Muhammad West – The Revival #11
AI: Summary ©
The history and character of the Islamic Middle East, including the rise of Islam and the rise of the Western Empire, are discussed. The fall of Toledo and the rise of the Western Empire have caused problems for Muslims, but the group discusses strategies for war and the loss of religion in the Middle East during the first semester of the Renaissance period. The second semester of the Renaissance period, which saw the fall of the European Union, has had a significant impact on political and cultural context of the region.
AI: Summary ©
Okay Sheikra Oh, that will actually go on a GPS ruler Amanda Rahim Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa Salatu was Salam ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa early your software domain. So don't worry, I can work with a lawyer but to catch up.
And hamdulillah the limit night of Ramadan 1/3 down my last panel with
us, grant us to achieve the most of what remains of Ramadan. Usually it's this middle part we see the magic a little bit empty. And so really it's about consistency every night. We know that beautiful Hadith that the process is every night, Allah subhanho wa Taala grants amnesty for a batch of people, but there will be saved from Jana. And so every night there's an opportunity to be on the list. Some Allah grant our names to be on the list of those who are saved. We continue with our series and we spoke about the fall of Toledo yesterday. And a lot of information yesterday, we cram quite a bit and no one has summarized too quickly. But as we said, after about almost 400 years of
Muslims
ruling over Al Andalus stole Iberian Peninsula, making a transforming what was a very rugged, desolate country into the one of the leading nations on earth in terms of civilization, the caliphate of under Lucia broke into civil war. And for 30 years, all the different typhus typhus states, Emirates fought with one another. Valencia versus Toledo versus Granada was kotoba. And while these communities are fighting each one, assassinating one another and many of them are brothers, and so on, so forth, conniving and scheming. They even asked the cushions of the North to side with him and they start taking each other out one by one, until they realize that they are
sitting ducks for the Christians of the North. And the Christians unite under the king of wands of the sixth. He was a very, you know, strategic, very strong king from from that perspective, united the Christian kingdoms and he started to invade under Lucia and eventually he invaded which was really the heart of and Lucia Toledo. And we mentioned how how you know, even the way in which he conquers Toledo shows you the the weakness and the the how pathetic the Emir is of the tie for work. When the the new emir of Toledo when his father died and he became the Emir he's people hated him. And so instead of being replaced and giving up his his his chair, he told Alfonso, I'll give you the
city allow me to take my dishes and go and you can have the city and he gave to Lita over basically, to a foreign king and spa. This is the first time in our history, that a Muslim country, Toledo was like a state fell to the Christians. And it will be the beginning basically, until what we see now of colonialism. This will be the first patch of land that we've lost. And Toledo will never be the conquered. It never gets to be conquered. And then we said of course with Toledo, it was clear the rest of the heifers when are on the chopping block your mighty kingdom, like Toledo would fall, then the other smaller ones are about to be next and Alfonso very clear. I mean, he called himself the
emperor of Iberia. He called himself the input of Iberia that this is his intentions. And while the amines are trying to scrape together more taxes to pay him off, one of the Amir's had some sense, the Emir of Seville, he contacted the ruler of the Morabito. And then we spoke last night about the Morabito. And this is one of the very unique one of the first we could say, grassroots Islamic movement, where the people of North Africa, West Africa, joined under a banner of Islamic rule. What we see of like the like the Arab Spring, what we see is sort of a grassroots swell of people turning to Islam wanting to be more devout. They were puritanical in some ways, but they were devoted in
terms of the Islamic identity. And when we say they will call them what I'll be doing because originally they lived out in tents. And also a Morabito is also somebody who guards the frontiers, a person who has in a perpetual state of Eman. So it's a state of jihad that Morabito and also had a very unique feature is that they would cover the the face the main they would cover, they would always wear like a type of veil, they would cover the face which added to this, all of them. So this was a very tough group of people, very devout Islamically and they managed to carve out the morale button Dynasty, which is basically from Morocco, all the way to Senegal, or Ghana, the garden
