All language subtitles for BBC.The.Dark.Ages.An.Age.Of.Light.3of4.The.Wonder.Of.Islam.PDTV.XviD.AC3.MVGroup.org.eng

CRICKETS CHIRRUP

OWL HOOTS

This is a series about
the Dark Ages, when civilisation was

said to have stopped and ignorance
flooded the world.

I've been trying to convince
you that it didn't happen,

that the Dark Ages
were a fine era for art.

But in this film,
I am going further.

The art we'll be looking at in this
film is some of the most

sophisticated ever made.

If any art challenges the myth
of the Dark Ages,

it's the art of Islam.

EXPLOSION

HORSE WHINNIES

This is Cordoba in Spain.

That's the great Mosque of Cordoba
up there.

And this handy little
Dark Age gadget is an astrolabe.

Some people call this the first
computer and what this thing

does is calculate exactly where you
are, by using the stars.

Islamic stargazers perfected the
astrolabe in the Dark Ages to

work out the direction of Mecca, so
they always knew which way to pray.

It filled their art
with cosmic patterns.

Later on, I will be showing you how
to use one of these, I hope,

but first we need to travel
back in time to

the beginnings of Islam, to the
first fascinating creations

of Islamic art and architecture.

So right now,
we're here in Cordoba, Spain.

To go back to
the beginnings of Islamic art,

we need to go right across
the Mediterranean to here.

Jerusalem -

the heart of the religious
Dark Ages.

What huge dramas have been
enacted here.

What important art has been created?

Most of it's gone unfortunately,
but not all of it.

Some of it has survived,

notably that magnificent golden dome
on the horizon -

the Dome of the Rock.

It's one of the most significant
buildings ever put up,

a piece of architecture
that changed history.

You couldn't really ask for a more
dramatic location, could you?

If you think it looks good from up
here on the Mount of Olives,

just wait until we get closer.

Mohammed died in 632 AD

and for the first 50 years
or so after his death,

Islam was preoccupied with conquest.

The speed at which the Islamic
empire expanded was remarkable.

In just a few decades, it went from
nothing to gigantic.

It was the most dramatic,
most aggressive

and fastest feat of empire building
the world has seen.

This is the Islamic empire, just 100
years after Mohammed's death.

Up here, the whole of Spain,
all of North Africa,

the entire Middle East, as far
across as the borders of India.

But all this astonishingly
successful conquest, didn't leave

much time for art.

Almost nothing survives
from the first years of Islam.

Clearly, art was not a priority.

And then,
out of nothing, as if by magic,

this appears - the Dome of the Rock.

Nothing in Islamic art
prepares us for this.

It's just suddenly there.

A definitive Islamic creation,
seemingly conjured out of thin air.

It's like a flying saucer
or something,

that's landed out of nowhere and
something you sense immediately,

even from this distance, is
the powerful geometry of it,

that air of mathematical clarity

and that's something that continues
in Islamic architecture.

As you can see, it's an octagon,
it's got eight sides.

Octagons have a special symbolic
presence, because they combine

the geometry of a circle
with the geometry of a square.

I'll show you.
If I draw a circle here...

And then...
two intersecting squares...

..here...

..and here...

The shape they form,
the shape in the middle...

That's the octagon.

The octagon is a surprisingly
popular Dark Age shape with

powerful, sacred meanings.

If the Earth is a square
and heaven is a perfect circle,

the octagon is a symbolic bridge
between the two.

All the proportions of the Dome
of the Rock are meaningful.

So these walls here...
the walls of the octagon...

each of those
is about 20 metres long.

And the Dome in the middle,
the height of that's

again about 20 metres and the
diameter of it's also 20 metres.

All these proportions have
been carefully calculated,

have a purpose.

It's as if the entire building has
been shaped by a divine mathematics.

And those divine mathematics have
given it a sacred meaning.

This location, Temple Mount, is
the holiest spot in Jerusalem.

This is where King Solomon
built the first Jewish temple,

the one destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar
and then Herod, the infamous

King Herod, built the second
temple here as well.

