1 00:00:14,840 --> 00:00:17,040 Go on, have a guess. 2 00:00:17,040 --> 00:00:21,800 We're looking at the trademark colonnades and capitals of a big Roman city. 3 00:00:21,800 --> 00:00:25,920 But is it Italy? France? Spain? 4 00:00:25,920 --> 00:00:31,560 No. We're in Palmyra, in Syria, not all that far from the Iraqi border. 5 00:00:33,600 --> 00:00:40,840 We forget that the land of the Caesars stretched from Arabia to Portugal, from Scotland to Libya. 6 00:00:43,160 --> 00:00:48,080 Across this vast, pacified Roman empire people spoke the same languages, 7 00:00:48,080 --> 00:00:51,680 everyone had the same chance to become a Roman citizen, 8 00:00:51,680 --> 00:00:57,320 everyone had freedom of worship, under a vast and accommodating polytheism, 9 00:00:57,320 --> 00:01:03,360 and everyone could marry whoever they chose, irrespective of religion or race. 10 00:01:08,400 --> 00:01:15,760 Today, that unity is gone and the great Roman territory has been effectively divided in two. 11 00:01:15,760 --> 00:01:19,280 There is the Christian world and the Muslim world 12 00:01:19,280 --> 00:01:23,840 and for 1400 years relations between the two have been marked by rivalry, 13 00:01:23,840 --> 00:01:30,760 mistrust, incomprehension and a simmering mutual antipathy that still afflicts us today. 14 00:01:33,800 --> 00:01:37,400 These programmes are an attempt to discover the origins 15 00:01:37,400 --> 00:01:42,480 and the see-sawing history of what some people call the "Clash of Civilisations". 16 00:01:42,480 --> 00:01:44,240 What do they mean by that? 17 00:01:44,240 --> 00:01:46,760 Is it true that there is such a thing? 18 00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:48,600 And will it ever end? 19 00:02:09,520 --> 00:02:14,200 When Rome fell in 476 AD, Western Europe was plunged headlong 20 00:02:14,200 --> 00:02:17,600 into what used to be called the Dark Ages. 21 00:02:17,600 --> 00:02:20,680 But was it really lights out for everyone? 22 00:02:20,680 --> 00:02:24,920 Let's face it, we have a pretty Monty Python vision of the Dark Ages, 23 00:02:24,920 --> 00:02:28,680 as a place of mud and illiteracy and embarrassing diseases. 24 00:02:28,680 --> 00:02:33,840 A kind of cringe-making adolescence of Western civilisation in which people hurled dead cows 25 00:02:33,840 --> 00:02:38,640 over castle battlements and drew endless lumpy pictures of the torments of hell. 26 00:02:38,640 --> 00:02:41,360 And yet there are plenty of historians 27 00:02:41,360 --> 00:02:45,800 who say that the Dark Ages were by no means as dark as all that. 28 00:02:45,800 --> 00:02:50,480 And in the centuries after the fall of Rome in 476 AD, the Roman roads continued to 29 00:02:50,480 --> 00:02:55,200 function and although the bridges may have been dilapidated, they could be repaired with pontoons 30 00:02:55,200 --> 00:02:58,680 and the currency continued to circulate and that, effectively, 31 00:02:58,680 --> 00:03:05,440 a great, unified civilisation continued to flourish about the shores of the Mediterranean. 32 00:03:08,240 --> 00:03:14,280 Something did finally destroy that unity and it wasn't the Huns and it wasn't the Vandals. 33 00:03:14,280 --> 00:03:16,360 It was the Arabs. 34 00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:20,560 In just 80 years, they conquered half of the old Roman Empire, 35 00:03:20,560 --> 00:03:23,160 colonising the grain fields of Egypt 36 00:03:23,160 --> 00:03:25,840 and surging through North Africa to Spain. 37 00:03:28,040 --> 00:03:32,160 And the crucial difference between the Arabs and all previous invaders 38 00:03:32,160 --> 00:03:36,840 was that the Arabs were not seduced by that intoxicating Roman brand. 39 00:03:36,840 --> 00:03:42,160 And they didn't adopt Christianity - they were to develop their own distinctive culture. 40 00:03:59,760 --> 00:04:07,040 And this powerful and sophisticated Muslim civilisation was to be in the ascendancy for 800 years. 41 00:04:12,280 --> 00:04:16,840 And that memory is important to Islamic extremists today when they 42 00:04:16,840 --> 00:04:22,000 consider what they now think of as the humiliation of the Arab world. 43 00:04:25,280 --> 00:04:30,400 In this series I'm going to travel around Europe, to the Mediterranean and the Middle East 44 00:04:30,400 --> 00:04:34,760 to look at some of the flashpoints in relations between Christianity and Islam. 45 00:04:37,360 --> 00:04:42,920 But also to see what we can learn from those precious moments of harmony and interchange. 46 00:04:57,160 --> 00:05:03,880 To understand the origins of this long-running antipathy, we need to grasp a key fact of geography, 47 00:05:03,880 --> 00:05:09,800 namely that Arabia, now Saudi Arabia, was never really part of the Roman world. 48 00:05:09,800 --> 00:05:14,480 The Arabs traded with Rome and supplied plenty of mercenaries and even an Emperor, Philip the Arab, 49 00:05:14,480 --> 00:05:20,160 and they supplied the camel, the heavy goods vehicle of the ancient world. 50 00:05:20,160 --> 00:05:24,320 But unlike their monotheistic neighbours, the Christian Roman Empire 51 00:05:24,320 --> 00:05:30,520 and the Zoroastrian Persian Empire, the desert Arabs remained a mostly polytheistic people. 52 00:05:30,520 --> 00:05:33,280 At the beginning of the 7th Century, 53 00:05:33,280 --> 00:05:38,560 the Arabs still believed in many gods and idols, until a 40-year-old man, 54 00:05:38,560 --> 00:05:44,000 called Muhammad, underwent a profound religious experience. 55 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:49,840 In 610 AD, Muhammad received his call to prophet-hood, and changed the course of history. 56 00:05:49,840 --> 00:05:52,840 And some have seen this as a bolt from the blue, 57 00:05:52,840 --> 00:05:57,840 a new divine message for humanity without any previous source or influence. 58 00:05:57,840 --> 00:06:02,160 While other Koranic scholars say, "No, you must look at the historical context." 59 00:06:02,160 --> 00:06:06,440 And the context was that the Arabs were then a remote desert people, 60 00:06:06,440 --> 00:06:10,240 with barely any previous literature of their own, 61 00:06:10,240 --> 00:06:13,920 living on the sandy fringes of two great empires - 62 00:06:13,920 --> 00:06:17,360 the Persian and, above all, the Christian Roman Empire. 63 00:06:17,360 --> 00:06:22,320 Many Arabs had already converted to Christianity, and Muhammad, the well-travelled merchant, 64 00:06:22,320 --> 00:06:25,880 would certainly have been familiar with the religion. 65 00:06:25,880 --> 00:06:30,840 But the advantage of Islam for the Arabs was that they could adopt it 66 00:06:30,840 --> 00:06:36,880 without any implicit political submission to the Christian Roman Emperor, and, above all, 67 00:06:36,880 --> 00:06:43,760 as the final, superior faith, and one which appeared in the Arabic language, 68 00:06:43,760 --> 00:06:50,080 it gave expression to the growing Arab sense of confidence and identity. 69 00:06:57,200 --> 00:06:59,600 Islam was not a new religion. 70 00:06:59,600 --> 00:07:03,760 The Muslims believed that their faith was the perfection of earlier revelations 71 00:07:03,760 --> 00:07:06,160 given to Jews and Christians by their prophets. 72 00:07:06,160 --> 00:07:10,680 And that's why Moses and Jesus are also revered by Muslims. 73 00:07:12,720 --> 00:07:16,400 If you ask a religious person, then he will tell you that, 74 00:07:16,400 --> 00:07:22,920 Abraham knew something about the true religion, then Judaism, it was a little bit better. 75 00:07:22,920 --> 00:07:28,040 Then Christianity is better than Judaism because every 76 00:07:28,040 --> 00:07:33,320 time God will give these prophets and these messengers more information. 77 00:07:33,320 --> 00:07:40,560 Until when Muhammad came, then the original one, the final religion, was given to Muhammad. 78 00:07:40,560 --> 00:07:43,720 So his idea was that he wasn't bringing a new religion, but... 79 00:07:43,720 --> 00:07:47,080 No, not at all. He was just correcting and finalising an ancient 80 00:07:47,080 --> 00:07:50,440 religion which can be traced right the way back to Abraham. Right. 81 00:07:50,440 --> 00:07:57,560 Because the Arabs have this relation with this area, with Syria and Egypt and Iraq, 82 00:07:57,560 --> 00:08:04,120 they were influenced by Christianity and Judaism, and it seems to me that they wanted a religion of their own. 83 00:08:10,120 --> 00:08:14,680 And the way to prove the supremacy of that religion was war. 84 00:08:14,680 --> 00:08:21,640 In 637, only five years after Muhammad's death, the Arabs conquered Jerusalem. 85 00:08:21,640 --> 00:08:27,600 Not only the most important city in Judaism, but also the place where Christ preached and was crucified. 86 00:08:27,600 --> 00:08:30,800 Where Constantine, Rome's first Christian Emperor, 87 00:08:30,800 --> 00:08:34,920 had ordered the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 88 00:08:34,920 --> 00:08:37,760 And what did Muhammad's successors do when they got there? 89 00:08:37,760 --> 00:08:45,120 They set about visibly demonstrating that Islam was the culmination of Judaism and Christianity. 90 00:08:49,200 --> 00:08:53,480 This is al-Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary. 91 00:08:53,480 --> 00:09:00,080 After Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD this whole area was just rubble. 