ISLAM THE BASICS

ISLAM'S CONTRIBUTION TO EUROPE'S RENAISSANCE
 
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HRH, The Prince of Wales, Islam And The West
 
  . . . we have underestimated the importance of 800 years of
  Islamic society and culture in Spain between the 8th and 15th
  centuries. The contribution of Muslim Spain to the preservation of
  classical learning during the Dark Ages, and to the first
  flowering of the Renaissance, has long been recognized. But
  Islamic Spain was much more than a mere larder where Hellenistic
  knowledge was kept for later consumption by the emerging modern
  world. Not only did Muslim Spain gather and preserve the
  intellectual content of ancient Greek and Roman civilization, it
  also interpreted and expanded upon that civilization, and made a
  vital contribution of its own in so many fields of human endeavour
  -- in science, astronomy, mathematics, algebra (itself an Arabic
  word), law, history, medicine, pharmacology, optics, agriculture,
  architecture, theology, music. Averroes and Avenzoor, like their
  counterparts Avicenna and Rhazes in the East, contributed to the
  study and practice of medicine in ways from which Europe benefited
  for centuries afterwards.
 
  Islam nurtured and preserved the quest for learning. In the words
  of (the Prophet's) tradition "the ink of the scholar is more
  sacred than the blood of the martyr." Cordoba in the 10th century
  was by far the most civilized city of Europe. We know of lending
  libraries in Spain at the time King Alfred was making terrible
  blunders with the culinary arts in this country. It is said that
  the 400,000 volumes of its ruler's library amounted to more books
  than all the of the rest of Europe put together. That was made
  possible because the Muslim world acquired from China the skill of
  making paper more than four hundred years before the rest of
  non-Muslim Europe. Many of the traits on which Europe prides
  itself came to it from Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free trade, open
  borders, the techniques of academic research, of anthropology,
  etiquette, fashion, alternative medicine, hospitals, all came from
  this great city of cities. Mediaeval Islam was a religion of
  remarkable tolerance for its time, allowing Jews and Christians to
  practice their inherited beliefs, and setting an example which was
  not, unfortunately, copied for many centuries in the West. The
  surprise, ladies and gentlemen, is the extent to which Islam has
  been a part of Europe for so long, first in Spain, then in the
  Balkans, and the extent to which has contributed so much towards
  the civilization which we all too often think of, wrongly, as
  entirely Western. Islam is part of our past and present, in all
  fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe.
  It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart.
 
Akbar S. Ahmed, Living Islam
 
  It is well to recall that Islam not only caused Islamic
  civilization to develop but also enabled the European Renaissance
  to take root and grow. The time when Islam was most strongly
  established was also the time when art, culture and literature
  flourished, whether in Spain or, later, under the Ottomans, the
  Safavids and the Mughals. Christian Europe was enveloped in
  darkness until Islam came to the Iberian peninsula. For centuries
  Islam fed Greek, Sanskrit and Chinese ideas into Europe. Slowly
  and steadily Europe began to absorb those ideas. In England,
  France, Germany and Italy society began to explore literature and
  art with a new perspective; thus the seeds of the Renaissance were
  sown. -- p. 15
 
Washington W. Irving, Tales Of The Alhambra
 
  As conquerors [Muslims], their heroism was equaled only by their
  moderation, and in both, for a time, they excelled the nations
  with whom they contended. Severed from their native homes, they
  loved the land given them as they supposed by Allah and strove to
  embellish it with everything that could administer to the
  happiness of man. Laying the foundations of their power in a
  system of wise and equitable laws, diligently cultivating the arts
  and sciences, and promoting agriculture, manufactures and
  commerce, they gradually formed an empire unrivaled for its
  prosperity by any of the empires of Christendom . . .
 
  The cities of Arabian Spain became the resort of Christian
  artisans, to instruct themselves in the useful art. The
  Universities of Toledo, Cordova, Seville, Granada, were sought by
  the pale student from lands to acquaint himself with the sciences
  of the Arabs and the treasure lore of antiquity. -- p. 52
 
John Edwards, History Today
 
  On the second day of January [1492] I saw Your Highnesses' royal
  banners placed by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra . .
  . and in the same month . . . Your Highness, as Catholic
  Christians and princes devoted to the holy Christian faith and the
  furtherance of its cause, and enemies of the sect of Mohammed and
  of all idolatry and heresy, resolved to send me, Christopher
  Columbus, to the . . . regions of India. -- vol. 42