kingdom, and we see the ruler use of even Tashfeen was a great man in our history. He founded Marrakech, the city of Marrakech, he basically founded and the city of Algiers, in Algeria. So of course, this is a man that is not only a a, a warrior, but also an incredible a statesman. And so much is written about him in terms of his Eman and his and his piety, that even though with power, he remained living a very austere lifestyle. He loved the orlimar he loved knowledge he loved learning
and wanting to see the Ummah better itself. And so when he gets this invitation from the amigos of of Spain help us and the extending a letter of Islam, he felt it incumbent on him I need to go. Now, we might think it's an homage to Allah, how many kingdoms today are willing to send one soldier to Gaza, they calling out for help, not a single Muslim countries 50 Muslim countries in the world to send even one soldier. Here a king is willing to relocate his entire army. Of course, he has enemies around him to pick up his entire army to go to another Muslim country in need. Not that the TYFA is of Spain, where he's great allies, they never, in fact, they were not very fond of the Abu Dhabi
tune because he went against a lot of things that the kind of lifestyle they lived, but he felt that these are Muslim brothers calling out to assist, and he moves his entire army from North Africa, and he lands on Iberia, in Spain, and SubhanAllah. There's also a point to note here that when he comes there, he was quite shocked at the luxury the decadence I mean, this man is a man who lived in the Sahara Desert, coming to what is perhaps the most developed city in the world. And Amin is of Spain of course living a very luxurious lifestyle, but still in that even though they differ in terms of so many things. At the end of the day, we have one hola we have one Rasool so number one Qibla we
have one Quran and the Amin is when they even said can we let these phonetics these, you know, a Taliban can type of people come here and bring their armies once the year they're not going to leave, as the Amin said, choose you either going to be a slave looking after camels or slave looking after pigs you decide which way you want to go. So they went the route of the Almoravids or the Morabito and they called the Almoravids in English, and when they arrive, use of intervene is greeted like a hero by the people of an Underoos. And he immediately wants to start the campaign against Alfonso that means you know, relax, enjoy yourself if you don't, I'm not here for that. But
I want to come and do my job. And I need to go back to Marrakesh as soon as I can. And so when Alfonso years that
use of has arrived, use of intervene arrives in in, in Spain, he writes a very elegant letter to him, and basically says to him, these people, your people are outsiders and we are about to we'll take them over one by one, and you will find that you will basically fighting you're basically a savage of the desert. What are you doing? What do you do in our land and use of industry in response in a very simple way, it says, as far as we are concerned, our school taught us before a jihad before we fight, we give you three options, one, embrace Islam, and you're 150 and you're my brother, or two, you go back home and pay the Jizya when number three we fight jihad, these are the
only options you have. And so, Alfonso was at that time besieging a museum city, he packs up his siege. And he of course, he's going to go to war with Yusuf and they arrive at a place
at a place called saguna. Has Sandra has this is the name of the battle. That's where the battle is going to be. It was 23rd of October, the 13th of Ramadan was the 13th of Ramadan. Just as these things happen. Subhan Allah Allah has decreed. And when he arrived at this place, they arrived, the two armies arrive on a Thursday, and Alfonso said to him, sit to sit to use of look, we are both fighting under our religious banner, I'm fighting under the cross you fighting for Islam. So let us fight on Monday, because tomorrow is your holy day is tomorrow. And Saturday is the Jew is odd for the Jews and the there are many Jews on both sides. In fact, at this point in time, most of the Jews
in the world lived in under Lucia. So they were Jews, with the Muslims and Jews with with the Christians. And so he said, Let's not fight on Saturday, it's the holy day for the Jews. And of course Sunday is odd for us. And you say That's fine with me. We'll fight on Monday and Fajr time or when the Muslims were getting ready for the horrors of Joomla the army of Alfonso came and they charged against the Muslims and this is no one I mean this is not our books are saying this it's in their own books that he deliberately did this ruse but use of antiseptic to this. He did not expect anything better because of the kind of man Alfonso is farmer sign of Alfonso had his own brother