92 00:09:00,080 --> 00:09:03,840 The first thing that the Caliph Umar, Muhammad's second successor 93 00:09:03,840 --> 00:09:07,160 did when he got here was to order the whole area to be cleared. 94 00:09:09,320 --> 00:09:12,880 And here was built this celestial golden Dome of the Rock. 95 00:09:25,400 --> 00:09:28,720 It's not a mosque, but its true purpose is still unclear. 96 00:09:34,240 --> 00:09:39,600 The rock inside the Dome is this small, lunar patch of limestone, 97 00:09:39,600 --> 00:09:43,640 upon which there used to rest the Arc of the Covenant itself. 98 00:09:50,000 --> 00:09:56,280 If you think of the "Clash of Civilisations" in geological terms, then this is the San Andreas fault. 99 00:09:56,280 --> 00:10:03,680 It was on this rock that Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac, Jacob had his vision of the angel ascending, 100 00:10:03,680 --> 00:10:06,920 somewhere around here Solomon built the first Temple of the Jews 101 00:10:06,920 --> 00:10:13,560 in 950 BC and, of course, here too, Jesus is supposed to have overturned the tables of the moneychangers, 102 00:10:13,560 --> 00:10:20,600 and here too Muhammad ascended into heaven, where he saw Abraham, and Moses, and Jesus. 103 00:10:25,720 --> 00:10:30,960 Muhammad's "Night Journey" is celebrated by this mosque, the Al Aqsa, or Farthest Mosque. 104 00:10:30,960 --> 00:10:33,280 The importance of these heavenly encounters, 105 00:10:33,280 --> 00:10:40,000 and the location of the mosque, is that they cement Muhammad's status as the last Prophet. 106 00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:43,800 Am I right in thinking that when Muhammad ascended to the seventh 107 00:10:43,800 --> 00:10:48,600 heaven on the night flight he meets Abraham, and Moses, and Jesus? 108 00:10:48,600 --> 00:10:50,600 It's not just a matter of meeting. 109 00:10:50,600 --> 00:10:52,440 It's more than meeting them. 110 00:10:52,440 --> 00:10:58,960 It is the Muslims who really believe that Muhammad led a prayer. 111 00:10:58,960 --> 00:11:03,200 He was the imam, he was the preacher, he was the leader for a prayer when 112 00:11:03,200 --> 00:11:08,960 he was joined by Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jesus, and the rest. 113 00:11:08,960 --> 00:11:16,160 Solomon, David. So this is important from a religious point of view, that Muhammad is the last true prophet. 114 00:11:16,160 --> 00:11:20,600 And when Muhammad began his preaching, 115 00:11:20,600 --> 00:11:23,800 they first prayed in the direction of Jerusalem and not Mecca? 116 00:11:23,800 --> 00:11:28,080 Yes, you are quite right, and that took place for 17 months. 117 00:11:28,080 --> 00:11:32,920 For this reason also Jerusalem is considered important to Islam because it is the first qibla. 118 00:11:32,920 --> 00:11:38,640 Qibla is the direction, among other factors, why Jerusalem is important, so it is the first qibla. 119 00:11:41,560 --> 00:11:44,480 The qibla is the direction in which Muslims pray. 120 00:11:44,480 --> 00:11:46,200 Now, of course, towards Mecca. 121 00:11:48,160 --> 00:11:52,400 When you think of the hostility that now seems to exist between Islam and 122 00:11:52,400 --> 00:11:58,480 Judaism, it's extraordinary to remember that there are believers in all three religions 123 00:11:58,480 --> 00:12:01,840 who hold that this holy hillside, the Mount of Olives, 124 00:12:01,840 --> 00:12:06,120 is the place where the resurrection of the dead will begin. 125 00:12:06,120 --> 00:12:12,360 And the dead of all three faiths lie in close proximity, waiting for God's great wake up call. 126 00:12:16,520 --> 00:12:21,000 But whatever reconciliation takes place in the afterlife, we must deal with the present 127 00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:25,960 and the historic resentments fuelled by the occupation of each other's territory. 128 00:12:28,480 --> 00:12:31,400 The annals of military history have nothing to match 129 00:12:31,400 --> 00:12:36,640 the speed and success of the Arabs' lightning conquests in the 7th and 8th century. 130 00:12:38,120 --> 00:12:40,520 The Prophet died in 632, 131 00:12:40,520 --> 00:12:46,960 and four decades later they settled in Egypt and Central Persia. 132 00:12:48,800 --> 00:12:52,640 They stretched from Toledo, in al-Andalus, medieval Spain, 133 00:12:52,640 --> 00:12:55,040 to the Sindh Valley in Pakistan today. 134 00:12:59,040 --> 00:13:04,320 The most prevalent and popular view is the classical one that 135 00:13:04,320 --> 00:13:08,200 Islam was programmed for success. 136 00:13:08,200 --> 00:13:14,120 And the fact that it so rapidly swept 137 00:13:14,120 --> 00:13:18,240 all over the Mediterranean world, 138 00:13:18,240 --> 00:13:21,640 and the conquests, 139 00:13:21,640 --> 00:13:26,200 are regarded as a special miracle 140 00:13:26,200 --> 00:13:30,360 granted by God in order to confirm the truth 141 00:13:30,360 --> 00:13:35,040 of the Islamic religion and the Islamic message. 142 00:13:35,040 --> 00:13:39,280 And this is why you have a revivalist movement, 143 00:13:39,280 --> 00:13:43,120 that if you revive your commitment to Islam 144 00:13:43,120 --> 00:13:46,040 then the divine favour will come back, 145 00:13:46,040 --> 00:13:52,560 will again prove that our God is the true and correct one. 146 00:13:56,120 --> 00:14:01,720 Arab horsemen carved huge tracts from the enfeebled empires of Persia 147 00:14:01,720 --> 00:14:06,200 and the Eastern Roman Empire, known as the Byzantine Empire to those in the West. 148 00:14:06,200 --> 00:14:10,880 And as they swept through the eastern Roman empire they found Christian heretics 149 00:14:10,880 --> 00:14:14,480 who had at least this in common with Islam 150 00:14:14,480 --> 00:14:19,640 that they denied Orthodox teaching about the divinity of Christ. 151 00:14:19,640 --> 00:14:23,160 There were all sorts of sects holding all sorts of positions. 152 00:14:23,160 --> 00:14:26,600 Enophysites, Monophysites, Nestorians, Copts. 153 00:14:26,600 --> 00:14:29,720 And these heretics were increasingly persecuted 154 00:14:29,720 --> 00:14:34,560 by the middle of the 5th century by the Orthodox Church in Byzantium. 155 00:14:38,560 --> 00:14:41,720 Fed up with being bossed about by their Byzantine overlords, 156 00:14:41,720 --> 00:14:46,160 they may have been attracted by one aspect of Islam in particular. 157 00:14:46,160 --> 00:14:49,400 There is no clergy in Islam. 158 00:14:49,400 --> 00:14:52,960 Any Muslim who just adopts Islam 159 00:14:52,960 --> 00:14:57,360 has no middle-man between him or her and Almighty God. 160 00:14:57,360 --> 00:15:01,440 So it was not like Judaism or Christianity. 161 00:15:01,440 --> 00:15:06,360 That encouraged many people to adopt this simple, direct religion. 162 00:15:15,000 --> 00:15:20,040 From the very beginning, Islam was so much more than a private relationship between man and God. 163 00:15:21,960 --> 00:15:26,560 Muhammad was a political and military leader, as well as the conduit of his faith. 164 00:15:28,840 --> 00:15:33,240 And the faith he propounded wasn't just about the cultivation of your immortal soul. 165 00:15:33,240 --> 00:15:37,160 It was about creating the perfect society on earth. 166 00:15:37,160 --> 00:15:39,840 An Islamic programme for the human race. 167 00:15:43,040 --> 00:15:48,560 Year one of the Muslim calendar is based on that essentially political moment when Muhammad 168 00:15:48,560 --> 00:15:53,680 and his followers left Mecca to set up a new Muslim society in Medina. 169 00:15:55,880 --> 00:16:00,240 Even though Islam for the first 10 or 12 years was a persecuted group in Mecca, 170 00:16:00,240 --> 00:16:02,480 when they moved to Medina in the year 622, 171 00:16:02,480 --> 00:16:03,960 in the famous Hijra, 172 00:16:03,960 --> 00:16:08,480 the famous emigration from Mecca to Medina, Muhammad becomes... 173 00:16:08,480 --> 00:16:13,840 A militant figure? He's a religious leader and a political leader from the very beginning. 174 00:16:13,840 --> 00:16:19,920 This is why Muslims don't believe in separation between state and church. 175 00:16:19,920 --> 00:16:24,120 I myself believe that there was a separation between state and church. 176 00:16:24,120 --> 00:16:31,400 Because when we read the Koran, the Koran speaks almost only about religion. 177 00:16:31,400 --> 00:16:34,840 It doesn't speak about the state and how to run the state. 178 00:16:34,840 --> 00:16:36,480 I believe there was even 179 00:16:36,480 --> 00:16:40,680 a separation between the church and the state even in the time of Muhammad. 180 00:16:40,680 --> 00:16:48,200 How to appoint a caliph, how to run the state, how many ministers to be there... 181 00:16:48,200 --> 00:16:50,360 everything. Everything is secular. 182 00:16:50,360 --> 00:16:55,440 But for some reason the theologians insist that this was part of the religion. 183 00:16:58,360 --> 00:17:01,040 Religion and politics are inextricably mixed 184 00:17:01,040 --> 00:17:04,880 in the notion of sharia, the Islamic code of religious law. 185 00:17:04,880 --> 00:17:10,240 This has been developed over centuries by religious and legal scholars. 