Comment by teleforce
12 hours ago
Fun facts, Gibraltar was named after Tariq ibn Ziyad, a famous muslim Berber commander of the Umayyad Caliphate that conquered most of the Spain and some part of French territories in the early 8th century CE [1].
Then after the conquest, came the exiled young Umayyad prince (escaping from by the later Abbasid Caliphate), who settled in Spain to create a long lasting around 800 years (that's more than European living in America now) muslim Spanish empire with its knowledge center in Toledo. This center contains many books translations and also many new books by muslim scholars. Famous books examples including Almagest Arabic translation that was copied and translated further into Latin, and studied by Copernicus and Galileo [2]. Of course they are other muslim astronomy books and ideas that Copernicus and Galileo studied and copied but never cited properly [3].
Another famous book is Muqaddimah by Ibnu-Rushd or Averroes that's widely considered as the very first work dealing with the social sciences of sociology, demography and cultural history [4].
This center was later captured in 11th century CE, and this event essentially started the Western Renaissance movement in Europe.
Legend has it, in order to motivate his troops, Tariq ordered to scuttle their entire ships armada, before advancing into Spain [5]. Perhaps some of the sinked ships are part of Tariq's original armada, but these ships were intentionally sinked not by accidents.
His act of bravery were copied and followed by later Spanish conquerers but as usual it's not been properly credited to Tariq's original efforts [6].
[1] Tariq ibn Ziyad:
https://arabic-for-nerds.com/islam/conquest-andalus/
[6] Richard A. Luecke - Scuttle Your Ships before Advancing: And Other Lessons from History.
> 800 years (that's more than European living in America now) muslim Spanish empire with its knowledge center in Toledo
The Muslim dominion of the Iberian Peninsula did not last 800 years. The Muslim invasion started in 711 CE, and by 1085 Toledo has fallen back to the Christian kingdom of León. Granada would eventually be conquered in 1492, but most of the old Visigothic Kingdom was already in the hands of the Christians.
711 AD to 1492 AD is a good 781 years.
But as I said above, that is only true for Granada, not for the rest of what it would become Spain.
> This center was later captured in 11th century CE, and this event essentially started the Western Renaissance movement in Europe.
Islamic contribution within the context of European history should be both acknowledged and recognized as being autoctonous, but attributing to it things that well attested through other pathways works against it and reinforces myths historians are toiling to get rid of.
The Renaissance as we know it was kickstarted by the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 by the French and Italians, that's well documented and broadly agreed on by historians. All of this happened on the foundations laid down from the 11th c. onwards as the post-Carolingian world was stabilized.
It's not like Tariq ibn Ziyad invented the concept of intentionally making a retreat impossible in order to compel soldiers to fight. There are proverbs about this kind of thing that predate him by centuries: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%A0%B4%E9%87%9C%E6%B2%89%E... It's probably a popular story to tell because it raises the stakes and provides for dramatic tension: either the battle is won or the army will be annihilated. But I suspect there've been quite a few unlucky commanders who tried this, got annihilated, and never had their heroism praised in history books.
You can use this technique during job interviews by bringing your own padlock and employment contract, and a rope just in case.
Why a pad lock and rope? Are you hoping to lock yourself in?