History Summarized: Medieval Spain & Al-Andalus

This video is brought to you by Squarespace where the real 10% discount was inside your heart all along well The Crusades were off making a mess of things in the far eastern end of the Mediterranean the West looked remarkably different Christians and Jews lived alongside Muslims in an Islamic Kingdom sharing art and knowledge and even speaking the same language For like five hundred years what? Yeah, I'm also really confused too So in order to figure out first how and then also why Let's do some history our story begins in the same place that all my nightmares do with the fall of Rome in the late 400s ad the Christian Visigoths swept through Europe and settled in Spain where they ruled somewhat absently for the next few centuries unbeknownst to them the Arabian Peninsula was experiencing plot developments, and the Visigoths were completely unable to put up the slightest resistance when the armies of the Umayyad Caliphate crossed the Straits of Gibraltar Into Iberia at the turn at the 8th century Fast-forward to one bright and sunny day in 750 AD when the Umayyad ruling family found themselves murdered and their Caliphate overthrown by the Abbasid Persians one lucky prince the young Abdul Rahman booked it right on out of Syria and ultimately settled in what they called al-andalus He inherited the rather tattered remains of Visigothic misrule and with nowhere to go but up He said about making Iberia a worthy successor to the Umayyads state that had been so cruelly toppled the ensuing period in history gets a sea really unfair shake because the mainline Islamic story follows to the east for the Abbasid period and most people don't start talking about Spanish history until we get Reconquista in several centuries down the line and even that's pretty one-sided My goal here is to show you an underappreciated yet impossibly fascinating corner of world history So what does our boy al Rahman do next? Well, first off the Muslim ruling class made up a tiny tiny percentage point compared to the rest of Iberia But he shared his family's Umayyad Ideology namely their enthusiasm to bring Islam to anyone who was interested and their willingness to blend in to local cultures to make that happen He knew there was nothing to gain from playing up ethnic or political rivalries So while he encouraged locals to convert to Islam, He prioritized inclusivity and made shared prayer spaces for Christians in the main half mosque half Cathedral of Cordoba The aptly named emirate of Cordoba also had an economic boom to get the place on the up-and-up Great religion and economics while I'm not infuriating my audience. I can bore them to death. All right, let's go I mean it is true over the course of decades and centuries very sane and boring policies helped build and connect cities all across Iberia new agriculture technology brought from Syria increased the productivity of the countryside and the reopening of old Roman trade routes across the Mediterranean brought goods and resources into Al-Andalus the Emir's who succeeded all Romans saw centuries of external and internal peace and prosperity one of the keys to this was the way in which the Muslim ruling class treated their Abrahamic and Patriots these fellow people of the book or D me were allowed to freely practice their own religion with a small handful of restrictions for Christians This was somewhat of a demotion because they'd obviously rather be in charge but the Jewish population Had never seen such liberal tolerance of their practices and in many cases Jews rose to positions of major prominence in cultural and political circles in an interesting twist Arabic replaced Latin as the lingua franca of Al-Andalus whereas Latin had become stiff and stale unto the Visigoths is long brought with the lively and dynamic language in Arabic people everywhere loved writing and speaking at for sacred or secular purposes and too quickly became the Unifying language of Iberia across ethnicities and between religions Catholics saw no problem at all delivering entire masses in Arabic Honestly the best thing that I can say about Al-Andalus is that they embraced what seems like a gross contradiction as an opportunity To try something completely new Maria Rosa meant a call whose book the ornament of the world was a huge resource for this video Praises the Andalusian culture as first-rate precisely because they weren't scared of losing their identity by incorporating the strengths of others Anyway other cool developments included running water Mountainous libraries and a flood of new technology coming over from their friends in the early Golden Age Muslim, Persia but speaking of the Abbasid they were going through a spot of trouble as parts of North Africa got drunk and decided to start their Own fonts Micallef it nearly nine hundreds now this was a big deal since the role of Caliphate applied to the empire with Dominion and influence over the world's Muslims having multiple of those would be like having two entire Roman Empire at that's right. Whoops guess everything's fair game now carry on and ready to step onto the world stage was Ameer Abdullah Roman the third who proclaimed in 929 what had already been true for a couple centuries? Not quite that Cordoba was the most powerful empire in the Islamic world but that the Andalusian world was substantially