[Sca-cooks] Grade school Spanish

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 01:28 AM 4/6/2005, you wrote:
>Medieval Spain was a wonderful place to live, where Muslims, Christen and 
>Jews
>debated and created a real multicultural melting pot!
>  It was muslims architects
>working over the whole Peninsule, Jewish philosophers as Averroes 
>discussing with
>Arabic theologists.
>At that time Cordoba and Sevilla were the biggest cities in Europe and 
>they had a
>rich bath culture, very similar to which the Romans had in the Empire.
>It was a time of exchange, but it was also a time of clashes and 
>encounters between
>Christen and Muslims. It was the time of El Cid, Spains most renowed 
>Christen hero
>and of the sultans in Baghdad being jealous of their Spanish bethren.
>Ana

That really depends on *when*, and *where*, Ana.  Those areas under Muslim 
rule, earlier on, yes, were rich in diversity- very like Sicily. But things 
changed as the Christian Spaniards pushed the Muslims south. And some of 
the pogroms led by Spanish Christians against the Jews compare to those in 
Germany and Russia at their height of anti-Semitism. (Isabella threw the 
last Jews out of the country in 1492.) Toledo fell to Alfonso in... 1081, 
IIRC. By the middle of the 13th century, most of the peninsula was in 
Christian hands, and in 1252, all the Muslims held was Granada.

And in Cordova, the Christians BURNT a library of more than a million 
volumes, many of them the only copies of Greek and Latin texts. They 
destroyed the University, were some of the finest doctors in Europe were 
trained. They also sacked a city that had an efficient water and sewer 
system, safe, lighted streets, and even hanging plants cared for by the 
government.

(Yeah, I can forgive many things, but burning a library is right out.)

'Lainie
___________________________________________________________________________
O it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it 
like a giant--Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act II