Herod's temple was made
entirely from white marble and was

so huge, it covered 67 acres
of the sacred location.

So grand, so pompous

and to my eyes, so inelegant!

So the Dome of the Rock
sits on layer upon layer

of crucial religious history

and when the Muslims conquered
Jerusalem in 638 AD

and claimed this site for Islam,
they took possession

of what is probably the most loaded
religious spot on Earth.

And that's just the outside!

For me, this mysterious interior is
one of the most atmospheric

achievements of the Dark Ages.

There's something so haunting about
the way the light works in here,

the shimmer of the mosaics,

the whispers of the calligraphy.

Basically, it's a circular shrine.

It's not a mosque,

it's a place of pilgrimage that has
been built around a sacred site.

The site it's all been built around
is the site of this holy rock here.

The Jews believe this is the
rock on which Abraham prepared to

sacrifice his son, Isaac.

And the Ark of the Covenant is
thought to lie hidden

somewhere underneath, as well.

SPEAKING SOFTLY: Islam has a
different tradition.

Islam believes this is the holy rock

from which the prophet Mohammed set
off on his great night journey

to heaven.

The angel Gabriel came to visit
Mohammed at Mecca

and brought him here to Jerusalem.

From this rock, the prophet ascended
to heaven and there,

in paradise, he met God
and God instructed him

on the Muslim duty of prayer.

So this holy rock,
like the architecture around it,

is a point of contact
between man and God

and that's the religious
message of the whole building.

If you saw the first
film in this series,

you'll recognise this shape,
because we've seen it before.

This type of encircling
architecture, built over a precious

site, something we found in the
round churches at Byzantium.

Remember, San Vitale in Ravenna

and Santa Costanza in Rome.

The Muslim Caliph Abd al-Malik
who built the Dome of the Rock was

deliberately taking on the
architecture of the Christians.

This round shape, the proportions,
none of it was an accident.

Abd al-Malik also added an explicit
inscription, which runs all the

way round, which gives the date on
which the dome was finished -

691 AD. It also includes a stern
message to the Christians.

"O, you people of the Book", it
says, meaning the Bible.

"Jesus is only a messenger of God.

"God is only one God."

It's a deliberate challenge to the
Christians. Jesus is just a prophet.

There's only one God
and Gods don't have sons.

This entire building is
taking on Christianity.

Look at that!

Floor to ceiling is covered
in the most exquisite mosaics.

Gold and green...
there's a palm tree

and these beautiful jewelled crowns.

And all the pieces of the mosaic
are set at different angles,

so they reflect the light
differently at different times

of day and all this,
all these glorious mosaics,

were intended to the evoke
a vision of paradise.

"When you look there in paradise",
says the Koran,

"you will see delights
that cannot be imagined.

"Fruits of every kind

"and all that you ask for."

At a stroke,
Islam had invented for itself

an unmistakable new architecture.

And at the centre
of this new architecture,

was a vision of paradise.

The Islamic paradise is a green
and verdant alternative to

the harsh desert landscape
in which Islam was born.

These are lands where water is
precious and so is hope.

Just a few years after
the Dome of the Rock was finished,

the Umayyad Caliphs in Damascus gave
the world another wonderful Islamic

structure - the Damascus Mosque.

I think it's one of the most
exciting buildings

I've ever been in.

And look what's on the walls.

Inside the fabulous Damascus Mosque,

the Umayyad Caliphs set out
actually to describe paradise.

And to surround the Islamic
pilgrim with delightful

and irresistible visions of it.

It's one of Islam's
most dramatic artistic moments.

These are the joys
that await us in heaven.

These are the beautiful cities
in which we'll live

and this is the water,

the cool and endless water,
that we'll drink.

Those magnificent images
of paradise in the Great Mosque

at Damascus are like images of a
wonderful oasis in the desert,

water, palm trees, flowers -

everything that's so hard
to find out here

and the Islamic paradise promises
so many pleasures in the next life

to the true believer -
all you can drink, all you can eat

and all you can dream of.

This is Qusayr Amra.

It's one of the desert palaces which
the Umayyad rulers of Damascus

built out here
to get away from the city -

its heat and its pressures.

