9 Things The Moors Gave To The World

9 Things The Moors Gave To The World

1. Europe Was Propelled Out Of The Dark Ages

The Moorish advances in mathematics, astronomy, art, and agriculture helped propel Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance.

2. Intellectual Achievements Of The Moors

The intellectual achievements of the Moors in Spain had a lasting effect; education was universal in Moorish Spain, while in Christian Europe, 99% of the population was illiterate, even kings could neither read nor write.

3. Libraries In Europe Were Non-Existent

In the 10th and 11th centuries, public libraries in Europe were non-existent, while Moorish Spain could boast of more than 70, including in Cordova that housed hundreds of thousands of manuscripts.

4. Establishing School Systems

Universities in Paris and Oxford were established after visits by scholars to Moorish Spain. It was then taken to Europe by the Moors, that seeded the European Renaissance and brought the continent out of the 1,000 years of intellectual and physical gloom.

5. The Creation Of Deodorant

A Moor by the name of Ziryab created a deodorant to eliminate bad odors, promoted morning and evening baths, and emphasized maintaining personal hygiene.

6. The Moorish Hydraulic Engineering

The Moorish achievement in hydraulic engineering was outstanding. They constructed an aqueduct that conveyed water from the mountains to the city through lead pipes. All of this, at a time when London had a largely illiterate population of around 20,000 and had forgotten the technical advances of the Romans some 600 hundred years before. Paved and lighted streets did not appear in London or Paris for hundreds of years later.

7. The Father Of Modern Surgery

The “father of modern surgery,” Abu al-Quasim (Al Zahrawi), was a Moor who was born in Cordoba. During a practice that lasted fifty years, he developed a range of innovative and precise surgical instruments, while writing a text book that was to be a cornerstone of Western medical training for the next 500 years.

8. The Wright Brothers Were Not The First To Fly

The Moors’ scientific curiosity extended to flight when polymath Firnas made the first scientific attempt to fly in a controlled manner, in 875 A.D. His attempt evidently worked, although the landing was less successful.

9. The Moors Introduced New Food Crops

Thanks to the Moors, Spain was introduced to new food crops such as rice, hard wheat, oranges, lemons, sugar and cotton. More importantly, along with these developments came an intimate knowledge of irrigation and cultivation of crops. The Moors also taught the Europeans how to store grain for up to 100 years and built underground grain silos.