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during the seventh and eighth centuries

ad a powerful new faith was about to

change the world the faith of Islam its

followers launched a conquest not only

by the sword but with the power of ideas

two hundred years after the death of

Muhammad his message and the new Arab

Empire were transforming three

continents to a far greater extent than

Western records might suggest it was the

Muslims who were to lay the cultural and

scientific foundations on which the

modern world is based if we have a

scientific age today it is because of

the Muslim scholars of the Middle Ages

if we have advances in medicine if we

have computer skills it is because of

the Muslim doctors and Muslim

mathematicians who gave those things to

the West

by the dawn of the eighth century Islam

had extended its reach from Spain all

the way to the edge of India it took

over two years to travel from one end of

the Arab Empire to the other at its

heart

lay the fabled city of Baghdad the

palaces of ancient Baghdad have been

lost over the centuries but in its glory

it rivaled ancient Athens or Rome

Baghdad is the Islamic Rome whenever you

think of what epitomizes what symbolizes

the culture of Islam at its height you

have to think of Baghdad this was where

scholars congregated this was a place

which had the widest horizons imaginable

these scholars came in search of answers

to pragmatic questions

the Empire's meteoric growth had left

its new leaders overwhelmed they had

staggering engineering and logistical

problems to contend with solving them

would take the greatest minds of the day

under the new Empire now we are

responsible for public hygiene you are

responsible for the marketplace you are

responsible for goods being sold in the

marketplace all of those require some

basic elementary sciences this new

civilization having a need for science

really stems from the need to run that

Empire the best minds rose to the call

the finest were welcomed at the center

of scholarship Baghdad's renowned House

of Wisdom it was a magnet for scholars

and intellectuals who came and worked in

the academies there were public

libraries associated with the palace and

scholars came from all over the Empire

and there were scholars from Iran there

were scholars from Byzantium who came

some were Christians some were Muslim

some were Jews

the challenge that greeted these

scholars was daunting the great works of

the Ancients had to be transformed into

a wholly new body of knowledge

competition for jobs developed within a

new intellectual elite and from there on

every single scientist is competing for

that job that they were competing among

themselves almost just just in the same

way that modern modern bureaucrats and

modern academicians will fight among

themselves scholars were dispatched

across the Empire to locate as many

ancient texts as possible the first

international scientific venture in

history unlike their Christian

counterparts Muslim thinkers saw no

insurmountable contradiction between

their faith and the laws governing the

natural world so they embraced Aristotle

and Plato right as the Christian Church

considered blasphemous

from the Hindus came mathematical

concepts that I'd us today

it was the scholars of the House of

Wisdom who developed the system of

Arabic numerals still in use it is they

who translated and transformed the

writings of the Greeks and made a gift

of them to the modern Western world the

Renaissance had its beginnings in

Baghdad whatever knowledge was available

they wanted to turn it into Arabic and

it's a curious paradox that if you look

at the great classical texts Plato

Aristotle the great names they've come

to us in the West through the medium of

Arabic and then been kept for us through

the activities of the House of Wisdom

having amassed the knowledge the Muslims

now began to challenge it the modern

scientific process have begun now you

begin to have what I call the birth of

the new Islamic science it is this

spirit I think the spirit of questioning

the spirit of saying that we have to

build science constantly on a systematic

consistent basis where we make a

physical proposition of how the universe

ought to be run and the mathematical

representation of that physical universe

ought to match

algebra and trigonometry engineering and

astronomy countless disciplines integral

to our lives today trace their roots to

Islamic scientists

at a time when Europeans were praying to

the bones of their saints to cure their

illnesses Muslim physicians developed an

innovative theory that disease was

transmitted through tiny airborne

organisms the precursor to the study of

germs they determined that sick patients

should be quarantined and then treated

this is the basis of the institution

most fundamental to medicine today the

hospital funded mainly through religious

endowments Muslim hospitals had separate

wards for patients suffering from

different kinds of disease even mental

illness was treated their studies of

anatomy were so sophisticated that they

remained in use by Muslim and European

physicians for 600 years Baghdad was a

city that prided itself on encouraging

knowledge and so reading intellectual

curiosity the pursuit of knowledge are

the bedrock of Islamic civilization and

of course the beginning of science

Muslim scientists were especially

intrigued by light lenses and the

physiology of the human eye it was they

who produced the first treatise that

ventured to explain how the eye actually

sees

a thousand years before the West dared

to take up the practice Muslim doctors

were removing cataracts surgically

tearing them from the eye with a hollow

needle but for all this knowledge to

transform and illuminate an empire it