independent from that of Abbasid Baghdad and further yet that the culture they cultivated should serve as a model for what the rest of the Islamic world should strive to replicate for as arguably true as this declaration was calling cordoba Caliphate pushed the proverbial waxed wings to the limit as they flew closer and closer to the Sun later that century Khalif Abd al-Rahman the third began construction of the monumental Garden of Medina, Asahara and Renovated parts of the Grand Mosque of Cordoba to expand it these two added to the already growing target on Andalusia's back and at the turn of the millennium North African Berber mercenaries hired by the usurper almond sword did what mercenaries always do and turned on their patron Sacking the imperial capital of Cordoba and setting Muslim Spain on a radically new trajectory under the so called Time of Troubles The aftermath of this fairly sudden collapse after things have been going substantially less explodey for so long entailed a markedly different Political order but it still retained most of the culture that made Andalusia So singularly exquisite the Caliphate split into various pockets of independent city-states called taifas and to simplify It was a similar setup to Renaissance Italy classical Greece taifas such as Granada Toledo Sevilla and others competed militarily and politically for power but more interestingly they also competed culturally each trying to attract the best scholars artists and translators to fashion a worthy successor to the legacy of Cordoba and this competition wasn't limited to Muslim powers either for the few centuries prior Christian kingdoms Like leon castile and aragon had been slowly gaining ground But then accelerated in 1064 with the Battle of Barbastro near Zaragoza when a Frankish led coalition captured a city with the help of who else but the Normans, these are just the facts of life the Sun rises rivers flow and Normans like to conquer 11th century Europe What can you do at the same time as they were yoinking England in southern Italy Normans were becoming infatuated with the culture of Muslim Spain honestly, I don't think any society loves history as much as the Normans did wherever they go They're just so dang happy to be there. It's adorable anyway It was in the decades after this that the kingdoms of Leon and Castille got a conquering and pushed their way down through the fragmented tyfa's to the city of Toledo in 1085 And here's one of my favorite parts of this story after King Alfonso captured Toledo from the Muslims He turned it into a new crossroads of Andalusian culture keeping all the principles of tolerance and inclusivity his latinized Christians worked together with local Arabic speaking Christians Jews and Muslims to get going on translating the extensive libraries of never-before-seen Andalusian knowledge. Yeah He conquered a Muslim city, but this was no crusade Christian Kings allied with Muslim armies Islamic Tyfa's enlisted Christian assistants against other taifas the conflicts at hand were almost entirely political without ever Approaching the binary us versus them were used to hearing about in the Holy Land But now here's the part of this story that I really don't like with Toledo Captured a couple neighboring taifas grew angsty and turned to outsider assistance in their fight to remain independent Sevilla enlisted the help of the fundamentalist almoravid Berbers and brought them across Gibraltar to push back against the Christian advance the hope was that they'd show up do their work and then leave but Mercenaries are never like that because it turns out it's more profitable to steal entire kingdoms than just go home color me shocked so the Almoravids colonized Andalusia for themselves and enforced restrictions against the multicultural society that they viewed as weak and impure Unsurprisingly and illusions of all faiths who very much liked their old way of life Thank you very much booked it north to the Christian domain of King Alfonso who championed the same Iberian worldview and those who stayed put revolted fiercely against the Almoravids and a century later the even more radical Almohad Unitarian sects that replaced them These guys really leaned into that us-versus-them narrative and made the wars a much more religious affair from here on out The really sad part is that Alfonso was this close these clothes to unifying Spain under a tolerant Christian order But no the assholes did what assholes do why am I shocked? The bright spot is that Christian Toledo became a beacon of old Andalusia and a flashpoint of cultural exchange between the previously separate arabised south and latinized north It's ironically after this point that many of the ideas that had been swimming around on the peninsula for centuries in Arabic finally Permeated into Europe through Latin and the proto Spanish Castilian dialect storytelling philosophy theology literal carriage loads of Aristotle art medicine astronomy tons of knowledge Transferred over in the aftermath of Toledo switched from Muslim to Christian this actually hilariously set off a massive firestorm of philosophical debate in Europe over big-name thinkers like a very Zinn Maimonides They're neo Aristotelian analysis of theology proved way too scandalous for the innocent ears of Parisian university students I say this is hilarious because the Islamic