Nine Hundred Years- Reviving the Spirit of Andalusia

Nine Hundred Years: Reviving the Spirit of Andalusia

Opening Salutations and Supplications

As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. As-salatu wa as-salamu ala asharaf al-anbiya wal-mursaleen, wa ala alihi wa sahabatihi, wa man tabi'ahum bi ahsani ila yawm al-deen.

Allahumma la ilma lana illa ma allamtana innaka anta al-alim al-hakim. Allahumma allamna ma yanfa'una wa infa'na bima allamtana wa zidna ilma. Allahumma iftah alayna hikmatak wa inshur alayna rahmatak ya dhal-jalali wal-ikram.

"O Allah, we have no knowledge except what You have taught us. Indeed, You are the All-Knowing, the All-Wise. O Allah, teach us what benefits us and benefit us with what You have taught us, and increase us in knowledge. O Allah, open upon us Your wisdom and spread upon us Your mercy, O Possessor of Majesty and Honor."

Wa sallallahu ala sayyidina Muhammad.

Introduction: The Significance of Al-Andalus

The topic that I was asked to talk about was Al-Andalus. Al-Andalus is one of the most extraordinary portions of our great Islamic history. And in reviving the spirit of Al-Andalus, it's important that we, first of all, look at what Al-Andalus means to the Muslims.

Al-Andalus is the greatest European expression of Islam. Islam has been in Europe for centuries. Islam was in Eastern Europe for centuries. But the Islam of Al-Andalus is a Western European phenomenon. And we should remember that, that for over 800 years, Islam begins in Spain in 711, in Christian era. And it does not end until the final expulsion in 1609.

The Extended Muslim Presence in Spain

People forget, they think of 1492 as the end of the Muslim experience in Spain. The reality is, is that the Muslims continued to exist in large numbers in Spain until 1609, which is the final expulsion. And in 1568, for two years, 1568 to 1570, that was the last actual resistance movement, the War of Al-Bukharas, or the Al- Bukharas Mountains, which are just east of Granada.

And this was led by a Muslim, Ferdinando de Valor, whose Muslim name, the Muslims by that time had both Spanish names and their Islamic names. Just like many converts here have their Western names and their Islamic names, these Moriscos, who were living in Spain as Muslims, and they were actually Spanish Muslims, they spoke Spanish, they wrote in Spanish, they often used Arabic script, this man whose name, his Muslim

name was Muhammad bin Umayyah, led a two-year resistance against the Spanish in 1568 to 1570. So it's important to remember that, that 900 years, over 900 years, the Muslims were in Spain.

Understanding the Historical Context Through an Analogy

Now I want you to imagine, America is a country that's over 200 years old, and we feel like we've been there a long time, even though we're all newcomers. I have ancestors that came very early, and then I have ancestors that came as late as 1896 through Ellis Island. My grandfather, my great-grandfather, and with him his son, who was my grandfather, came through Ellis Island. He's my mother's father, as late as 1896.

So I want you to imagine that the Canadians, who were really the loyalists of the War of Independence, they did not split off from the United States, or rather from England. And many of the loyalists in America, in the United States of America, fled to Canada, because the Canadians remained loyalists. When I was reading Canadian history, I was shocked to find out that we were the bad guys in the War of 1812. I always thought we were the good guys. But I was reading Canadian history, and they looked at it very differently, and we're neighbors.

So I want you to imagine that the Canadians decide that the Americans are out of control. This is just an imaginary scenario, so don't worry. That the Americans are out of control, they're threatening the world with proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, they're tyrannizing and terrorizing and doing all these horrible things, and also the fact that they're burning the vast majority of fossil fuels, they're causing permafrost in Canada to melt. And the permafrost is very important for the stability of the ecosphere, and now we know that the polar bears, which are Canadian citizens, are really suffering right now.

So the Canadians are fed up. They say, we're going to drive the Americans out of America into Mexico. So they basically invade America. Imaginary scenario. They invade America, the Canadian Mounties on their horses, go down into America and drive the Americans into Mexico, and the Mexicans being the generous people and warm people that they are, they embrace the Americans as refugees from economic deprivation and loss of housing and all of those other things. So they embrace them and say, nuestra casa es tu casa, no hay problema.

So, there's your scenario. Now, what would the Americans do? I think personally, being from America, I really think they would begin a resistance movement in Mexico and start operations to get their country back. Because they've been there for 200 years. 200 years. Now imagine the Muslims in Spain 900 years. 900 years and they're driven out of their homes by an invading force from the north that called it the Reconquista. Which is not a valid term. It wasn't a reconquest. The northern Spaniards were never, they weren't from southern Spain. They weren't from Andalusia. So you imagine what would happen in that scenario. It's a very interesting problem.

Spanish Denial of Islamic Heritage

Now the Spanish have basically denied the 900 years of Muslim Spain, really. They've completely denied it. They see it as Arab invaders. And I want to talk a little bit about that.

The Initial Conquest: Tariq bin Ziyad

First of all, Tariq bin Ziyad was actually encouraged. Musa ibn Nusayr, who was the governor then of the Umayyads of the east. Tariq bin Ziyad was his general. But they were encouraged to cross over to Spain. The reason for that is because there was a count in Ceuta, Ceuta, which is part of Morocco. It's actually Spanish Morocco. It's still part of Spain. But it's in Morocco.

This count, Julian, and some, he's called Urban as well, had a daughter, Florinda. And it was the habit of the nobility of that time to send their children to the courts of the Visigothic kings in order for them to become cultured. So he sent his young daughter, she was 14 or 15, to the court of King Roderick, which was in Toledo. And in that court she was raped by the king. Now she was blamed for this, but when she came back what happened was her father was completely alienated from the Visigothic king of Spain, and so he sided with the Arabs and helped them to cross over into Spain.

So they had expeditionaries where they sent these reconnoitering groups over into Spain to look around. And when Tariq bin Ziyad finally crossed over in 711, and the famous story that he burnt the ships is just fantasy. It's, first of all, it's just a stupid thing to do. You don't burn your navy down. If you're going to send it back, you send it back. We have a problem in our history is we have what are called the Qusas, and the Qas were people that told stories to encourage people in the mosques and things like that, and they often embellish stories, what the Arabs call yubahir al-qissa, to spice up the story. So that's a spicing up of the story.

So Tariq bin Ziyad, when he crossed over and quickly, really it was quite an extraordinary conquest, begins to really take over this country. And within this first period, the Umayyads basically gained control of a large segment of Spain.

The Umayyad Dynasty in Spain

Now this initial Umayyad period will last until 756, so from 711 to 756, which is when Abd al-Rahman al- Dakhil, who was the grandson of the Khalifa Hisham, who ruled in the 740s, he actually ruled from the 724 to 743, I think, and he had trained his grandson, he actually believed, because Abd al-Rahman al-Dakhil was a very brilliant young man, he believed that he would be a caliph at one time, but when the Abbasids took over in 750, he flees, and he goes to Morocco.

He actually had relatives from the Berbers in Morocco, and they took him in, and then he crosses over and establishes an amazing capital in Qurtaba. A brilliant man, really unusual, a highly gifted general and statesman. And the Umayyads had a great deal of intelligence, the Umayyad rulers. They didn't last long, and one of the things that I've noted in Islamic history is that intolerant dynasties in Islam are very short-lived.

The Pattern of Tolerance in Islamic Dynasties

One of the really interesting things about Islamic dynasties is that the intolerant ones never last more than a

hundred years. And the great dynasties of Islam that either were intolerant in the beginning but learned tolerance quite quickly, the Abbasid dynasty is a good example of that, or the Ottoman, and the Ottoman is the most extraordinary in terms of tolerance. And they're the longest-lived dynasty in human history. There is no... The Osmanli is the longest-lived family dynasty that we know of in human history. So it's really quite extraordinary that they lived as long as they did.

If you look at the period, the Umayyad period, when the Umayyad dynasty collapses in the east with the takeover of the Abbasids, most of the Umayyad family were wiped out, and the few that got away, among them Abdurrahman al-Dakhil, fled. He goes to Spain, sets up this extraordinary dynasty, and it is a reasonably short- lived dynasty. I mean, it doesn't go on for long because, well, there's a number of reasons for that that I don't want to go into, because I really want to get to the point of this, of what's so extraordinary about this.

Abdurrahman II and Multicultural Court

But his, the second Abdurrahman, Abdurrahman II is another very extraordinary ruler. He basically creates a court that is a completely multicultural court. He has people coming from all over, the ins and outs. They bring Persians, are imported from Persia, brought in. Shiraz was one of the cities that a large contingency of Persians came from, and one of the things they brought to Spain was the knowledge of Persian winemaking. There's an area just outside of Seville, Jerez de Frontera, which is where they grew their grapes, and it's actually Shiraz de Frontera, which is where we get the Western word sherry from. And I know none of you know what that means, because you're Muslims, but sherry is considered a very fine type of wine in the West. So that actually came from Persian Muslims that brought that knowledge to Spain.

The Glory of Córdoba: A City of Unparalleled Civilization

Now, during this period, in 950 in Córdoba, just to give you an example of what type of city this was, in 950 in Córdoba, and we have very strong documentation of this, there were 600,000 people living in this city, which is an extraordinary number for that period in human history. 600,000, over half a million people, a very large city. There were 92,700 shops and trade establishments in that city. Can you imagine the wealth that that city possessed? 92,700 shops. And that means most people were self-employed and were doing quite well.