No-one's certain which of the
Umayyad princes chose this

distant desert location.

Was it the Caliph Al-Walid the First
or Al-Walid the Second?

What is sure is why
they chose this particular spot.

Qusayr Amra is built in a wadi -

the Wadi Al Battum - and wadis are
desert valleys that fill up

seasonally with water.

So when it rains in the desert,
the precious water floods through

the wadi and fertilises it.

Round the back of the building,
over here, the various

contraptions for channelling this
water through the palace,

because, believe it or not, what you
have before you here is a bathhouse!

Qusayr Amra is a bathing
establishment in the desert -

one of the earliest surviving
secular buildings of Islam.

The reason we've driven all this way
across the desert to find it is

because this fabulous bath house
in the sands has something

remarkable inside it, something
you'd never expect to find here.

Floor to ceiling Islamic frescoes.

A troupe of acrobats
gives a busy performance

and there's a bear
strumming a lute.

There's so much going on in here.

And a group of statuesque
female dancers,

show off their figures
and their beauty.

The dancing girls
are particularly surprising.

We're just not used to Islamic
imagery as abandoned as this,

but it's important to remember
this is just

as old and just as traditional as
everything else we've seen.

This, too, is a precious
Islamic heritage.

A negative way to understand
Qusayr Amra's remarkable frescoes

is to see them as signs
of moral relaxation.

Away from Damascus, deep in the
desert, a wayward Umayyad prince

is indulging an appetite for wine
and music and women.

But I don't think
that is what it's about.

If we go back to the many
descriptions of paradise in the

Koran, there are constant references
to the pleasures available there.

Rivers of wine served in crystal
cups, beautiful flowers,

beautiful jewels
and beautiful girls.

"For the righteous", says the Koran,
"there shall be gardens

"and vineyards and high-bosomed
virgins for companions,

"dark eyed and bashful,
as fair as corals and rubies."

Inside here is the caldarium -
the hot room.

In here the Umayyad prince would
soak himself in hot water,

heated up by all those gubbins
we saw outside and as he lay

here in his bath, the Umayyad prince
would stare up at the Dome

where he'd see something wondrous -

an evocation of the stars at night.

This is the earliest known
Islamic star chart,

painted onto the dome at
Qusayr Amra.

Around the edge are
the 12 signs of the Zodiac.

And in the middle,

frescoed representations
of the constellations.

The Great Bear,

the Little bear.

What a thing to find in
an eighth century bathhouse,

a fabulous image of the heavens
at night above your head.

It's as if someone has taken
the roof off the dome

and looked out into
the sky at night in the desert,

full of twinkling stars.

What a beautiful idea.

It takes a bit of
getting to Qusayr Amra

but I wanted to make it clear right
from the start that Islamic art,

with its beginnings
in the Dark Ages,

has this sensuous dimension to it,

a relationship to pleasure that
you just don't find in other art.

Scattered across this great
Syrian Desert are the remains

of fantastical Umayyad palaces,

filled once with beautiful mosaics

and marvellous colonnades.

What tangible sensuousness you find
here in this first Islamic art.

These eighth century desert palaces
must once have been filled

with the accoutrements of pleasure -

vases, hangings, plates and cups,

almost all of which
have disappeared.

But in 1986, here in Jordan,

they dug up this.

It's an eighth century
Islamic brazier

and it gives us a tiny hint

of what life was like
in the Qusayr Amra bathhouse.

The brazier was used to heat up
the prince's room

and for burning incense.

Originally there were wheels on it
and it could be wheeled around

from room to room
to fill them with sweet smells.

It's made of iron and bronze

and at the front here, as you can
see, there are these arches

a little bit like
the ones in Qusayr Amra,

and inside the arches are scenes of
lovemaking and couples canoodling,

and it's all so atmospheric
and so beautifully done.

Look at these eagles at the bottom,

the way they've been shaped,
their wings, their feathers.

This is metalwork
of the highest quality.

At the four corners, four cuddly
nudes prepared to release

a small bird into the
incense-filled air above them.

