Lost Africa: Moorish Spain, Moors in Europe, Moorish Empire

Moorish Spain

It's no secret that the Moorish empire extended into modern day Spain and Portugal. The Moors, whose kingdom was just across the strait of Gibraltar, expanded tremendously after the fall of the Roman Empire in perhaps the 470s. AD By the early 700s AD, the Moors had controlled Andalusia and after 711 AD, the majority of the Iberian peninsula.

According to legend, the phrase, "Thank heaven for 711" comes from the overwhelming sentiment of relief when the Moorish civilization permeated into Spain and replaced a Catholic feudal serfdom under the Visagoths. For over 750 years, the Moors would lead Spain into a Renaissance with an uprecedented era of freedom of association, religion, education and enterprise for Catholics, Muslims and Jews. By the 1100s, however, the Frankish kingdoms began efforts to contain the spread of the Moorish civilization to the south of the Pyrennees mountains. Finally by he 1490s, the Catholic Castillian Spanish would take control of the last vestiges of Moorish society.

Among the Moors' many lasting legacies are within both the Portuguese and Spanish languages, which have borrowed thousands of words including: "Andalusia" (from "Al-Andalus" for Southern Spain); "almohada," (a comfortable chair); and "algodon" (cotton). However, other Moorish contributions are more visible.

Chess

The Medieval painting shown to the right (circa 1280 AD) depicts Black Africans playing chess, a game they brought to Europe. The walls of Kemet (Egypt) show the earliest use of chess thousands of years before it would be introduced by the Moors to the Europeans.

Europe's First Castle

General Tarik ibn Ziyad al-Gibral, from which the name, "Gibraltar" is derived led one of the first major invasions of the Iberian peninsula. His castle (shown to the right - 700s AD) is the earliest known Medieval castle in Europecenturies before the first medieval castle in the Loire Valley.