186 00:17:10,240 --> 00:17:13,000 It's based on the Koran and the life of the Prophet 187 00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:17,480 and it has rules for just about every aspect of daily life. 188 00:17:17,480 --> 00:17:20,120 Theoretically, Allah is the governor. 189 00:17:20,120 --> 00:17:25,320 And he put sharia, or what we call the law of Allah. 190 00:17:25,320 --> 00:17:29,120 The Government is 191 00:17:29,120 --> 00:17:32,520 obliged to guard, 192 00:17:32,520 --> 00:17:35,200 to defend, the sharia. 193 00:17:35,200 --> 00:17:41,240 But they are not above it, they are submitted, they are subjected to the sharia also. 194 00:17:43,320 --> 00:17:49,400 And it was up to the people to decide who is good to rule over them. 195 00:17:51,320 --> 00:17:57,680 But if the ruler, and there are many examples of this in Islamic history, 196 00:17:57,680 --> 00:18:01,520 if the ruler insulted their faith, by any way, 197 00:18:01,520 --> 00:18:04,320 they had to revolt against him. 198 00:18:07,680 --> 00:18:11,320 We have seen even in our own time how militant Islamic groups 199 00:18:11,320 --> 00:18:14,720 can target rulers of Muslim countries 200 00:18:14,720 --> 00:18:20,200 for not adhering to sharia, and we have seen how those leaders can pay a terrible price. 201 00:18:20,200 --> 00:18:25,960 Like the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, assassinated in 1981. 202 00:18:29,600 --> 00:18:32,680 The very same accusations, of a certain worldliness, 203 00:18:32,680 --> 00:18:36,400 a willingness to compromise, were made about the Umayyads, 204 00:18:36,400 --> 00:18:40,960 the first dynasty to rule the Muslim world. 205 00:18:40,960 --> 00:18:45,520 The Umayyads took control less than 30 years after the Prophet's death 206 00:18:45,520 --> 00:18:48,520 and here was the first sharp contradiction 207 00:18:48,520 --> 00:18:53,600 between political expediency and the purest demands of Islam. 208 00:18:53,600 --> 00:18:56,920 There were tensions between the ruling class and the ulema, 209 00:18:56,920 --> 00:18:59,200 the religious leaders of the community. 210 00:18:59,200 --> 00:19:02,400 That was there from the very beginning, and ultimately it's what 211 00:19:02,400 --> 00:19:05,720 caused a split between Shia Islam and Sunni Islam. 212 00:19:07,760 --> 00:19:11,240 This is a split that goes back to whether or not you believe that 213 00:19:11,240 --> 00:19:14,680 the ruler of the community needs to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad or not. 214 00:19:16,320 --> 00:19:19,480 And here exactly is a split between religion and politics. 215 00:19:19,480 --> 00:19:24,560 The Shia eventually became more of a religious tradition and less of a political one. 216 00:19:24,560 --> 00:19:28,240 And the Umayyads went on and carried on as they had before. 217 00:19:30,680 --> 00:19:35,000 As so often, the doctrinal split was really about power. 218 00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:37,320 The Umayyads were certainly Muslims, 219 00:19:37,320 --> 00:19:40,280 but their real interest was in ruling. 220 00:19:40,280 --> 00:19:43,240 Having a new territory is one thing. 221 00:19:43,240 --> 00:19:46,680 Controlling it, administering it is totally another. 222 00:19:46,680 --> 00:19:48,760 They penetrated, 223 00:19:48,760 --> 00:19:53,680 conquered, but settlement took centuries. 224 00:19:53,680 --> 00:19:56,320 They really acquired the administration 225 00:19:56,320 --> 00:20:01,080 of the Byzantines, their palaces, their guards, their weaponry. 226 00:20:01,080 --> 00:20:07,920 It took them more than a century until the administration became really Arabic. 227 00:20:11,840 --> 00:20:14,320 They didn't live with the rest of the population. 228 00:20:14,320 --> 00:20:19,240 They established military camps, and there they spoke Arabic. 229 00:20:19,240 --> 00:20:24,920 So everybody from the cities and from the villages who went there, they had to speak Arabic. 230 00:20:24,920 --> 00:20:28,680 Because they are the leaders, and they have the money, and this and that. 231 00:20:28,680 --> 00:20:32,880 So by doing that, slowly the other people learned Arabic. 232 00:20:32,880 --> 00:20:37,360 And slowly they lost their languages and they spoke Arabic. 233 00:20:39,960 --> 00:20:44,160 Arabic replaced Greek and Latin as the language of the imperial class. 234 00:20:44,160 --> 00:20:48,000 And soon the Arabs were developing their own structures of government, 235 00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:52,960 complete with the universal expression of their economic and political mastery. 236 00:20:52,960 --> 00:20:54,760 Arab currency. 237 00:20:54,760 --> 00:20:58,520 It must have been an amazing shock for the Byzantine Empire. 238 00:20:58,520 --> 00:21:01,800 They'd had 700 years of thinking the Roman Empire would never fall, 239 00:21:01,800 --> 00:21:06,880 and suddenly they have these coins circulating which don't have the Emperor's head on them. 240 00:21:06,880 --> 00:21:11,560 Is that right? Yes. And this is really what proves that the Arabs didn't only have 241 00:21:11,560 --> 00:21:18,120 the military ability, but also the administrative, economic, and cultural ability. 242 00:21:20,800 --> 00:21:25,960 Surrounded by populations that were overwhelmingly Christian or Jewish, 243 00:21:25,960 --> 00:21:30,960 the new Arab rulers behaved with subtlety and intelligence. 244 00:21:30,960 --> 00:21:34,120 Many non-Muslims did eventually convert to Islam. 245 00:21:34,120 --> 00:21:37,200 Those that didn't paid a special poll tax, called the jizya. 246 00:21:37,200 --> 00:21:43,920 But there was no compulsion to convert, and no ban on the Jewish and Christian faiths. 247 00:21:43,920 --> 00:21:49,240 It's a myth to think that the Arabs converted people to Islam at the point of sword. That didn't happen. 248 00:21:49,240 --> 00:21:52,200 It was not completely unheard of, but it was rare. 249 00:21:52,200 --> 00:21:58,160 And usually it was a decision that people made themselves for a whole variety of reasons. 250 00:21:58,160 --> 00:22:02,360 It was a combination of personal, political, social, cultural... 251 00:22:04,400 --> 00:22:08,320 When we look back at the history of this fabulous Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, 252 00:22:08,320 --> 00:22:11,920 we have a tantalising glimpse of a brief shining moment 253 00:22:11,920 --> 00:22:16,840 when Christians and Muslims were even prepared to share the same house of God. 254 00:22:19,600 --> 00:22:24,680 People have been worshipping on the site of this Umayyad Mosque for 3,000 years. 255 00:22:24,680 --> 00:22:29,600 First they venerated the Aramaean god Hadad, then it was the Temple of Jupiter, 256 00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:32,960 then the Christians converted that into a basilica, 257 00:22:32,960 --> 00:22:38,400 and when the Muslims arrived here in 636 AD, it became part mosque, part church. 258 00:22:38,400 --> 00:22:42,720 With the Christians coming in one door, and the Muslims entering the other. 259 00:22:42,720 --> 00:22:47,720 And even when the Muslims razed that building to create this enormous mosque, 260 00:22:47,720 --> 00:22:54,320 it still physically expressed the organic inter-relationship between the two religions. 261 00:22:54,320 --> 00:22:58,080 There's a shrine to the head of John the Baptist with real skin and hair, 262 00:22:58,080 --> 00:23:03,720 there's a minaret of Jesus, and Justinian II sent, from Constantinople, 263 00:23:03,720 --> 00:23:09,200 Byzantine craftsmen, to help create these fabulous golden mosaics. 264 00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:35,960 But as time went on, restrictions began to tighten around the Christians, 265 00:23:35,960 --> 00:23:38,840 even though they were in the overwhelming majority. 266 00:23:38,840 --> 00:23:42,960 They weren't allowed inside the mosque, they weren't allowed to build new churches, or to repair 267 00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:46,280 old ones, or to go out in the streets without a zunar, a special identifying belt, 268 00:23:46,280 --> 00:23:51,920 or to beat their gongs too loudly, or to build their houses higher than Muslim houses. 269 00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:57,080 You could not imagine a more effective system of cultural dominance. 270 00:24:03,040 --> 00:24:07,360 No, the Christians didn't have anything like equality under the Muslims in Damascus. 271 00:24:07,360 --> 00:24:12,880 But if you compare their position to the grisly fates of the Jews or heretics under Christian rule 272 00:24:12,880 --> 00:24:16,440 then you could argue that the Muslims were really quite generous. 273 00:24:18,160 --> 00:24:23,640 And I think today there's a lazy prejudice about Muslim imams, the leaders of religious services. 274 00:24:23,640 --> 00:24:30,400 An assumption that they're all hook-clawed fanatics, preaching hatred against other religions. 275 00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:39,680 One way to correct that prejudice is to go on a Friday to the Damascus mosque 276 00:24:39,680 --> 00:24:45,360 where Dr Muhammad al-Habash pours forth a mesmerising gospel of tolerance. 