Sanitizing the Past

Question: What European invaders were obsessed with cleanliness and public baths … and also gave us literary figures like Shakespeare’s Othello?

Answer: The Moors

Public baths may have been one of the most iconic symbols of the ancient Romans, but they were more concerned with socializing and relaxing than with strict personal hygiene. For the Moors, frequent bathing and a love of cleanliness was so important that a popular saying of the day claimed that a Moor "would rather go without bread than soap."

But who exactly were the "Moors?" For a group that left such a significant mark on medieval Europe, it’s not as clear cut as one would think. That's because "Moors" does not actually refer to a specific ethnicity, race, or homogenous group. Instead, the term encompassed medieval Muslim inhabitants of a wide range of regions that included Sicily and southern Italy, Malta, northwestern Africa (known as the Maghreb), and the Iberian Peninsula (known as al-Andalus).

When the Roman Empire ruled northern Africa (a province they called Mauretania), the native people they encountered were referred to in the same way that ancient Greeks referred to all outsiders—as "Barbarians." And for Africans living near the Mediterranean Sea, this term eventually evolved into Berbers. Europeans would soon refer to Berbers and all Africans of Islamic descent as Mauri, which worked out as "Moors." But the term was always imprecise.

The Arab dominance in the Mediterranean began shortly after the collapse of the Roman Empire in Europe. When Islam was born in the Arabian Peninsula, followers of this new religion arrived on the southern shores of the Mediterranean early in the seventh century, quickly conquering North Africa and spreading their language, religion, and culture to the native Berber populations. Within a hundred years, the Islamic empire would stretch from modern-day Morocco to eastern Iran. Their presence in southern Europe began in Iberia in 711 AD—where they were referred to as the Moors—and then in southern Italy and Sicily by 831 AD—where they were referred to as Saracens.

So basically, the "Moors" were a group of Muslims from northern Africa who invaded Europe. And European Christians, not surprisingly, resented this Moorish rule. For centuries, Christian Europe challenged any and all Muslim territorial dominance, culminating in the expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I of Spain in 1492.

To put an even finer point to it, the term "Moor" was never used by any particular group to refer to themselves. It was a European catch-all for anyone of the Islamic faith with an African ethnicity—or really, anyone who had dark skin.

Anyone familiar with Shakespeare’s Othello can see how the idea of Moors spread across Western Europe. Othello, the great playwright’s "Moor of Venice," was a noble Moorish general in the employ of the Venetian army. In spite of his military prowess, Shakespeare portrayed Othello as exotic and untrustworthy—"a lascivious Moor" who secretly married a white woman. A reflection of Europe’s stereotypes of black people at the time, it would be quite some time before Othello would be portrayed on Broadway by actors like Denzel Washington, as the "Noble Moor of Venice" was played by white actors in blackface for hundreds of years.

Invaders would come and go throughout European history, of course, and each would leave their mark in a region’s culture and traditions. But as unwelcome as the Moors were, let’s give credit where credit is due …

The Moors took medieval Europe into the modern age

At the time of the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, the Moors were well ahead of anything happening in medieval Europe. While some 90% of Europe’s population remained illiterate (including some European kings who couldn’t read or write), education was universally available to all within the Moors’ realm—at a time when there were just two universities in all of Europe, the Moors would establish 17 universities in Spain. But that was just for starters. The advanced civilization of the Arabs was renowned for its architecture, science, mathematics, exploration, and much more.

So, what exactly did the Moors bring to Europe?

Right from the get-go, the Moors introduced architectural techniques that simply blew away European stonemasons. But their contributions went well beyond architecture. Take Cordoba alone, which by the 10th and 11th centuries was the second biggest city in all of Europe—and the most modern by far. A center of learning and education, Cordoba was home to more than 80 libraries containing some of the most advanced knowledge of mathematics, medicine, botany, and astronomy—far superior to anything available in the rest of Europe (where public libraries were non-existent). There was plenty to choose from in Cordoba’s libraries, too—one of them contained more than six hundred thousand manuscripts.

