Africans From The Nile Valley First Civilized the Europeans.
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BLACK / MOORS
The Greeks were the first civilized Europeans who were primarily civilized by the Black Africans of the Nile Valley. The Greeks passed on this acquired culture to the Romans who ultimately lost it, thus initiating the dark ages that lasted for 500 years. Civilization was again restored to Europe when another group of Black Africans, The Moors, brought the Dark Ages to an end.
In trying to hide the truth, white historians promote the lie that it was the Europeans who gave civilization to Africa when in fact this is a total reversal of the truth. In school you might have been brainwashed into thinking that western or white civilization was founded on Greek civilization, which seemed to just suddenly appear out of nowhere. What they were trying to conceal or deny was the fact that Greek civilization was a descendant, a child of the more advanced Black African civilization which had preceded it by thousands of years. In fact, Greek legend tells of Egyptian and Phoenician conquerors who had been ruling Greece until the 14th or 15th century B.C.
Muhammad, the Arab prophet, began to preach the word of Islam at the start of the 7th century. The Arabs, obsessed with religious zeal, sought to spread Islam and conquer the world, and by 708, the Arabs had overrun North Africa. Consequently, the Moors in large numbers accepted Arabic as the national language and converted to Islam, the religion of their conquerors.
Descendent of Moor In the year 711, a Black Moorish army from Morocco arrived in Spain under the command General Tarik ibn Ziyad (al Gibral), with 7,000 troops consisting of 300 Arabs and 6,700 native Sudanese, - an Arabic word for Black people. They crossed from Africa to the Iberian Peninsula, landing near a steep rock which, from that day until now has borne his name "Tarik's Mountain" or The Rock of Gibraltar, in honour of Tarik's accomplishments. In Arabic this is Jabal al Tarik, but the English, in their typical disdain for other people's languages, pronounced it Gibralter.
Tarik, being a devout Muslim and consumed by the desire to spread the religion of Muhammad to the European continent, ordered that all the boats be burnt when his fleet arrived in Spain, because he had decided that if he could not glorify God by seizing Spain for Islam, then he and his army would never return home but perish in battle.
In August 711, Tarik won a vital victory over the opposing European army by defeating Roderick, the Gothic King of Spain, after rousing his troops on the eve of the battle with the following words: "My brethren, the enemy is before you, the sea is behind; whither would ye fly? Follow your general; I am resolved either to lose my life or to trample on the prostrate king of the Romans."
Within a very short time, the Muslim forces had conquered the entire Iberian Peninsula.
After the invasion of 711, other waves of Moors even Blacker in colour arrived. The occupation of Portugal during this period accounted for the fact that even noble families had absorbed the blood of the Moor. Racial mixing in Portugal, Spain and elsewhere throughout Europe which was under the influence of the Moors, took place on a large scale from that point onward. The Moors were responsible for darkening the whites of these areas, Portugal in particular, which became the first model of a Negroid Republic in Europe.
That is why historians claim that Portugal is in reality a Negroid land, and Napoleon pointed out that Africa begins at the Pyrenees. Eventually the miscegenation (intermarriage) of Blacks and whites led to the disappearance of the Black or Negroid skin colour in Europe.
For 700 years (711-1492 A.D) during the Middle ages, the Black African Moors had dominated and ruled Spain, southern France and much of Scotland (southwest Europe), providing Europe with its finest civilization ever, recognizing earlier that Europe had again sunk to a level of almost complete barbarism, having lost all of the civilizing principles that were passed on by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Initially, Spain was the only country in Western Europe that had any semblance of civilization, but this later began to spread to Italy, Portugal and also into Northern Europe.
But while the Moors were re-civilizing Europe, noble empires in Ghana, Mali, and Songhai (Western Africa) were thriving and trading with the Moors, therefore Africa was clearly not some Dark Continent waiting for any European civilization. In fact, Black African Egyptians and Black African Moors were credited for having civilized the European barbarian.
By the 11th century, however, the Moroccan Islamic rulers of Spain had become decadent and soft, and in 1086 under the command of the Black-skinned Yusuf ibn Tashfin, the Almoravids, a dynasty of very Black Muslim sultans from Senegal in the heart of western Africa arrived, further consolidating the earlier incursions. Their rise to power began when a pilgrim named Yahya (the Muslim name for John the Baptist) returned home from Mecca and founded a new religious sect which quickly developed into a new military campaign, branching out from Senegal, and conquering all of Northwest Africa and Spain.
El Cid Yusuf ibn Tashfin, the greatest of the Almoravid leaders, defeated El Cid (right), one of Spain's most renowned and legendary folk heroes, and though Yusuf was almost 80 years old when he came to Spain, he was still quite energetic. Outnumbered by the Christians 3-to-1, his unconquerable spirit triumphed, and miraculously he destroyed King Alfonso of León and Castile at the Battle of Zalacca, where 70,000 Christian soldiers were on the run from Yusuf's army of 25,000 Muslims. One by one, Yusuf defeated the Christian generals, inflicting a humiliating defeat on the Christian army, with El Cid being the last one to fall, but when he did, practically the entire Iberian Peninsula was under Yusuf's control. Yusuf became King of an Empire that encompassed a large part of Africa and most of Spain. In 1090 Yusuf ibn Tashfin again invaded Spain, and turning conqueror, he seized all the Moorish territories of Spain except Zaragoza.
It is said that a Black Moorish woman named Nugaymath Turquia was the leader of a contingent of 300 Black Moorish Amazon Queens with their heads shaven, leaving only a top knot. They were described as "negresses" and were members of the Almoravid Dynasties which occupied Spain in 1086AD. The Almoravids were a heavy Black population, originating in southern Morocco and Northern Senegal, in western Africa.
Later, Yakub ibn Yusuf (1149-1199 AD), also known as Al-Mansur which means The invincible - since it is said that he never lost a battle, - was considered by Muslims to be the greatest of all the medieval Kings of Spain. His Empire was immense, stretching to the border of Egypt, and this Black man ruled Spain during its most glorious period.