277 00:24:45,360 --> 00:24:49,160 SUNG PRAYERS 278 00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:14,880 As in all mosques, and indeed in all synagogues, men and women worship separately. 279 00:25:21,640 --> 00:25:25,680 Dr al-Habash notes repeatedly that Allah is the god of all men, 280 00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:29,240 and highlights positive moments in the treatment of Jews and Christians 281 00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:31,160 by the caliphs who succeeded Muhammad. 282 00:25:33,600 --> 00:25:38,160 We believe there is wisdom in Christianity, there is wisdom 283 00:25:38,160 --> 00:25:42,680 in Judaism, there is wisdom in Hinduism, there is wisdom... 284 00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:45,800 Every place around the world there is wisdom. 285 00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:49,240 And this is our message, to search for wisdom. 286 00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:58,000 Now, Dr al-Habash is also a Syrian MP and it may be that he's telling me what he thinks I want to hear, 287 00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:01,600 but it sounds sincere enough. 288 00:26:01,600 --> 00:26:06,320 Our message is God created all of humanity. 289 00:26:06,320 --> 00:26:09,640 All of humanity are like one family. 290 00:26:09,640 --> 00:26:12,880 This is a family of God. 291 00:26:12,880 --> 00:26:15,840 We believe God is one, 292 00:26:15,840 --> 00:26:18,520 but his names are many. 293 00:26:18,520 --> 00:26:21,240 Reality is one, but its ways are many. 294 00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:30,920 There is something in al-Habash's open-minded approach that recalls the Golden Age of Islam, 295 00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:38,640 the intellectual adventurousness of the new dynasty that took over the leadership of the Muslims in 750. 296 00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:41,840 They were called the Abbasids and they moved the centre 297 00:26:41,840 --> 00:26:45,960 of gravity of Islam eastwards to a new-built city, Baghdad. 298 00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:51,880 Baghdad was the major administrative and economic capital, 299 00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:55,360 and cultural capital, and the intellectuals, 300 00:26:55,360 --> 00:27:00,360 the thinkers resided there, and they were patronised by the State. 301 00:27:05,480 --> 00:27:09,920 Scholars and artists and scientists could travel freely 302 00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:14,360 across the territories that the Abbasids controlled, and they went 303 00:27:14,360 --> 00:27:17,880 specifically to search for teachers. 304 00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:20,080 So they were in pursuit of knowledge. 305 00:27:26,240 --> 00:27:31,480 This is al-Azhar University, founded in 975 AD at a time when Oxford 306 00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:33,880 was still a place where an ox forded a river. 307 00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:39,600 While the people of Oxfordshire were living in huts of wattle and daub, 308 00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:43,240 Arab scholars were poring over translations of the classics, 309 00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:48,080 from Persian, Chinese, Sanskrit and, above all, from Greek. 310 00:27:52,280 --> 00:27:58,480 Anything scientific or philosophical was preserved, studied, and then passed on round the Arab world, 311 00:27:58,480 --> 00:28:01,360 through North Africa and back to Europe. 312 00:28:05,240 --> 00:28:08,440 This second-hand learning apart, there were precious few contacts 313 00:28:08,440 --> 00:28:12,240 between Muslims and Western European Christians. 314 00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:18,560 In so far as the Europeans knew anything it was derived from the Arab sorties into their territory. 315 00:28:18,560 --> 00:28:23,600 Some of the early western stereotypes of Muslims that resulted from these struggles 316 00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:27,240 are still lurking in our collective unconscious, even now. 317 00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:37,720 Within 80 years of the death of Mohammad, the Arabs landed in western Europe. 318 00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:44,960 Here then was the beginning of a clash of civilisations and it took place in Spain. 319 00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:54,040 I'm here in Tarifa, on the southernmost tip of the European continent. 320 00:28:54,040 --> 00:28:59,200 Called after Tarif who came here in 710 on a reconnaissance mission. 321 00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:04,400 A year later, they came back, mob-handed, captured the whole of Spain up to the Pyrenees 322 00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:10,640 within seven years, and within about 20 years they're only a couple of hundred miles short of Paris itself. 323 00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:18,600 Today, Tarifa is a kite-surfers' hangout. 324 00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:35,760 And if you want to know why the wind is so strong, it's because this is the Atlantic coast. 325 00:29:35,760 --> 00:29:39,720 The Arabs started at the Red Sea and within 80 years, 326 00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:43,200 they'd come as far west as it's possible to go. 327 00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:45,320 Or is it? 328 00:29:45,320 --> 00:29:50,720 It was in 711 that a Moorish general, Tariq Ibn Ziyad, came here, and having given his 329 00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:53,680 name to the rock of Gibraltar, Jabal Tariq, 330 00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:57,000 he then urged his horse into the waves and cried, 331 00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:03,040 "Unknown land to the West, if I could find thee, I would convert thee to the true faith." 332 00:30:03,040 --> 00:30:06,840 Now that has to be one of the greatest "what ifs" of history. 333 00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:11,960 Imagine if a Moorish general, and not a Spanish sponsored navigator, 334 00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:14,160 had discovered the New World. 335 00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:18,080 Instead, they pushed on north into France, 336 00:30:18,080 --> 00:30:20,440 and in 733, there took place a battle 337 00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:25,320 that has loomed large in the fevered imaginations of western Europeans. 338 00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:29,960 Because it was only at Poitiers, less than 200 miles south of Paris, 339 00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:33,440 that the Muslim armies were finally halted by Charles Martel. 340 00:30:36,320 --> 00:30:40,960 For a long time, it was seen as the turning point of European destiny 341 00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:42,800 and in the words of Gibbon, 342 00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:48,240 "The Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates and the Arabian fleet 343 00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:50,680 "might have sailed without a naval combat 344 00:30:50,680 --> 00:30:52,440 "into the mouth of the Thames. 345 00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:57,760 "Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford 346 00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:02,520 "and her pupils might demonstrate to a circumcised people 347 00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:06,240 "the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Muhammad." 348 00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:09,400 Now I'm a big fan of Edward Gibbon, 349 00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:12,440 but is he still thought to be sound, 200 years on? 350 00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:16,640 Myriam, tell me about the Battle of Poitiers. 351 00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:19,000 I've always been told it was a real key moment 352 00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:20,440 for the history of Europe. 353 00:31:20,440 --> 00:31:22,160 Charles Martel, had he not won, 354 00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:25,960 the whole of European history would have been different. Is that right? 355 00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:28,880 No, it's not. That's not right? That's not right at all! 356 00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:31,680 Wrong again! Yes, totally wrong. 357 00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:39,120 In fact, this battle is one battle inside all the battles. 358 00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:42,200 In fact, we are at the moment 359 00:31:42,200 --> 00:31:47,920 when Muslims could not go further into the north. 