And there's a floaty feeling
to this marvellous metalwork.

What a beautiful thing.

And the figurative sculptures
you see here,

the female figures are, again,
very surprising

because this is an is aspect
of Islamic art that was there
at the start,

that is very traditional, but which
modern Islam often forgets.

The beautiful brazier was an object
of private delectation.

It had no religious purpose.

But it's important to remember
that sensuality played a role

in the art of these times.

In the beginning, this was
Islamic art too,

and this,

and this.

When joy was called for,
Islamic art inspired great joy.

And when sobriety
was more appropriate,

it achieved great sobriety.

This is the finest early mosque
in Cairo,

the mosque of ibn Tulun.

I like everything about it,

but most of all I admire
its architectural seriousness.

The way you know,
as soon as you step in here,

that this is a space devoted
to important understandings.

Ahmed ibn Tulun who founded
this mosque in 879 AD

was the son of a Turkish slave,
who became governor of Egypt.

Originally the mosque stood
at the centre of a new city

that ibn Tulun also founded,
the city of Al-Qatta'i.

But Al-Qatta'i was destroyed
in the 10th century.

This is all that's left of it.

They say ibn Tulun chose this site

because this is where
Noah's Ark came to rest.

There was certainly water here,

that domed creation in the centre
is the ablutions fountain,

where all Muslims must wash
themselves before prayers.

All mosques, not just this one,

are based on the very first mosque

which was the prophet's
own house in Medina.

It was a typical mud brick dwelling,
with a courtyard,

and in that courtyard the
prophet's followers would gather

to hear him speak.

So, all these great
courtyards of Islam,

all of them, are descended directly
from the prophet's own courtyard.

Their evocative sparseness is
an echo of their origins.

Their sun-baked simplicity
has been there from the start.

The walls that encircle you here

are like the walls of
the prophet's own courtyard.

Their task is to keep the outside
world at bay,

and here at ibn Tulun,

there's actually two sets of walls,
a kind of double glazing

that separates you from
the hustle and bustle out there.

I like these playful crenulations
arranged along the top as well.

They look like paper cut-outs,

something my daughter
might have made.

To protect his followers
from the sun

the prophet built a simple shelter
at the end of his courtyard

with a roof made out of
palm branches and leaves.

That simple shelter was the
inspiration for these great arcades

which still protect the prophet's
followers from the sun.

The shelters in his courtyard
were also used

as somewhere to meet
and discuss community affairs.

And that marvellous
communal atmosphere

of a space with many purposes is
something else that survives

to this day in the Islamic mosque.

The largest covered space
was the prayer hall, which

was basically the prophet's own
house at the end of the courtyard.

Every prayer hall today is
a continuation of this marvellous
Islamic sense.

Underneath all this mighty
religious architecture

you can still feel
the humble presence

of the prophet's own dwelling.

These prayer halls are so welcoming,

they have a sense of
the living room about them.

A home from home.

Most mosques are square
or rectangular in plan

and that's because they're all
arranged in relation

to this wall here,
which is called the Qibla wall.

The Qibla wall indicates
the direction of Mecca.

In Arabic the word Qibla
means direction.

And in Mohammed's house
a simple spear stuck in the ground

would mark the way to pray.

The centre of the Qibla wall
is marked by the mihrab

which is always the most
ornate part of the wall.

Usually a niche.

These niches were probably
inspired by the culminating niches

of Byzantine churches,
Christian architecture.

To the right of the mihrab
is the minbar or pulpit

and this is based, once again,
on the prophet's own house.

They say that when Mohammed
had gathered

so many followers he could
no longer be heard by everyone

he stepped up onto
some blocks of wood

and those are the origins of
the minbar.

How fascinating that all
the great mosques of Islam

inherited their wonderful clarity,
their simplicity and their

underlying sacred geometry from
the humble house of the prophet.

Look at all that wonderful stucco
work around the arches,

all that repetition and variety,

this is art used in
a different way,

not to illustrate something
but to create a visual rhythm.

Christian churches are full of
pictures that tell you stories

but there are no pictures in
these great Islamic interiors.