Al-Mansur, known to his subjects, as The Black Sultan, came to power in Africa during a period when the Christian re-conquest of Spain had again obtained tremendous momentum, since the Almoravids, like the Umayyads before them, had become decadent and soft. Al-Mansur thus conquered and began to expand the empire that was first established by the great Almoravid leader, Yusuf ibn Tashfin.
But as in the past, internal strife amongst the various Muslim sects played right into the hands of the Christian forces who took full advantage, and believing that their day had finally come, assembled an army of 300,000 men at Alarcos, intending to put an end to Moorish rule in Spain once and for all. Al-Mansur sent envoys throughout his vast North African domains calling for all able-bodied men to come to the rescue of Islam. They responded well, and at Alarcos, Al-Mansur dealt the Christian forces a crushing defeat, the spoils of which were "beyond calculation," before going on to re-take all the principle strongholds of Christian Spain.
Alhambra Al-Mansur who was a military genius, was also a lover of justice as well as a supporter of the arts and literature, so when he came to power, his first order of business was to distribute vast quantities of food to the poor, and free all who were unjustly imprisoned, besides reforming the laws to prevent others from being unjustly incarcerated. He rebuilt the cities and erected mosques, schools, hospitals, and aqueducts. Moorish success in hydraulic engineering was exceptional, as noted by the construction of an aqueduct that carried water from the mountains into the city using a piping system. Some of Spain's greatest Moorish architectural works, including the Alhambra, were started during Al-Mansur’s time in power.
When history is taught to white people, the period called the "Middle Ages" is generally referred to as the "Dark Ages," and is portrayed in white history books as the period during which civilization in general, including the arts and sciences, laid idle. This was certainly true for the whites, but not for the Blacks. In fact, a painful piece of evidence that whites still cannot face up to is the reality that during the Middle Ages, the great empires of the world were Black empires, and the educational and cultural centres of the world were predominately African. Moreover, during that period, it was the white people who were the lawless barbarians.
During the dark ages in Christian Europe, the Moors had built more than 300 public baths throughout its 21 suburbs, also introducing Spain to underwear and bathing with soap, at a time when taking a bath was thought to be a diabolical practice to be shunned by all good Christians, and cleanliness was regarded as a sin. Human waste was simply thrown into the streets because there were no bathrooms available.
In addition to 700 mosques, the Moors also constructed magnificent cities in Spain, but the incredible city of Cordova was the most majestic of the tenth century with half a million inhabitants dwelling in over 113,000 homes. There were also well-paved roads with elevated sidewalks for pedestrians.
Alhambra Granada The houses, which were adorned with gardens as well as artificial fountains and orchards, contained marble balconies for summer, and hot-air ducts under the mosaic floors for the winter season. At night it was possible to travel for 10 miles by the light emanating from the lamps along a continuous block of buildings. All this was taking place several hundred years before there was a paved road in Paris, or a single street lamp in London, where even the streets were yet covered with mud and dark. If truth be told, London was yet a tiny mud-hut village. (Digest, 1973, p. 622).
Alhambra Throughout that period, Moorish monarchs were living in splendid palaces of highly polished marble and elaborately carved walls, with beautiful mosaic floors, while European Kings (England, France, and Germany) were living in big, cold, damp barns of unfinished stone which lacked windows and chimneys, with just a hole in the roof to remove any smoke.
Also at a time when Christian Europe had a mere two universities of any merit, the Moors had constructed more than 17 great universities, 800 public schools, numerous colleges and bookstores. Not even public libraries were in existence in Christian Europe during the 10th and 11th centuries, but Moorish Spain had more than 70, of which the one in Cordoba had a collection of 600,000 books!! Students from France and England travelled there to sit at the feet of Muslim intellectuals to study philosophy, science and medicine.
Females were encouraged to dedicate themselves to intense study since mother Africa was a matriarchal society, making Spain in that era, the only region where female doctors, lawyers, and scientists were established.
The Moors had an insatiable desire for knowledge, translating everything they could find into Arabic, even searching monasteries for rare books. They collected and translated ancient Egyptian and ancient scientific texts, which provided the gateway for the European to access higher learning at the end of Roman domination. In Moorish Spain, free education was available even to the poor and most humble, while in Christian Europe where superstition, barbarism and filth ran high, 99% of the populace was illiterate, including the kings who could neither read nor write.
The entrance of the Moors therefore, was responsible for the European rediscovery of art, music, science, mathematics, geography, geometry, political and physical Sciences, philosophy, personal hygiene, medicine, military training and manoeuvres.
Muhammad Bin Musa Al-Khowarizmi The Ethiopians and Black Egyptians originated Mathematics and Trigonometry, whereas the African Moors originated Algebra and developed Trigonometry into a science. Even the word Algebra was derived from the title of the first textbook produced on the subject that was written around 820 AD, called Hisab Al-Jabr wa'l Muqabala by the "Father of Algebra," Black author Muhammad Bin Musa Al-Khowarizmi, from whose name the word algorithm - a math procedure - was derived.
This textbook alluded to the systematic method developed in the Islamic Empire for solving linear and quadratic equations.
The Arabic numbers used today, including the zero and the decimal point, came from the ancient Arab people who originally were Black Africans. The useless Roman numerals were replaced by Arabic figures since, "you can't do higher mathematics with Roman numerals." (Dr. Ivan Van Sertima). The words Chemistry and Alchemy came from the word Kam or Khem, a term that the ancient Egyptians used to refer to the colour of their skin, which meant BLACK. The alphabet used by Western civilization traces its origins to the Black Phoenicians who copied these principles from the Africans of the Nile Valley.
The wrongly credited Pythagoras and Euclid actually got their knowledge from the Sacred Mystery Schools of Black Egypt, the world's first universities known to man, which had other branches in many locations throughout the world, including China!!