360 00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:53,720 You see, at that time, they began to be... 361 00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:56,560 SHE SPEAKS FRENCH 362 00:31:56,560 --> 00:31:59,440 To be beaten. Yes, they began to be beaten. 363 00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:00,840 In fact there is Poitiers, 364 00:32:00,840 --> 00:32:04,240 but there are all the battles. They were starting to lose anyway. 365 00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:08,080 Exactly. You mean they were reaching the natural limits of their advance? 366 00:32:08,080 --> 00:32:09,440 Yes, that is the idea. OK. 367 00:32:09,440 --> 00:32:12,120 They had settled in Spain, 368 00:32:12,120 --> 00:32:14,720 and also in the south of France, 369 00:32:14,720 --> 00:32:19,720 so I think that they wanted to stay, they wanted to consolidate. 370 00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,840 Consolidate that particular territory? Yes, what they had. 371 00:32:25,760 --> 00:32:32,560 In France, Poitiers became part of a national myth as historians looked back at the 7th and 8th centuries 372 00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:38,640 and concluded that this first clash between Islam and Christianity was genuinely decisive 373 00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:40,640 in the creation of modern Europe 374 00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:43,480 and in the destruction of the Ancient World. 375 00:32:43,480 --> 00:32:48,520 For centuries, indeed, the greatest historical minds have puzzled 376 00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:52,560 over why the Roman empire declined and fell in the first place. 377 00:32:52,560 --> 00:32:59,240 In 1935, the great Belgian historian Henri Pirenne, supplied a revolutionary answer. 378 00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:05,080 It wasn't the Germanic tribes who wrecked the unity of the Roman empire, said Pirenne. Oh, no. 379 00:33:05,080 --> 00:33:09,840 They may have had wacky Germanic names like Gondebaud and Clodomir, 380 00:33:09,840 --> 00:33:11,960 but they still used Roman coins, 381 00:33:11,960 --> 00:33:16,440 they still spoke Latin of a kind, they still aspired to romanitas. 382 00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:19,520 And in fact it wasn't, said Pirenne, until the middle 383 00:33:19,520 --> 00:33:24,080 of the seventh century when suddenly, the Arabs arrived. 384 00:33:24,080 --> 00:33:25,680 And with lightning speed, 385 00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:30,280 they swept through some of the richest territories of the old Roman empire. 386 00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:36,680 And it was then, he said, that the economic unity of the Roman system was destroyed, and the sweet, slow, 387 00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:40,240 sunset of the Roman empire gave way to the Middle Ages. 388 00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:42,320 And instead of a great whole, you had 389 00:33:42,320 --> 00:33:46,240 two opposed civilisations with little understanding of each other, 390 00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:48,640 and not even much interest in each other. 391 00:33:55,200 --> 00:33:59,160 What is so sad is that the same could still be said today. 392 00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:06,440 Let's look at Spain, where the Moors, as the Arabs here were known, were established for 900 years 393 00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:09,640 and where the glories of medieval Muslim and Jewish culture 394 00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:13,000 are still five star items on the tourist trail. 395 00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:17,440 Here's Maimonides, the Jewish sage, born in Cordoba, 396 00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:20,560 the foremost doctor of his age, a polymath 397 00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:24,480 whose career was only made possible by the Muslim Enlightenment. 398 00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:36,480 Though his toe is still stroked by reverential tourists, 399 00:34:36,480 --> 00:34:40,080 and though this very flamenco music may have Muslim roots, 400 00:34:40,080 --> 00:34:43,520 there are some Spaniards who are a little resentful 401 00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:47,680 of the touristic obsession with Spain's Moorish past. 402 00:34:51,080 --> 00:34:52,920 Take the Great Mosque at Cordoba. 403 00:34:52,920 --> 00:34:56,240 You'll find plenty of Spaniards keen to point out that it's now 404 00:34:56,240 --> 00:34:59,560 a Roman Catholic cathedral, built on the site of an even earlier 405 00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:02,640 Christian church, dating from the time of the Visigoths, 406 00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:04,320 whom the Moors had superseded. 407 00:35:11,640 --> 00:35:14,720 And somehow that misses the point - that this mosque 408 00:35:14,720 --> 00:35:18,080 is one of the most extraordinary religious buildings on Earth. 409 00:35:32,080 --> 00:35:35,680 It's structures like this that gave medieval Cordoba 410 00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:38,200 the name, "the Ornament of the World." 411 00:35:38,200 --> 00:35:42,920 With its fountains, its thousands of libraries, its well-paved, 412 00:35:42,920 --> 00:35:46,760 well-lit streets, it made places like London look, frankly, barbaric. 413 00:35:49,240 --> 00:35:53,960 And 10th century observers came back stunned with tales of this city 414 00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:58,280 of 900 baths and its library with 600,000 volumes 415 00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:02,200 and everywhere, men devising new techniques for irrigation, 416 00:36:02,200 --> 00:36:04,440 silk manufacture, algebra, astronomy, 417 00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:10,080 before knocking off a quick lyric in which they likened their beloved to a pomegranate or a persimmon - 418 00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:16,040 on the new paper they were introducing from Andalusia to the rest of Europe. 419 00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:22,560 And if they were really lucky, the visitors might be admitted 420 00:36:22,560 --> 00:36:24,960 to the enchanted world of Madinat al-Zahra, 421 00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:30,120 a 10th century summer palace built by the Muslim caliph of Cordob 422 00:36:30,120 --> 00:36:32,800 and still being excavated today. 423 00:36:41,960 --> 00:36:45,600 This is only a tiny fraction of the 112 acre, 424 00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:48,520 10th century Muslim Versailles, 425 00:36:48,520 --> 00:36:52,400 complete with bowery nooks, and fragrant jasmine-scented walks. 426 00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:57,680 And if you're asking yourself why the caliph built this here on the hill overlooking Cordoba, 427 00:36:57,680 --> 00:36:59,680 it wasn't just because it was cooler, 428 00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:02,440 or because they could make use of the running water. 429 00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:05,640 It was so that the people for miles around could see this 430 00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:10,840 great white city, this symbol of Muslim power and luxury. 431 00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:16,000 In fact, the whole thing was so deeply civilised that recent 432 00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:20,720 commentators have been tempted to idealise Moorish al-Andalus. 433 00:37:20,720 --> 00:37:26,360 They have seen it as a social paradise, a lost Eden in which Moors, Jews and Christians 434 00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:29,800 lived in the kind of perfect harmony you associate 435 00:37:29,800 --> 00:37:33,760 with a glutinous song by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. 436 00:37:33,760 --> 00:37:36,320 They call it "convivencia" - 437 00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:40,400 living together. 438 00:37:40,400 --> 00:37:45,120 Western historians have long had a tendency to idealise al-Andalus, 439 00:37:45,120 --> 00:37:47,760 Muslim Spain, as a kind of dream world. 440 00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:49,920 A happy community of poets and scholars 441 00:37:49,920 --> 00:37:51,720 with women's writing circles, 442 00:37:51,720 --> 00:37:57,440 and important astronomical discoveries, as though 10th century Cordoba offered a beacon of hope 443 00:37:57,440 --> 00:37:59,280 to us from 1,000 years ago, 444 00:37:59,280 --> 00:38:03,920 about how Christians and Muslims can still live together happily. 445 00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:07,320 And yet, of course, it wasn't quite really like that. 446 00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:11,120 What sticks in the mind is not just the occasional persecutions in which 447 00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:17,280 both sides indulged, it's the stand-offishness of one religious community toward the other. 