world had already had the same debate centuries before and was super chill with mingling faith and reason but over in Europe people like Aquinas who argued almost the exact same Balance were pretty much banned until about 5 minutes before they were made Saints What can I say? Institutions are silly sometimes but sometimes they do important things too Like fighting battles and telling tyrants to kindly knock it off and stop being a dick about everything Specifically Pope Innocent the third got everyone together to defeat the Almahad armies at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 The resounding victory signaled the beginning of the end for what remained of Muslim Spain Cordoba Valencia and Sevilla changed hands in the dozen years between 1236 and 1248 The last remaining Muslim taifa was Granada Who as it happened actually helps the Castilians drive out the Almohads Because they'd rather have a Christian Kingdom at their borders if it meant they could return to their old Andalusian ways after Granada became a Protectorate of Castile in the mid 12 hundreds they began construction on their final monument to a bygone era the palace of Alhambra Meanwhile and all but Christian Iberia was enjoying the formerly Islamic strongholds. They had acquired King Alfonso The learn had loved translating Arabic scholarship and the Great Mosque of Sevilla was converted to a Cathedral because they just liked the building so much rather than destroy all these monuments to the history of Al-Andalus Christian rulers were content to appropriate them and just slap a cross or two in there to make it fit and that's way better for all of us because we Still get to see it all these centuries later But as we're approaching the endgame it's time to wrap things up Granada held out for two and a quarter centuries slowly but surely Building up and improving the Alhambra covering every wall floor and ceiling with every style of calligraphy and geometrical patterning imaginable it really is nothing short of exquisite flash-forward of 1492 and the so called Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella were so enamored of the Alhambra that even in Conquest they made the place into a church to preserve it without any of the a key cognitive dissonance but after reclaiming the last stronghold in Iberia for Christ they found that fit to force all Jews and Muslims in Spain to either convert flee or died during the Really not even Spain expected the Spanish Inquisition whether it was a plan to consolidate power a reaction to an ottoman scare a bid to match European religious uniformity or simply scapegoating minorities for recent plagues the Edict of expulsion in 1492 served as a Shocking and sudden ends to what had been several centuries of tolerant coexistence in a shared culture so that's the history of Al-Andalus and its development throughout medieval Spain like ancient Persia like Norman Sicily and in theory like America, it's a story of what good arises when everyone can participate independent of who's in charge I think this history is so uniquely fascinating because it shatters two massive assumptions first It shows that the medieval era was more than just a backwater Intermediary period but a culturally rich world in its own right and second It proves that three religions with seemingly endless enmity can substantively cooperate to build something far greater than the sum of their parts Medieval Iberia was obviously not perfect. But especially when compared to their contemporaries It shows what happens when communities aren't afraid to Challenge themselves to step outside their usual identity and ultimately to become something much much more But if you want to reconquer Iberia, wait, no But if you want to build a repository of important works and products all in one place Yeah, it definitely sounds better do what we did and create a website with Squarespace If you have a project or business you want to promote online a website is like your own personal Great Library of Cordoba and Squarespace makes the whole process simple and affordable Especially if you start a free Squarespace trial at squarespace.com/overlysarcastic and use code overly sarcastic to get 10% off your first purchase Building a slick website for ourselves was easy because we didn't have to worry about code plugins or updates It's great for OSP because we're now able to collect all the different branches of our business from YouTube and patreon to Twitter and merchandise All under one roof. My point is that everybody can benefit from having a cohesive digital presence So to get started on your website head over to squarespace.com/overlysarcastic and use code overly sarcastic for 10% off

Channel: Overly Sarcastic Productions

Views: 912,399

Keywords: William Shakespeare (Author), Shakespeare Summarized, Funny, Summary, OSP, Overly Sarcastic Productions, Analysis, Literary Analysis, Myths, Legends, Classics, Literature, Stories, Storytelling, Medieval, Spain, Andalusia, Toledo, Cordoba, Sevilla, Granada, Alhambra, Castile, Leon, Christian, Arabic, Latin, Iberia, Spanish, Muslim, Islam, Jewish, Judaism, Crusade, Tolerance, Culture, Philosophy, Reconquista, Reconquest, Inquisition, Al-Andalus, Caliphate, Emirate, Umayyad, Abbasid, Almoravid, Almohad, HIstory, Historical

Id: NJWjDVrxrhI

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 08 2019