Moorish school teachers, (unlike their European counterparts who believed that the earth was flat), were aware that the world was round and taught geography from a globe. They produced accurate maps which showed all land and sea routes located precisely in relation to latitude and longitude, and also introduced the compass to Europe. Being such experts at shipbuilding, they were able to utilize their geographical expertise to engage in commercial activities with distant lands like India and China. It should not be a surprise therefore that Christopher Columbus’ chief navigator on the flagship Santa Maria was a Moor named Pietro Olonzo Nino, who is said to have argued with Columbus about who really discovered the Americas.
Clearly the ingredients of The European Renaissance were introduced and implemented by the Moors in Europe, taking the general populace out of the dark ages, and paving the way for the Renaissance period. These sources of European culture can easily be traced to the Moors whose civilization was not only artistic, scientific and commercial, but also extremely tolerant of all other races and cultures. The Jews of medieval Spain, for the most part, coexisted very well with the Muslims, and for them, the sojourn in that nation is remembered as being the second most glorious period in their history, exceeded only by the glory of the reigns of King David and King Solomon in ancient Israel. Therefore, the mis-education that has been promoted for centuries suggesting that the Greeks, Leonardo da Vinci and other Europeans were responsible for the European Renaissance is nothing but another white lie.
In short, during the Golden Age of Islam, the Moorish Empire was the most advanced State in the world. The white Christians of Spain, during the entire period, deeply desired to expel the "Blackamoors" from their country. Nevertheless, it is an undisputed historical fact that medieval Spain was the cultural, educational, and scientific centre of Europe.
Moors playing a game of chest In spite of the Moors' advances in science and scholarship, they also enjoyed other activities such as horse back riding, marksmanship, polo, backgammon, and chess, the favourite Moorish pastime, because many enjoyed the challenge of warfare strategy and tactics. In this picture (1283 AD), Black Moorish noblemen are shown playing chess while being waited upon by white and Black servants.
Hannibal, (247-183 BC), the Moor of Carthage's military ingenuity, certainly indicated that he also must have participated in some aspect of war simulation.
Berbers Berbers In most modern white texts, the North African invading Moors are described as a "white" Mediterranean type tribe who were sunburnt and bronzed for generations, while the Black Africans were completely removed from among these Islamic invaders, downgrading them to the role of a few insignificant slaves.
However, the Berber is said to be a part of the Biblical Noah who originated from the land of Eber, - a grandson of Noah. Gen: 10:21 declares, “Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born.” Remember the sons of Noah were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
These original Berbers were the North African ancestors of the present day dark-brown peoples of the Sahara and the Sahel such as the Fulani, Tugareg and Zenagha of Southern Morocco, including the other dark-brown Arabs. In other words, modern North Africa has changed considerably as a result of the waves of invasions by the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Turks, Germanic tribes, Arabs, and French, which impacted heavily on the colour variations of the present region.
Europeans focus only on the most recent world of the white Arab and Berber people, portraying them to be the way North Africans always appeared, but this is like suggesting that ancient America has always looked like the present day white population.
But according to earlier versions of the Oxford English Dictionary, as early as the Middle Ages and as late as the 17th Century, the Moors were commonly regarded as Black or very swarthy, which is why the word is often synonymous with Negro.
Moorish Tuareg People Moorish Girls playing the Kora
On the left are Moorish Tuareg people at a gathering in the country of Niger, and on the right are Moorish girls playing the Kora which is a famous West African musical instrument that was played in ancient Egypt as well.
But more current texts, like the Webster's New World Dictionary, categorize Moors as members of a Moslem people of mixed Arab and Berber descent. The term Berber is now a general term that is presently applied to these North African people who currently share common cultural ideas, language and customs. So this separation of Black or Negro from the name Moor is, by and large, a recent modification, since they were all used synonymously in the beginning. Evidently, the indigenous Berbers are now one of the most deliberately misrepresented people of North Africa.
Black Berber women Berbers enjoying a traditional meal These Black Berber women on the left are descendants of the ancient Berbers which the early Greeks and Romans wrote and spoke about in glowing terms. On the right is a modern Berber family enjoying a traditional meal. However, these are not the types of images seen on television or in the mainstream text books. Only the lighter skinned people who are now also referred to as Berbers because of a common language and customs, tend to be highlighted.
Around 46 BC the Roman army entered West Africa and encountered Black Africans which they called "Maures" based on the Greek adjective "mauros," meaning "scorched or Black." The word "Moor" was originally used to specify Blacks, but with the passage of time it was applied to Muslims in general, especially the Berbers. Furthermore, during the European Renaissance, explorers, writers and scholars used to apply the term Moor to Blacks in general, using both words synonymously.
Even to the earlier Greeks, the Moors were "a Black people" (Mauros) and to the Romans, they were "a Black woolly-haired people" (Maurus), also synonymously known as Ethiops, Niger (Negro) and Afer (African).
Moreover, as late as the 5th Century A. D. Procopius, a Roman historian, called the people of Morocco Black.Other major historians who wrote about these Berbers were Martial, Silius Italicus, and Corippus.
In addition to the numerous sources which support the view that the Moors were a Black-skinned people, there was no doubt in the minds of the Christians of early Europe as to their ethnicity. In the 'Chanson of Roland' (Song of Roland) written after the Moors had invaded France in 718 A.D., the invaders were described as "Blacker than ink with large noses and ears" and with "nothing white except the teeth."
The Chanson of Roland states that the Moorish army led by Marganice, the Emperor of Ethiopia and Carthage, was 50,000 strong. Their most valiant figure was Abisme (Abyssinian), who was described as "Black as melted pitch."
Coat of arms Even more so, all the Moors are shown as jet-Black in the official coat of arms of Aragon which has four Moorish kings killed in battle by King Pedro VIII of Aragon on November 18, 1096.
