THE last stronghold of the Moors in Europe was Granada which was in the south of Spain.
Spain in the Moorish period was known as Al Andalus which was Arabic for ‘land of the Vandals’.
Since around 1000 CE, the Pope had gathered together all white nations against the Moors and this led to waves of attacks on the blacks of Europe.
These attacks are remembered as the ‘crusades’.
Although these crusades were largely unsuccessful, they were a clear indication of what was to come after the Moors – a new world order which would be intolerant of black people.
The crusades were an eye opener to the white people of Europe in that they began to appreciate the full extent of the riches and lavishness in the Moorish territories. This would inspire them to take over control of the land from the Moors. Meanwhile, the Moors did not appear to appreciate the fact that the crusades were a serious threat to their rule in Europe.
As such they continued to fight among themselves,
By the 13th century, the Catholics began winning pockets of control in places like Spain and although they did not vanquish the Moors, their pockets of control became snares on the Moors.
Christian kings would enter the Moorish territories and break irrigation systems, burn trees and so on.
For some time there was hunger in these areas because of the acts of sabotage that were conducted by the whites.
Sometimes the whites would accept money from the Moors in exchange for the security of their properties.
The whites were simply envious and marvelled at the sophistry of Moorish properties and what they saw.
For about 100 years, the whites of Al Andalous ran the Moorish territory as a mafia living off the wealth of the Moors corruptly acquired to guarantee the safety and security of Moorish properties.
Indeed these white people were living up to their name of ‘vandals’ – a term which would eventually attain the meaning it carries today.
Some white kings, after asserting their strength in Moorish strongholds, would actually request to have buildings of Moorish architecture built for them by the Moors.
In 1248, a white king called Peter who was Christian had a Moorish style castle built.
It even had inscriptions from the Quran on its walls and it was the pride of his day because Moorish architecture was the most beautiful and the most sophisticated in Europe.
During the wars between the whites and the Moors, the Moors recruited men from the Almoravid dynasty of West Africa to boost their armies.
This created new problems for the Moors because the Almoravide despised the lavish lifestyles of the Moorish Muslims of Andalous.
They despised the corrupted brand of Islam practised by the European Moors thus the fact that they entered into treaties with whites and non-Muslims.
The Almoravide saw images of singing girls in Moorish buildings (something unacceptable in traditional Islam) and decided to take corrective action by destroying some of the images to return to ethical Islam.
The degrading of Moorish rule was a slow process which took centuries yet in Spain there is an event which is remembered as the ‘re-conquest’ suggesting that there was a full- fledged holy war which led to the victory of the Christian whites over the Muslims, but this is not entirely correct.
The fact is that the Moors were admired in Europe and many people in Spain had turned to Islam in order to be admitted in Moorish universities.
This was unacceptable to the Catholic Church.
Today the European renaissance is often attributed to Italian scholars who regained an interest in the classics.
This, however, is only intended to downplay the influence of the Moors in this respect.
Taleido is a town which was seized by the whites from the Moors in 1085 CE.
It was in Spain and it was there that the Spanish population would access Moorish education.
These people learnt Arabic and the Spanish followed in the footsteps of the Moors. Europeans from many countries would come to Taleido to learn.
This continued for hundreds of years and was the real reason for the European Renaissance.
Over time, Moorish territory kept dwindling.
The Moors who were 70 000 strong remained in control of Granada for some time. In 1236 Cordoba fell to the whites, then followed Valencia and Seville.
In the places that they lost, the Moors were forcibly baptised into Catholics or expelled.
Spain was then divided into three kingdoms namely, Moorish Granada in the South, Castile in the west and Aragon in the east.
The king of Castile handed over his kingdom to his niece who was known as Isabella.
Isabella in 1469 married her second cousin who was heir of the throne of Aragon in the east.
This political move united the Catholic kingdoms into one powerful force.
Granada was blocking Isabella’s vision of a unified Spain and so she focused on the eradication of the Moors in Granada.
With the help of Italy and the Catholic Church, the city of Granada was besieged for a year until it finally surrendered.
It was on January 1 1492 when Isabella and Ferdinand took the keys of the palace of Alhambra and ousted the Moorish ruler who was known as Bhu Abdul.
Isabella and Ferdinand were both dressed in elaborate Moorish outfits which they had especially made for this occasion for Moorish clothing defined pomp in those days.
A few years after the conquering of Granada came the ‘inquisition’ which was an act of ethnic cleansing which made it impossible for Muslims to practise their religion openly in Europe.
The inquisition was not only targeted against the Moors, but also the numerous Europeans who had taken up Islam.
The whites wanted to get rid of the Moorish influence on Europeans once and for all.
The campaign to convert people from Islam to Catholicism intensified.
Those that resisted were excommunicated.
Some were burnt to death.
Most had their homes and livelihoods taken away from them.
In 1526, the Spanish inquisition went to Granada where there were reports of resistance and people who were still practising Islam.
They had the choice to convert to Catholicism, leave the country or face the wrath of the inquisition.
The Moors of Granada resorted to pretending they were Christians, but would secretly live as Muslims.
They redesigned their houses to block outsiders from seeing what was happening inside.
The inquisition went door to door in search of violators and a number of Moorish leaders were expelled leaving mostly women and children in Granada.
In 1609, there was a full scale expulsion of the Moors because it was feared that they secretly collaborate with the Turks and other Muslim powers which were rising in the region.
Catholics feared or hated Islam to the extent that they even expelled their own Iberian (Spanish) kinsmen who did not denounce Islam.
The 250 000 Muslims fell victim to the expulsions of 1609 and by 1619, the Moors were all gone.
Most of them found refuge in North and West Africa and some fell victim to slavery and were sent to different parts of the world.
The inheritors of Ferdinand and Isabella’s kingdom moved out property from the Moorish mosques and castles and built cathedrals therein.
These still exist in places like Cordoba to this day.
Even on Ferdinand and Isabella’s graves there is an inscription in Arabic, “There is no god, but Allah.”