What would the World have been like if the Moors?

The Caliphate of Cordoba is noted as a 'beacon of civilization' in the Dark Ages. But what's often left out of this description is that what they achieved only stands out because, in a very real sense, the Moors essentially CAUSED the Dark Ages.

This was once the commonly-accepted thesis, and there is a lot to back it up. Until the Moorish invasion, Europe was not very different than it was under the Romans. Though Germanic barbarians were the rulers, wealth increased, education standards rose, trade and commerce went on as usual.

It was only when the Moors invaded in the early 700s, and cut the North-South trade routes, that the real Dark Ages began.

http://www.idscience.org/2007/07/28/islam-the-real...

The moorish Iberia was more advanced that christian Europe only during the first 200 years of muslim domination.

But the enlightenment that people seem to have about muslim Iberia should not make us forget that that ideal country fell apart into a myriad of small kingdoms because of corruption of the rulers and then integrism emerged with the Almoravides 1000s and 1100s and the Almohades (1100s - 1200s) that started oppressing christians and jews.

It was that islamic integrism what made mandatory for christians and jews living moorish land to look north for help from the christian kingdoms.

Also don't forget that christians were the vast majority of the population in moorish Iberia were christians, so the muslim rulers did not tolerate that because of their great tolerance, but because they would had no other option. It's clearly evident that the larger the moorish population is in islamic Iberia, the more integrist the rulers get.

Ah, you read the fairy tale of Al Andalus, highlight of civilization, peace and multiculturalism in the middle ages. A lot of wishful thinking, plain nonsense, a tiny bit of truth and LOADS of political correctness.

First of all, the Moors didn't build that much. Yes, they did build a few outstanding buildings. But so did the Spanish and the Portuguese. Only much more. For every preserved Moorish building (usually mosques) there are at least 10 similar Christian buildings (usually but not exclusively churches and monasteries).

Second, what you have not read about, because it is very politically incorrect, are the dhimmy laws. Christians and Jews were second rate citizens at best. Something like the Neurenberger laws of Hitler, but more vicious and degrading.

As you said yourself: knowledge of hydraulics and hydrostatic principles were predating the Moorish conquerors. They didn't invent it, at best improved it a bit.

The works of philosophy were not preserved in Spain, but in Constantinople. It is not a coincidence the Renaissance started right after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. Scientists fled before the fall mainly to Italy. Which is exactly where the Renaissance got started.

Finally, there was constant war. That "enlightened" period was a war lasting for over 800 years. Probably one of the longest in the history of mankind. The country was conquered by the Moors, and it took that long to get it back in one piece. The Moors weren't exactly the Salvation Army.

Western Europe would have been more modernized and Christianity would not have been as prevalent, but still active. All in all I'd say that it would have been good in the short term for the West as the Islamic world was more innovative and involved in trade than Western Europe but in the long term Western Europe would not have expanded and impacted the rest of the world due to a lack of development in Legal Systems.

It's also questionable if the new world would have been colonized at all. Had western Europe been conquered by the Moors they would have had access to the Silk Road. This means that there would have been little to no need to discover a trade route AROUND it to receive Indian goods, thus no new world colonization.

We would be 2 centuries more advanced scientifically and socially. The Christian church opposed anything they couldn't explain in terms of a god and were far less tolerant socially than Islam.