had to be copied and shared across over

a hundred different cities in the

Islamic world for this there was a new

invention paper around the year of 700

750 when Muslim armies reached Central

Asia they encountered paper for the

first time and very quickly the Muslim

bureaucracy started using paper and

that's where Europe learned to make

paper from they learn to make it from

the Arabs

with the wide use of books and paper

hundreds of scribes some of whom were

women who were kept busy transcribing

the translations and new writings of the

Baghdad scholars we know for example

that there was a street of booksellers

with more than a hundred shops each one

with paper and books for sale and this

is a time when you know in Europe a

monastery would be lucky if it had five

or ten books

while the monks of the West were

hoarding their wisdom on scraps of

expensive parchment paper enabled

Islamic civilization to spread its

newfound knowledge far and wide so the

chief distinction therefore of Islamic

civilization in addition to the fact

that it made new leaps of originality

new transformations in the traditions of

learning and and everything else

possible is the fact that it enabled

human beings to consider the possibility

of the globe as a single unit by the end

of the 7th century the Islamic empire

had reached southern Spain creating a

unique society where Christians Jews and

Muslims lived in harmony Cordoba was the

European Christian travelers opportunity

to glimpse an Islamic city

they were astonished by what they saw

a thousand years ago cordoba was a

centre of learning and culture that

rivaled Baghdad this was a city that had

hot and cold running water street

lighting after dark

it had libraries that the rest of the

world would have died for this was a

city of light a Muslim city if you think

of the cities that existed at the time

the squalid stench of Paris the the

miserable nosov London and then you find

the city of light of knowledge the

archetype for the European cities to

come is not Athens or Rome

it is Cordova the glory of medieval

Cordoba is here in what is now the great

roman catholic cathedral in the middle

of the city but the Cordoba Cathedral of

today began its life as a mosque one of

the grandest of the Islamic empire

the architecture of the Great Mosque is

a kind of petrified forest with

thousands of columns stretching as far

as the eye can see and as those columns

go up they suddenly begin to grow they

sprout branches and leaves and flowers

you wonder in the in the mosque as if it

were a place without any direction

you're you're lost in a kind of forest

as Europeans made their way from the

cold stone of their northern castles

into the glorious Muslim cities of

southern Spain they couldn't help but be

impressed in the green hills above

Granada was a palace of startling

elegance a shining example of the

richness and sophistication Islam

brought to medieval Europe the Alhambra

when you enter the Alhambra you're

struck by this extraordinary beauty

unequaled anywhere you have architecture

which is almost like frozen music it is

the pinnacle of human achievement at

that time

and yet what is wonderful about it is

that in every room in this majestic

palace you find the sentence repeated

again and again that says la Ilah illa

llah which means there is no victor

there is no power greater than that of

God so it brings down the human spirit

into thinking that however high the

achievement it's God that is really the

giver of all this it's a place of

perfect rest perfect solitude perfect

luxury

so the senses of the eye of the nose and

of the ear are all pandered to in this

extraordinarily sophisticated and

orchestrated building

here the Muslim elite relished a life of

extraordinary luxury reposing on lush

carpets surrounded by perfume and music

the privileged few debated the nature of

God the subtleties of Greek philosophy

or the most recent mathematical

revelations from India while they dined

on spiced delicacies served on Chinese

portland's they strolled the grounds

through gardens irrigated by complex

gravity-fed water systems this was as it

were Islam's last stand in Europe they

knew the Christians were coming but they

viewed that with fatalism and it didn't

stop them creating what is still a

marvel

among palaces

but over 2,000 miles away at the dawn of

the 11th century a tragedy in Jerusalem

would put Muslims and European

Christians on a collision course that

would result in one of the greatest

religious wars in history for 200 years

Christian holy places in Jerusalem had

been respected and protected by Muslim

rulers in 1009 the Egyptian ruler al

Hakim broke with that tradition he

ordered the holiest Church in

Christendom destroyed and of course it

is totaled the whole Christian world he

committed the greatest of treason by

destroying a church that was protected

under the agreement of Allah the second

caliph and this created the emotion for

the greatest and most difficult

religious war in history

the fact that al-hakim successor rebuilt

the Church of the Holy Sepulchre it was

done by 1048 with Byzantine help didn't

cut any ice there was this perception

now that things were not going well in

the Holy Land in Europe anti-muslim

sentiment was gathering strength on

November the 27th 1095 at the Council of

Clermont in France pope urban ii

exhausted a militant Christendom to

recover the holy sepulchre from the

infidel

one has to try and imagine what Europe

was like at the time it was divided by

petty warlords and the only way to unify

these cobbling territories was to try

and find a common enemy for them that is

how the Crusades come to become a

rallying cry for a very disunited and

weak Europe in 1097 Muslim Shepherds in

Syria caught their first glimpse of a

site that would soon strike terror

throughout the Holy Land when the

Crusaders struck by sheer chance the

Arab Empire was at its most vulnerable

broken into feuding kingdoms and petty

dynasties

they couldn't have chosen a better

moment because the Muslim world was in a

very fragmented state the the great

rulers of the time had died and into

that power vacuum there came this most

unexpected enemy the Crusaders from

Western Europe the Muslims didn't really

know who they were they thought they

were just another lot of Byzantines who

were coming as usual to be a nuisance

and and fight on the borders they had no

idea that there was this extraordinary

surge of religious fervor and fanaticism

coming from Western Europe and that the

aim of this group was Jerusalem on July

the 15th 1099 after a 40-day siege the

Crusaders entered the holy city

probably one of the most horrifying

episodes in history is the entry of the

Crusaders into Jerusalem these were

savage barbarians who came in and

slaughtered every living thing they

found they saw the holy city and they

were in a state of exultation and that's

why there was this terrible massacre in

the name of Chris and him it was a blot

on the name of Christendom in the Muslim

view and justifiably so even Christians

weren't spared at the Church of the Holy

Sepulcher dozens of worshippers from

Eastern sects were massacred to the

Crusaders there were nothing more than

foreigners their intrepid rooster was a

devastating one they were writing to say

that their horses were waiting up to

their knees in the blood of the Saracens

I mean it's a terrible massacre

the arab poets of the time talk about

the feelings of anguish and terror which

the Crusaders caused the local people

the old women the young girls we have

mingled blood with flowing tears and

there is no room left in us for pity to

shed tears is man's worst weapon when

the swords stir up the embers of war

when blood has been spilt when sweet

girls must hide their lovely faces in

their hands for shame the First Crusade

was over of the 100,000 men who began

the campaign most would eventually

return to Europe having had only a

glimpse of Muslim life the job of

occupying Jerusalem and the surrounding

countryside fell to the 20,000 men who

chose to remain indefinitely to secure

their occupation the Crusaders did hear

what they had done in Europe they built

castles the Crusaders built the finest

castles that the Near East has ever seen

and the proof of that is that they're

still there

when everything else may have faded away

the Crusader castles remain a living

testimony to their presence and crack de

Chevalier in Syria is the crusader

castle over them all it's very very big

it's strong it's impenetrable it's a

living example of the way that a number

of the Crusader castles couldn't be

taken by siege

in these castles you you get a glimpse

of this relentless energy of these

Western European architects and

engineers who think nothing of slicing a

hundred and seventy thousand tons of

rock so that they can create a moat for

a castle in a strategically well sited

spot

but castle is the grip of the Crusaders

on this territory that they had rested

with so much blood and toil from Muslim

hands whilst from the Western

perspective the Knights of the Crusades

may have seemed a decisive force in

world events away from the Holy Land

their sporadic fighting had done little

to abate the momentum of Islamic

civilization as the Knights of the

Crusades bunker down in their castles

Islam continued to flourish and spread

its influence over three continents

Muhammad's message rang out as clear and

strong as it ever had

what Musk's we're now on every horizon

they welcomed traders they housed

schools and hospitals through Islamic

architecture literature and music a

vibrant culture was emerging in

celebration of a singular faith faith

had launched an empire

but ultimately what United it was trade

for the Muslims trade like science

brought innovation

business was expedited by a

revolutionary concept called the sack a

check that could be written in Spain and

cashed in India writing a check assumes

that someone's going to honor it and

cash it at the other end so it frees up

your ability to travel it frees up

Commerce because again the money doesn't

have to be moved from Samarkand back to

to Cordova in order to go back the other

way the next year so that you can base

it all on trust and faith alongside

international trade flowed innovations

in craftsmanship from the Persians

Muslim blacksmiths learned how to fold

steel to give it strength and

flexibility the swords made in Toledo

and Damascus had no equal in the world

but the economic backbone of islam's

expanding wealth was textiles the demand

for the products of Muslim looms was

enormous for Kashmir cotton and silk

while Europeans settled for coarse

woolen and linen garments Muslims wore

brigaded fabrics of organdy Damus and

taffeta words that came into the English

language from arabic and persian these

complex patterns were coveted by wealthy

Europeans including the church when the

Christians needed a cloth worthy of

wrapping the bones of their saints they

looked to a Muslim loom many fabrics

were trimmed with decorative Arabic

texts from the Holy Quran and so the

words of the Prophet could appear in

startling proximity to christen domes

holiest icons it is not unusual to find

in Italian Renaissance paintings for

example to find paintings of the Virgin

wearing a robe of very fancy pattern

cloth and precious silks embroidered

with gold or woven with gold designs

sometimes they would say things with an

Arabic inscription on it which says

there is no god but God Muhammad is His

Prophet in Arabic

but the blending of Christian and

Islamic cultural traditions in Europe

did little to abate the ongoing fighting

between Crusader and Muslim in the Holy

Land in 1187 preparations were underway

for a new Muslim counter-attack under

the command of one of Islam's most

celebrated figures his name was Salah

Houdini but the West would remember him

and come to revere him as Saladin now

Saladin was a a man of enormous power as

a general and physically fooled was a

very strong man but he was a man to

inspire others and that was very

important on the evening of July the 3rd

after a long march the Crusaders were

camping on a barren plain between two

hills called the horns of Hattin as dawn

approached Saladin's men set fire to the

tall grass had a strong wind carried the

flames into the Christian encampment

the army was totally decimated the

victory at Hattin was a real turning

point for Saladin three months later

Saladin entered Jerusalem for the first

time in almost a century the call to

prayer floated over the holy city once

again

and yet remarkably saladin levels no

retaliation against Christians or their

holy places in the Church of the Holy

Sepulchre mass was celebrated as usual

Saladin also decreed that Christians who

wish to could leave the city with their

property those who chose to stay will be

allowed to worship freely he said no no

revenge at all all of you are free and

that's what Saladin did and as a result

he's venerated in the West and rightly

so other Crusades would follow though

the Crusaders would eventually be driven

from their Citadel's along the coast and

returned to Europe their only lasting

legacy a few abandoned castles but the

returning Crusaders found themselves

changed by their contact with Islamic

culture the long-term impact on European

life would be profound after the

Crusades many Europeans were far more

open to the ideas of what was going on

to the east what what was happening in

other parts of the world they they

simply couldn't be as insular as before

lots of people were open to what's out

there let's explore this let's see this

new intellectual thoughts let's see what

these people are writing let's learn

languages this is when people start to

learn Arabic slowly in the West

as the barrier of language dissolved

ideas born in the great Muslim cities

began to filter into Europe ideas that

would forever change Western thought the

great Italian theologian Thomas Aquinas

used the writings of the Muslim

philosopher Alvarez to justify the clear

separation of faith and reason a Muslim

ideal that formed the basis of all

scientific inquiry and led to the

European Renaissance Avaris himself

appears in Raphael's classic Renaissance

painting of great Western thinkers here

alongside Plato and Aristotle stands a

vivid reminder of the debt the world

owes Islam this scope of Islamic

civilization has now reached levels

which were not accomplished by any other

civilization known civilization of the

world

but this Golden Age of Islam was not to

last

after battling with the Knights of the

Crusades the great cities of the Islamic

empire will be brought to ruin by a

force that descended upon them not from

the West but from the east so far as the

Muslims were concerned the Mongols came

from another planet they were aliens

the Mongols were an entire people on the

move and they were unstoppable they all

fought the women fought the children

fought the men fought they were all

horst their ponies never tired and they

inflicted on the Muslim world an eco

catastrophe the Mongols were toko

Mongolian nomads from the steppes of

Central Asia in the 13th century this

devastating pagan force rampaged across

much of Eurasia between the Ukraine and

China it wasn't long before they entered

Islamic Persia

they were such fast riders and skilled

riders the cavalry was unbeatable

anywhere they could descend on any area

very very quickly and surprise in the

army

terror was the Mongols principal tactic

so that attacked the city if the city

resisted and gave them some trouble they

Massacre everybody and then build a huge

pile of them and make this known to all

the cities and towns nearby so the other

people out of sheer terror would

surrender without a fight

city after city fell before them it was

only a matter of time before they

reached the center of Islamic power on

February the 10th 1258 the Mongols took

Baghdad

the Arab chroniclers record other

Mongols put Baghdad to the torch and

killed 10,000 inhabitants mosques and

libraries the collected knowledge of

centuries were all set ablaze

within less than 50 years the Mongols

seized at the heart of the Islamic

empire from the Arabs

Islamic civilization seemed poised for

destruction lost to posterity

but then something remarkable happened

now within three decades just three

decades those armies became conquered by

Islam transformed from a destructive

force into a civilizing force the

conversion and its lasting effect was

extraordinary within a decade the

Mongols had gone from building towers of

human heads to building mosques

glorifying God

it is not surprising to me that the land

conquered the conquerors the mongols

themselves became Muslims or Islamic

leaders par excellence the mongols

transformed islam now islamic power

could be held by anyone not just the

arabs who had created it the mongols

threw open the door for the great

gunpowder empire to follow the empire of

the ottoman turks

Islam was now set on a new course of

expansion to both the East and the West

marching to the beat of Turkish drums

you can see the third and final part of

empire of the faith tomorrow night on

BBC 2 at 11:20 and if you'd like to take

part in the community events that

complement Islam UK core free phone Oh

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