Al-Andalus 3: A Golden Age

folks, we're back with part 3 of our series on Al-Andalus, aka Muslim Iberia from 711-1492. this time, we trace the history of Al-Andalus up through the rise of the Almoravid dynasty in the late 11th century and how the Christian response coalesced almost from nothing in 1063 with the Siege of Barbastro thanks to a little help from the Pope. we talk about how this is different from the standard Christian Nationalist Reconquista narrative and then a bit about El Cid. then, finally, we talk about the myriad contributions to culture, society, religion, science, and art that Al-Andalus produced as it was a massive contributor to the wider Medieval Islamic Golden Age (768-1260). check us out!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Writing an essay about Showgirls for my Patreon this month.
I'm like, so, now I'm just a titty brained and
uh yeah, you know how it is. So we're gonna
try to pull it out. We're gonna try to pull
it out of the bag. We're gonna think about my
actual job. That's what's up, man, She's thinking about knobs

(00:24):
and cum jokes. What can I say?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah? Yeah, the greatest stripper ever, the Lebron James is
so true. When this woman strips, she like nothing. There's
nothing else in history can compare it to seeing this

(00:47):
woman take her clothes off and you know, good for her.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
It's true. Yeah, It's like, I think the conceit of
Showgirls that you have to you have to become comfortable
with is you just have to accept that, know me
is the hottest woman on the planet. You just need
to like there is you can't look, there's.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
No you can't be influenced by the fact that you
saw her unsaved by the bell three morning for like
seven years now, and you can't, you know, mix that
up with the weird feelings you have because you're like,
wait a minute, I was a Tiffany Amber. I was
Tiffany Amberthees, and then Lark Vorhees and then Jesse. No
offense to Jesse. Wow, my ranking as a kid owned.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
This is a great offense to tall girls everywhere. But
also I think that's the standard ranking.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
You know, listen, it wasn't.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well look, I had to tell you. It's interesting because
in nineteen ninety five, beauty standards are really different. So
for example, like you know, shout out to my girl
Elizabeth Berkley Loren. She married one of the Lorentz family,
so you know, but like she just really doesn't have

(01:58):
an ass.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
No, you weren't allowed back then, but you weren't allowed
to It's true if you had an ass, if a
woman had an ass, they would.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, they would they you would go to jail.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
You Like, it is so funny that like that, like
big asses were not like a like a uh conventional
attractive thing like in in like the broader concept of
like cultural history until like a lot really.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
It's really is like, yeah, it's truly truly, Seattle really
did a solid for everyone on that.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
A thing, a thing where a lot of people were like,
wait a minute, I really do like an ass a
big ass. Wait a minute, why are there no big
asses anywhere?

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Wait? Okay, so there is one really good ass in Showgirls,
you know because of my my extensive viewing of this,
and that ass belongs to Rina Riffle, who plays the
the stripper whose name is Penny, who James eventually knocks up,
and Penny has an incredible ass and fun fact, Rina

(03:07):
Riffle was in both the show Girls and strip teas
in nineteen ninety five. Big year for Rena Riffle.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Good for her.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, yeah, that's how good that ass was. That's how
good that ass was.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Somebody didn't like that. That was the coming out party
for the ass that. You know. Another thing we can think.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
A lot of shots are framed just to get Rina
riffles ass in that.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, and another thing we could thank Paul Verhoven for.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
You know what, It's such a good movie. Dog Like,
I'll be thinking about it all the time, so.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
I know, I know you do love it. I gotta yeah,
it's been a long time since I've seen it.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah, I mean, I don't think that there's anything wrong
with that either, but you know, it's just.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
I mean, it just didn't it didn't appeal to me
the same way that the other Verehoven did in my mind.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I was like, damn,
these are so nice titties and all that, but you know,
it just didn't it didn't speak to my myopic male
child brain the way that you know, big blow up, violence,

(04:11):
explosion or yeah, cop, did.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
You know that's the thing. I think that you were
too free of the form of americanness that Paul Verhobbn
was expressly attempting to critique with Show Girls.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
I would argue, well, yeah at the time, because I
was just like, hey, titties, that's nice.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, nice, nice?

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Cool?

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Hey what what hey?

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Hey wait a minute, this is confused, Like yeah, I
mean like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
I know it's a confusing movie. What it's all that?
But do you like them?

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Why? Why did Like it's like just like wait a minute,
what are they talking? Like? Why do they keep talking about?

Speaker 1 (04:48):
What? Oh?

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, that's what watching that is like. A twelve year
old was like, wait, no.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
That's what watching that is like. That's what watching that
is like. And that's the point of it. I you know,
I argue, but you know what, it's a really good
for hobe that I rewatched recently is total recall. Oh yeah,
fucking whips. I like how there's the chick with the
three titties.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
I like the exploding heads.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
It's I got a question.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
The stomach guy, whatever his name is, I forget.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Now, where do you come down on in terms of
Total Recall? Do you think that he actually went to
Mars or do you think that it is the package
he paid for? Uh? Because I think that he that
it's all in his head and Blair thinks that it's real,
and I think that that's.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Just what I've always I've always thought it was. I
think I've always thought it was real, but just because
that's how you know it's presented, And like when I
was younger, I didn't think about it. I mean, no,
I can see I could see it being a thing
in his head, and I could see that, and I
mean I could see that being like an interesting part
of the critique too, like on top of everything else.

(06:00):
So I could definitely see that. I guess I don't.
I guess it's not one to me because like I
liked Total Recall, but like that wasn't like that wasn't
one of the eighties movies.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
That like absolutely that was really cool.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Grabbed me, mostly because I didn't see it until I
was like a little bit older. Yeah, for sure, Like, yeah,
I was one of those Oh no, I remember. I
didn't like it at first because they would show it
on TV and it made no goddamn sense, like all
the yeah everything, and like it was just like and
I'm like, what the fuck is like what does this mean?
And then it's like an older you know, I watched

(06:36):
it and I was like, oh, okay, cool, Oh I
get it, like I see what you're doing here, but like, yeah,
it didn't it didn't really work well on TVs.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
I think the first one that I saw was actually
show Girls, because it's like we didn't I didn't see
a RoboCop until I was a lot older, and I
think I I think I saw show Girls before I
saw Starship Troopers, but I can't be certain of the order.
I might have seen Starship Troopers first.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
I'm not sure I saw RoboCop first.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, hell yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah. That was one of those things where my dad
was like, oh, yeah, you can watch that. That's fine,
your eight whatever.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Watching watch that guy get shot in the dick.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Watch the guy get shot in the in the dick.
Watch like, uh, do get pulled. What the fuck is
his name? Read? Uh the dad from that seventies show.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
Fuck?

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Oh yeah, bad guy. Uh yeah, like watching that guy
just get torn up. It's just fantastic, folks, It's great. Yeah,
and then Starship Troopers and then Total Recall, and then
it was like, oh, okay.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
I saw I haven't seen Basic Instinct. I probably should.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Oh you would like I think you would like Basic Instinct.
It's uh, it's like, yeah, that was one of those
where I watched it and I was like, oh, this
is like sexual politics thing. Yeah, I'm tuning out for.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
All Yeah yeah fourteen like you know, oh yeah, like
damn much to ponder.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Much consider anyway? Uh about Sharon Stone's uh bodacious Tatars.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, that's right, that's so true.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
It's like a lot I think that. I think that's
what people would have said back then.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
They should anyway we could, we should bring back saying
bodacious tatars.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Just getting beaten, beaten with pipes in the street, like
kick god, what is wrong?

Speaker 1 (08:36):
Welcome back to her not so different show about bodacious tatars.
About have always beenous.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
About giant bodacious tatars throughout history? You know who had
the biggest tits in the medieval era we today, we
debate for forty five minutes.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Well, I guess that was a really sad thing, is
that they don't like big.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
They don't know they were, Like where's the demure noble.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Sauceless sauceless era, you know, and like, hey, shout out
to the small tits too. We love to see them all. Okay,
equal opportunity. But I don't know, we got to call
them something other than bardaceous. I think bordacious, does not.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
You know what, they're all ladies. They're all bodacious to me.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
That's and that's called feminist.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
As an ally as as a feminist, I can say
they're all They're all. They're allus in my heart, I'm
very brave.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Hashtag ally hashtags.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Ally hashtag sex positive, hashtag me hashtag I'm I'm a
good boy. Oh god, Okay. One of those things is like, yeah,
I'm not. I'm definitely not making any common it's about that.
That's uh, yeah, that's gonna that's gonna be all you.

(10:04):
I'm not on the individual bodaciousness.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Of Yeah, I mean, ladies and gentle days if you want,
you know. Comments on titties write and say eleanor what
about this? You know what I'm probably gonna say, thanks, thanks,
great great child.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
What are you doing? I'm just sending nudes to my
favorite pocket Like wait what like damn?

Speaker 1 (10:34):
That's sweet? Right, that's yeah, thanks for thinking of us.
That's good. I gotta stop watching.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Ask ask guy coming in like, whoa, that's great. Have
you guys get any pictures of them from the back? Yeah? Yeah?
Oh man, all right, well that's the and caboose ass
slash Paul Verhoven chat.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
I guess we should talk about other things.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, let's do our job. I guess all right.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Here Yeah, hello, welcome back to We're Not So Different,
a podcast about how asses have always been underrated. My
name is Luke and I'm an amateurish medievalist, and as
always i'm joined dactor eleanor Yanniga who is anything. But
today we are talking more about on de Luce. But

(12:12):
before we get there, we get a couple questions first
from our patron, Alie Cant, who says, so, what exactly
are the differences between a count, a viscount, an earl,
and a mark a marquess in similar nobleman roles with
funny names.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Okay, So I can tell you from the English point
of view that here's how it goes. So the number,
the biggest one is duke, okay, okay, So duke is
most important and duke you know, this like comes back
from this is like a Norman thing because William the
Conqueror was the Duke of Normandy, right, But they don't

(12:50):
start doing dukedoms in England until the fourteenth century. But
the dukedoms can be conferred on you, like that's a
thing that you certainly can do. But ordinarily what happens
with dukedoms is that's what's given to you if you
are like a prince of royal blood when you get majority, right,

(13:12):
So it's like if you're the third prince or whatever,
you're not going to get to be the king, so
you end up being a duke. Right underneath that is marquess,
which is fun So that is also Norman. It comes
from the term marchio and it's like that is people

(13:36):
who were very specifically in the marches, so like the
Marches of Wales and things like that, So you know,
like basically the people that they had on the edges
to like watch the Welsh marches or to watch the
Scottish marches, so that's that's where it comes from. Then
you get your earls, okay, which is interesting to me

(13:57):
because I thought that earls were going to be higher
than Marquis's but shows what I know. I guess that
I'm just more used to seeing earls, and it's because
earl is a really old name here, because we get
that from the Danish, right, because that was yarl and
they they are like the people who kind of like

(14:19):
administer particular provinces for the kings, right, So that that's
what you get. Next, Then you get your viscount okay,
your viscountscount, yeah, exactly. And interestingly it was first introduced
in the Hre in the tenth century and it was

(14:42):
a vice kommes, right, so it's like basically like underneath
the account or something like that. So like, but we
don't apparently have counts here in England, so I think
that basically counts are the equivalent of earls on the
count net but on the continent, but they don't have
earls because they weren't taken over by the Danish, right,

(15:02):
So you have a count and said and then you
have a viscount, right, and so we have these from
like the one hundred Years War mm hm. And so
that is a it's an attempt to consolidate French names

(15:24):
into like the English one because they're like, oh, yeah,
well we're going to rule Frants, then we're gonna have
to have a way to amalgamate all these guys, right.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Fun fact, Earl famously became a name. Another fun fact.
Every time I see Marquis, I want to say Marquise,
but yeah, it did became a name. You throw a
knee on the end of that bad boy, and it's Marquise,
you know. And of course count became a name, Count Dooku.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
That's right, Yeah, yeah, that was shit.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
Is better than a joke about burgers being hamburger chefs.
I love that they didn't have hamburgers back then. God
damn it. They weren't civilized like us.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
No, that's a way that they had to wait around
for Mongols to invents grinding meat.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
So yeah, yeah, and then for the Americans to perfect it,
because you can't allow for such a thing. No yeah, wait,
hold on, oh I'm sorry, go ahead, got one.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
More under viscount you get Baron I forgot about Baron.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, another name.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
My friends in high school had a Springer Spaniel named Baron,
so to me, it is always a dog. And like
we have the most barons around the shop. There's tons
of fucking barons left. There's like four hundred barons, which
so it's like pretty common. Uh you know, it's like
as common as a noble could be, I suppose, So yeah,

(17:00):
you know, basically they are like it essentially meant that
you held land, so it's like, you know whatever. So yeah,
then then and then you got just like your serves
and esquires and ship below that. It's not that interesting,
but yeah, that's so that's everybody.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, yeah mech then squire was the title of nobility,
not the title that you get. Called me your an
attorney and nothing else. Uh yeah, Ollie, thank you very
much for the question. Uh. Next, we got one from
cat Solis, who says, question about medieval executions generally, were

(17:38):
there any factors that determine the weapons used for beheadings
other than the executioner's preference. Thinking about Margaret Pole's hack
job sorry via acts versus Ambolin's French swordsman executioner, I
saw some Wolfall talk online about English beheadings traditionally involving
an axe and block, while the French just had the

(17:59):
person kneel, but no sources, so I'm curious.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, I mean the major way that people got executed
was hanging rather a lot of hanging around the joint.
But as you kind of move up in society, you
get more of the beheadings because they're faster, right, and
oftentimes for nobles and people like that, they want to

(18:24):
have it be a little bit less of a spectacle,
like enough of a spectacle where some people are allowed in,
but they don't want like the baying mobs of hundreds
of people coming in to watch nobles getting killed, because
it's just all a bit unseemly, you know, Anablin gets
the French swordsman because they're like trying to be nice,
you know, because Henry he's such a nice guy.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
So we're always saying that, yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Yeah, completely absolutely, And then like I think that it
does tend to be more common that English people do
use a block, yes, but I don't really know that
much more about Like I know more about English executions
just because of where I live than I do about

(19:08):
French ones. I do know that we get rather a
lot of axes in the Holy Roman Empire, and but
that tends to kind of like be I think.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
That they're generally kneeling.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yeah, yeah, but then sometimes there's no real rhyme or
reason to it. But there's also just a lot of
hanging around the shop like more common people. It's hanging.
So that's how we we tend to know about it.
But yeah, it's it's all pretty grim. Hilariously, I was
just chatting to a friend of mine and she's she's
another public historian and she works on amble In and
apparently she was at a history festival last year and

(19:44):
there was this man in the crowd who like came
to argue with her about that, like, well, what was
Henry the supposed to do?

Speaker 2 (19:53):
He was like, I mean what was he supposed to do? Not? Fuck?
Is not fucking a woman? I didn't want to fuck
him unless she was married? I mean, what what?

Speaker 1 (20:02):
What do you not kill her?

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Oh? You're you're applying you're applying these modern standards to
a medieval man who didn't know anything about it. Well, like,
there was some large coalition of groups of people across
the continent who were like, no, Henry, don't do this. Yeah, right,
come on there, sure, yeah, And I'm supposed to believe

(20:26):
and I'm supposed to believe that people care when a
woman died in the early modern period.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Sure, yeah, anyway that makes me laugh.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah, I did have a non uh stupid question. Well,
at least from my perspective. I mean, I realized that
that hanging does take a bit and you got to
kick and stuff. But I'm also led to believe that
having your fucking head chopped off, uh, is not something
that can usually be accomplished in a single swing odd

(21:00):
circumstances are by very strong people with a very large blade.
Because one of the things I've found out from reading
about actual executions like this is that even the best
of these guys were like two to three swing minimum. Like,
there's a lot of shit you got to get through
in the human neck to get it off.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
It's not, yeah, it's not. It isn't kind of like
a one and done deal, which is which was why
they have this like special swordsman Bramble and right. You know,
it's the equivalent of like having a really good second
if you you know, shame yourself in front of your domaio.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Right, yeah, yeah, it's part in uh got part in
the Showgun where they where they're talking about the time
where young.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
Like you guy getting the eight year olds of eight
year old to.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
Like to chop your head off because he defeated you
in battle or whatever, and in the memory of it
he does it in one swoop. But then when they're
talking about it much later, he like, what did I
have to hit him like twelve fucking times to get
his head off?

Speaker 1 (22:04):
Like you idiot? Like who would ask you?

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Who would ask a twelve year old to do this?
You moron? You ube? Yeah yeah yeah. Medieval executions actually
executions of any era.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Not not great main Yah, yeah, it's to be honest.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
The guillotine was a huge step forward.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, people people make a big deal about it now,
huge step forward. Uh. But yeah, basically, if you're going
to execute people for like actual reasons, like you know,
revolutionary justice type stuff, just make it swift, no torture.
Don't people like this for the love? Oh yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
People, people make a big people make a big deal
about the guillotine now because they're like, oh, rich people
got killed and that's what it's about.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
You know, hey, how yeah, when it's actually when it's
actually an ingenious use of human engineering. This, it really
is was really intended to solve a lot of problems
and you know, just happened dead for an unintended reason,
kind of like the cotton gin Eli Whitney Woo. Nobody's

(23:11):
gonna need slaves after.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
I invent this?

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Hell, oh god, this is awful. Yeah, Kat, thank you
very much for the question question you want to answer.
If you want to ask questions like these that we
are forced at Halbert point to answer on the show,
then please do subscribe to our Patreon, Patreon dot com,
slash w n sd pod where you can ask us

(23:39):
these questions. You can join our discord, which has now
more than three hundred members, not three hundred active members,
but more than three hundred members regardless. And uh yeah,
and you can also listen to bonus episodes. We just
released our first one on and Or season two last week,
and later this week we will get to part four

(24:00):
of Giovanni Boccaccio's The Cameron. Uh and it will get
even raunchier.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
Your hats, because.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Onto your hats, folks, because you get to find out
what what was considered extremely pornographic.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Too of the fourteenth century.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
And you're gonna be like, well, I mean that was that.
That was definitely like a fun story, but really that
was it. Huh okay, cool, So it really was like,
oh they showed me an ankle. Yeah, you know, folks,
it was a different time. It was a different, different time.
But regardless, we will take you back to the different
time and uh the ravings of a guy uh watching

(24:47):
the world end uh during the Black Deaths. So yeah,
he's just like us for real, for real anyway, Yeah,
subscribe to that patroon dot com slash w nsd pod
five bucks a month. You guys know the deal. Anyway,
as much as we would like to avoid defining all
Ontolus by its relationship to the rest of so called
Christian Europe, it becomes far more difficult as time moves on,

(25:11):
especially since we all know eventually where this leads. Indeed,
from the outset in seven eleven until about ten sixty three,
there was nothing that could be remotely considered a united
Christian response to the Muslim presence in Iberia. To be sure,
leaders who happened to be Christians conquered parts of northern
and northeastern Spain and northern Portugal, carving out their own
lands and kingdoms, but aside from being Catholic Christians, they

(25:35):
shared little in the way of common culture or even
love for one another. Herona, Barcelona, leon Oporto, and Zamora
were all taken by Christian rulers before the end of
the ninth century, but that's where it stopped. For nearly
two hundred years. The kingdoms of Leon, castill, Navarre, and Arrogant,
as well as the County of Barcelona all formed, but

(25:56):
they fought with each other just as often, if not
more so, than they with the Muslims to their south.
Even through the early eleventh century, when the Umid state
of Cordoba completely unraveled and broke into more than twenty
competing typhus or independent Iberian Muslim states, there was no
concerted effort to push Islam out of Iberia, and they
weren't able to extend their holdings further. But all that

(26:18):
began to change in ten sixty three as Pope Alexander
the Second had a wild and crazy idea. What if
the secular military leadership of Christian Europe, meaning Western Europe
in this case, called their levies to form a multinational
Catholic coalition to go in eject Muslims from the land
and then occupy it so it could be brought back
into the loving bosom of Christendom. And what if follow

(26:41):
me here? All warriors were given a plenary indulgence, granting
them remissions of remission of sins if they participated a
teaching formalized within a decade by Bishop Anselm of Luca.
In ten sixty three, Alexander the Second did just that, unofficially,
preaching a limited war to remove the Muslims from their

(27:02):
rule in the city of Barbastro, which he referred to
as quote a Christian emergency end quote. It was not
a true crusade, at least not by the standard set
three decades later that would be employed for another four
hundred years thereafter, but it was a direct precursor to
those later. It be seen as a dry run for
the wider crusading practice, a proof of concept for the

(27:24):
popes that it could work. But that was all hindsight.
When a mixed force composed of Normans under William of Aquitaine,
alongside Ragonese and Catalan soldiers besieged Barbastro in ten sixty
three and took it less than a year later. They
had no idea the horrifying precedent they were setting, though
in something of an ironic joke, the siege and capture

(27:44):
of Barbastro would be a brief Christian victory that was
reversed in short order by ten sixty five Muslim forces
from the Taipha of Zaragoza, along with a contingent at
five hundred Savillan Christian cavalry, successfully reclaimed to Barbastro, leaving
Christian forces in disarray and great enmity between the Spanish

(28:04):
forces and the Franks for what was deemed quote Norman barbarity,
much like the real Crusades would inspired later More importantly
to this series, however, the Siege of Barbastro was the
first real United attempt by something that vaguely can be
called Christendom to eject Muslims and Islam from the Iberian Peninsula.

(28:25):
It was not the nationalist notion of a reconquest with
all the fascist baggage that entails, but Christian opposition to
Iberian Muslims was fomenting into a real cohesive project at
the time, and that's going to be an existential problem
for the leaders of all Idolus going forward. So ye,
as we said part three of our series on all Ondoluce,

(28:46):
and today we're talking about how these disparate, feuding statelets
began to coalesce into a force that would one day
fully eject Muslim rule from the Iberian Peninsula, especially the
end of the Umid state of Cordoba and the Typhi period. However,
we don't want to fully focus on Christianity this time,
especially since it's going to be such a big, big

(29:06):
problem next time when we close this out. So we're
also going to talk about some of the lasting cultural
and cultural, spiritual, political, and scientific legacies of the peoples
of al Andolous during the time of Muslim rule. There's
a whole golden age specifically associated with al Andolous after all,
and we can't forget that. Also, we got to talk
about el Seed. You know, he's there. We can't we

(29:27):
can't forget about.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
That's our boy though, about Seed.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Oh yeah, Eleanor. We talked last time about how we
don't subscribe to the Christian nationalist idea of a reconquista,
but that certainly seems to start changing in the eleventh century.
How are we to delineate between the ahistorical fascist narrative
and the actual events that happened.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, I think that this is one of the real
times when actually looking at the history shows you that
the history with the big age that people tell you
isn't real, right, because all you have to do is
look at how these various kingdoms relate to each other

(30:10):
and how they make varying alliances whose lands they're taking.
And you know you've already touched on this point. But
the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula spend just as
much time at each other's throats as they do fighting
with anybody who is Muslim. And this isn't to say
that they don't fight people who are Muslim. And it

(30:32):
isn't to say also that when they do fight people
who are Muslim, they aren't going. Yeah, like, this one's
from my boy jac shout out to God. He's definitely
going to help us win this one. But we have
careers like you know of our boil Seed that show
us that you know, this idea that there is a

(30:53):
fundamental disconnect between Muslims and Christians and that they are
always at each other's throats. Like that's thoroughly modern. You
have people who are just soldiers of fortune who move
back and forth all the time. It's completely possible for
you to be a client of a Muslim ruler when

(31:14):
you are a noble who is Christian and vice versa.
You know, there are all different ways of doing this
on the peninsula, and they end up just being a
kind of more interesting bunch of smaller kingdoms than what
is going on in the rest of euro because it's
just like the rest of Europ where everyone's kicking each

(31:35):
other's teeth in all the fucking time, right, you know,
Like it's it's possible to see various parts of the
Holy Roman Empire at each other's throats and like going
for each other, you know, Dear God, Like you know,
England is constantly having, you know, an anarchy or something
like that and fighting each other, and it's the same
thing that's happening down on the Iberian Peninsula. But you

(31:57):
can have this veneer on top of it, right. I
suppose what it ends up doing, interestingly, is it ends
up getting people from outside the area more involved the
people inside, and people outside the area are like, oh yeah,
this is just like a crusade, and everyone like from
Barcelona's like, what, no, it's not.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
The Aragonese told us, we like, we needed to do
this so they wouldn't try to take the border territories
between us and you know whatever, and they were like yeah,
and then and then it was real. They were like wait,
why like wait, why are these Normans doing this? Why

(32:39):
are they killing everyone like this? Why are they not
really making distinctions between like the Muslims there and anyone else?
Oh god, why are you doing that?

Speaker 1 (32:49):
You know?

Speaker 2 (32:49):
And I'm not, obviously not to say that Aragonese and
Catalan men didn't participate in those things too, but it
seems to be a distinct problem from after this that
lingered on for a good while. They didn't really like
the French.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
Now, that's the thing. It's like, if you've got to
choose between your neighbors who, yeah, like you fight with
them all the time or whatever, but culturally you have
a lot of similarities, and you know, these fucking French,
like the French Vikings are in your backyard, you know,
then you're most of the time going to fall down
on the side of your neighbors.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Then, yeah, you know, what.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
It is seen is more foreign threat because one ament
only it is more foreign right.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's you know, we all know
there's leads to fourteen ninety two, the removal of the
last Muslim stronghold from Granada in the very southern tip
of Spain. But you know, we can't lump all of
that together because not only were the people of all

(33:59):
andelusiks speriencing different things at the time, at these times,
the leadership was going through different things, and you know,
there was a push and pull. It wasn't all just
the Christians pushing south relentlessly for four hundred years. It
was you pushed a little and you got somewhere, and okay,
we took back part of Extremadura, and everyone's like, yeah,

(34:19):
there's a reason no one really cares that you did that.
I call it dura and not place we like to live.
I realized it's not I really don't. I know, I
understand Spanish, just not like that. Don't don't message me
listen now, you know, So yeah, you just can't. You

(34:41):
can't lump all these things together because it's, uh, you know,
it's not the same thing. The uh, the as we'll
talk about later. The Uh al Moravid dynasty treats not
only most of their Muslim constituents, but they're Jewish and
Christian and constituents far differently than the Umid state of

(35:02):
Cordoba did, which you know, is just it's a different thing.
But yeah, so at this time, at about the early
early one thousands or so, around one thousand and thirty
was the very end, but the Umid state of Cordoba
began to just fall apart. The wider Umids had hung around.

(35:29):
The last Umid caliph would die in ten thirty one.
But yeah, the Umid state just couldn't hold it together,
what with all the Berbers and everything going on, the
different factions on the peninsula, and they broke into typhas.
So how was it that they were able to do
this and break into these typhos without like being overwhelmed,

(35:50):
Because typically if you're looking at the history of this
and you say, okay, this is when the Yumid state
of Kordoba broke up, So that would definitely be when
a big push came. And the thing about it was
that it wasn't they didn't there wasn't a big push
again for fifty years after this.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
So no, no, And I mean so I think that
that just goes to show you how I suppose Europeanized
everyone had become at that point in time. It's like
they can break up into the typhus and things like
that because they're like, wellsh I don't know everyone else
has smaller kingdoms now, So like I guess we're doing
that now, right, because it's just like if everyone up

(36:30):
in Astorias or whatever has their own kingdom, well that's
that's a route to continuing rule for the people who
still want to keep charge. You know, if you're a
major landholder, you're still going to want to keep your
land going. You're not going to want to see anyone
kind of come take it over. So they just kind
of break up and fracture a little bit, because that's

(36:51):
what everyone's been doing, you know, like that's what happens
when the empires fall, right, And it all also kind
of shows us what I think is quite interesting is
there's this disinterest coming to us from the Arabian Peninsula
at this point in time. They're like, yeah, fuck it,
that's too far to walk. I'm not going over there, dude,

(37:12):
you know, like and you know, there is kind of
more of a I suppose recentering happening in Islam at
the time, you know, more of a desire to push
into uh further into Asia then there is wanting to
go into Europe. There is, and there are great reasons

(37:33):
for that. It's like you can already trade, you know,
with with the Iberian Peninsula. There's no real need to
do that. Whereas if you can manage to Islamify some
of these Mongols around here and stuff like that, then
you stand to make a make some pretty good connections,
right you know, where we're we are putting our sites

(37:55):
on Persia in places like that instead, And so I
think it just kind of shows that everything was actually
fairly settled in terms of what things are, and everyone
just kind of accepted that there is a bit of
a melting pot situation going on over on the Iberian
Peninsul's like there's all these varying states and you know,

(38:16):
it's interesting too, because like the ten thirties, it's like,
you know, so now we're in we've just got to
the high medieval period. Like congratulations, everybody, We've done it.
And you know, they there isn't going to be a
big bunch of Christians who are going to come and
take it over, because it's like Jesus, the French just
had to invent Normans because they're having enough problems with Vikings, right,

(38:38):
They're like, I don't know, I guess we've bought these guys.
Now they are viking about, you know, more or less.
You know, they've got a lot more back and forth
going on with whatever's going on in England because that's
just kind of the way that they're pointed. They know
that if they want to do something in terms of
like attacking you know, Muslim they're going to have to

(39:01):
get through a bunch of Christian kingdoms first, and they're
not going to be happy to see you. Yeah, there's
a bunch of French people. So it's like, you know,
it would kind of be up to the Christians on
the peninsula, and the Christians on the Peninsula know what
their neighbors are, like, they know what their neighbors are
capable of. Yes, they will fight them, for sure, but

(39:21):
you know, we're also a little bit ahead of the
Crusades as well, you know, so it's sort of like
there isn't this idea that like, oh, let's get together
like and do like a big push because that also
it just isn't in the psyche of the Iberians at
the time.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
I guess, yeah, yeah, it's just, you know, you don't
have even if you wanted to extend Barcelona or you know,
the County of Barcelona or you know, the count the
Kingdom of Arragon or whatever much further south, it's going
to be difficult when it's just you drawing from that

(40:01):
one tiny region and fighting with all your neighbors. But yeah,
these Typhos, essentially I acted like you know, regular states,
I mean kind of like Holy Roman imperial states, except
there was no at this time, there was no overarching
imperial structure above them, and so they would fight with

(40:22):
each other, they would fight with the Christians, they made
alliances with the you know, it's the same stuff. And
I mean this is going on even after the Almorovids
take over. It still takes them a while, like into
the early eleven hundreds before they kind of break what
the Typhos were doing like this. But yeah, that brings

(40:43):
us up to ten sixty four, in the ten sixty
three and the Siege of Barbastros, so it's considered different
than the events that came before it. But from a
historical perspective, how is it? Because I mean we have
seen like what we would kind of consider cross national

(41:04):
coalitions to fight Muslims in Iberia. You know, uh, the
Charles Martel and his Franks and the Oquitanians under O
to the Great. So you know what makes Barbastro special different?

Speaker 1 (41:17):
I guess that it is because the the desire to
go out and get Barbastro is coming from the papacy
as opposed to coming from varying rulers. Right, So when
Charles Martel is doing this, he's like, hell, yeah, free
land baby, ye right, Whereas more or less Barbastro is

(41:41):
like Pope Alexander the second idea, right, And so what
is happening here. It isn't about like going to nobles
and just saying, hey, you want to fight. It's like
this is preached. You know, they send out preachers saying,
oh yeah, let's let's go. Let's go fucking get these guys, right,
and so like we are going to go out and

(42:02):
we are going to get the Burgundians and the French
to kind of point themselves down here, right. And this
is interesting. It has become interesting to people, essentially because
from a historiographical standpoint, people like to say that this
is kind of like a crusade before the Crusades, right,
so this is about the papacy beginning to throw its

(42:22):
weight around. And that is also one of the big
differences between this and when Charles Martel does it is
you know, when Charles Martel was doing it, the papacy
still didn't have any fucking power, right. It's like it's
the it's the eleventh century and the papc has finally
got a little bit of street cred and they decided
this is what they're going to use it for. And

(42:44):
now obviously there is a amount of cynicism that is
going to go along with this as well. You know,
the church wants to expand back into the areas because
they want tithes, right like, let's let's just be so
real here. And basically nobles are going to do it
because a they can get a plannary indulgence and so

(43:06):
that's pretty sweet. And be like, again, if you're just
like some fail son, this is a chance to get
some pretty sweet land in theory, like if you're like
the fourth son of a Burgundian viscount then like, here's
a way to actually get something, right. So this ends
up being particularly popular with like the Aquitanese and stuff,

(43:29):
you know, like the people who are kind of like
southern anyway where they're like, oh, I don't have to
walk very far, maybe could get like some some more land.
And we see also that like the catalogs are like, oh,
sweet dog, like this is going to be good for
us to get some land. And I think that there

(43:50):
in lies kind of the crux with why this doesn't
work very well, because you know, everyone who showed up
is like, sweet, I'm going to get land, right.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Barbastro isn't that big. It's barely a blip between Huesca
and Zara, Like what are we doing here?

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Yeah? This is like a city, right, you know, which
is also what makes this so funny because you know
people now like to jack off about it, like I
see people I mean white supremacists. Are they people who
don't know?

Speaker 2 (44:19):
Like, to be clear, I was not jacking off about
it in the intro. You are not you are my
passionate interest versus there.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
I don't mean you, Luke, I never mean you. What
I mean is that you know, there are some people
who build it up into being more than than what
it is, because like, the thing that's quite funny about
this is that it is very acquisitorial, right, because like
that that's why I don't fall text. Everyone's like, okay, cool,

(44:47):
I'm here, like where's my ship, And everyone's like what,
like it's only a little city, right, you know, And
so that's quite funny.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
Yeah, it's yeah, it.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
It is.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
There are differences from the actual crusades. There are no
vowels in this one, there's no pilgrimage attached to it.
There's less widespread preaching and church involvement, and this is
strictly marshal. But a big thing in this apparently meant
a whole lot to a lot of people in Europe,
is that church leadership is not officially doing this. Like

(45:28):
even though Alexander the second is like, yes, this is
a good idea, it's not officially sponsored by the church.
The bishops aren't like walking before people, which is what
would happen later. But yeah, so it's you know, it's
a difference, and that what we would consider basically just
a fig leaf for you know, the for the historians,

(45:50):
like meant a lot to these people at the time,
because the difference in response from this which is anemic
to thirty in thirty years, to the next one, which
is over two hundred thousand people total showing up to
like march halfway across the world and die in the heat,
you know, is insane.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Well, I mean yeah, and when you think about it, right,
it makes sense because what this is is, as you say,
this is a fig leaf. This is an excuse to
go fuck your neighbor up and like get some land.
And they're like, oh, yeah, I'm really mad about Muslims
question mark, you know, and going to get some land.
Whereas the Crusades, there is great, a great deal of

(46:33):
like personal piety that comes into it. And certainly one
of the reasons why it's something that people want to
do is because you know, as good Christians, they all
want to go to the Holy Land someday. You know,
this is something that they really wish to experience. And
pilgrimage is a really important part of the medieval way
of thinking about Christianity and your place in the world.

(46:57):
And I mean there's the pilgrimage to something the combozzella,
but like it's not in Muslim hands, you know, and
like that, and that's one that everybody goes on all
the time, right, Like everybody, like people we going down
to something over the comstella, like you know, they're on
the commune area. They're just like yeah, what what you
know all the time. So that's absolutely fine. Like the
big thing that you'd be like, yeah, we must free
it from these Muslim dogs or whatever is free. So

(47:22):
it's it just it is more of a land grab fundamentally.
And I think that, you know, to cast dispersions at
Alexander the second, I think he's just kind of like
trying to expand his tithe base. You know, this is
about bringing money in from one of the richest parts
of Europe. So yeah, if you could just re christianize it,
that'd be great, thanks, you know.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
Mm hmm, yeah, it's yeah. It's also this is kind
of I mean, this kind of does look like a
drive run for the Albergui and Cruse where they were like,
you know those people in some France they've been doing
some heresy and are you sure it's just you didn't

(48:06):
want to have the nice southern French land to yourself,
you sure? No, no, no, no, I would never do that. Yeah,
so yeah, yeah, it's be fair.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
They did be doing some heresy. I mean they did,
but you know, like that, I would have killed them
for it. I would have killed them for it personally.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
Yeah. It was uh you know, yeah, you know, Barbastro was,
as I said, retaken quite quickly by Muslim forces. But
that would be short lived for the time because the
Christians did start pushing further south at this point and

(48:49):
they they ran up into the Almoravid dynasty. The Taiphas
were fighting amongst themselves. They could really unite to fight
back against the Christians who were loosely fighting more together.
At this point, they the Muslim contingents had lost Madrid

(49:13):
and Toledo by ten eighty five, but uh, the Almoravids,
who had taken power in north uh northwest Africa and
based out of Marrakech, they decided to come over and
deal with the squabbling Taiphas, get them under the power
and then and they basically rolled over and they were like, look,

(49:35):
you can either keep fighting with each other and be
ruled by Christians or uh, you know, become vassals to us,
unite and push the Christians back. And they were like well,
you know better the devil we know, and they went
they they got under the Almoravids and it it was

(50:00):
uh that stopped that completely checked the Christian push south
for a while. They would not be able to, uh
to move any further south, uh until Kowenka in UH
eleven seventy seven. But uh, yeah, the Almrvids were different

(50:20):
because they were based on a much more conservative Islamic
sect and they had much different opinions on Christians and
Jewish citizens than previously. Now they didn't push them out
or you know, lead any state sponsored programs.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
There.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
There were a couple of earlier programs against Jews, one
in Cordoba and like ten eleven and another one a
little bit later, but uh those were those were not
you know, widespread sponsor you know states sponsored things. They
were much smaller. But yeah, things became a lot more
difficult then Christians and Jews would jew were reviewed a

(51:09):
lot more skeptically under the owl more evids than before.
But yeah, it uh eleanor like I mean, I guess
you can kind of understand it because like if it
becomes like an existential thing us versus them, you can
kind of understand how they would eventually become more uh

(51:30):
more militant against it. Uh, you know, because it directly
affects them. But you know, like what uh you know what,
like you know what, what were their efforts to like
do this, to like crack down, because they clearly didn't
kick any of them out. They still accepted the Jesus,
So like, you know what was the difference?

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Yeah, well, I mean the thing about the Ubians is
they were like fairly lax, right, like, I mean quite famously.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
That's part of the reason why they end up getting
toppled is everyone's like, guys, you see pretty drunk, and
everyone's like what me, No, no, no, no, I'm just
very high on hash Yeah. And also you know what,
this is a normal amount of drunk.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
Oh oh, oh, you're perfect. Oh I see smoke weed
right before I drive my son to archery practice. Oh
I can't drive a chariot effectively when I've been had
a little smoking. Oh yeah, good point, mom, that it's
a hundred percent. Do not smoke weed and operate vehicles,

(52:32):
or get drunk and operate vehicles anyway, Go ahead.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Please do not get in a chariot.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Yes, after a chariot of anything. Don't need to get
on a bike. You can skin your knee and hurt
yourself back.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
You know, just just take you take it easy out there, folks.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
They take old two feet on home or public transport anyway.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
Yeah, sorry, yeah, I mean but basically, you know, that
is in very many ways the downfalls of the umiad
more generally right. And so yeah, the Almrbons are offering
a harsher line in Islam. But that's just because they're
not drunk, just kinna, you know, they're they're sort of

(53:12):
like doing the thing you know, which which the you.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
As the one of the one of the Springfield policeman
has a badge in his mouth when Rix Banner shows
up and kicks Wickham out of the chairs, like you
spit that badge out of your mouth. You're a policeman,
like exactly doing this show like you what what? How
do you have three harems? This is offensive?

Speaker 1 (53:40):
Exactly right, Yeah, I supposedly interesting. The other interesting thing
is like, you know, the al Morivans are really coming
from much more of like I suppose, a Western African background,
you know, like they're much more berber and their outlook
and so essentially what they are offering is kind of like, oh,

(54:02):
I don't know, localized form of Islam as well. So
you know, like this is much more linked to kind
of like the western Sahara urban culture, and it's a
lot more hooked in with what is going on in
that zone of influence, whereas I mean, granted, the Umi

(54:22):
it's been cut off from you know, Arabia for ages now,
but it is just very much like of of its
time and place, if that makes sense. And so yeah,
they are like a little bit more strict, but that's
not saying muh, you know. And and also they don't,

(54:44):
as you say, you know, they don't have the desire
to kick out Christian and Jewish counterparts because again they're
they're from this culture. You know, these are people who
have been here a long time too. And also, you know,
the fun thing about strict Muslims is the stricter of
the group of Muslims, the more they're going to need

(55:05):
non Muslims just in order to like, you know, get paid, right,
you need that just yet. So yeah, it's like the
irony of you know, strict Islam is always how many
non Islamic people are are hanging around as a result, you.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
Know, yeah, you know, this is pretty much where we're
going to leave off with the whole Christendom thing. It's
starting to form into a real cause in fits and starts,
and you know, the Almorovids stopped the Southern push for
a time, but beginning in the late eleven hundreds, that

(55:39):
Southern push is going to become fully unstoppable. And you know,
we we know where that leads to, uh to the
final banishment or the final uh throwing off of Buslim
from from from the the Iberian Penunsul in fourteen ninety two.
And you know they never had to think about it
ever again ever. You know, yeah, we'll talk about that

(56:02):
next time, because this is a good time to talk
about a very famous person probably and we probably the
single most famous person from this entire era, uh el
Seed see El el Sid Yeah, yeah, there you go.

(56:24):
You gotta you gotta say it all fancy like, uh yeah.
He was born in ten forty three. He died in
ten ninety nine, antagonizing the al Morovids. You know, he
shows up in a lot of Siev games. Eleanor what's
his deal? Why is this guy so? Why why is
he so famous? And why does he have a really

(56:45):
metal looking statue in Yas.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
Yeah, he does have a really metals Dutch Borgos, So
he is really interesting. I say, he's from near Borgos,
home to my favorite type of black pudding out more.
But so he is just one of these very Iberian dudes, right,
So he would just kind of work for whoever, and

(57:12):
he was a pretty fucking good military leader, right. So
he starts out kind of like working with and alongside
the Castilians. You know. He he's like a lower nobleman
in the same way that like everyone who you hear
about is, and he kind of like makes good. Right.
So he's working initially for Sancho the second I simply

(57:39):
love to say the names of the very Iberian kings
and I'm like, yeah, come on, Sancho. So he was
at this point in time employed and kind of fighting
more particularly against Zardagosa, and he was working alongside Sancho,
and you know is Muslim at the time. But it's

(58:00):
just also is kind of like who they're next to. Yeah,
you know, so that's that's quite funny. And so they're like, okay, yeah,
that's that's what we're gonna get get down to, right,
We don't exactly know what happens at this point in time.
We think that maybe, like I'll see these like killing

(58:22):
out goes people like there are some there are some
like rumors that he managed to do that. But anyway,
as Sancho ends up getting killed, probably by like you know,
his cousins or some shit, right, And so his brother
takes over from him, and his brother had been in

(58:42):
exilent Delaedo and it was like, oh no it is
my brother dad. Wow, that's crazy, bro. And so anyway
he well no what bro, oh bro, No, not bro. Anyway,
Hey I'm here, I'm here, I'm back right out. Yeah yeah,
So like homeboys back and like you know, here we go.

(59:02):
Like he is not particularly interested in working with his
brother's friends, and Elsie'd essentially gets himself exceled at this
point in time, and so he's like, okay, well all right, whatever, dude,
Like it's hard to keep a good bitch down. Fuck it,
we ball and so off he goes, and he ends

(59:27):
up just kind of being like anybody anybody sells sword anybody, uh.
And he ends up then going to work for some
of the Muslims because they're like I don't give a shit, right, Like,
you know, I just got kind of get paid out here, right.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
So like he.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
Manages to like impress anyone because he ends up fighting
like the Emma Ranada, uh, and he does really really
well against them, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone's like,
oh yeah, this question just like fighting him like that
means everyone's like, oh, we're like I'm paying attention, right,
So for over he goes end up like in Barcelona, right,
and so it's like okay, yeah, that's fine, here we go.

(01:00:08):
We're in Barcelona. But basically then people are like, hey,
what's up, I got more money, right, and like the
type of Zaragosa is like, hey, homeboy, I hear that
you've been getting treated badly by your your friends. Do
you want to like come and work for us? And

(01:00:29):
Elside is like basically like hell yeah I will, right,
And like so he he'd been you know, he can't
hang out at Alphonsa's court, so here he goes, right,
and so now he's working for the type of Zagosa.
They end up fighting other typhas almost like primarily he
does end up like beating the shit out of the
Arragonese as well, which is cool, you know, and they

(01:00:53):
besiege Gibraltar, they do all these sorts of things, and
then hilariously then you have like the French try to
get involved because like the Christians are getting their asses
beat pretty badly. So here comes Raymond of Burgundy and
he's like, yeah, well now I'm gonna like attack Zadagosa

(01:01:14):
or whatever, and like that was stupid, you know, and uh,
and like we all learn a valuable lesson, right, But
one of the valuable lessons that we learn is like
maybe we should call el Seed back and be like, hey,
I saw you, sure you don't wanna you don't want
to do that or whatever. So he gets basically like
a recalled and like so he's then working for Alfonso again,

(01:01:40):
and like he gets kicked some of the Almoro fans out.
But then basically what ends up happening is he kind
of goes out on his own. So he's sort of
got his own army at this point in time that
is both Christian and Muslim, and he's like, I want
my own land. Like I'm tired of like going back

(01:02:00):
and forth between like a Zaragosa and Castile. I want
I want to be able to like make something for
myself so basically he's like, well, I'm going to go
and attempt to sort of take over some of Valencia. Now,
the rulers of Barcelona are like, the fuck you are?
You know, like I don't I would really rather that

(01:02:23):
you do not do that, and Elsie's like, yeah, well
I'm gonna do that anyway, right, And so he ends
up laying siege to Valencia, and basically like he does
kind of okay, but he ends up eventually kind of
like dying. There are some fun rumors about this, so

(01:02:49):
like one of them is that his wife Humana then
like puts his corpse onto his horse and then is like,
oh look everybody, it's el Seed and we're all gonna
like the siege and everyone was yay, fantastic, like falls
it out, but like that's probably like not real unfortunately.
But like one way or another, he's a really interesting

(01:03:10):
guy because it actually shows us, I think, what is
really going on down on the Iberian Peninsula, which is,
I don't know, man, whatever the fuck you want, Like
you got a strong back, we could use you a
kind of a deal down there, right, Like he is
able to play off people very very well. He is

(01:03:31):
aware of the fact that there is a possibility to
take your own land if you've got a good enough army.
He is willing to work with whomever. You know, he's
got Muslims in his employee, he's got Christians in his employee.
He is employed by varying people at vary in times.
And he's also taking advantage of the fact that it
is just a fucking mess down there, right. We got
brothers killing brothers, we got cousins killing cousins, we've got

(01:03:54):
everybody at war with everyone, and chaos is a ladder homie.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
So people like to big l seed up into kind
of like an anti Muslim person, but that's like a
fucking ridiculous thing to say. That means he didn't look
at anything, and actually what he is is very much
a man of his time and place, right, Like I mean, no,
you like the all the like weird nineteen forties movies
about him and stuff are all about like what a
Christian guy he is, right, And it's like, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Mean, yeah, he was a Christian, but he wasn't. He
wasn't he he was He wasn't fighting the uh, the
the Muslims because he hated them.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
No, let's not say that no, and and like that
that's the thing, right, He's doing it because this is possible,
and you know, he really can take advantage of these
situations and play people off against each other. And you know,
like you go ahead, la siage to Valencia. You know,
look does it take?

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Okay? Right, like the SEASONALCI not take. But you know
he gave it a good crack.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
Yeah I tried. Yeah, yeah, you can't say that LC
didn't work with whoever came along when he needed them big.
He was a big fan of the Typha of Zarigo,
so he worked with them a lot and fought against
a lot of Christians with them, which really wasn't that uncommon.

(01:05:26):
As I said earlier, a lot of these typhos they
employed Christian mercenaries who fought against Christians specifically who were
really hated. So yeah, it was good times. Yeah. Anyway,
enough of this Christian nonsense. Let's talk about the contributions

(01:05:47):
al Anderles made during its flashing height. There's the widespread
Islamic Golden Age, which goes far beyond Spain. Of course,
it goes across the entire Islamic world, beginning around seven
sixty eight, lasting into the twelve hundred's but it's you know, folks,

(01:06:08):
we got so many things, you know, so much from this,
so much astronomy, so much everything. But basically the stuff
that is specific to al Andolou's astronomy a huge contributions
from Ibn Tufail Alba Tragi and of course Avaros, who

(01:06:34):
is a polymath. He's going to show up a few
times on this hell. Yah, he just you know, he's
he's one of the only one of the only Muslims
of Vinsaladin who gets to stand in the first ring
of Hell because he's so respected. And I mean like

(01:06:54):
there are something like six six peop astronomers from Andalucia
who are thanked by name by Copernicus at the beginning
of they of us. So yeah, they contributed a lot

(01:07:14):
to our current understanding of the universe, according to the
guy who came up with our current understanding of the universe.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
But that's right, yeah, yeah, and you know that they're
really going hard on astronomy, which is very cool.

Speaker 2 (01:07:28):
So yeah, I think there are a number of medical
texts that are that try to be comprehensive, you know,
because at the time they're just all kind of spread out.
You get a lot of this stuff. It's it becomes
you know, they there's this kind of thing that you

(01:07:51):
hear sometimes about how like the Muslims might have had
a better understanding of medicine at the time, and from
the temp from you know, from our perspective, we'd be like, well, no,
because no, you will understand it. Yeah, yeah, it's still
yeah gallanic. But from their perspective, yes, it was incredibly

(01:08:15):
advanced for the time. You know, they were at the
forefront of four humors ology and all that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
They're pretty good surgeons. Is the thing that is really
going down very well in terms of Islamic medicine, and
that is something that feeds into European medicine very very closely.
So pretty much everyone in Europe agrees that they're where
to go if you need, for example, lieball surgery, right,
Like there's medical trees on that sort of thing, and

(01:08:43):
that is one of the things that does improve in
the medieval period. It's very specifically surgery.

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
I mean, like like their surgery would be considered like
beyond gruesome by our standards, but like if you can
do like a one or two percent sent uh percentage
rise in like people who are saved people who survive.
That's huge because your percentage saved is already so low
that like rise is like whoa, that's you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
Know, no, And that's that's what it comes down to,
is that there are these really big leaps that they
managed to make in surgery, and surgery is the thing
that is possible to get better at if you still
believe in your world theory. And that's like, yeah, that's
the one that's.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
It's funny how they're like caps on everyone like so
much of it because like if you're not willing to
think about germs and bacteria or anything like that, like
it really limits most of your horizons in medicine, except
like you can be like, wait a minute, we now
know how to get an arrow out of a guy
slightly better. We did it. Yeah, okay, Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
You know what they're really good at is fistulas interesting,
which is yeah, there's like lots of lots of surgical
guides to that, and you know, I'm sure people are
very glad that they were. So it's a terrible way
to go, terrible way to go.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Otherwise, it's and another big thing something we don't think about,
but these people did fantastic steps forward in irrigation growing stuff. Folks,
Do you like sugar, do you like bananas? Do you
like things like this? Because that had those things have

(01:10:33):
like worldwide applications now because of this, because the first
sugar plantations were started in the Middle East by you know,
I think it was under the Umids or around that time,
but anyway, they spread out and went everywhere, and there
is a thing called the Arab agricultural revolution, which I

(01:10:56):
can't speak to the fact of whether it's actually revolutionary
or not, but it was a big deal. You know,
the Islamic States were very big about state sponsored agricultural projects,
especially in places where like you could grow a lot,
but you needed a lot of help with irrigation, like Spain,
because you can there are a lot of places in

(01:11:18):
Spain you can grow a lot, but you do got
to do a lot of irrigation because it's pretty dry
in some parts of the country. As you know, anyone
who's been there can discuss. And you know, this is
a big deal. Like part like the thing about Alhambra,
one of the I mean, you know, it's a gorgeous palace.
It's like it has like all these little fantastic details.

(01:11:41):
But one of the big things about it was it
helped this entire area turn into like a lush like
fertile growing region because it had these advanced water gardens
and these advanced water systems like their aqueducts and things
like that, which are still there and still occasionally in use.

(01:12:04):
So yeah, just you know, huge stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
It's the fucking best never been.

Speaker 2 (01:12:10):
I love Alhambra. I love the look of it. I
just love how fucking red it is. I think it's
so cool.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
Yeah, it's you know, we talked a little bit about medicine,
but al al Zarawi, who he was an earlier Andalusian
a physician and was later called the greatest physician Western
Islam ever produced literature. Folks, these people were doing their

(01:12:38):
damn best prevent a dark ages. They were over the
period from the seven hundreds to the fourteen hundreds, there
are about twelve thousand known scholars fourteen thousand surviving works,
and we know from you know, historical reports that in

(01:12:59):
the city of Doba alone in the tenth century they
were averaging seventy thousand copies Jesus of manuscripts and things
per year like this is you know, there's a lot
of the stuff now, you know, a lot of it
doesn't survive to us because paper and all that shit.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
But I definitely doing it, Yeah for sure. Yeah. And
you know, one of the big ways that we have
a lot of texts from the classical period, it is
strictly through this particular Iberian pathway. So like a lot
of Aristotle, for example, comes to us via the Middle

(01:13:38):
East into the Iberian Peninsula, they copied into Arabic, and
then it's translated out of Arabic into Latin. So that's
where the great majority of it is coming from at
the time, which you know, yeah, you know, you could
also argue that this is one of the things that
holds medicine back. Hey hey, but you know, I mean,
how is it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:57):
But like until we had microscope, until we could prove that,
it's really hard for like.

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
Medicine to like I mean, it was like, oh yeah,
Jim thinks that there's ghosts on your skin and that's
what's making you sick?

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
What a idiot like I do like the idea that
if this hadn't been spread that like some guy and like,
you know, twelfth century Belgium is like, hey, bacteria, germs.
That's a real thing, right, and people would have just
been like, yes, absolutely, I definitely don't need proof of that. Yeah,

(01:14:37):
it's philosophy, folks. Our buddy Avros is back an Avros
was like he was considered a bad boy, at least
in Christian circles. They were very very offensive to the
you know, to the to the to the more stiff

(01:14:59):
upper types. But yeah, you know he uh many contributions
and many things that I'm just like, man, that sounds
really smart. I'm not dealing with all much. Yeah, yeahs
is a thing.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
Yeah, absolutely, And you know they're the incredible amount philosophy
that's going on at the time means that you get
a lot of great philosophy out of Christians and Jewish
people as well. So there's a really great there's a
really great culture of polemicism going on on the Iberian
Peninsula at the time, which like all the scholars are

(01:15:35):
really into this. So the scholars are constantly like beefing.
They're just having like posting flame wars with each other
and then also borrowing books from each other, which is adorable.
So it creates a really great culture for these sorts
of things.

Speaker 2 (01:15:50):
Yeah, it's you know, this is a little bit after this,
but this is when the Jewish scholar and writer Memora
Montese Mamonodese. I'm sorry. I apologize to everyone who had
to hear that, but yeah, you guys know who I'm
talking about. Uh, he was writing a little bit after this.

(01:16:11):
Of course he was not writing in uh in al
and Delous because his family were run out of there
by the Almahds. But but yeah, it's you get you
just have this huge, this huge flourishing that goes on.
And of course, like arts, architecture, like the Great Mosque

(01:16:33):
of Cordova is still there in altered form.

Speaker 1 (01:16:38):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:16:38):
You just you have all of these, you know, different
beautiful things. The Heralda in Seville, Alhambra's usually as we
talked about, and you know, just I don't, as I've
said many times, I'm not big on architectural styles. I
don't understand it. But man, these things are pretty damn it. Yeah,
they're They're really nice.

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
They make some absolutely beautiful fucking architecture which is still standing.
And I think that there's not a lot more that
you can say for something then it's gorgeous and still around.
You know, a thousand years later. That's pretty fucking good, right.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
Yeah, yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's it's great. The Great
Mosque of Cordova now the Mosque Cathedral of Cordova, which.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
You know, it's so cool.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
It looks it's fucking huge. Like the idea of like
the mosque slash cathedral is so funny to me, like
the like the medieval KFC slash taco bell wrist.

Speaker 1 (01:17:40):
I'm at there.

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):
I'm going in here.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
I'm at the cothree jel what I'm at the combination
great mosque and cofthree Jill exactly. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
You just go in there and it's like, wow, I
can do both. This is like people are just grinding
their teeth to dust, Like, no, that's not the point.

Speaker 1 (01:17:59):
No, great, it's really good, very very fun folks.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
It's there's so much here, so much beautiful culture, so
many of the things that we we you know, that
we have today that we take for granted. You know,
all that math stuff that you roll your eyes about
that we all roll our eyes about and we think
we never used but then kind of do. Uh, folks,

(01:18:25):
it's all on them.

Speaker 1 (01:18:26):
And geometry, bitch.

Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
Yeah, geometry, motherfucker algebra. Uh yeah, that that's about going
to do it for us today. Next time, as I said,
we will close the series out and we will talk
about the sad end of all antelous and uh yeah,
what what it all means and why why it's said,

(01:18:49):
why we lost something and uh you know why the
other states of Spain should should secede if they want,
because yeah, because this, yes, Spain, Spain is fake. Break
break back apart into your competing little statelets.

Speaker 1 (01:19:07):
Selling shirts that just say fake across the map of Spain.

Speaker 2 (01:19:11):
No Spain, I'm gonna need all of Europe just to
break into the tiny statelets it was after the Roman Empire.
Let's just fall apart. You know, you guys can can
Yeah however you want. But yeah, thank y'all for listening. Uh,
we'll be back with that next time. And uh then

(01:19:33):
we'll be back on this Friday with our fourth episode
in our series on the Cameron. So come check that
out all of your for all of your medieval writing needs.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
For your sex story based yes several, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 (01:19:51):
Uh huh yes, late that people are gonna be like, wait, sex,
what was this cool? You guys want to hang out? Yeah,
about doing like a medieval only fan for the last time. No, no, stop,
and somebody's like, I'll give you money. It's like, wait,
I don't know, hold on, hold on. Maybe I was. Yeah,

(01:20:15):
as long as I never have to appear on screen,
you could just hear me talking, maybe we'll see hell yeah,
I uh yeah, yeah. I don't even know how to
segue off of that. Eleanor what the fuck's going on? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:20:30):
Well, I mean, yeah, that's over by the end of
the week. Over at my personal Patreon. If you want
to read twenty five hundred words that I've written about
show Girls, that's the place to do it. Baby. What
the fuck else is going on?

Speaker 2 (01:20:44):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
I don't know. A bunch of stuff that isn't out yet. Still.
I know I keep saying this, but it's because it
just keeps happening. So yeah, I did. The place to
keep up with me is on the socials. I'm at
going medieval and you know, you know, I'll be posting
my ship when it comes up, you know how I be.
It's like, we're un really out here.

Speaker 2 (01:21:01):
Yeah, yeah, you can. You can find me where uh
you know, the socials, Luca is amazing. You can find
my old show people's Sister of dew Republic if you
want to hear me yep about Star Wars. Otherwise, yeah,
thank y'all very much and we'll see you next time.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
By I don't know why that was so peppy.