448 00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:20,600 The lack of interest. The refusal properly to mix. 449 00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:24,240 Convivencia may have meant living next to each other, 450 00:38:24,240 --> 00:38:27,080 but it wasn't a multicultural melting pot. 451 00:38:28,680 --> 00:38:32,400 For one thing, the Arab overlords conducted their usual policies of 452 00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:36,120 discrimination against the non-Muslims in their midst. 453 00:38:36,120 --> 00:38:39,920 They had to accept second class citizenship. 454 00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:44,040 They had disadvantages, like not being able 455 00:38:44,040 --> 00:38:46,240 to hold power offices. 456 00:38:46,240 --> 00:38:50,880 They could not be superior to Muslims in any way. 457 00:38:50,880 --> 00:38:54,760 Say, to have a Muslim slave, was impossible. 458 00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:58,760 Whereas a Muslim could have Christian slaves, or Jewish slaves. 459 00:38:58,760 --> 00:39:01,640 And were they encouraged to convert to Islam? 460 00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:09,480 Yes, they were. There was a proselytising process in all the areas conquered by the Muslims. 461 00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:12,480 Of course, the Muslims 462 00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:16,360 thought that the rest of the people were wrong in their beliefs. 463 00:39:16,360 --> 00:39:22,400 And so, they wanted the rest of the population to become Muslim. 464 00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:24,600 But there was no compulsion. 465 00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:32,640 No compulsion, perhaps, but plenty of common sense reasons to get with the winners. 466 00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:36,440 Gradually, al-Andalus became mostly Muslim. 467 00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:42,720 And even the Christians who maintained their faith became thoroughly Arabised. 468 00:39:42,720 --> 00:39:46,360 They were called Mozarabs, wannabe Arabs. 469 00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:53,400 These very reduced Christian minorities were also losing Latin, 470 00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:56,920 because of the pressure of Arabic on them. 471 00:39:56,920 --> 00:40:01,560 So, for instance, we have that by the 10th century in Cordoba, 472 00:40:01,560 --> 00:40:05,040 for instance, the gospels were being translated into Arabic. 473 00:40:05,040 --> 00:40:08,600 That's amazing. The psalms were also being translated into Arabic. 474 00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:11,680 Into Arabic? Yes, because the Christians were losing Latin. 475 00:40:14,560 --> 00:40:16,600 For some Christians, 476 00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:19,760 this inexorable Arabisation was a cause of deep dismay. 477 00:40:21,880 --> 00:40:25,880 By 850, some Cordoban Christians could take it no more. 478 00:40:25,880 --> 00:40:28,960 Take the case of Isaac, who turned up one day 479 00:40:28,960 --> 00:40:31,920 at the office of the qadi, the local religious chief, 480 00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:34,640 and announced that he wanted to become a Muslim. 481 00:40:34,640 --> 00:40:39,600 The qadi instructed Isaac in Islam, at which point Isaac flabbergasts 482 00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:43,880 the qadi by insulting Muhammad and abusing Islam. 483 00:40:43,880 --> 00:40:46,720 The qadi, of course, strikes Isaac. 484 00:40:46,720 --> 00:40:51,240 Isaac then says, "How dare you strike a face that resembles the image of God?" 485 00:40:51,240 --> 00:40:53,480 The qadi gives him one last chance - 486 00:40:53,480 --> 00:40:58,240 Are you drunk, having a bad day, something going wrong at home? Is there anything I can do? 487 00:40:58,240 --> 00:41:03,680 And Isaac says, no, no, no, he's absolutely determined to die for Christianity. 488 00:41:03,680 --> 00:41:05,520 Which, of course, he duly does. 489 00:41:05,520 --> 00:41:11,920 In a 9 year period, 47 further Christian martyrs followed Isaac's lead. 490 00:41:13,480 --> 00:41:15,880 We interpret this movement 491 00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:20,240 of the so-called voluntary martyrs as a movement of frustration from 492 00:41:20,240 --> 00:41:26,480 people who were losing their social power at that time here in Cordoba. 493 00:41:26,480 --> 00:41:30,320 Because the rate of conversion was so high that these people just couldn't 494 00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:34,320 stand the idea that Christianity was becoming a minority religion. 495 00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:38,360 So it was a kind of desperate movement in desperate circumstances. 496 00:41:47,400 --> 00:41:51,200 Now, there's no real analogy between the Cordoba martyrs 497 00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:53,400 and the Muslim suicide bombers of today - 498 00:41:53,400 --> 00:41:56,600 the Christians didn't set out to kill innocent people. 499 00:41:56,600 --> 00:42:00,440 But the two groups are alike in at least one respect. 500 00:42:00,440 --> 00:42:05,040 I think the kind of spectacular terrorism we are seeing in the Islamic world is very much, 501 00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:10,280 in my interpretation, very much a product of a sense of desperation. 502 00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:16,760 Rather than of self-confidence. 503 00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:20,600 All other means have been used, and there's nothing left except 504 00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:24,040 this kind of destructive, spectacular terrorism. 505 00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:32,040 In the history of Spain, 506 00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:35,960 religious communities have taken it in turn to suffer despair. 507 00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:39,400 First the Christians experienced the erosion of their religious 508 00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:42,600 and cultural identity and responded with fanatical protest. 509 00:42:42,600 --> 00:42:48,120 Then it was the turn of the Jews and the Muslims, expelled in the 1600s. 510 00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:51,120 And under the Catholic monarchs and General Franco, 511 00:42:51,120 --> 00:42:54,240 it was the Muslim contribution that was airbrushed out 512 00:42:54,240 --> 00:43:00,120 of history, and Catholicism became a state-sponsored religion. 513 00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:03,240 I was born in a generation, under the Franco regime, 514 00:43:03,240 --> 00:43:06,920 where everybody was forced to be Catholic. 515 00:43:06,920 --> 00:43:09,880 When any other religion, 516 00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:13,160 different from Catholicism, was forbidden. 517 00:43:13,160 --> 00:43:19,920 And even you could go into prison if you have any outward manifestation of any other religion. 518 00:43:28,840 --> 00:43:35,400 Even today, when Spain's Muslim heritage generates so many millions of tourist dollars, you can detect 519 00:43:35,400 --> 00:43:38,880 a certain local sniffiness about our Moorish obsessions. 520 00:43:38,880 --> 00:43:41,600 "Don't forget the Visigoths", they cry, 521 00:43:41,600 --> 00:43:45,720 and they point to the few defaced lumps that remain from the era 522 00:43:45,720 --> 00:43:47,680 of the Christian barbarians, 523 00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:51,760 as though the 900-year Arab presence was a kind of aberration. 524 00:43:51,760 --> 00:43:53,760 THEY SPEAK LOCAL LANGUAGE 525 00:44:27,760 --> 00:44:31,120 You think much of the culture is Islamic? 526 00:44:31,120 --> 00:44:32,640 No! No? 527 00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:34,320 No! No, no, no! 528 00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:36,440 It derives from the ancient Visigoth, 529 00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:38,480 from the ancient Christian culture? 530 00:44:38,480 --> 00:44:41,320 Yes. Here, the Visigoths and in the North, the Celtic. 531 00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:04,320 The sheer ignorance that exists in this country about Islam 532 00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:09,440 and about the Islamic past, I mean, that's a pity. 533 00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:13,680 It's surprising to what extent people ignore the richness 534 00:45:13,680 --> 00:45:16,960 of the Islamic civilisation in this country. 535 00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:22,040 People want to somehow stress this Visigothic heritage, 536 00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:25,880 but obviously, the Visigothic heritage is, I mean... 537 00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:28,320 It's pretty difficult to work out what it is. 538 00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:30,960 It's pretty difficult to work it out, yeah. 539 00:45:30,960 --> 00:45:35,120 Many people are proud of the Moorish past. 540 00:45:35,120 --> 00:45:38,720 But that's not to say they look forward to a Moorish future. 541 00:45:38,720 --> 00:45:42,760 We make the difference. Not we, but people in general, 542 00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:46,040 make this difference that the Alhambra was made for 543 00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:50,160 another Moorish people, but not this Moorish people right now. 544 00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:54,000 Not the Moroccans who come and live in modern Granada. Exactly. 545 00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:58,880 The illegal ones. Maybe they have a problem with these people. It's a question of patriotism. 546 00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:05,720 People think Spain is, like, my country. Mi Corazon. 547 00:46:05,720 --> 00:46:10,520 And they want very white and perfect people. 548 00:46:10,520 --> 00:46:14,600 They don't want no Muslim or not anyone to come here. 549 00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:19,040 But maybe half of Spain thinks that it's all right, and the other half 550 00:46:19,040 --> 00:46:23,240 of Spain is like, afraid of this. Maybe they're just scared. 551 00:46:27,440 --> 00:46:32,800 The Spanish are, of course, not alone in suffering from the odd bout of racism or xenophobia. 552 00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:36,240 But if you put the Spanish nation on the psychoanalyst's couch, 553 00:46:36,240 --> 00:46:40,080 it's easy to see how history has conditioned their subconscious. 554 00:46:40,080 --> 00:46:45,320 It is a history of bloody battles between Moor and Christian. 555 00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:51,960 The Christian kings in the north were increasingly warlike and their determination to repel the invader 556 00:46:51,960 --> 00:46:56,320 was fuelled by an increasingly religious fervour, which made life 557 00:46:56,320 --> 00:47:02,120 tricky for the Christians still in Moorish territory in al-Andalus. 558 00:47:02,120 --> 00:47:07,320 Even though legally speaking, they had the same status as Jews, 559 00:47:07,320 --> 00:47:10,800 they were never considered the same as Jews 560 00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:13,440 because they were a fifth column. 561 00:47:13,440 --> 00:47:15,440 They were a military threat? 562 00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:19,760 They could be in contra, they could be spies, they could be seen as 563 00:47:19,760 --> 00:47:24,760 spies or people who had alliances with the Christians of the North. 564 00:47:26,920 --> 00:47:29,200 And yet, it wasn't the Christians 565 00:47:29,200 --> 00:47:33,920 who destroyed this palace of flowers, Madinat al-Zahra, in 1010. 566 00:47:33,920 --> 00:47:37,160 It was Muslim Berber tribesmen. 567 00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:41,280 And this Muslim civil war gave the Christians their chance. 568 00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:43,040 After centuries on the back foot, 569 00:47:43,040 --> 00:47:45,360 Christians were advancing in Spain, 570 00:47:45,360 --> 00:47:48,000 Sicily had been recaptured for the cross, 571 00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:52,000 and now Christian eyes were turning east as they contemplated 572 00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:54,120 a grandiose plan of reconquest. 573 00:47:54,120 --> 00:47:55,960 The Crusades. 574 00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:08,600 Now, it would be fair to say that in the West 575 00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:10,480 these days the word "Crusade", 576 00:48:10,480 --> 00:48:14,360 does not carry its full weight as an unrelenting military operation 577 00:48:14,360 --> 00:48:16,880 actuated by specifically Christian fervour. 578 00:48:16,880 --> 00:48:20,880 For instance, the other day, I heard a colleague of mine call for a "crusade" 579 00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:26,440 to ensure that rubbish skips were installed with flashing lights as well as reflective signs. 580 00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:32,400 I can't imagine that 1,000 swords are going to leap from their scabbards to fight for that one. 581 00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:36,440 And yet when George Bush called for a "crusade" after 9/11, 582 00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:41,920 he started a global panic, because he seemed to be alluding backwards to an epoch 583 00:48:41,920 --> 00:48:46,000 in which Christians fought Muslims, and Muslims fought Christians, 584 00:48:46,000 --> 00:48:47,440 for the sake of religion, 585 00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:50,040 and sometimes for the sake of religion alone. 586 00:48:51,680 --> 00:48:53,040 It began in 1095 587 00:48:53,040 --> 00:48:57,800 with the most bellicose Christian sermon of all time. 588 00:48:57,800 --> 00:49:02,680 Pope Urban II appeared before a vast crowd in Clermont, France, 589 00:49:02,680 --> 00:49:05,520 and called for an armed pilgrimage 590 00:49:05,520 --> 00:49:12,080 against the Muslims in the Holy Land, the place the Muslims had conquered 400 years earlier. 591 00:49:12,080 --> 00:49:18,200 And you may wonder how western Europe plucked up the courage to challenge Muslim supremacy. 592 00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:22,000 On the face of it, we've got a mystery. 593 00:49:22,000 --> 00:49:25,360 For centuries, the Arab world has been firing on all cylinders. 594 00:49:25,360 --> 00:49:29,720 They've been charting the heavens, investigating the circulation of the blood, 595 00:49:29,720 --> 00:49:33,120 and cracking complicated algebraic equations, and they've been 596 00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:37,040 full of intellectual and military confidence, while western Europe 597 00:49:37,040 --> 00:49:39,160 has been sunk in lethargy - 598 00:49:39,160 --> 00:49:44,920 a world of stumbling ox carts and mumbling monks and homicidal popes. 599 00:49:44,920 --> 00:49:47,800 And yet it's western Christendom 600 00:49:47,800 --> 00:49:54,080 that manages to shake itself out of its lethargy, and mount these extraordinary expeditions. 601 00:49:57,160 --> 00:50:01,360 It's partly a function of the relative unity of the two civilisations. 602 00:50:01,360 --> 00:50:04,680 At the height of their powers in the 9th and 10th centuries, 603 00:50:04,680 --> 00:50:07,200 the Muslims were united, but western Europe 604 00:50:07,200 --> 00:50:09,600 was plagued by the feudal system, 605 00:50:09,600 --> 00:50:13,920 with power contested between barons and counts and lords. 606 00:50:13,920 --> 00:50:16,920 Jonathan, you know that film Pulp Fiction, where this guy 607 00:50:16,920 --> 00:50:20,200 called Marcellus says "I'm going to get medieval on your ass"? 608 00:50:20,200 --> 00:50:22,360 And that immediately connotes 609 00:50:22,360 --> 00:50:27,040 ideas of barbarity and violence and very, very nasty practices. 610 00:50:27,040 --> 00:50:29,360 Is that fair on the Middle Ages? 611 00:50:29,360 --> 00:50:36,440 It is, and it isn't. Violence is a very clear and powerful feature of 11th and 12th century Europe. 612 00:50:36,440 --> 00:50:40,440 The reason why it's such a violent society is that order has broken down. 613 00:50:40,440 --> 00:50:46,440 You've got these small lordships, castellans, and these guys are laws unto themselves. 614 00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:51,080 They can charge around attacking peasants, churches, the vulnerable, the weak. 615 00:50:51,080 --> 00:50:55,800 They take money from them, they take their cattle, their crops and they enrich themselves. 616 00:50:57,440 --> 00:51:00,360 At this stage, the popes in Rome were happily 617 00:51:00,360 --> 00:51:04,600 assassinating each other like minor characters from the Sopranos. 618 00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:07,000 But as the 11th century progressed, 619 00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:10,640 the Catholic hierarchy began to get its act together. 620 00:51:10,640 --> 00:51:14,720 The Church decides it has a moral responsibility to do something about this. 621 00:51:14,720 --> 00:51:19,240 It needs to try and steer its flock, if you like, in a better moral direction - violence is bad. 622 00:51:21,080 --> 00:51:25,440 And so one of the things it tries to do is initiate something called the Peace of God. 623 00:51:25,440 --> 00:51:31,600 And what this is, is the Church telling and making knights and people in society swear on an oath 624 00:51:31,600 --> 00:51:34,560 that they will not harm certain groups of people. 625 00:51:34,560 --> 00:51:38,080 The poor, or churchmen. Or the Truce of God. 626 00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:41,520 That for certain periods of time, there will be no violence. 