8 Modern Advancements the Moors Brought to Europeans

The YouTube clip "When Black Men Ruled the World: THE MOORS" (3:05 minutes) sheds light on a little known fact -- on historically, who really was intellectually superior and developed.

“Moors were commonly viewed as being mostly black or very swarthy, and hence the word is often used for negro,” The Oxford English Dictionary

The Moors established an Empire spanning parts of northern Africa to southern Europe, ruling in Europe for nearly 800 years (711-1492 AD), which is longer than Europeans have been out of the Dark Ages,

In fact, the Moorish advances in mathematics, astronomy, art and agriculture brought Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance. 

1 - UNIVERSAL EDUCATION — While Christian Europe had a 99% illiteracy rate, 2 universities and 0 libraries, the Moors had 17 universities in 7 cities along with over 70 libraries. The Moors introduced their education system to Europe, bringing it out of 1,000 years of intellectual gloom.

2 - FASHION AND HYGIENE — The Moor Ziryab pioneered the concept of changing clothes based on seasons. He also created deodorant, daily bathing, and invented toothpaste. He made popular the concepts of shaving, haircuts, and hair washing among men.

3 - CUISINE — Ziryab introduced the concept of the three-course meal, which included the soup, main course and desert. The Moors introduced a number of crops that remain prominent in Spain today.

4 - URBAN UTILITIES — Moorish cities had street lights, hospitals, and running water. Paved and lighted streets did not appear in London or Paris for hundreds of years later. Moors built an aqueduct that brought water from the mountains to the city.

5 - MEDICINE — The “father of modern surgery” was the Moor Al Zahrawi, who developed innovative and precise surgical instruments, as well as the premier textbook of Western medical training.

6 - HUMAN FLIGHT — The Moor Ibn Firnas made the first scientific attempt to fly. Although his flight worked, his landing was unsuccessful.

7 - ADVANCED AGRICULTURAL TECHNIQUES — The Moors introduced Spain to rice, hard wheat, cotton, and more. Along with this came knowledge of crop irrigation and cultivation, building underground grain silos that stored grain for up to 100 years.

8 - PAPER MAKING — Moors introduced paper making to Spain, allowing for accurate preservation and dispersal of knowledge.

Sailing Alone around the World

Captain Joshua Slocum, born in Nova Scotia in 1844 and who later became an American citizen, had been lured by the sea his entire life. At 14 he ran away to work as a cook on a fishing schooner and two years later when his mother died he left home for good, enlisting as an ordinary seaman on a British merchant ship bound for Ireland. Then from Britain he shipped again sailing for China, the Philippines, and Singapore, and by 18 he had been awarded the certificate of second mate.

Around 1870 he was given command of a merchant ship that he sailed out of San Francisco to Japan, China, the Spice Islands, and Sydney Australia, where he met an American woman, Virginia Albertina Walker, who he married. The two were well matched for ship life and together for the next 13 years sailed the world, with Virginia giving birth to and schooling their seven children (only four survived) on the various ships that Slocum commanded. 

But this ideal marriage to the sea and a wife did not last and Virginia took ill and died. Two years later Slocum married his cousin Henrietta aka Hetty and with a crew of 10, including two of Slocum's sons, the newlyweds set out for South America. The voyage was conflicted with problems -- a cholera outbreak, a smallpox epidemic, and a mutinous crew before finally running aground near Paranagua, Brazil. Stranded, Slocum salvaged what he could from the wreck and constructed the Liberdade, a 35-foot long "canoe" that he sailed for 5,500 miles home, the adventure that he later published in his Voyages of the Liberdade, 1890. Hetty was completely disenchanted with ship life, and on their honeymoon voyage at that, and the forever-after land-loving Hetty and old sea-wolf Slocum stayed married but pretty much only in name.

With the advent of steamships, sailing the seas became steaming the seas, yet old-school Slocum refused to adjust. In 1892 Slocum was offered the rotting shell of a 37-foot long oyster boat, the Spray, which Slocum rebuilt from the keel up. And with this oyster boat Slocum determined to circumnavigate the earth alone, a feat emphatically expressed as impossible.

Many books by Joshua Slocum titled Sailing Alone around the World. I read the Barnes and Noble 2005 edition. It came with a timeline of Slocum's life juxtaposed with world events affecting him (e.g. the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898 affecting his solitary return) and a glossary of sea terms.

In April 1895 Slocum sets sail aboard the Spray. He had almost no money and lacked critical navigational equipment. The last leg of his journey he even lacked a map as the goat that had kindly been given him as a companion chewed through his ropes, equipment and seemed to have a palette partial for maps. On June 27 Slocum sails into Newport, Rhode Island, completing the world's first solo circumnavigation, a passage of 46,000 miles. 

To earn money for his journey, along the way at various ports he would entertain people in halls and informal places with his stories, charging them a small fee. At some of these ports he would stay but a few days or even hours while at others he would stay for extended periods of time, like at the southern tip of Africa where he was given a free rail pass and just wandered, enjoying the sites, for three months. On his return to the States, he achieved great fame and his adventures printed first as a serial and later as a book, Sailing Alone around the World, were well received. With the proceeds he was able to purchase a house on the Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. 

Yet, the sea still called and restless Slocum sailed off to the Caribbean for the winter of 1905, returning with rare Caribbean orchids for President Theodore Roosevelt. On November 14, 1909, the aging Slocum in the aging Spray set sail for South America, and the story of him and his Spray, which to this day is one of the most replicated boats due to its reliable and well-balanced construction, disappeared. 