They had 50 hospitals. 50 hospitals in a city of 600,000 people. They had one university and they had 300 colleges. Just imagine that. The university had 20,000 students full-time. 20,000 students. And that does not overlook the fact that people were allowed into, because classes were held openly, and so people were allowed to come in, what they call in Western universities, auditing a course. People were allowed to come in and audit without actually being registered at the university. But 20,000 out of 600,000, the population, I mean it's just an extraordinary number of people, and they were coming from many, many places.

There were 300 public baths. 300 public baths in that city and 72 public libraries. 72 public libraries. Imagine that in 950. This is the... Their one average house in Cordoba at that time had more books than all of Europe contained at the same time. I mean, so imagine that. There was lighting. There were actually lights in the streets.

So there was lighting, and you could see the lights of Cordoba from 40 miles away, according to accounts at the time. Later, they introduced indoor plumbing. And they actually, in Granada, where they had gravity, they had very sophisticated systems of gravity, they actually had running water with faucets. And you could imagine the level of civilization that was there.

The Dhimma System: Understanding Protection and Responsibility

Now, during this period, one of the things that the Muslims were noted for was their tolerance of other religions. And this is obviously because the Prophet taught us about the dhimma system. And I want to say a few words, because the dhimma system is considered very negatively now in the modern world of global community. What they call the global community, where everybody cares about everybody else, and nobody steals from anybody else's wealth or property.

I mean, I'll give you an example of dhimma too. Now, in the Gulf War, Gulf War I, the United States protected Kuwait. And it was a good thing, because Kuwait was unjustly... But it wasn't for free. It cost a lot of money. Really. Like, several tens of billions of dollars. So, it costed a lot of money, and the Kuwaiti government paid quite dearly for that protection. So, things aren't free. Protection is not free. I mean, that's just the way the world works. So, you can call it paying for our weapons, or whatever you want to call it, but in Islam it's just dhimma means responsibility. It's much cheaper than America charges for protection. I guarantee you, it's a much better deal. And it's all out in the open. It's just there, right in the open, just sign on the dotted line, enter into an agreement, and we'll protect you. You don't have to do anything.

And what's amazing, the justice of the Muslims is that when the Muslims retreated from certain areas in Syria, because they were unable to protect the Christians and Jews of that area, they actually returned their money to them. And this is documented historically. So, they weren't squeezing people out. And we even know that Sayyidina Umar said, if they can't pay it, don't force it from them. In other words, it was pay if you're able to, if you have that capacity. There were old people that could no longer pay the dhimma, and Sayyidina Umar would excuse them from that. So, dhimma was not a negative thing.

In fact, some حَتَّى يُعْطُوا الْجِزْيَةَ عَن يَدٍ وَهُمْ صَاغِرُونَ hatta yutu al-jizyata 'an yadin wa hum saghirun (Quran 9:29(, which is in the Quran, there's a big debate about what صاغر saghir means. And I really find it dangerous to say in a state of humiliation, which is how many of the tafsirs say it. صاغر saghir is also something, it's somebody who's under somebody else, so we can look at it as a minority. They pay with their hands because they're a minority. They're in a weakened position, and dhimma means responsibility. Whose dhimma are they in? They're in the dhimma of Allah and His Messenger. فِي ذِمَّةِ اللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِ fi dhimmati Allahi wa rasulihi "In the protection of Allah and His Messenger." And that's your responsibility, the Muslims, to protect and defend their mosques, their synagogues, their churches, and according to the Maliki and Hanafi schools that were operative in the majority of the Islamic lands, also the Buddhist temples, the Hindu temples, because the Shafi'is restricted to the three major Ahlul Kitab, Jews, Christians, and then the Majus.

The Martyrs of Córdoba: A Religious Phenomenon

And I'll give you one example of the martyrs of Cordoba, who were a very interesting group of Christians. These were really fanatical Christians who were very disturbed by the numbers of Christians that were converting to Islam from the Visigoths. The martyrs of Cordoba would go into the mosques and they would curse the Prophet ﷺ openly because they wanted to be martyred. So they were doing it to revive the spirit. And this is something any beleaguered religious community will often resort to a type of stupid martyrdom, a really useless martyrdom, as a way of trying to keep a resistance alive. Do you see? It's a religious phenomenon that you see throughout religious history.

So this is what they did. Because the rulers at that time realized what they were doing, they would go to extraordinary ends to prevent them from being punished. And they would actually protect them. Although some were killed. And Muslims would get very angry. I mean, if you do something like that to a Muslim, they'll literally go insane. And could kill a person just because it's a type of temporary insanity. Because they're so enraged that somebody could desecrate or degrade one of any of the Prophets. But certainly the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.

Jewish Leadership and Meritocracy in Muslim Spain

So during this period, Shabrut was one of the prime ministers of this government. Of Abdurrahman II. He was a Jewish minister with immense influence and power. And this was another aspect of Muslim Spain and also the Ottomans. It was a very interesting aspect of the Ottomans which is meritocracy. The Muslims would often because of the meritorious qualities of an individual, they would elevate them. And allow them to rise up in the community irrespective of their origins.

This is very contradictory to feudal systems whereby you have feudal lords and then you have the gentry and then you have the peasants. The peons. Peones. In what the Arabs call the Bayadika. You know the pawns. They're the lowest people. Peones actually comes from pes which is a Latin word for foot. They're the people that have to walk everywhere because they don't have transportation. Now they take buses. Those are the peones. And so these people could rise up. So a cobbler could become a minister.

Sidi Ahmed Zarrouq was a cobbler. He was a very poor man in the 9th century in Fes. But because of his brilliance, he ended up becoming a great scholar. Although you did have aristocracy in the Muslim world. It was a very fluid system.

The Sephardic Jews: From Oppression to Prosperity

So Jews who were historically in Spain they were treated as the lowest of the low. And these are called the Sephardim. Sephardim. You have three types of Jews. You have the Ashkenazi Jews that are the Eastern European Jews. And then you have the Sephardim that are the Spanish Jews. And then you have the Mizarim that are the Eastern Jews of Egypt and Palestine, Iraq. Daniel Pearl who was killed unjustly in Pakistan. His mother was a Mizarim. She was actually an Iraqi Jew. So that's why he had that dark complexion. Because he was Eastern. Eastern Semite.

So the Sephardim were actually, if you study, and I read a book on Cordoba when I was in Spain. I read an extraordinary book that had statistics of the Jewish community in Cordoba at the height of the Muslim Umayyad civilization. The Jews were largely middle and upper middle class. They were not ghettoized. They were actually a very successful community.

Maimonides and Ibn Rushd: Jewish-Muslim Intellectual Exchange

One of the most interesting characters in Jewish history is Musa Ibn Maymun who's known as Maimonides. Now Maimonides lived in the 11th century during the period of Ibn Rushd. He was actually a student of Ibn Rushd during the Muwahhidun period. Now Ibn Rushd, who was a brilliant Maliki jurist, but he was also a brilliant philosopher. And Abu Yaqub who was the ruler at that time actually was his patron, and because of that he wrote several commentaries on Aristotle that ended up becoming the preeminent commentaries that led to a renaissance of thought in Europe because Albertus Magnus, who's the great philosopher, Christian philosopher who taught St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Thomas Aquinas is a very important historical intellectual in Christian history because basically the Catholic Church based the entire foundation of their theology on St. Thomas Aquinas' thought.

So Ibn Rushd was the man who gave access to Aristotle to St. Thomas, and he actually mentions him many, many times in the Summa Contra Gentilis and Summa Theologica. Very, very interesting. Now that word itself that St. Thomas Aquinas uses, Summa, it means Jami'a, which is a specific Maliki term. The Malikis use the word Jami'a in their books. You'll always see Kitab al-Jami'a which is a book that has a lot of different issues in it. So this was a direct result of the Islamic influence in Spain on Europe.

Ziryab: The Cultural Icon Who Transformed Andalusia

Now during this early period another very interesting phenomenon happens, and this is important in terms of the influence that the Muslims have had on the West. In the 9th century and the 850s one of the extraordinary characters that shows up in Spain and becomes a character in the court is a man called Ziryab. And Ziryab was an absolute genius. He was a poet, he was a musician, he was actually a connoisseur of food. He was also a type of beau grumble character who was a bon vivant. He liked very fancy clothes and actually his hairstyle was different from the Spanish hairstyle but because he was so popular the Spanish men began to actually imitate his hairstyle which shows you celebrities have always been around and have an effect on culture. People think it's a modern phenomenon but the reality of it is, it's not.

Now Ziryab who was actually fled from the court in Iraq. One of the things that Ziryab did which is really interesting is he started a conservatory of music and began to teach music to the Spanish Muslims now he developed a type of instrument from a lute and lute in European language comes from al-'ud he developed it by adding a string and the Spaniards called it the guitarra morisco, the Moorish guitar which becomes the guitar.

Music as Medicine: The Maqamat and Music Therapy

Now because of this he introduced very sophisticated music from the east, Persian maqamat, what are called maqamat and one of the things this music was used for was to treat people for illnesses and so there were actually hospitals in Cordoba that used music to treat the mentally ill and this is based on a Greek theory that comes from Pythagoras called the ethos theory of music that the soul is actually affected by the vibrations of sound and we know this from the Qur'an. The Qur'an is a very sonorous, very mellifluous and soothing speech that part of it is the resonance that it has on the soul and so the Qur'an is a shifa as well and I don't want to compare the Qur'an to music at all because that's haram to do but it's very interesting that they use these and I'll just give you one example.

In this science there's the maqam al-rast which is a maqam that uses the key of C and the key of C is a very soothing key and it's often used in popular music and in fact when I was talking with Yusuf Islam about this and he said that was one of my favorite keys to write in. So like peace train is written in the key of C but this maqam al-rast actually soothes people and calms them down. So they would use this in the hospitals and they called them maristan or bimaristan and this was also in Fes and I visited one in Fes this science is still taught in Turkey and they still use music therapy in Turkey so it's actually used.

The Musical Influence on Western Civilization

Now this is a very interesting influence on the west and it's a little side track here but I find it fascinating there are two major musical influences on western civilization the first is Spain and then Italy through Sicily that goes up. Classical music develops in Italy and the reason is because classical music's roots are in Sicilian and Andalusian music which was very very popular and even many of the ulama of that time would listen to it and this is still the case in Morocco even though the majority, the mashhur of the four madhabs, I'm not promoting music or anything, the mashhur of the four madhabs is stringed instruments they say don't listen to them but percussion instruments are permitted for festive occasions, things like that and singing, the majority permit that some prohibit it, so I don't want to talk about the specificities of halal and haram about this, I'm talking about the sociological phenomenon of music in Andalusia.

This music actually moves into Europe through the troubadours, now troubadour most of the dictionaries of etymology say troubadour comes from tarab, the mutrib you know the Arabs say zamr al-hayla yutrib, the musician of the neighborhood doesn't entertain anybody they don't want to listen to him so the mutrib, the troubadours were the traveling musicians and they would often sing love songs, which is ghazal, because the Arabs and the Arabic language is a language of love, it's a language of hubb and so these troubadours move into

the provincial France, and you get all of these troubadours singing in France love songs and then that moves to England and also to the Celtic lands, so Celtic music is directly related to, and this has been proven by ethnomusicologists that there is a direct relationship to Celtic music and Spanish music.

The Connection Between Andalusian Music and Rock and Roll

Now the other very strange connection, and this was only recently developed in a very interesting book called Africa and the Blues because blues is a very American music, and it's the music of the African American slaves and if you listen to early slave recordings, and I've heard them from the late 19th century where they still had freed slaves who were alive and they recorded them singing you can't distinguish between their singing and the Adhan it's just amazing I have a recording of this and it just amazes you, the same guttural sounds.

Now these two influences through Europe via Spain and through Africa come into America with the Appalachian Celtic influences and then the Delta Mississippi Blues influences and this creates what we call rock and roll, but I really believe we should call it Moroccan roll because the connection is really extraordinary, and I'll give you an example the basis of rock and roll is a 4-4 beat in fact they call it the Bo Diddley beat that's called the Bo Diddley beat in rock and roll, now if you ever heard Van Morrison, and I liked him before I was Muslim if you ever hear Van Morrison from he's a 60's singer, he sings a song where he goes la la la la la la la say it again, la la la la la la where did that come from? (لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللهُ - la ilaha illa Allah) that's where it came from.

Now one of the interesting things about rock and roll music, because my father plays piano and one of his friends who was a jazz musician in New York Cy Walter when rock and roll first came out in the late 50's, my father asked him what do you think about this wretched music he said it'll never last and he said why not and he said because all it has is a beat but he didn't know what that beat was based on because I really believe that it's actually resonating in people's hearts something's resonating in people's hearts, they're hearing something and the rock and roll beat is based on a 4-4 beat and the kalima (لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللهُ مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ اللهِ - la ilaha illa Allah muhammadun rasul Allah) is based on 4-4 beats and that's why all of the Muslim shahada is based on these basic rhythms and so you have this connection.

In Spanish all the Spanish singing, if you've ever heard the Andalusian singing, a lot of it is singing (لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللهُ - la ilaha illa Allah) a lot of the west African music is singing (لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللهُ - la ilaha illa Allah), so here they're saying la la la la la la, in Morocco they're saying (لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللهُ - la ilaha illa Allah) so we just need to fix the voweling for them it's gonna take some work but it can happen, and in fact there was an album that won a Grammy a few years ago that Santana produced and in that song you know the song says there's a devil under the bed he's telling you to be afraid and there's an angel over your head and you can hear him say and then it comes in (لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللهُ - la ilaha illa Allah) like they sing that literally (لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللهُ - la ilaha illa Allah) and it fits in that 4-4 rhythm so that's just a side thing which I find really interesting and I think Muslims should study this to bring this out, it's really important that people see where this stuff comes from and why it has an effect on people so that is one of the interesting aspects of Spanish influence on the west, is the musical influence.

Córdoba and Seville: Cities of Knowledge and Culture

Now the Muslims of Spain were completely in love with learning or I should rather say certain cities in fact Qurtuba. Qadi Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi who grew up in Seville he said about Qurtuba (إِذَا مَاتَ مُوسِيقِيٌّ فِي قُرْطُبَةَ نُقِلَتْ آلَاتُهُ الْمُوسِيقِيَّةُ إِلَى إِشْبِيلِيَّةَ حَتَّىٰ تُبَاعَ - idha mata musiqiyun fi Qurtuba naqilat alatuhu al-musiqiyya ila Ishbiliya hatta tuba'a) "If a musician in Qurtuba died, all his instruments were sent to Seville in order to be sold." And he said if a scholar in Seville died his books were sent to Qurtuba in order for them to be sold because Seville was known as a party town.

There's people when they go to university, they don't choose like Harvard or Yale, they choose universities that they know are known for partying seriously this is true, people go to universities, I'll give you a good, I don't want any of you to apply here, but a good party school is the university of Arizona in San Antonio, that's a famous party school, people go there to have a good time for four years but if you want to study, you have to go to a serious school, well the same is true in the Muslim countries there were cities that were known like Qurtuba was a city known for knowledge, Ishbiliya was a city known for a lot of fun and activity, to this day Seville is still known as a party town, and Qurtuba is considered a city of great learning, to this day Qurtuba is still a place it's a university town that has much learning in it, it's just amazing, it's sunnatullah fi khalqihi.

The Rihla: The Journey of Knowledge

So, the learning the desire for learning was immense in Andalusia, and this is really the strength of this country, during the period of the Umayyad, scholars came from all over, one of the most interesting aspects of Andalusian scholarship is that they encouraged something that was called a rihla the rihla was where a scholar would travel to another country, and to take a journey to the east in order to gain more knowledge and then would come back, and they would often see an extraordinary change in that scholar's perspective.

This is very important, and I would encourage it for our ikhwanuna fil-Khalij some of the ulema in the Khalij would really benefit by taking journeys of knowledge to other countries, where they can sit with other ulema, and listen to other ulema because when ulema are stuck in one little provincial area and all they know is their own area they're not able to really think in a more global or more broad perspective so, exchanging of students is very important, this is what the Andalusians would do.

In fact, Ibn Hazm who's a mutashaddid amongst those scholars, was known for not making the rihla, and maybe there's a relationship to Ibn Hazm's harshness in certain issues and the fact that he never took that great journey to acquire knowledge from scholars in the east.

Ahmad Ibn Maslamah and the Introduction of Numerals

One of the great travelers of the east was Ahmad Ibn Maslamah al-Majriti now this man in the late 10th, early 11th century he made a journey, and he brought back the system of numeration that had gone all over numeracy in the east, so he brought back what are called al-arqam al-hindiya and they developed, the Andalusians and the

Moroccans developed their own system, which is called al-arqam al-arabiya, and this is very important to note that the Arabic numerals are not Indian numerals, the Arabic numerals of the Morocco and of the North African countries were developed by the Muslims themselves, and relate to angles.

These were taught to one of the students, Gerbert who learned in Spain studied in a school in Spain. Gerbert becomes Pope Sylvester. Pope Sylvester introduced numerals into Europe, where did he get that knowledge he got it from the Muslims, and numerals I will guarantee you, numerals are the secret of the power of western civilization, and if you don't believe me read a book called The Measure of Everything, which is about how the western scientists began to measure everything and they did it because they were empowered by numerals.

The Power and Danger of Mathematics

And that's why and I've said this before, but the problem is not weapons of mass destruction the problem is weapons of math instruction, because it's only through higher mathematics that you can develop weapons of mass destruction and that's why Imam Ghazali, they warned about because they were concerned about that aspect if the people that master these sciences aren't morally righteous, upright people, they can actually really harm people, and do terrible things.

So the Muslims introduced these numbers into Europe and then Europe took these numbers and measured and quantified everything, they developed calculus Leibniz and Newton developed calculus, and calculus has empowered western civilization really, completely so the western dominance that we witness now on the globe is a direct result of a Pope, that studied from Muslims, who believed that knowledge was for humanity, and this is very important, and I want to wind down here, because it's such a fascinating period, and I actually lived in Spain, I lived in Spain for over a year in Granada.

Andalusian Innovations and Contributions

So just a few things about the contributions of Spain, the Spaniards invented crystal, Spanish Muslims invented crystal, the highest form of glass, the Spanish invented the idea of a movement in music, nuba, it's called a nuba, it's a change, western music if you look at classical music western music, the hallmark of it is movements, where did they get the word from? They got it from Spanish music many of the instruments used in classical music came through Spain do you see, in fact the piano, which is the highest of the western classical instruments, along with the violin both of them are introductions from the east, by Muslims.