The decoration here
communicates in other ways.

There's a sense of
endlessness to it.

It develops in all directions.

And it makes you feel part of
something that's bigger than you.

So there are no pictures.

Instead, all the way round
runs this Koranic inscription,

carved into wood.

You know I said this mosque
was built on the site

when Noah's Ark was said
to have come to rest,

another story they tell here
is that this Koranic inscription

is carved on the actual
wood from Noah's Ark.

At the mosque of ibn Tulun

the Koranic inscription runs for
two kilometres around the building,

that's 1/15th of the entire
Koran written up on these walls.

This is the Word of God in its
most sacred and purest form.

The power of the word is
one of the great

creative obsessions
of the Dark Ages.

And in the
Metropolitan Museum in New York,

the most beguiling
of the first Korans,

the so-called Blue Koran,

turns the words of God
into such glorious art.

Don't know if you remember
the building of the Aswan Dam

in the 1960s?
It was rather controversial,

the president of Egypt,
President Nasser,

joined up with the Russians
to build a dam across the Nile,

and various archaeological sites
were lost forever,

or had to be moved to
new locations, stone-by-stone.

All sorts of ecological disasters
were predicted for the dam.

Most of which haven't happened.

The conquest of water

was another of Islam's great
achievements in the Dark Ages.

In Cairo, the Nile would
overflow its banks every summer

and the agriculture
of the entire Nile Delta

depended on the success
of this fertile flooding.

Thick black silt,
rich with nutrients,

would be deposited
across the flood plain,

ensuring a splendid harvest.

That was in the good years.

In the bad years, the levels
were either too low,

which meant disaster,

or too high,
which also meant disaster.

The Aswan Dam was built
to control that process,

so, you might wonder,
what did they do before?

In Islamic times they used this -
the celebrated Nilometer

of Rhoda Island on the Nile.

Opened for business in 861 AD,

it's one of the oldest
Islamic monuments in Egypt.

And what dramatic evidence it
offers of the aquatic brilliance

of Islam's engineers.

What this thing does is measure
the height of the Nile flood.

It's basically a big well,

sunk some ten metres under
the level of the river.

In the middle is an octagonal
marble column,

a kind of giant ruler which,
as you can see,

is marked off at different heights.

The measurements are in cubits and
one cubit is about half a metre,

so around 16 cubits
is the perfect flood.

Fertile, controllable.

Below 16 cubits there's not enough
water, so famine conditions ahead,

and higher up,
once we get past 19 cubits,

that's really bad,
a catastrophic flood.

Islamic authorities in Cairo
used the great Nilometer

to calculate
their annual tax demands.

The perfect flood
meant perfect profits ahead.

Thus, this brilliant piece of design

was an early Islamic alternative
to the pocket calculator.

Before they'd built
the Aswan Dam,

these tunnels here led off into
the Nile at three different levels.

So if they weren't closed off now,
I would be under water.

Look at those pointed arches
above the tunnels.

That's pure Gothic, 400 years early.

The Nilometer was designed
by the famed Persian astronomer

Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad
ibn Kathir al-Farghani,

better known to us
by his Latin name, Alfraganus.

Alfraganus's most famous
achievement as an astronomer

was calculating
the diameter of the Earth.

Copernicus was said
to have used his results.

There's even a crater on the moon
named after him,

the Alfraganus Crater.

But it isn't just science
that created this,

and it isn't just commerce either.

All the way round,

there are also these beautiful
Koranic inscriptions,

in a lovely Kufic script.

"Thou seest the Earth
barren and lifeless...",

it says, at the 17 cubit mark.

"..But when we pour rain on it,
it is stirred to life".

At the Nilometer in Cairo,
science, commerce and faith

have combined
in a uniquely Islamic fashion

to create a technological wonder.

This entire series is about
how the Dark Ages weren't dark.

But sometimes, I should just shut up

and let you see the proof
for yourselves,

because it couldn't be more obvious.

CALL TO PRAYER

This is Kairouan in Tunisia.

Once,
this was a city of enormous power,

the most important Islamic outpost
in North Africa.