The city was ahead of its time in other areas as well. Along with raised sidewalks for pedestrians, Cordoba had some ten miles of paved streets illuminated by streetlamps—hundreds of years before there were paved streets in Paris or lamps in the streets of London. And as mentioned earlier, the Moors put a premium on cleanliness, installing some 900 public baths in Cordoba alone.

The 800-year reign of the Moors wasn’t perfect, of course, but as the noted British historian Basil Davidson put it: "no lands were more admired by its neighbors, or more comfortable to live in, than a rich African civilization which took shape in Spain."

Exotic foods and food for thought …

You can also thank the Moors for introducing a stunning variety of fruits and vegetables that would have been completely foreign to Spain and the rest of Europe during the Middle Ages—things like peaches, lemons, oranges, saffron, cotton, rice, silk, sugar cane, apricots, figs, dates, pomegranates, and many others. They did this by reviving and updating the old Roman irrigation systems they encountered, resulting in a surge in agricultural productivity that would make Spain one of the largest producers of crops in Europe.

A more cerebral contribution of the Moors would be the game of chess. Although some 1,500 years old, once chess spread from Indian to the Arabic world, it was introduced to Spain by the Moors and quickly swept across European courts and society. And as any math nerd knows, the Arabic origin of the classic numbers we know and love today were introduced to Europe by the Moors—and were quickly adopted for being so much simpler and easier to use than clunky Roman numerals. At a time when the common writing medium in Europe was parchment made from animal skins, the Moors also made things a whole lot easier by introducing paper.

But did Muslims, Christians, and Jews really live in peaceful coexistence?

Well, not so much. The period of Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula is often described as La Convivencia (meaning "The Coexistence"), supposedly a time when Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived peacefully side by side in the only enlightened area of medieval Europe. It’s nice to think that, but the reality is a lot more complicated.

No, Christians and Jews were not forced to convert to Islam under Moorish rule. They were allowed to follow their faiths (as long as they paid a tax), they could work in the civil service of the Muslim rulers, and didn’t have to live in ghettoes. But Jews and Christians were treated as second-class citizens. They were forbidden to proselytize to Muslims and had to adhere to restrictions on the building of synagogues and churches. What was tolerated varied depending on which Muslim rulers were in control at the time.

Still, compared to how Muslims and Jews would be treated by the Christians following the Reconquista, the rule of Muslims in Spain could indeed by looked upon as a period of relative tolerance and peaceful coexistence.

Even more surprising contributions of the Moors:

• Zero, which isn’t nothing—After India introduced a symbol in an abacus column some 1,500 years ago, the Arabs eventually brought the concept of "zero" to Europe. The Italians were particularly mistrustful of this wholesale change to their ancestors’ numeral system, passing a law in 1229 forbidding bankers from using zero or any of the fancy new Arab numerals in their accounts.


• A word or two from the Moors—Both English and Spanish contain thousands of words of Arabic origin, including algebra, checkmate, influenza, cipher, alcohol, chemistry, typhoon, orange, alkaline, cable, nadir …


• A contribution that was out of this world—The Moors introduced several innovative scientific techniques to Europe, including the astrolabe, a device to measure the position of the stars and planets. They also brought the compass from China into Europe.


• The Moors were guitar heroes—The Moors introduced the earliest versions of several musical instruments to Europe, including the lute (el oud), the guitar (kithara), and the lyre.


• I’m ready for the next course, please—A famous 9th-century Moorish musician known as Ziryab (the Blackbird) is credited with changing the way we eat by breaking meals into separate courses beginning with soup and ending with desserts.


• A Spanish national hero that bridged both worlds—One of the most legendary warriors to ever live was the 11th-century knight Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar—better known as El Cid. A true icon, Dias would be celebrated by both Christian and Muslim authors alike, going down in history for selling his mercenary services to either side—and never losing a battle.

From sunlit courtyards to ornate arches, observe the Moorish influences in Sicily during our Sicily's Ancient Landscapes & Timeless Traditions adventure.