These pitch Black Negro troops played an important part in the Moorish conquest of Spain especially under Abderrahman I (757-787), who founded the independent kingdom of Cordova.
A rival Moorish leader also arrived with a great number of Negroes from Africa, forming a mighty regiment in 1016 and took over the Caliphate. Again in 1086, Yusuf ben Tachfln, a Nigerian perhaps, who is described by Moorish historian Ali ibn Abd Allah as dark and woolly-haired, brought in an army composed mainly of pure Negroes.
Yakub el-Mansur invaded Iberia in 1194 and became master of practically all of it. The guards of these Moorish kings were specially chosen for their size. They were Negroes, "jet-Black and of immense strength, recruited from the Atlas, Timbuktu, and Nigeria."
The world-famed shrine in Portugal (Fatima), where Catholic pilgrims from all over the world go in search of miracle cures for their afflictions, owes its origin to the Moors. There is even an account where a Portuguese nobleman was so saddened by the death of his wife, a young Moorish beauty whom he had married after her conversion to Christianity, that he gave up his title as well as his fortune and entered a monastery. His wife was buried on a high plateau called Sierra de Aire, and it is from there that the name of Fatima was derived.
Moors were also recruited for Roman military service and were stationed in Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Poland and Romania, and many became high ranking officers. For example, Lusius Quietus, a Moor, was considered the most competent soldier in the Roman army, and was one of Rome's greatest generals who was also named by the Roman Emperor Trajan as his successor around 98-117.
St Maurice St. Maurice, the greatest patron saint of medieval Europe, the Knight of the Holy Lance, was another popularly recognized one of the many Black soldiers and officers employed by the Roman Empire. St. Maurice (on the left), who was worshipped as early as 460AD, is said to have gained sainthood after refusing to allow his legion to massacre a Christian uprising. He is still worshipped in Poland, Romania, Switzerland, Austria, Greece, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Britain, Germany and the former Yugoslavian States where his iconography decorates churches and shrines. St. Maurice had numerous artworks, structures and even a castle dedicated to him, and the existence of almost 300 major images of the Black St. Maurice has been catalogued. Coins and Coats of Arms for many districts and cities in Germany were also made in his honour. The name Maurice stems from the word Moor or Mauritania.
By the way, Saint Augustine was also a dark-skinned Berber.
The Moors ruled and occupied Lisbon and the rest of the country until well into the twelfth century, but they were later defeated and driven out by the forces of King Alfonso Henriques with the support of English and Flemish crusaders. This battle took place at the Castelo de Sao Jorge or the Castle of St. George which still stands today overlooking the city of Lashbuna, the name the Moors called Lisbon.
The white Christians of Spain had always intended to drive out the Moors during the "Middle Ages," but it was not until 1492 when Isabella and Ferdinand finally defeated the last Moorish King in Granada, that their dreams came true. This was the same year in which Christopher Columbus was commissioned by Queen Isabella to discover the "New World".
The Moors had also introduced the first shooting mechanisms or rifles known as fire sticks, thus revolutionizing European military science, but this backfired and led to their downfall when their enemies used gunpowder technology to force them out of Spain and drive them back to West Africa. Many of them would later be captured and sold into slavery throughout America and the Caribbean islands. Several of these slaves were multilingual and well-educated, cultured scholars who came on the ships of Christopher Columbus.
The day the last Moors and Jews were expelled from Spain was counted as a great day in Spanish history, since Spain, largely because of the strength of its navy, had achieved the status of a world power, but in less than a century, the Spanish Armada was defeated by England, and the nation went into a great decline.
So it is a historically undisputed fact that Spain, during the Dark Ages, was the greatest nation in Europe, a status which it has never regained, because it was the light of knowledge which illuminated the Moorish lands of Spain and Sicily that was instrumental in dispelling the gloom of ignorance which enclosed mediaeval Europe.
Alambra Moor Architecture However, the defeat of the Moors did not put an end to their influence in Europe, as their African presence can still be seen everywhere in Portugal and Spain through the architecture of the many buildings which still retain their Moorish design. These can be seen in places like the Praca De Toiros - the Bull Ring in Lisbon and Alfama, which is the oldest quarter in Lisbon with its 15th century houses and narrow-winding streets, dating back to the time when it was the last settlement of the Moors.
Fado singers, who abound in all corners and bistros of Afalma, also owe much to the influence of the Moorish musicians centuries ago. Even the fishing boats called the rabelos on the beaches of Cascais show marked African traces, and are reminiscent of the transport boats of Lagos in Nigeria.
* By 1507 there were numerous Moors at the Court of King James IV of Scotland.
* A descendant of the Black Moors ruled Spain for 700 years.
* An African king named Gormund ruled Ireland during the Anglo-Saxon period in England.
* Halfdan the Black was the first Africoid king to unite Norway.
Did you know that the original knights of England were Black, including those of King Arthur's Round Table? Morien, known as The Black Knight of King Arthur fame and Sir Pallamedes, is the adventure of a heroic Moorish knight who is supposed to have lived during the days of King Arthur, and he is described as all Black, that is, his head, body and hands were all Black.
When the British Isles were invaded by the Vikings, some of these Norse raiders were Africoid. A prominent Viking of the eleventh century was Thorhall who was aboard the ship that carried the early Vikings to the shores of North America. He was a strong, giant, Black man.
Another Viking more notable than Thorhall was Earl Thorfinn, "the most distinguished of all the earls in the Islands." Thorfinn who was described as "one of the largest men in relation to his stature, ruled over nine earldoms in Scotland and Ireland, and died at the age of seventy-five.
In due course, the European Christians conquered Muslim territories, and soon afterwards the great debt Western civilisation owed to the Moors was quickly forgotten. By the 18th century, European Christians saw themselves as the predestined rulers of the world with a divine mission to civilise the heathen!!
Western historians have conveniently ignored the immense contributions of the brilliant and energetic Moorish civilisation in delivering Europe from mediaeval barbarism, but this can only be interpreted as a form of European arrogance and disrespect towards Blacks. It is evident however, that the contributions of the Black Moors to European civilization are immeasurable, even though there is absolutely no credit given to them.
Muhammad, the Arab prophet, began to preach the word of Islam at the start of the 7th century. The Arabs, obsessed with religious zeal, sought to spread Islam and conquer the world, and by 708, the Arabs had overrun North Africa. Consequently, the Moors in large numbers accepted Arabic as the national language and converted to Islam, the religion of their conquerors.
Descendent of Moor In the year 711, a Black Moorish army from Morocco arrived in Spain under the command General Tarik ibn Ziyad (al Gibral), with 7,000 troops consisting of 300 Arabs and 6,700 native Sudanese, - an Arabic word for Black people. They crossed from Africa to the Iberian Peninsula, landing near a steep rock which, from that day until now has borne his name "Tarik's Mountain" or The Rock of Gibraltar, in honour of Tarik's accomplishments. In Arabic this is Jabal al Tarik, but the English, in their typical disdain for other people's languages, pronounced it Gibralter.
Tarik, being a devout Muslim and consumed by the desire to spread the religion of Muhammad to the European continent, ordered that all the boats be burnt when his fleet arrived in Spain, because he had decided that if he could not glorify God by seizing Spain for Islam, then he and his army would never return home but perish in battle.
In August 711, Tarik won a vital victory over the opposing European army by defeating Roderick, the Gothic King of Spain, after rousing his troops on the eve of the battle with the following words: "My brethren, the enemy is before you, the sea is behind; whither would ye fly? Follow your general; I am resolved either to lose my life or to trample on the prostrate king of the Romans."
Within a very short time, the Muslim forces had conquered the entire Iberian Peninsula.
After the invasion of 711, other waves of Moors even Blacker in colour arrived. The occupation of Portugal during this period accounted for the fact that even noble families had absorbed the blood of the Moor. Racial mixing in Portugal, Spain and elsewhere throughout Europe which was under the influence of the Moors, took place on a large scale from that point onward. The Moors were responsible for darkening the whites of these areas, Portugal in particular, which became the first model of a Negroid Republic in Europe.
That is why historians claim that Portugal is in reality a Negroid land, and Napoleon pointed out that Africa begins at the Pyrenees. Eventually the miscegenation (intermarriage) of Blacks and whites led to the disappearance of the Black or Negroid skin colour in Europe.
For 700 years (711-1492 A.D) during the Middle ages, the Black African Moors had dominated and ruled Spain, southern France and much of Scotland (southwest Europe), providing Europe with its finest civilization ever, recognizing earlier that Europe had again sunk to a level of almost complete barbarism, having lost all of the civilizing principles that were passed on by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Initially, Spain was the only country in Western Europe that had any semblance of civilization, but this later began to spread to Italy, Portugal and also into Northern Europe.
But while the Moors were re-civilizing Europe, noble empires in Ghana, Mali, and Songhai (Western Africa) were thriving and trading with the Moors, therefore Africa was clearly not some Dark Continent waiting for any European civilization. In fact, Black African Egyptians and Black African Moors were credited for having civilized the European barbarian.
By the 11th century, however, the Moroccan Islamic rulers of Spain had become decadent and soft, and in 1086 under the command of the Black-skinned Yusuf ibn Tashfin, the Almoravids, a dynasty of very Black Muslim sultans from Senegal in the heart of western Africa arrived, further consolidating the earlier incursions. Their rise to power began when a pilgrim named Yahya (the Muslim name for John the Baptist) returned home from Mecca and founded a new religious sect which quickly developed into a new military campaign, branching out from Senegal, and conquering all of Northwest Africa and Spain.
El Cid Yusuf ibn Tashfin, the greatest of the Almoravid leaders, defeated El Cid (right), one of Spain's most renowned and legendary folk heroes, and though Yusuf was almost 80 years old when he came to Spain, he was still quite energetic. Outnumbered by the Christians 3-to-1, his unconquerable spirit triumphed, and miraculously he destroyed King Alfonso of León and Castile at the Battle of Zalacca, where 70,000 Christian soldiers were on the run from Yusuf's army of 25,000 Muslims. One by one, Yusuf defeated the Christian generals, inflicting a humiliating defeat on the Christian army, with El Cid being the last one to fall, but when he did, practically the entire Iberian Peninsula was under Yusuf's control. Yusuf became King of an Empire that encompassed a large part of Africa and most of Spain. In 1090 Yusuf ibn Tashfin again invaded Spain, and turning conqueror, he seized all the Moorish territories of Spain except Zaragoza.
It is said that a Black Moorish woman named Nugaymath Turquia was the leader of a contingent of 300 Black Moorish Amazon Queens with their heads shaven, leaving only a top knot. They were described as "negresses" and were members of the Almoravid Dynasties which occupied Spain in 1086AD. The Almoravids were a heavy Black population, originating in southern Morocco and Northern Senegal, in western Africa.
Later, Yakub ibn Yusuf (1149-1199 AD), also known as Al-Mansur which means The invincible - since it is said that he never lost a battle, - was considered by Muslims to be the greatest of all the medieval Kings of Spain. His Empire was immense, stretching to the border of Egypt, and this Black man ruled Spain during its most glorious period.
Al-Mansur, known to his subjects, as The Black Sultan, came to power in Africa during a period when the Christian re-conquest of Spain had again obtained tremendous momentum, since the Almoravids, like the Umayyads before them, had become decadent and soft. Al-Mansur thus conquered and began to expand the empire that was first established by the great Almoravid leader, Yusuf ibn Tashfin.
But as in the past, internal strife amongst the various Muslim sects played right into the hands of the Christian forces who took full advantage, and believing that their day had finally come, assembled an army of 300,000 men at Alarcos, intending to put an end to Moorish rule in Spain once and for all. Al-Mansur sent envoys throughout his vast North African domains calling for all able-bodied men to come to the rescue of Islam. They responded well, and at Alarcos, Al-Mansur dealt the Christian forces a crushing defeat, the spoils of which were "beyond calculation," before going on to re-take all the principle strongholds of Christian Spain.
Alhambra Al-Mansur who was a military genius, was also a lover of justice as well as a supporter of the arts and literature, so when he came to power, his first order of business was to distribute vast quantities of food to the poor, and free all who were unjustly imprisoned, besides reforming the laws to prevent others from being unjustly incarcerated. He rebuilt the cities and erected mosques, schools, hospitals, and aqueducts. Moorish success in hydraulic engineering was exceptional, as noted by the construction of an aqueduct that carried water from the mountains into the city using a piping system. Some of Spain's greatest Moorish architectural works, including the Alhambra, were started during Al-Mansur’s time in power.
When history is taught to white people, the period called the "Middle Ages" is generally referred to as the "Dark Ages," and is portrayed in white history books as the period during which civilization in general, including the arts and sciences, laid idle. This was certainly true for the whites, but not for the Blacks. In fact, a painful piece of evidence that whites still cannot face up to is the reality that during the Middle Ages, the great empires of the world were Black empires, and the educational and cultural centres of the world were predominately African. Moreover, during that period, it was the white people who were the lawless barbarians.
During the dark ages in Christian Europe, the Moors had built more than 300 public baths throughout its 21 suburbs, also introducing Spain to underwear and bathing with soap, at a time when taking a bath was thought to be a diabolical practice to be shunned by all good Christians, and cleanliness was regarded as a sin. Human waste was simply thrown into the streets because there were no bathrooms available.
In addition to 700 mosques, the Moors also constructed magnificent cities in Spain, but the incredible city of Cordova was the most majestic of the tenth century with half a million inhabitants dwelling in over 113,000 homes. There were also well-paved roads with elevated sidewalks for pedestrians.
Alhambra Granada The houses, which were adorned with gardens as well as artificial fountains and orchards, contained marble balconies for summer, and hot-air ducts under the mosaic floors for the winter season. At night it was possible to travel for 10 miles by the light emanating from the lamps along a continuous block of buildings. All this was taking place several hundred years before there was a paved road in Paris, or a single street lamp in London, where even the streets were yet covered with mud and dark. If truth be told, London was yet a tiny mud-hut village. (Digest, 1973, p. 622).
Alhambra Throughout that period, Moorish monarchs were living in splendid palaces of highly polished marble and elaborately carved walls, with beautiful mosaic floors, while European Kings (England, France, and Germany) were living in big, cold, damp barns of unfinished stone which lacked windows and chimneys, with just a hole in the roof to remove any smoke.
Also at a time when Christian Europe had a mere two universities of any merit, the Moors had constructed more than 17 great universities, 800 public schools, numerous colleges and bookstores. Not even public libraries were in existence in Christian Europe during the 10th and 11th centuries, but Moorish Spain had more than 70, of which the one in Cordoba had a collection of 600,000 books!! Students from France and England travelled there to sit at the feet of Muslim intellectuals to study philosophy, science and medicine.
Females were encouraged to dedicate themselves to intense study since mother Africa was a matriarchal society, making Spain in that era, the only region where female doctors, lawyers, and scientists were established.
The Moors had an insatiable desire for knowledge, translating everything they could find into Arabic, even searching monasteries for rare books. They collected and translated ancient Egyptian and ancient scientific texts, which provided the gateway for the European to access higher learning at the end of Roman domination. In Moorish Spain, free education was available even to the poor and most humble, while in Christian Europe where superstition, barbarism and filth ran high, 99% of the populace was illiterate, including the kings who could neither read nor write.
The entrance of the Moors therefore, was responsible for the European rediscovery of art, music, science, mathematics, geography, geometry, political and physical Sciences, philosophy, personal hygiene, medicine, military training and manoeuvres.
Muhammad Bin Musa Al-Khowarizmi The Ethiopians and Black Egyptians originated Mathematics and Trigonometry, whereas the African Moors originated Algebra and developed Trigonometry into a science. Even the word Algebra was derived from the title of the first textbook produced on the subject that was written around 820 AD, called Hisab Al-Jabr wa'l Muqabala by the "Father of Algebra," Black author Muhammad Bin Musa Al-Khowarizmi, from whose name the word algorithm - a math procedure - was derived.
This textbook alluded to the systematic method developed in the Islamic Empire for solving linear and quadratic equations.
The Arabic numbers used today, including the zero and the decimal point, came from the ancient Arab people who originally were Black Africans. The useless Roman numerals were replaced by Arabic figures since, "you can't do higher mathematics with Roman numerals." (Dr. Ivan Van Sertima). The words Chemistry and Alchemy came from the word Kam or Khem, a term that the ancient Egyptians used to refer to the colour of their skin, which meant BLACK. The alphabet used by Western civilization traces its origins to the Black Phoenicians who copied these principles from the Africans of the Nile Valley.
The wrongly credited Pythagoras and Euclid actually got their knowledge from the Sacred Mystery Schools of Black Egypt, the world's first universities known to man, which had other branches in many locations throughout the world, including China!!
Moorish school teachers, (unlike their European counterparts who believed that the earth was flat), were aware that the world was round and taught geography from a globe. They produced accurate maps which showed all land and sea routes located precisely in relation to latitude and longitude, and also introduced the compass to Europe. Being such experts at shipbuilding, they were able to utilize their geographical expertise to engage in commercial activities with distant lands like India and China. It should not be a surprise therefore that Christopher Columbus’ chief navigator on the flagship Santa Maria was a Moor named Pietro Olonzo Nino, who is said to have argued with Columbus about who really discovered the Americas.
Clearly the ingredients of The European Renaissance were introduced and implemented by the Moors in Europe, taking the general populace out of the dark ages, and paving the way for the Renaissance period. These sources of European culture can easily be traced to the Moors whose civilization was not only artistic, scientific and commercial, but also extremely tolerant of all other races and cultures. The Jews of medieval Spain, for the most part, coexisted very well with the Muslims, and for them, the sojourn in that nation is remembered as being the second most glorious period in their history, exceeded only by the glory of the reigns of King David and King Solomon in ancient Israel. Therefore, the mis-education that has been promoted for centuries suggesting that the Greeks, Leonardo da Vinci and other Europeans were responsible for the European Renaissance is nothing but another white lie.
In short, during the Golden Age of Islam, the Moorish Empire was the most advanced State in the world. The white Christians of Spain, during the entire period, deeply desired to expel the "Blackamoors" from their country. Nevertheless, it is an undisputed historical fact that medieval Spain was the cultural, educational, and scientific centre of Europe.
Moors playing a game of chest In spite of the Moors' advances in science and scholarship, they also enjoyed other activities such as horse back riding, marksmanship, polo, backgammon, and chess, the favourite Moorish pastime, because many enjoyed the challenge of warfare strategy and tactics. In this picture (1283 AD), Black Moorish noblemen are shown playing chess while being waited upon by white and Black servants.
Hannibal, (247-183 BC), the Moor of Carthage's military ingenuity, certainly indicated that he also must have participated in some aspect of war simulation.
Berbers Berbers In most modern white texts, the North African invading Moors are described as a "white" Mediterranean type tribe who were sunburnt and bronzed for generations, while the Black Africans were completely removed from among these Islamic invaders, downgrading them to the role of a few insignificant slaves.
However, the Berber is said to be a part of the Biblical Noah who originated from the land of Eber, - a grandson of Noah. Gen: 10:21 declares, “Unto Shem also, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born.” Remember the sons of Noah were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
These original Berbers were the North African ancestors of the present day dark-brown peoples of the Sahara and the Sahel such as the Fulani, Tugareg and Zenagha of Southern Morocco, including the other dark-brown Arabs. In other words, modern North Africa has changed considerably as a result of the waves of invasions by the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Turks, Germanic tribes, Arabs, and French, which impacted heavily on the colour variations of the present region.
Europeans focus only on the most recent world of the white Arab and Berber people, portraying them to be the way North Africans always appeared, but this is like suggesting that ancient America has always looked like the present day white population.
But according to earlier versions of the Oxford English Dictionary, as early as the Middle Ages and as late as the 17th Century, the Moors were commonly regarded as Black or very swarthy, which is why the word is often synonymous with Negro.
Moorish Tuareg People Moorish Girls playing the Kora
On the left are Moorish Tuareg people at a gathering in the country of Niger, and on the right are Moorish girls playing the Kora which is a famous West African musical instrument that was played in ancient Egypt as well.
But more current texts, like the Webster's New World Dictionary, categorize Moors as members of a Moslem people of mixed Arab and Berber descent. The term Berber is now a general term that is presently applied to these North African people who currently share common cultural ideas, language and customs. So this separation of Black or Negro from the name Moor is, by and large, a recent modification, since they were all used synonymously in the beginning. Evidently, the indigenous Berbers are now one of the most deliberately misrepresented people of North Africa.
Black Berber women Berbers enjoying a traditional meal These Black Berber women on the left are descendants of the ancient Berbers which the early Greeks and Romans wrote and spoke about in glowing terms. On the right is a modern Berber family enjoying a traditional meal. However, these are not the types of images seen on television or in the mainstream text books. Only the lighter skinned people who are now also referred to as Berbers because of a common language and customs, tend to be highlighted.
Around 46 BC the Roman army entered West Africa and encountered Black Africans which they called "Maures" based on the Greek adjective "mauros," meaning "scorched or Black." The word "Moor" was originally used to specify Blacks, but with the passage of time it was applied to Muslims in general, especially the Berbers. Furthermore, during the European Renaissance, explorers, writers and scholars used to apply the term Moor to Blacks in general, using both words synonymously.
Even to the earlier Greeks, the Moors were "a Black people" (Mauros) and to the Romans, they were "a Black woolly-haired people" (Maurus), also synonymously known as Ethiops, Niger (Negro) and Afer (African).
Moreover, as late as the 5th Century A. D. Procopius, a Roman historian, called the people of Morocco Black.Other major historians who wrote about these Berbers were Martial, Silius Italicus, and Corippus.
In addition to the numerous sources which support the view that the Moors were a Black-skinned people, there was no doubt in the minds of the Christians of early Europe as to their ethnicity. In the 'Chanson of Roland' (Song of Roland) written after the Moors had invaded France in 718 A.D., the invaders were described as "Blacker than ink with large noses and ears" and with "nothing white except the teeth."
The Chanson of Roland states that the Moorish army led by Marganice, the Emperor of Ethiopia and Carthage, was 50,000 strong. Their most valiant figure was Abisme (Abyssinian), who was described as "Black as melted pitch."
Coat of arms Even more so, all the Moors are shown as jet-Black in the official coat of arms of Aragon which has four Moorish kings killed in battle by King Pedro VIII of Aragon on November 18, 1096.
These pitch Black Negro troops played an important part in the Moorish conquest of Spain especially under Abderrahman I (757-787), who founded the independent kingdom of Cordova.
A rival Moorish leader also arrived with a great number of Negroes from Africa, forming a mighty regiment in 1016 and took over the Caliphate. Again in 1086, Yusuf ben Tachfln, a Nigerian perhaps, who is described by Moorish historian Ali ibn Abd Allah as dark and woolly-haired, brought in an army composed mainly of pure Negroes.
Yakub el-Mansur invaded Iberia in 1194 and became master of practically all of it. The guards of these Moorish kings were specially chosen for their size. They were Negroes, "jet-Black and of immense strength, recruited from the Atlas, Timbuktu, and Nigeria."
The world-famed shrine in Portugal (Fatima), where Catholic pilgrims from all over the world go in search of miracle cures for their afflictions, owes its origin to the Moors. There is even an account where a Portuguese nobleman was so saddened by the death of his wife, a young Moorish beauty whom he had married after her conversion to Christianity, that he gave up his title as well as his fortune and entered a monastery. His wife was buried on a high plateau called Sierra de Aire, and it is from there that the name of Fatima was derived.
Moors were also recruited for Roman military service and were stationed in Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Poland and Romania, and many became high ranking officers. For example, Lusius Quietus, a Moor, was considered the most competent soldier in the Roman army, and was one of Rome's greatest generals who was also named by the Roman Emperor Trajan as his successor around 98-117.
St Maurice St. Maurice, the greatest patron saint of medieval Europe, the Knight of the Holy Lance, was another popularly recognized one of the many Black soldiers and officers employed by the Roman Empire. St. Maurice (on the left), who was worshipped as early as 460AD, is said to have gained sainthood after refusing to allow his legion to massacre a Christian uprising. He is still worshipped in Poland, Romania, Switzerland, Austria, Greece, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Britain, Germany and the former Yugoslavian States where his iconography decorates churches and shrines. St. Maurice had numerous artworks, structures and even a castle dedicated to him, and the existence of almost 300 major images of the Black St. Maurice has been catalogued. Coins and Coats of Arms for many districts and cities in Germany were also made in his honour. The name Maurice stems from the word Moor or Mauritania.
By the way, Saint Augustine was also a dark-skinned Berber.
The Moors ruled and occupied Lisbon and the rest of the country until well into the twelfth century, but they were later defeated and driven out by the forces of King Alfonso Henriques with the support of English and Flemish crusaders. This battle took place at the Castelo de Sao Jorge or the Castle of St. George which still stands today overlooking the city of Lashbuna, the name the Moors called Lisbon.
The white Christians of Spain had always intended to drive out the Moors during the "Middle Ages," but it was not until 1492 when Isabella and Ferdinand finally defeated the last Moorish King in Granada, that their dreams came true. This was the same year in which Christopher Columbus was commissioned by Queen Isabella to discover the "New World".
The Moors had also introduced the first shooting mechanisms or rifles known as fire sticks, thus revolutionizing European military science, but this backfired and led to their downfall when their enemies used gunpowder technology to force them out of Spain and drive them back to West Africa. Many of them would later be captured and sold into slavery throughout America and the Caribbean islands. Several of these slaves were multilingual and well-educated, cultured scholars who came on the ships of Christopher Columbus.
The day the last Moors and Jews were expelled from Spain was counted as a great day in Spanish history, since Spain, largely because of the strength of its navy, had achieved the status of a world power, but in less than a century, the Spanish Armada was defeated by England, and the nation went into a great decline.
So it is a historically undisputed fact that Spain, during the Dark Ages, was the greatest nation in Europe, a status which it has never regained, because it was the light of knowledge which illuminated the Moorish lands of Spain and Sicily that was instrumental in dispelling the gloom of ignorance which enclosed mediaeval Europe.
Alambra Moor Architecture However, the defeat of the Moors did not put an end to their influence in Europe, as their African presence can still be seen everywhere in Portugal and Spain through the architecture of the many buildings which still retain their Moorish design. These can be seen in places like the Praca De Toiros - the Bull Ring in Lisbon and Alfama, which is the oldest quarter in Lisbon with its 15th century houses and narrow-winding streets, dating back to the time when it was the last settlement of the Moors.
Fado singers, who abound in all corners and bistros of Afalma, also owe much to the influence of the Moorish musicians centuries ago. Even the fishing boats called the rabelos on the beaches of Cascais show marked African traces, and are reminiscent of the transport boats of Lagos in Nigeria.
* By 1507 there were numerous Moors at the Court of King James IV of Scotland.
* A descendant of the Black Moors ruled Spain for 700 years.
* An African king named Gormund ruled Ireland during the Anglo-Saxon period in England.
* Halfdan the Black was the first Africoid king to unite Norway.
Did you know that the original knights of England were Black, including those of King Arthur's Round Table? Morien, known as The Black Knight of King Arthur fame and Sir Pallamedes, is the adventure of a heroic Moorish knight who is supposed to have lived during the days of King Arthur, and he is described as all Black, that is, his head, body and hands were all Black.
When the British Isles were invaded by the Vikings, some of these Norse raiders were Africoid. A prominent Viking of the eleventh century was Thorhall who was aboard the ship that carried the early Vikings to the shores of North America. He was a strong, giant, Black man.
Another Viking more notable than Thorhall was Earl Thorfinn, "the most distinguished of all the earls in the Islands." Thorfinn who was described as "one of the largest men in relation to his stature, ruled over nine earldoms in Scotland and Ireland, and died at the age of seventy-five.
In due course, the European Christians conquered Muslim territories, and soon afterwards the great debt Western civilisation owed to the Moors was quickly forgotten. By the 18th century, European Christians saw themselves as the predestined rulers of the world with a divine mission to civilise the heathen!!
Western historians have conveniently ignored the immense contributions of the brilliant and energetic Moorish civilisation in delivering Europe from mediaeval barbarism, but this can only be interpreted as a form of European arrogance and disrespect towards Blacks. It is evident however, that the contributions of the Black Moors to European civilization are immeasurable, even though there is absolutely no credit given to them.
Isaac Richardson
Lead Acquisition Specialist/Advocate of Seller Financing at GOLDEN GROVE PROPERTIES, LLC
Charles Romano
>See Kama Sutra for more info.
Isaac Richardson
Lead Acquisition Specialist/Advocate of Seller Financing at GOLDEN GROVE PROPERTIES, LLC