Now, it's a marvellous place
to visit

for any true student
of the Dark Ages.

Kairouan, they say, was
founded by the great Arab warrior,

Sidi Uqba ibn Nafi,
who conquered these parts for Islam

just 50 years after the death
of the Prophet.

When Sidi Uqba got here,
this was all desert.

But something made him pause
and look down at his feet.

When Sidi looked down,

he saw a miraculous spring
of fresh water bubbling up,

and in that water, a golden cup

which he had lost many years
before at the holy spring in Mecca.

The underground waters
seemed to have carried it here.

So it was clearly a sign.

And on this holy spot,
Sidi Uqba founded Kairouan.

At the centre of the new city,
he built a new mosque,

the oldest such mosque
in North Africa.

From the outside,
there's not much sign of it.

Islam isn't a religion
that flaunts itself in the streets.

But when you get inside
into the great courtyard

of the Sidi Uqba Mosque,
what a powerful sight awaits you.

Another practical use for these
great mosque courtyards,

particularly here in Kairouan,
where it is so dry,

is for collecting water.

When it rains, all the water is
channelled down here to the centre.

See these decorative openings? They
actually have a practical purpose.

When the water flows through them,

all these arabesques filter out the
impurities, the dust, the feathers.

Then the water, pure and clean,

is saved below
in two giant cisterns,

so all of Kairouan can make use
of it.

Because it was built from nothing,

Kairouan is a particularly pure
Islamic city.

There are few cases here

of the Romans or the Vandals
or the Byzantines.

In Kairouan, Islam
started from scratch.

Except here, in the courtyard of
the mosque. Look at this column.

Look at the top.
What is that, Corinthian?

And next to it, Venetian?
Over here, Roman, perhaps.

Could even be Egyptian, who knows?
Of the 414 columns

arranged around this great courtyard
of the mosque in Kairouan,

no two are the same.

Every column is different.

That's because
they were all taken

from other people's temples
and palaces and city halls.

This entire mosque
was built from bits and pieces

of other ancient buildings.

In the old days,

it was actually forbidden
to count the columns in here.

Anyone caught doing it was blinded.

If you look closely,

you find some really surprising
things about this courtyard.

For example, up here,
there's a Christian cross.

So this column must have
come from a Byzantine church.

But through some
miracle of architectural power,

despite all this busy borrowing,

the end result is an
unmistakable sense of Islamic unity.

This space could have
come from nowhere else.

This is unmistakably...

an Islamic space.

There are many remarkable
things about the Kairouan Mosque.

But particularly remarkable,
I think,

is the proof that is offered here

that architecture is an art form
of spaces, not of details.

Of courtyards, not of capitals.

See the tower here?

It's got these slabs of stone
at the base,

with Latin inscriptions on them.

See this one here, it's upside down.

So these must have come
from a Roman building.

This is actually the oldest
surviving Islamic minaret.

It's got a bulky,
militaristic presence,

rising up in these
three squat pieces.

But like all minarets,
its original purpose is glorious,

to spread the word,
to share the news, to shine a light.

The minaret is one of the defining
Islamic achievements

of the Dark Ages.

Islam did much that was inventive
and progressive in architecture.

But in its minarets,
it surpassed itself.

This word "minaret"
comes from the Arabic "manarah",

which means lighthouse.

And that's its function,
to be a beacon of hope,

to offer safety and protection.

And of course, the faithful were
called to prayer from up there.

In the very first mosque,
built by Mohammed,

the faithful were called
from the rooftops.

But as cities got bigger,
mosques got bigger,

you needed somewhere higher up
from which to broadcast the faith.

And look what inventive shapes
were found

for this conquest of the sky.

This is the minaret of the
Great Mosque of Samarra in Iraq.

Its nickname, for obvious reasons,
is "the snail shell".

No-one else in the Dark Ages

built anything
as airily ambitious as this.

And it wasn't just the mosques.

This extraordinary
brick masterpiece in Iran

is the tomb of the Ziyarid prince,
Qabus ibn Voshmgir.

It's a thousand years old,

but looks like something the Bauhaus
might have come up with,

don't you think?

Inside, Qabus had himself suspended
at his death

in a coffin of pure rock crystal.

What a thrilling Islamic conquest
of the heavens.

Speaking of rock crystal, it's
a very special substance, isn't it?

According to the Koran,
when the chosen arrive in Paradise,

they will be given drinks of ginger,

served in goblets of crystal.

Crystal,
or rock crystal to be more specific,

was a substance with which Islam
seemed to have a special affinity.

They say it
was Ahmed ibn Tulun himself

who introduced the art
of carving rock crystals into Egypt.

What's certain
is that it was in Egypt

that this difficult art
reached perfection.

I don't know about you,

but I can't think of many substances
in the world

with a presence as magical
as rock crystal.

Particularly when
it has passed through the hands

of the master carvers of Islam.

Only a handful of these gorgeous
Islamic ewers have survived.

And that just makes them
feel even more precious.

Rock crystal itself
is actually very common.

It's just a type of quartz,

and quartz is the most common
mineral in the Earth's crust.

You get it everywhere. Look.
There's a stripe of it here.

What isn't common
is pieces of quartz

so pure and perfect and transparent

that they satisfy the demands of
the great crystal carvers of Islam.

No-one has ever carved rock crystal
more finely than this.

What they'd do is find
a perfect lump of crystal

and shape it on the outside, and
then begin hollowing out the inside.

They'd hollow it further
and further and further,

till in the very best Islamic art,

the walls of the crystal were only
a couple of millimetres thick.

Now, that was unbelievably
difficult.

The shimmering images carved
into these gorgeous crystal ewers

would transport the drinker
to paradise.

Hunting scenes, flowers,
beautiful birds,

so crystal clear
that none could resist them.

And it wasn't just Islam

that saw something magical
in this rock crystal.

In Ireland,
when Ireland was still pagan,

they used to put
pieces of rock crystal

at the entrance
of the burial chambers.

And in Egypt,
they carved it into perfect spheres,

which apparently kept your hands
cool when you touched it.

And of course, it was used for
telling the future, and it still is.

All sorts of Dark Age societies
were fascinated by rock crystal.

The Roman naturalist, Pliny the
Elder, believed that rock crystal

was actually frozen water, trapped
for aeons under the glaciers.

Even the early Christians
worshipped it.

For them, rock crystal had a natural
relationship with divine perfection.

So they'd put it on the outside
of their reliquaries

and up in their golden crosses,

where its perfect presence seemed
somehow to connect them to God.

Christian rock crystal
has a different feel to it.

In Christian hands,

the light-filled paradise of Islam
seemed to fill up with shadows.

With Christian rock crystal,

the Dark Ages are what
you expect them to be -

Mysterious, spooky and talismanic.

The water engineers of Islam
perfected their hydraulic skills

in lands
where water was precious and rare.

So their relationship to it had
something of the dream about it.

For Islam,
water wasn't just a necessity -

it was an enticement, too.

This is Cordoba in Spain.

The Muslim armies
got here in 711 AD

and conquered it
from the Visigoths -

remember them from the last film?

And when Islam arrived in Spain

it could not believe
how fertile this new territory was,

how full of paradisiacal waters.

This is the Guadalquivir
in Andalusia,

the largest navigable river
in Spain.

The name is Islamic.

It comes from al-wadi al-kabir,
which means "The Great Valley".

These days the Guadalquivir River
is only navigable up to Seville,

but in Islamic times you could sail
all the way up here to Cordoba

and in this great city,

Islamic water architecture
surpassed itself.

All along the Guadalquivir,

a cunning system of mills,
dams and water wheels

channelled the energy
of the waters.

The water wheels of Cordoba
lifted water from the river

high up to the bank where
the gardeners of Islam used it

to recreate paradise on Earth.

This isn't actually
an Islamic garden -

it's an Islamic-style garden

built by the Christian kings
here in Cordoba.

Unfortunately, the original
Islamic garden has disappeared.

But Islam was here for 500 years

so this style of garden-making
is ingrained in the culture.