627 00:51:41,520 --> 00:51:45,480 So one of the things it's got to stop people doing is sinning. 628 00:51:45,480 --> 00:51:49,680 And what was the Church's main weapon in the fight against sin? 629 00:51:49,680 --> 00:51:53,360 The promise of eternal damnation, everlasting torment. 630 00:51:53,360 --> 00:51:56,720 And we're not just talking about Heathrow on a bank holiday. 631 00:51:56,720 --> 00:52:01,840 As we can see from this famous carving in Moissac in south-west France. 632 00:52:01,840 --> 00:52:05,200 Now, when did you last hear a Christian mainstream cleric 633 00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:08,720 warn his congregation that they were going to fry in hell? 634 00:52:08,720 --> 00:52:12,400 Is there anyone in the Church of England who still believes in 635 00:52:12,400 --> 00:52:15,360 the great crimson, licking tongues of hellfire, 636 00:52:15,360 --> 00:52:18,560 with grinning demons toasting your spleen on forks? 637 00:52:18,560 --> 00:52:21,560 The last pronouncement I heard from the Church of England was 638 00:52:21,560 --> 00:52:24,400 that even if hell does exist, there may be no-one in it. 639 00:52:24,400 --> 00:52:27,320 Compare that feeble, milky theology 640 00:52:27,320 --> 00:52:32,200 with the genuine terror in the hearts of 12th century Europe. 641 00:52:32,200 --> 00:52:35,160 Look at Luxuria here, the Wages of Sin. 642 00:52:35,160 --> 00:52:40,880 Her breasts have been devoured by serpents, and a toad wreaking some unmentionable vengeance. 643 00:52:40,880 --> 00:52:43,960 We find it difficult to think ourselves back into the minds 644 00:52:43,960 --> 00:52:46,520 of people who were genuinely terrified of hell. 645 00:52:46,520 --> 00:52:52,840 And yet for a medieval churchman, that terror was full of political possibility. 646 00:52:52,840 --> 00:53:00,720 "O peccatores transmutetis nisi mores iudicium durum vobis scitote futurum." 647 00:53:00,720 --> 00:53:05,560 Oh, sinners, unless you shape up, something nasty is going to happen to you. 648 00:53:05,560 --> 00:53:07,760 That was the gist of what the priest said. 649 00:53:11,520 --> 00:53:15,560 Sin was a powerful tool of religious and political control 650 00:53:15,560 --> 00:53:18,800 because the Church could decide what constituted a sin. 651 00:53:18,800 --> 00:53:22,280 And the Church could let you off. 652 00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:24,800 As we'll see, this once in a lifetime chance 653 00:53:24,800 --> 00:53:29,080 to Get Out Of Hell Free was a crucial component in the Crusades. 654 00:53:31,440 --> 00:53:34,800 To see how sin was used to order medieval society, 655 00:53:34,800 --> 00:53:37,760 I've come to the French village of Conques. 656 00:53:37,760 --> 00:53:41,800 Here's the famous tympanum, giving it the full medieval monty. 657 00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:44,680 There's heaven, on one side, painted blue. 658 00:53:44,680 --> 00:53:48,360 And Hell, replete with ghastly torments, painted red, on the other. 659 00:53:48,360 --> 00:53:51,840 This is a portrait, not just of the hereafter, 660 00:53:51,840 --> 00:53:57,000 but of the hopes and fears of medieval Christian society. 661 00:53:57,000 --> 00:53:59,480 It's a hellfire sermon in stone, isn't it? 662 00:53:59,480 --> 00:54:01,880 It is. It's a cartoon with words and pictures. 663 00:54:01,880 --> 00:54:06,120 And in the middle, you've got Christ in majesty, delivering the Last Judgement. 664 00:54:06,120 --> 00:54:07,760 If you end up on the wrong side, 665 00:54:07,760 --> 00:54:10,360 you get pushed through the jaws of hell. There. 666 00:54:10,360 --> 00:54:14,040 An enormous creature with a pair of feet disappearing down its mouth. 667 00:54:14,040 --> 00:54:15,280 Great big dog in a kennel. 668 00:54:17,520 --> 00:54:20,920 You have to admit that hell is more interesting to look at. 669 00:54:20,920 --> 00:54:23,080 There's a heck of a lot more going on. 670 00:54:23,080 --> 00:54:25,840 But it's the peace, the calm, and the order that people 671 00:54:25,840 --> 00:54:28,880 are aspiring to, that the church is trying to direct them to. 672 00:54:28,880 --> 00:54:35,040 There's so little of that in their disordered, violent, medieval lives? Yeah, exactly. 673 00:54:35,040 --> 00:54:39,520 The genius of Urban II in 1095 is to come up with the idea of the Crusade. 674 00:54:39,520 --> 00:54:43,360 Men who'd been sinning all their lives through these misdeeds 675 00:54:43,360 --> 00:54:46,080 that we can see, through this penitential act - 676 00:54:46,080 --> 00:54:51,040 taking the cross and going to the Holy Land, will get remission of all their sins. Bingo! 677 00:54:51,040 --> 00:54:52,680 The slate will be wiped clean. 678 00:54:57,400 --> 00:55:00,520 Pope Urban's masterstroke was to solve two problems at once. 679 00:55:00,520 --> 00:55:05,360 To export the violence of the troublesome medieval knights out of Europe, and to strengthen 680 00:55:05,360 --> 00:55:09,920 to power of the papacy as the leader of the Western Christian Church on the other. 681 00:55:11,360 --> 00:55:14,080 He had the idea that if Christians 682 00:55:14,080 --> 00:55:18,240 from the West could go to Jerusalem 683 00:55:18,240 --> 00:55:22,280 to free Christians from the East 684 00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:26,680 from the dominations of Muslims in general, 685 00:55:26,680 --> 00:55:31,000 so he could recreate the unity of the world. 686 00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:34,520 The unity of the Roman world, as it was. How amazing. 687 00:55:34,520 --> 00:55:36,880 So that was part of his conception? 688 00:55:36,880 --> 00:55:41,960 He was sure that he was the only one 689 00:55:41,960 --> 00:55:44,960 who could rule over Christendom. 690 00:55:44,960 --> 00:55:48,760 And also the Pope in the Middle Ages, 691 00:55:48,760 --> 00:55:54,160 in the centre of the Middle Ages, had become a prince. 692 00:55:58,280 --> 00:56:02,360 It was one thing for the Pope to send out crusaders to capture the Holy Places. 693 00:56:02,360 --> 00:56:04,720 It was quite another to hold onto them. 694 00:56:06,320 --> 00:56:12,960 When Urban II makes his speech at Clermont, he promises the crusaders "the land of milk and honey". 695 00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:14,520 And what he's doing there 696 00:56:14,520 --> 00:56:16,280 is being realistic. 697 00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:22,520 OK, they've got to go for the right reason, the religious intention, cleansing Jerusalem and all that. 698 00:56:22,520 --> 00:56:24,520 But he's not stupid. Because of course, 699 00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:28,160 if they do that, then all come home, it's pointless, self-evidently. 700 00:56:28,160 --> 00:56:31,320 Some people have got to stay, and they will be promised that land. 701 00:56:33,800 --> 00:56:37,840 Add to this the long-lasting Christian antipathy towards Muslims, 702 00:56:37,840 --> 00:56:41,520 and a powerful resentment of their occupying Jerusalem, and you have 703 00:56:41,520 --> 00:56:45,360 a recipe for the extraordinary combination of pilgrimage 704 00:56:45,360 --> 00:56:47,720 plus violence that was the Crusades. 705 00:56:50,000 --> 00:56:54,080 Some 60,000 persons set off for the Holy Land. 706 00:56:54,080 --> 00:56:59,120 Not only knights, but also peasants, preachers and assorted misfits. 707 00:56:59,120 --> 00:57:04,000 The main body of knights arrived in Constantinople in July 1096. 708 00:57:04,000 --> 00:57:08,320 Three years later, after a long series of arduous and bloody sieges, 709 00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:10,080 they arrived in Jerusalem. 710 00:57:13,360 --> 00:57:18,360 Here they slaughtered between 20,000 and 30,000 people - 711 00:57:18,360 --> 00:57:20,720 Jews as well as Muslims. 712 00:57:24,800 --> 00:57:28,320 It's not surprising, then, that for many Muslims today, 713 00:57:28,320 --> 00:57:32,920 the Crusades are seen as an ominous symbol of Western aggression. 714 00:57:32,920 --> 00:57:36,760 Some people say that the Crusades have never ended. 715 00:57:36,760 --> 00:57:39,600 And yet in the West, they've tended to be seen either as 716 00:57:39,600 --> 00:57:44,000 a glorious adventure or an admirable religious sacrifice, or both. 717 00:57:45,680 --> 00:57:49,040 The way the Crusades are viewed by many in the Muslim world today 718 00:57:49,040 --> 00:57:52,080 is at the heart of the current crisis. 719 00:57:52,080 --> 00:57:53,440 To understand why, 720 00:57:53,440 --> 00:57:57,120 we need to see these struggles in their true context. 721 00:57:59,360 --> 00:58:00,600 In the next programme, 722 00:58:00,600 --> 00:58:04,040 I want to look at the impact of those Crusades on the Muslim world, 723 00:58:04,040 --> 00:58:08,160 and I also want to look at the way that word has become, today, 724 00:58:08,160 --> 00:58:13,560 even more menacing to the Muslim mind than it was 1,000 years ago. 725 00:58:45,080 --> 00:58:48,120 Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd 726 00:58:48,120 --> 00:58:51,120 E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk