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CONTENTS: Southern Arabia (7th AD), Faith Commited to Knowledge . Mosques . Alexandria . Berebers & al-Andalus . Granada & the Moors . Virtual Alhambra . Alhambra Palace . Pythagoras & Single Ratios . Proportional System Design . Prince Abda-Er-Rahman & Cordoba . Cordoba (the Great Mosque)

* Southern Arabia (7th AD): As Islam grew bigger so it grew more ambitious. Within decades, Islamic arabs had reached as far as Persia in the east, and in the west they conquered Egypt, Jordan and much of nothern Africa... Islam was also a faith commited to knowledge. Mohammed: <<Seek knowledge>> Literacy and religious studies went hand in hand, whereas a number of other relions of the day prefered to keep literacy the priviledge for the cleric and the elite.   * Mosques were used for teaching grammar and literacy to ordinary people. <<With knoledge you can become what you want to be in the future>>... Because the Arabs were nomads, they developed a sophisticated astronomical system. Islam became a culture which embraced scientific and mathematical investigation. When Muslims encountered the teachings of of other cultures, they embraced them vigorously. Pompey's Pillar Alexandria * When the Arabs took over Alexandria in 641 AD, they had direct access to the Ancient Greek knowledge (e.g. Aristotle, the Bible, etc.) The contrast with Europe at this time is that in Europe the ancient Greek texts were often feared as blasphemous. In 529, for instance, the Christian Emperor closed down the Athenian schools of phylosopy.   * In July 711, 7,000 Berebers stormed across the streets of Gibraltar. In just four years, they colonised almost the whole of Spain, only halted at Poitiers in France. The Muslims called Iberia 'al-Andalus', the Land of the Vandals (or 'Visigoths'). Everywhere they were in Spain they found cities in crisis. In some cities, such as Recopolis (Madrid), the Visigoths happily handed in their land in return for Muslim protection. Muslims started to build a new society, and the continet's history was about to be transformed.  Recopolis (Zorita, Guadalajara) (c) Jaime Illanes 2004

Kairouan (Tunisia, 730 AD) World's Oldest Minaret Kairouan's Prayer Hall Umayyad Mosque (706 AD) Damascus (Syria) Inside Umayyad Mosque Mihrimah Sultan Mosque (Turkey, 1565) Kilic Ali Pasa Mosque (Turkey, 1580) Sokollu Mehmet Pasa Mosque (Turkey, 1572)

CORDOBA

MALAGA

GRANADA

Fernando & Isabel

* After the Catholic Monarcs Fernando and Isabel took over the city of Granada, they began to destroy all evidence that the Muslims had ever been in Spain. In the following centuries, the Spanish  authorities persecuted and expelled 300,000 Muslims and burned as many as one million Arabic books. This put an end to a civilization that flourised in Spain for seven centuries and have become known as The Moors. Archaeologists anr historians are now starting to put together the real history of the Moors in Spain.

The Alhambra (‘Red Castle‘, in Arabic الحمراء)

La Alhambra (Madinat al-Hamra):    Virtual Walk ('Visitas Virtuales')...

	* The Alhambra Palace: One of the most complete Medieval Islamic palaces in the whole world. Built by the Muslim Kings of Granda in the XIV century, not a single account of life there survives. All its archives were incinerating in the fires of the Inquisition. The XIX century writer Washington Irving wrote: <<The transiction is simply magic. It seemed that we had been transported to the past and to other kingdoms, that we had witnessed scenes of Arabic history.>>	Washington Irving
	* There is a specific reason why it feels so harmonious inside the Alhambra: The men who built it had knowledge of complex geometry which originated in the ancient world. The first man to set down these mathematical principles was Pythagoras (see also 'Pythagoras & Sacred Geometry': http://dyg2.tripod.com/id6.html). He saw numbers everywhere, but its brilliance is to understand the ratio between them. The whole of the Alhambra is based around one single ratio: The relation between the ground and the elevations of the buildings.	Pythagoras
Relationship between the side of the square & its diagonal	Patio de los Leones
* The king ordered a new palace and has just a limited area to built it. He asked his architects to build the palace according to a single set of proportions, a family of rectangles each related to the other. The key to the design is the simple relationship between the side of the square and its diagonals. If we use the diagonal to make a rectangle, and the diagonal from that rectangle to make another, we get a progression of rectangles. The fourth rectangle is double the side of the first, and the diagonals of this sequence are Ö2, Ö3, Ö4, and Ö5. Every part of the Alhambra was designed using variations of this proportional system. And this mathematical design is the root of its beauty... The Alhambra was built by an Empire which at its pinacle dominated the world from China to Africa, the richest most intellectual civilisation at the time.	Diagonals = Square Roots of 2, 3, 4 & 5	Patio Cuarto Dorado Sala Dos Hermanas
Muslim Occupation of Iberia: 790-900-1150 & 1300 AD Cordoba Aerial View Los Arrabales Archaeological Site Medina Archaeological Site Medina Archaeological Site II Ruins of Miraflores	* When the Prince Abda-Er-Rahman I's family was slaughtered, he fled to damascus and headed for Al-Andalus. He brought culture and learning from the Islamic world straight to Iberia. When he arrived, he went to Cordoba and set to rebuild it. He brought cutting-edge technology for irrigation and the landscape was transformed. This new agriculture created a huge wealth, none of which had been seen in Europe before (e.g. oranges, lemons, palm trees, etc.). This wealth was used to built one of the greatest cities in the world... While Londoners were still living in wooden houses, 'Cordobeses' had built a cosmopolitan city with a population of over 100,000, the largest settlement in Europe. Cordoba held seventy libraries and over three hundred public baths, houses with running water and roads with street lights, palaces, sewage channels, fountains, etc. New archaeological excavations in Cordoba are revealing a city that was just as rich as the one described at the time as the 'Ornament of the World.' However, Adb-Er-Rahman I's greatest achievement was the Great Mosque of Cordoba... Mezquita's Dome Mezquita's Ceiling	Cordoba (قرطبه): La Mezquita Interior Courtyard Cross-Section Plan Interior Hallway Archs Ceiling

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