BBC: When The Moors Ruled In Europe 2005

About halfway into Acorn Media's moderately intriguing "When the Moors Ruled in Europe," it hit me: Her long brunette tresses notwithstanding, host Bettany Hughes seems to be trying to sound like Simon Schama. Well, if you're going to mimic, mimic from the best. This two-episode British ************************ary postulates that Islamic culture was the basis of Western culture, that there would be no Oxford University if a wandering Brit hadn't returned to the Isles with a memoir of the great thirst for knowledge and love of beauty in Moorish Spain, that the so-called Reconquest of Spain was actually a civil war between Islamic and Christian Spaniards and that the Renaissance was merely a discovery of Islamic culture. I'm oversimplifying, but not by much. Nonetheless, it is true that Islamic culture has often been underrepresented in Western history, that Arabic numerals helped advance civilization because they were easier to work with than Roman numerals, and that the celebration of art, architecture and the written word in the great Moorish cities of Cordoba and Toledo did have a lasting impact on European civilization. While Hughes does simplify too much, a discerning viewer will be convinced by some of the points in the ************************ary. Even more valuable are the extraordinary images of Islamic art and architecture in Spain. - David Wiegand

WHEN THE MOORS RULED IN EUROPE

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