The piano is an extended what they call the qanun the qanun, if you look at a qanun and look inside a piano, it's identical, really it's identical, the piano is a percussion instrument, the qanun is a plucked instrument the piano is struck, and who invented the qanun? Al-Farabi the Muslim philosopher Al-Farabi.

Al-Farabi: The Genius of Seventy Languages

Al-Farabi was a genius he spoke 70 languages there's a famous story, he came into a gathering in Halab of one

of the Umara, and he was wearing an Anatolian suit because he studied logic from Greece and the, he was just sitting there, and the ulama were talking and one of the servants spoke a very strange dialect, and the emir was trying to explain something to the servant, and the servant couldn't understand so Farabi spoke to the servant, and the emir looked at him and said he said do you speak this dialect? He said he said I speak 70 languages, they said do you know anything about Arabic? He said well, test me, and so the grammarians started testing him, they went on and on until they all said, this man knows more than anybody and then he began to talk about logic and they were completely amazed and so the emir said, do you know anything about music? And he said yes, bring me an 'Oud, so they brought him an 'Oud and he played the 'Oud and made them all laugh and then he played the 'Oud and he made them all cry, and then he put them to sleep.

Because he wrote a book which I actually have in my library called Kitab al-Musiqa al-Kabir the big book of music it's this big I mean it's and in that book he teaches you how to use music to affect the emotions of people, which is the reason Plato in the Republic said music should be prohibited because it's too powerful a weapon and it affects the emotions of people and most musicians don't know what they're doing so they get people agitated you know, you go to a rock concert and suddenly people are beating each other up and they don't know why well if you play that music like that, you know everybody's going like that, and lighting candles and so this was something that the Muslims the influence that they had all of these things, music on the movements.

The Hallmarks of Great Civilizations: Law and Astronomy

And also the extraordinary advancements in astronomy and I'll tell you a secret that this is something I've never seen this written you know, Benatu Sadri, like Imam Suyuti used to say, the hallmark of a civilization, and I've seen this throughout my study of history the hallmark of a great civilization is it has two great concerns two major concerns the first concern is a concern with law jurisprudence, what we call fiqh, and the second concern is with ilm al-falak and the reason I believe that is true, see people wonder why America spends so much money on NASA, and spends so much money on astronomy because that's the nature of a vibrant dynamic civilization they're interested in the heavens.

Why is America's flag the stars and bars because the bars, when they put you in jail because of the law they call it behind bars and that's the way America works you know if you don't follow America's law they put you behind bars right, so (خَلِّي بَالَكَ مِنْ نَفْسَكَ - khalli balak min nafsak) like the Egyptians say but the flag of the America is the stars and the bars ilm al-falak, ilm al-qanun and that's the secret why are Americans obsessed with law Americans are the only people that I know of, really, you would be amazed at how much legal language Americans know deposition, they're litigious they sue each other a lot but they really know look at how many American programs are about law courts and lawyers look at how many films have been made that are just court scenes because they're obsessed with law, and as long as they're obsessed with law, they'll be a powerful nation and when they begin to lose that desire.

America's Legal Tradition and Islamic Influence

And that's why what's extraordinary, and I'm not really blowing any pipes for America right now, what's really extraordinary about that country and I just say, you know, turbans off to them, is that you have people in that country that no matter how criminal the activities of the country get you have really great jurists and people in the country that fight to redress the wrongs of that country and I have to say that I feel proud of being on the side of those people I really do because there are really good people in there that are working to redress the guantanamization of people it's a word in our vocabulary now, to guantanamize people.

And the whole point of these laws that are so extraordinary, the high principles, that many of them came through Sicily, Kitab Roger people don't know about that, the history of Sicily, in fact a lot of people wonder where Americans got the jury system or the English-Anglo jury system of 12 and some of the researchers in the US actually believe that there's a connection between a Maliki principle of taking 12 people in the absence of a qadi and using 12 notable peers to judge a people because the idea of some of the Maliki scholars like Imam al-Qarafi, if you have 12 people it's hard for them to agree on an error.

So much of what we see in America and in the West in terms of laws and things, there's a direct influence statute law was influenced by Napoleon who adopted many of the Maliki principles in Napoleonic statute law which is a very important legal development in Western legal history so the influence is immense.

How to Revive the Spirit of Andalusia

And so how can we revive the spirit? I would say that there's a few things that we can do the first thing that we can do is recognize that Spain is one of the greatest testimonies to the power of the Islamic religion to facilitate the flourishment of human society and civilization it is one of the most powerful testimonies to the ability of Islam to actually create a better life for ordinary citizens not just for the elite.

The parks in Andalusia were for everybody they developed parks where everybody could go to, the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich the street lighting was for everybody, the wealthy, the poor the public baths were for everybody this is one of the secrets of Andalusia is that it really helped human society flourish.

Christianity's Failure and Islam's Success in Creating Civilized Societies

Now one of the tragedies of Western civilization that they have yet to come to terms with many many people in the West have not come to terms with this fact Christianity as a religion failed to create societies in which human beings flourished this is a historical fact and this is why Christianity when it ruled Europe with its iron hand knowledge was not promoted and when it was it was only promoted amongst the priestly class, common people were not allowed to learn the standard of living was never promoted early Christians in Europe believed that taking baths was ungodly that it was better to be an ascetic and so in many places baths were never encouraged, this is very well known, many many other things.

But the most important thing that they failed to do, which Islamic civilization and particularly Spain succeeded in doing was creating an environment of religious tolerance this is the great accomplishment of Spain is that in Spain Muslims Jews and Christians lived under the beautiful umbrella of Islam the protective umbrella of Islam that put them in the shade of justice from the sun of tyranny and during that time you had extraordinary intercultural dialogue you had extraordinary intra-religious dialogue and debate Muslims were not only tolerant of other madhabs in their schools but they were tolerant of other people's beliefs and honored those people in their right to believe what they believed this is the great achievement of Spain and this is something that the West directly adopted from Ottoman and Spanish influence.

Henry Stubb, Hobbes, and Locke: The Influence of Islamic Tolerance

And one of the great proofs of this is Henry Stubb who in 1701 a book was released into the intelligentsia of England Henry Stubb was a close friend of the great English British philosopher Hobbes Hobbes was very troubled by the religious wars of the 17th century because of that he wrote a book in which he really wanted to create a space where the secular and the religious were separate because he felt the religious always ended up creating tragedy creating wars, creating dissension.

And the great student of this idea is another extraordinary philosopher who returns in the great revolution in 1688 from the tolerant land of the Dutch, he returns with them and this is Locke, John Locke and John Locke wrote a very important treatise which is called the treatise of toleration and one of the things that I discovered about this man in reading a biography of him was that the most influential teacher on Locke was a man named Edward Pocock and Edward Pocock was the Arabic Islamic professor at Cambridge and Edward Pocock introduced these ideas to Locke at a very early age of the sophistication of the Ottoman system of toleration.

And that is why the first act of toleration in European history was under the caesarean of the Ottoman Empire done in Transylvania, this is the first act of toleration and then the next is in England so the secular religious crisis of Europe was a direct result of the inability of European religion to help benefit human society and this is the great achievement of Islam this is the great achievement of Islam.

Prince Charles on Islam's Harmonious Integration of Sacred and Secular

And this is why Prince Charles in an extraordinary and prescient address said that the Muslims are unique in religious history in being able to join the secular and the sacred in a harmonious interrelationship and it behooves us in the west to bring the sages of Islam to the west in order for them to edify us and illuminate us on the secret of that ability because we are facing a great calamity if science does not serve humanity under the great umbrella of the religious truths the moral truths of religion, science is out of control science is completely out of control.

And that is why we do not want to see a separation of religious principles from secular tradition this is not a Muslim problem this is uniquely a European problem it is not a problem of Islam and although I don't want to see the mullahs running everything I really don't mullahs, I want them in the masjids guiding people and things

like that and leave them out of the White House or any other place really, I don't want to see the mullahs there I want to see the mullahs murshidun lays siyasiyyin I really believe that because that's the role of the scholar is to help guide the political people.

And that's why the prophet in a hadith, and there's some weakness there but the hadith repeated many many things that the scholars are the inheritors of the prophets that's a really important idea in Islam.

The West's Adoption of Islamic Principles

So finally the West abandoned this project of religion and made it a private affair and adopted four things in order for human beings to flourish, politics economics, science and technology and the human social sciences these were all hallmarks of the Andalusian society they're all hallmarks of the Andalusian society and so our challenge as Muslims is how we can once again be able to revive the ability for Islam and for the Muslims to work with the great challenges of our time, the great transformations of our time, using the past as our compass the past is our north star but also using the present recognizing we're in the present and on a journey into the future.

So we want the asala of the past the principles of the past and the strength of the past to derive from that but we also have to reconcile the fact that we are modern people, and we can do that, and may Allah give us benefit.

Closing: The Divine Pattern of Rising and Falling Civilizations

And finally Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says about people that abandoned his way

"How many great gardens did they leave behind, and springs and fountains"

"and blessings in it, deriving these blessings from"

"This is the sunnah of Allah"

"These are the days we cause to alternate among the people."

We are here in the west we should partake in this extraordinary civilization by becoming productive members of it and also, I believe, becoming leaders, inshallah. And we can do that in the spirit of Andalusia. May Allah reward you well. And peace be upon you.