Sailing Alone around the World (Barnes and Nobles 2005), p 230-231

Paris by Rutherford

I have just discovered another favorite author, Edward Rutherfurd. He writes like my favorite author of many years, James Michener (1907 - 1997) and author of more than 40 books, most of which were historical novels. Michener's historical fiction were typically on countries or geographical areas, and he would travel the area for months, interacting with locals, historians, researchers, delving into the history. Then he would organize a rich history in his mensa-brain and create novel characters (pun intended) to live from, often preceding, recorded time in the area to the present. His books are epics, they are historical dynasties of people not famous but who, by their very lives, were the foundation to what exists today, they are tomes of knowledge! I've read several of his books, which usually are 600+ pages, and I marvel that every page is filled with rich content. Michener doesn't waste words; he shapes thought and imagery with every word!

Edward Rutherfurd (1948 - present) writes rich historical novels in epic and tome-like multi-generational format like Michener. Since I've only read this book by Rutherford, I can't really compare overall content, but from looking at what Rutherford puts on the shelves, Rutherfurd writes on not only countries — e.g. Sarum (1987), Russka (1991), Dublin: Foundation (2003), Ireland: Awakening (2006), China (this year 2017) — but also on deep histories of big cities — London (1997), New York (2009), Paris (2013). 

Paris, the book I just finished, is 832 pages. The book opens with a light history of the days before Julius Caesar saw the possibilities of the mud-flats and islands and rich valley where the throbbing city of Paris now is. The tribal village on the Seine River was ideally located for development, a hub, a road to see what lay beyond, and so the village developed, shaped by conquerors, reshaped by the Huns, the Franks, the Dark Ages. 

Rutherfurd writes the dramatic history of Paris, starting in the year 1216, by following the dynastic line of four families. Each family represents a different socioeconomic class of people that contributed to building the city into the modern, refined and travel-venerated city it is today: a family of street persons descending from a cutthroat, a noble titled family blood-related to the king, a merchant family that directly contributed to the financial and socioeconomic development of the city and a branch of which broke off and represented emigration to Canada, and a Jewish family that developed the learned centers of Paris and in payment received ostracization, deportment and even death as their legacy. 

In the 1600s two other family dynasties were added: another merchant family strategically intermarrying with the Renard merchant family and which represented a growing hierarchy of merchant classes and the unspoken taboo of not marrying outside of one's economic level. The other family (the Gascons) was a look at the laboring class who with their blood and sweat built the physical foundation of the city. In fact, a greater part of the latter half of the book was about the Gascons and how this family met great people and how the social barriers of class started collapsing, particularly with world war, and how war brought these families into a tight network together, having to interact together, and this beginning of integration representing the modern Paris — families still separated by socioeconomic histories but integrating and recognizing that each socioeconomic class played its part in the Paris of the 20th century.

Giant Straw Animals, Japan

Viral on Facebook are images of giant straw art. The images are definitely impressive, smack of a new and trendy culture, and are certainly worth a re-share. The following is a Bored Panda article entitles "Giant Straw Animals Invade Japanese Fields ... They Are Badass"

Fall is a season of harvesting, and festivals to celebrate it are currently taking place all over the world. In Northern Japan, the Wara Art Festival recently rang in the September-October rice season, and it’s a wildly inventive and fun way to repurpose rice straw left over from the harvest. 

Wara Art Festival has been taking place in Niigata City since 2008, where it began as a creative collaboration between the city’s tourism division and the Musashino Art University. Rice straw was once widely used in Japan to produce various goods, such as tatami mats, but has now been replaced by wood and plastic in most instances. The students of Musashino worked together to fill the fields of Niigata with giant animal sculptures made of bound rice straw, and they’ve been doing it every year since 2008.

Featured are some of the best displays of the 2017 season:

The base of the structures are made from pipes and wooden sticks, and then the straw is added. One sculpture takes about a week to complete, and a lot of man power.

Another article entitled "Straw Dinosaurs in a Rice Field" and also published by Bored Panda in 2015, has more information regarding this new and trendy rice field activity.

What a way to end a season. Each year on the last day of August, Japan’s Niigata Prefecture celebrates the end of the rice harvest in a rather elaborate (yet resourceful) fashion: creating rice straw sculptures. 

Known as the Wara Art Festival, artists across the area transform the prefecture’s leftover wara (rice straw) into some truly stunning artwork, all available for public viewing.

Beyond pure artistic vision, each sculpture requires approximately one hundred bushels of straw, a team of workers and wooden frames, which serve as a “skeleton” for each sculpture. 

All of the subsequent works are impressive in their own right, but one artist in particular stands out: Amy Goda. Since 2013, the local sculptor’s massive dinosaur creations have captured the Internet’s attention, bringing the Wara festival fans from all around the world. 

Goda employs an array of techniques to create her straw statues, ranging from basket weaving to cottage thatching — even braiding. Whatever Goda’s process, her results are sturdy enough to allow festival goers to not just view her work, but fully interact with it. Festival patrons can pose on top of the giant effigies or stand underneath without fear of harm to themselves or Goda’s creations. 

From time to time, sculptors create variations that can float on water, like the giant duck featured at this year’s event. Reaching heights of up to 16 feet, the at the Wara Art Festival are truly a sight to behold. If your allergies or thin wallet prevent you from viewing the straw sculptures yourself, we’ve got you covered:

More info: Wara Art Festival (Japanese), Facebook