What you still get here
is a vivid sense

of how the Islamic garden felt.

Fountains, waterways, flowers -

these are the divine atmospheres of
those magical paradisiacal mosaics

we saw in the Great Mosque
at Damascus.

Except this time they're real.

To enter the mosque at Cordoba
you need to pass through

another beautiful evocation
of the paradise ahead -

an orange grove.
So divinely harmonious.

This was obviously
a very desirable location.

They say there was
a Visigoth church here originally

and later, when the Muslims were
finally kicked out of Spain,

a Catholic cathedral was
plonked in the middle of the mosque

creating this ungainly hybrid.

It was the Umayyad prince,
Abd al-Rahman I,

who began building
the Cordoba mosque.

He actually bought the land
from the Christians

and in those early days
of religious tolerance,

Muslims and Christians
shared the building.

The Cordoba mosque
is famous for its columns.

856 of them.

"Like rows of palm trees
in the oasis of Syria,"

is how someone's described them.

Columns are very laborious to make

and they use up a lot of precious
stone, so they're very heavy,

and if you can avoid making them,
you will.

For the Cordoba mosque,

the columns came from the Visigoth
church that was there before

and also from nearby Roman temples.

But these reused Visigoth columns
weren't quite tall enough

so to make the Cordoba mosque
higher and more airy

the architects of Islam
came up with a brilliant new idea -

the double arch.

Two arches for the price of one.

At the bottom, the horseshoe arch,

borrowed, as we saw in the last
film, from the Visigoths.

Then, on top of that, a round arch,
arch number two,

making the mosque taller,
less solid-looking.

More see-through.

For the first time
in European architecture

the aesthetics of light
were shaping a building.

Do you know, Cordoba,
when the Muslims were here,

had a half a million people
living in it.

It was by far the largest and most
prosperous city in western Europe

and all of those inhabitants
had running water.

They had toilets that flushed,
street lamps -

in the 10th century.

In urban planning, architecture,
mathematics and water engineering,

Islamic knowledge was peerless.

And in one area it was spectacular -
astronomy, the study of the stars.

90 percent of the 200 brightest
stars in the sky have Arabic names.

Vega, Betelgeuse, Algol, Deneb -

they're all creations
of the Dark Ages

because Arabic astronomy allowed the
Dark Ages to glimpse the cosmos.

Remember those stars painted
on to the roof at the palace
in Qusayr Amra?

Well, that was just the beginning.

While Christian science was
insisting on a backward, biblical
understanding of the cosmos,

Islamic science was investigating
the heavens more adventurously.

This little baby here,
the astrolabe,

has been called the first computer.

It was developed to pinpoint
the direction of Mecca.

Muslims needed to pray
five times a day

in a specific direction
at specific times.

The astrolabe could work all that
out in relation to the stars

so this was the first compass
as well, and the first clock.

So the way it works,
the first thing you need to do

is decide on which star
you want to focus on

and I'm going to choose Vega.

So I find Vega in the sky
and with these sights here

I line it up
until I can see Vega in the middle.

It's exactly there.

And that gives me
a reading here in degrees,

degrees from the horizontal.

So I can see that Vega,
right now, is 35 degrees.

So the next thing to do is to set
the date, measured, of course,

in the old-fashioned way,
in phases of the zodiac.

Right now we're in Gemini, so...

In fact,
we're in the 15th degree of Gemini.

About there,
otherwise known as the end of May.

So this is basically that
in diagrammatic form

and whatever is true on here
is also true out there.

So I know the date,
I know where Vega is,

so, with the help
of this handy Dark Age sat-nav

I can finally work out where I am.

It was Alfraganus, the multi-skilled
designer of the Nilometer in Cairo

who undertook the first great
Islamic exploration of the stars.

He was followed by many others.

Without Islamic science and its
sensuous delight in the cosmos,

perhaps this really
would have been a dark age.

With Islamic science,
it was anything but.

In the next film
we'll be heading north

to celebrate those fine
craftsmen the Vikings

and to investigate those
particularly skilled jewellers
of the Dark Ages,

the Anglo-Saxons.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd