20130829: Documentary Review--When the Moors Ruled Europe

When the Moors Ruled Europe

1. British feature length live action film, 100 minutes, 2005, NR, 
2. IMDB: 6.7/10.0 from 21 reviews.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 100% from 12 audience ratings.
4. Stars: Bettany Hughes (contrarian historian)
5. Directed by Timothy Copestake.
6. This mess badly needed subtitles.  The simultaneous translations were missing or incomplete.
7. While describing the renovation of Cordoba after the Berber and Islamic invasion of Spain, subsequently called Al Andalus, the narrator says, 'Almost immediately the land was transformed.'  Oh, stow it.  Changes on that scale do not happen overnight.
8. A fragment of a page in Arabic translated from a copy of a book purported to have been in the Library of Alexandria was shown as if it were of great moment, and proved what wonderful, culture-bringing people the foreign invaders were.  The narrator fails to mention that Islamic marauders torched and utterly destroyed the Library of Alexandria.
9. 'Inhabitants converted to Islam in droves.'  It sounded like the narrator had never had heard of conversion by the sword.
10. At one archaeological dig, modern Spanish building materials were shown over a Moorish layer, which in turn covered a Roman layer.  The Roman layer looked fresh and serviceable as well as more colorful and sturdy than the Moorish or the Spanish layers on top.  The narrator repeatedly praises Moorish architecture to the skies, but what I see while she is speaking is ugly, ordinary, cluttered, and often oppressive.  Level them, don't praise them.
11. The Dark Ages were indeed dark for Europe.  Few would dispute that the Spanish Moors introduced paper, the astrolabe, improvements in medicine, the number zero, arabic numerals, well-stocked libraries, and the like to Europe.  This was during the period 711 to roughly 1100 AD.
12. By 1100, Al Andalus had fragmented into city states.  The fall of Moorish Spain was well underway.  The city states imported fundamentalist warriors into Spain.  These warriors felt the need to purify and did not care for the mixing of Moors, Christians, and Jews that they found.
13. The period of the re-conquest is in modern times described as a holy war.  The narrator presents the Moorish side of the propaganda concerning this period.  'The reconquest was nothing but a civil war between factions of different faiths.'  Just what else is a holy war within one country?
14. The narrator takes the wellsprings of the Renaissance from Italy, and claims they originated in Moorish Toledo.  Really?  Did Islamic cultures of the time go through the same sorts of advances that the Europeans did during the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution?  Those occurred in Europe.
15. The narrator rather takes the Christians to task for presenting Moors with the choice: become Catholic, leave Spain forever, or face punishment.  How is this worse than the choice: convert to Islam or be beheaded (decide now)?
16. One star of five, for the misinterpretations and omissions, as well as the incredibly ugly architecture.

Cinematography: 5/10 Mediocre in its best parts, downright sloppy in others.

Sound: 7/10 The narrator is well-miked, but those interviewed were not always.

Acting: N/A

Screenplay: 2/10  Yikes.  This is neither new nor interesting nor engaging nor believable.