scenes of lovemaking and couples canoodling and it's also atmospheric and so beautifully done i mean look at these eagles at the bottom the way they've been shaped their wings their feathers this is metal work of the highest quality at the four corners four cuddly nudes prepare to release a small bird into the incense-filled air above them and there's a floaty feeling to this marvelous metal work [Music] what a beautiful thing and the figurative sculptures you see here the female figures are again very surprising because this is an aspect of islamic art that was there at the start that it's very traditional but which modern islam often forgets the beautiful brazia was an object of private delectation it had no religious purpose but it's important to remember that sensuality played a role in the art of these times in the beginning this was islamic art too and this and this when joy was called for islamic art inspired great joy and when sobriety was more appropriate it achieved great sobriety [Music] this is the finest early mosque in cairo the mosque of eben tulun i like everything about it but most of all i admire its architectural seriousness the way you know as soon as you step in here that this is a space devoted to important understandings [Music] who founded this mosque in 879 a.d was the son of a turkish slave who became governor of egypt originally the mosque stood at the center of a new city that ibn tulun also founded the city of al-qatai but al qatai was destroyed in the 10th century and this is all that's left of it [Music] they say ibun tulun chose this site because this is where noah's ark came to rest there was certainly water here that domed creation in the center is the ablutions fountain where all muslims must wash themselves before prayers all mosques and not just this one are based on the very first mosque which was the prophet's own house in medina it was a typical mud brick dwelling with a courtyard and in that courtyard the prophet's followers would gather to hear him speak so all these great courtyards of islam all of them are descended directly from the prophet's own courtyard [Music] their evocative sparseness is an echo of their origins and their sun-baked simplicity has been there from the start the walls that encircle you here are like the walls of the prophet's own courtyard their task is to keep the outside world at bay and here at ibu tulun there's actually two sets of walls a kind of double glazing that separates you from the hustle and bustle out there i like these playful crenellations arranged along the top as well they look like paper cut outs something my daughter might have made to protect his followers from the sun the prophet built a simple shelter at the end of his courtyard with a roof made out of palm branches and leaves and that simple shelter was the inspiration for these great arcades which still protect the prophet's followers from the sun the shelters in his courtyard were also used as somewhere to meet and discuss community affairs [Music] and that marvellous communal atmosphere of a space with many purposes is something else that survives to this day in the islamic mosque [Music] the largest covered space was the prayer hall which was basically the prophet's own house at the end of the courtyard and in every prayer hall today there's a continuation of this marvelous islamic sense that underneath all this mighty religious architecture you can still feel the humble presence of the prophet's own dwelling these prayer halls are so welcoming they have a sense of the living room about them a home from home most mosques are square or rectangular in plan and that's because they're all arranged in relation to this wall here which is called the qibla wall the qibla wall indicates the direction of mecca in arabic the word qibla means direction and in muhammad's house a simple spear stuck in the ground would mark the way to pray [Music] the center of the qibla wall is marked by the mihrab which is always the most ornate part of the wall usually a niche and these niches were probably inspired by the culminating niches of byzantine churches christian architecture and to the right of the mihrab is the minbar or pulpit and this is based once again on the prophet's own house they say that when muhammad had gathered so many followers he could no longer be heard by everyone he stepped up onto some blocks of wood and those are the origins of the minbar [Music] how fascinating that all the great mosques of islam inherited their wonderful clarity their simplicity and their underlying sacred geometry from the humble house of the prophet look at all that wonderful stucco work around the arches all that repetition and variety this is art used in a different way not to illustrate something but to create a visual rhythm [Music] christian churches are full of pictures that tell you stories but there are no pictures in these great islamic interiors the decoration here communicates in other ways there's a sense of endlessness to it it develops in all directions and it makes you feel part of something that's bigger than you so there are no pictures instead all the way around runs this quranic inscription carved into wood you know i said this mosque was built on the site where noah's ark was said to have come to rest well another story they tell here is that this quranic inscription is carved on the actual wood from noah's ark [Music] at the mosque of ibn tulun the quranic inscription runs for two kilometers around the building that's one fifteenth of the entire quran written up on these walls this is the word of god in its most sacred and purest form [Music] the power of the word is one of the great creative obsessions of the dark ages and in the metropolitan museum in new york the most beguiling of the first qurans the so-called blue quran turns the words of god into such glorious art i don't know if you remember the building of the azwan dam in the 1960s it was rather controversial the president of egypt president nasa joined up with the russians to build a dam across the nile and various archaeological sites were lost forever or had to be moved to new locations stone by stone all sorts of ecological disasters were predicted for the dam most of which haven't happened the conquest of water was another of islam's great achievements in the dark ages in cairo the nile would overflow its banks every summer and the agriculture of the entire nile delta depended on the success of this fertile flooding thick black silt rich with nutrients would be deposited across the floodplain ensuring a splendid harvest that was in the good years in the bad years the levels were either too low which meant disaster or too high which also meant disaster the azwan dam was built to control that process so you might wonder what did they do before [Music] in islamic times they used this the celebrated nylometer of rhoda island on the nile opened for business in 861 a.d it's one of the oldest islamic monuments in egypt and what dramatic evidence it offers of the aquatic brilliance of islam's engineers [Music] what this thing does is measure the height of the nile flood it's basically a big well sunk some 10 meters under the level of the river in the middle is an octagonal marble column a kind of giant ruler which as you can see is marked off at different heights the measurements are in cubits and one cubit is about half a meter so around 16 cubits is the perfect flood fertile controllable below 16 cubits there's not enough water so famine conditions ahead and higher up once you get past 19 cubits that's really bad a catastrophic flood [Music] the islamic authorities in cairo used the great nylometer to calculate their annual tax demands the perfect flood meant perfect profits ahead thus this brilliant piece of design was an early islamic alternative to the pocket calculator before they built the azwan dan these tunnels here led off into the nile at three different levels so if they weren't closed off now i would be under water and look at those pointed arches above the tunnels i mean that's pure gothic 400 years early [Music] the nylometer was designed by the famed persian astronomer abu abbas ahmed ibn mohammed ibn khattir al-faghani better known to us by his latin name alfred genus alfred most famous achievement as an astronomer was calculating the diameter of the earth copernicus was said to have used his results and as even a crater on the moon named after him the alfred gaines crater but it isn't just science that created this and it isn't just commerce either all the way around there are also these beautiful quranic inscriptions in a lovely kufic script thou seest the earth barren and lifeless it says at the 17 cubit mark but when we pour rain on it it is stirred to life at the nylometer in cairo science commerce and faith have combined in a uniquely islamic fashion to create a technological wonder this entire series is about how the dark ages weren't dark but sometimes i should just shut up and let you see the proof for yourselves because it couldn't be more obvious this is carawan in tunisia once this was a city of enormous power the most important islamic outpost in north africa now it's a marvelous place to visit for any true student of the dark ages carawan they say was founded by the great arab warrior city akbar ibn nafi who conquered these parts for islam just 50 years after the death of the prophet when sidi akbar got here this was all desert but something made him pause and look down at his feet when city looked down we saw a miraculous spring of fresh water bubbling up and in that water a golden cup which he'd lost many years before at the holy spring in mecca the underground waters seem to have carried it here so it was clearly a sign and on this holy spot city akbar founded carawan [Music] at the center of the new city he built a new mosque the oldest such mosque in north africa from the outside there's not much sign of it islam isn't a religion that flaunts itself in the streets but when you get inside into the great courtyard of the city akbar mosque what a powerful sight awaits you [Music] another practical use for these great mosque courtyards particularly here in kerawan where it's so dry is for collecting water when it rains all the water is channeled down here to the center and see these decorative openings they actually have a practical purpose when the water flows through them all these arabesques they actually filter out the impurities the dust the feathers then the water pure and clean is saved below in two giant systems so all of carawan can make use of it because it was built from nothing carawan is a particularly pure islamic city there are a few traces here of the romans or the vandals or the byzantines carawan islam started from scratch [Music] except here in the courtyard of the mosque look at this column look at the top what is that corinthian next to it i don't know phoenician over here roman perhaps could even be egyptian who knows of the 414 columns arranged around this great courtyard of the mosque in kerawan no two are the same every column is different [Music] that's because they were all taken from other people's temples and palaces and city halls this entire mosque was built from bits and pieces of other ancient buildings in the old days it was actually forbidden to count the columns in here anyone caught doing it was blinded if you look closely you find some really surprising things about this courtyard for example up here is a christian cross so this column must have come from a byzantine church but through some miracle of architectural power despite all this busy borrowing the end result is an unmistakable sense of islamic unity this space could have come from nowhere else this is unmistakably an islamic space [Music] there are many remarkable things about the carawan mosque but particularly remarkable i think is the proof that is offered here that architecture is an art form of spaces not of details of courtyards not of capitals see the tower here it's got these slabs of stone at the base with latin inscriptions on them see this one here it's upside down so these must have come from a roman building this is actually the oldest surviving islamic minaret and it's got a bulky militaristic presence rising up in these three squat pieces but like all minarets its original purpose is glorious to spread the word to share the news to shine a light the minaret is one of the defining islamic achievements of the dark ages islam did much that was inventive and progressive in architecture but in its minarets it surpassed itself this word minaret comes from the arabic manara which means lighthouse and that's its function to be a beacon of hope to offer safety and protection and of course the faithful were called to prayer from up there in the very first mosque built by muhammad the faithful were called from the rooftops but the cities got bigger mosques got bigger you needed somewhere higher up from which to broadcast the faith [Music] and look what inventive shapes were found for this conquest of the sky this is the minaret of the great mosque of samara in iraq its nickname for obvious reasons is the snail shell no one else in the dark ages built anything as aerially ambitious as this and it wasn't just the mosques this extraordinary brick masterpiece in iran is the tomb of the ziriyad prince kabus ibn vashim gear it's a thousand years old but looks like something the bauer house might have come up with don't you think inside caboose had himself suspended at his death in a coffin of pure rock crystal what a thrilling islamic conquest of the heavens [Music] speaking of rock crystal it's a very special substance isn't it according to the quran when the chosen arrive in paradise they'll be given drinks of ginger served in goblets of crystal [Music] crystal or rock crystal to be more specific was a substance with which islam seemed to have a special affinity they say it was ahmed ibn himself who introduced the art of carving rock crystals into egypt what's certain is that it was in egypt that this difficult art reached perfection i don't know about you but i can't think of many substances in the world with a presence as magical as rock crystal particularly when it has passed through the hands of the master carvers of islam only a handful of these gorgeous islamic viewers have survived and that just makes them feel even more precious rock crystal itself is actually very common it's just a type of quartz and quartz is the most common mineral in the earth's crust you get it everywhere look there's a stripe of it here [Music] what isn't common is pieces of quartz so pure and perfect and transparent that they satisfy the demands of the great crystal carvers of islam no one has ever carved rock crystal more finely than this what they'd do is find a perfect lump of crystal and shape it on the outside and then begin hollowing out the inside and they'd hollow it further and further and further till in the very best islamic art the walls of the crystal were only a couple of millimeters thick now that was unbelievably difficult the shimmering images carved into these gorgeous crystal viewers would transport the drinker to paradise hunting scenes flowers beautiful birds so crystal clear that none could resist them and it wasn't just islam that saw something magical in this rock crystal in ireland when ireland was still pagan they used to put pieces of rock crystal at the entrance of the burial chambers and in egypt they carved it into perfect spheres which apparently kept your hands cool when you touched it and of course it was used for telling the future and it still is all sorts of dark age societies were fascinated by rock crystal the roman naturalist pliny the elder believed that rock crystal was actually frozen water trapped for eons under the glaciers even the early christians worshiped it for them rock crystal had a natural relationship with divine perfection so they put it on the outside of their relic cries and up in their golden crosses where its perfect presence seen somehow to connect them to god christian rock crystal has a different feel to it in christian hands the light-filled paradise of islam seemed to fill up with shadows with christian rock crystal the dark ages are what you expect them to be mysterious spooky and talismanic [Music] the water engineers of islam perfected their hydraulic skills in lands where water was precious and rare so their relationship to it had something of the dream about it for islam water wasn't just a necessity it was an enticement too this is corodaba in spain the muslim armies got here in 711 a.d and conquered it from the visigoths remember them from the last film and when islam arrived in spain it could not believe how fertile this new territory was how full of paradisical waters this is the quad al-hivir in andalucia the largest navigable river in spain the name is islamic it comes from al-wadhi al-kabir which means the great valley these days the guad al-hivir river is only navigable up to seville but in islamic times you could sail all the way up here to cordoba and in this great city islamic water architecture surpassed itself all along a cunning system of mills dams and water wheels channeled the energy of the waters the water wheels of korodoba lifted water from the river high up to the bank where the gardeners of islam used it to recreate paradise on earth this isn't actually an islamic garden it's an islamic style garden built by the christian kings here in cordoba the original islamic garden has disappeared but islam was here for 500 years so this style of garden making is ingrained in the culture and what you still get here is a vivid sense of how the islamic garden felt fountains waterways flowers these are the divine atmospheres of those magical paradisical mosaics we saw in the great mosque at damascus except this time they're real to enter the mosque at cordoba you need to pass through another beautiful evocation of the paradise ahead an orange grove so divinely harmonious this was obviously a very desirable location they say there was a visigoth church here originally and later when the muslims were finally kicked out of spain a catholic cathedral was plonked in the middle of the mosque creating this ungainly hybrid it was the umayyad prince abdul rahman the first who began building the cordoba mosque he actually bought the land from the christians and in those early days of religious tolerance muslims and christians shared the building the cordoba mosque is famous for its columns 856 of them like a rows of palm trees in the oasis of syria is how someone's described them columns are very laborious to make and they use up a lot of precious stone so they're very heavy and if you can avoid making them you will for the cordoba mosque the columns came from the visigoth church that was there before and also from nearby roman temples but these reused visigoth columns weren't quite tall enough so to make the cordoba mosque higher and more airy the architects of islam came up with a brilliant new idea the double arch two arches for the price of one at the bottom the horseshoe arch borrowed as we saw in the last film from the visigoths then on top of that around arch arch number two making the mosque taller less solid looking more see-through for the first time in european architecture the aesthetics of light were shaping a [Music] building [Music] you know cordoba when the muslims were here had half a million people living in it it was by far the largest and most prosperous city in western europe and all of those inhabitants had running water they had toilets that flushed street lamps in the 10th century in urban planning architecture mathematics and water engineering islamic knowledge was peerless and in one area it was spectacular astronomy the study of the stars 90 of the 200 brightest stars in the sky have arabic names vega betelgeuse algol deneb they're all creations of the dark ages because arabic astronomy allowed the dark ages to glimpse the cosmos remember those stars painted onto the roof at the palace in kaziramra well that was just the beginning while christian science was insisting on a backward biblical understanding of the cosmos islamic science was investigating the heavens more adventurously [Music] this little baby here the astrolabe has been called the first computer it was developed to pinpoint the direction of mecca muslims needed to pray five times a day in a specific direction at specific times the astrolabe could work all that out in relation to the stars so this was the first compass as well and the first clock the way it works the first thing you need to do is decide on which star you want to focus on and i'm going to choose vega [Music] so i find vega in the sky and with these sights here i line it up until i can see vega in the middle it's exactly there and that gives me a reading here in degrees degrees from the horizontal so i can see that vega right now is 35 degrees so the next thing to do is to set the date measured of course in the old-fashioned way in phases of the zodiac right now we're in gemini so in fact we're in the 15th degree of gemini about there otherwise known as the end of may [Music] so this is basically that in diagrammatic form and whatever is true on here is also true out there so i know the date i know where vega is so with the help of this handy dark age sat nav i can finally work out where i am it was alfred the multi-skilled designer of the nylometer in cairo who undertook the first great islamic exploration of the stars he was followed by many others [Music] without islamic science and its sensuous delight in the cosmos perhaps this really would have been a dark age with islamic science it was anything but in the next film we'll be heading north to celebrate those fine craftsmen the vikings and to investigate those particularly skilled jewellers of the dark ages the anglo-saxons

Channel: TRACKS

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Keywords: TRACKS, tracks travel channel, tracks travel, Documentary movies - topic, full documentary, travel documentary, culture documentary, dark ages documentary, dark ages an age of light, waldemar januszczak the dark ages an age of light, the dark ages an age of light episodes, waldemar januszczak islam, waldemar januszczak islamic art, islamic art documentary

Id: lyyaYrt18Pg

Length: 59min 44sec (3584 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 04 2021