killed and his other brother jailed for life. So this is the kind of politics that the kind of man that Alfonso was and so he he breaks his promise and he attacks the Muslims at the time when they were getting ready for Juma, but the Muslims are able to retaliate. Initially,
the plan was without going too much into detail of the battle. The Alfonso has a very strong cavalry, and they were the plan was they're going to charge and they're going to use the cavalry and smash into the Muslim lines and use of allows us to happen So originally it appears that Alfonso is winning and as he gets deeper and deeper in there is sort of a track that Yousuf has planned for him. His cavalry gets stuck with the they have some in in North Africa that a very special way of fighting back they use these long kind of spears, javelins, and when you're
cavalry charges into that it's like they charge into a wall of spikes. And once he had them pinned down like that, the the Berbers on what I'll be doing of course on foot and on land fighting hand to hand. They are different kinds of warrior. And so once you neutralize the cavalry Alfonso, it was really a hand to hand combat and there was no match against them what I'll be doing, and this was a huge disastrous defeat. In fact, the battles name in Arabic is the battle of the maracas. Dakka. Dakka means the weak ground because of the blood, the amount it was slippery. And what is confirmed by all sources. This was a massive catastrophe, catastrophic defeat for Alfonso. He barely survived
he was severely injured, which he didn't recover from the sun also died in these battles. And, you know, he basically returns home to Castile with only about 500 Men, his entire army and the army, the Muslims of use if they move forward, and they try to recapture Toledo, but they were unsuccessful. Toledo now shows you how mighty this city was in terms of fortress, it would not have been taken easily if the Emir of Toledo did not just give the city over. And so even with all the Muslim army, they were unable to capture Toledo. And remember the engineers of Al Andalus were experts and the way the way they built the fortifications, you will see that for hundreds of years,
these cities held out against sieges, and so we could never take it was a decisive victory. But we could never ever retake Toledo. Immediately after the defeat of Alfonso he returns to Castile and that's basically the stop of his expansion. Use of returns back to Africa, but within a year, he has to return back to Al Andalus. Because once again this trouble and he will return back multiple times. Eventually he realized the problem was not the Christians. The problems were that Amir's because as soon as he left they would start plotting and planning dates each other, they would still start scheming. So use of rights led to the Khalifa in Baghdad. And when he became a look, he's one
of the strongest men in OMA he's actually stronger than the Khalifa himself. He never took the title Ameerul Momineen or Khalifa he called himself a middle Muslim and I'm just sayin Amir, amongst the Muslims. The Khalifa is in Baghdad, a man he never met. And he would still usually what would happen is you would put a you would ask Allah to guide our Amin, our Khalifa from the Joomla. He would continue doing this. And so he wrote to the Khalifa Khalifa, I have this problem with these amines here in Spain. It is based Can I take not take them out? But can I sort of crab take hold of these Emirates and take charge of it? And he wrote a letter one thing I talked to her from who was at that
time, the most well renowned scholar in the world. emammal Cassani. He wrote a letter to Imam Hassan Ali give me a fatwa that I can be a Muslim, so I'm not supposed to fight them, but I need to take them take charge of the situation. And both Imam Hassan Ali and the Khalifa said to him go and do what is just what they're doing is they are, you know, spreading volume, and they are oppressing the people to do what is just and so he basically captures all the divers. And so for this period Al Andalus is part of the Almoravid or the Morabito dynasty and they remain the defensive line against the Christians for over 150 years. And this is where what we call as we said, this movement is
called the Reconquista, the conquering of Iberia the Christians call it the Reconquista what should have happened was what should have been completed after the fall of Toledo is stuck basically for almost 400 years, this action of the of the of the Morabito and so
this is where it stops. But of course, as I said, Toledo fell we'll talk more about that in a minute. So Toledo falls in tin 8518 86. Right, Toledo falls, another great Muslim locality falls five years later, Sicily. And you didn't know that Muslims are all Sicily for 300 years Subhanallah, Sicily, that little island, next to Italy, right next to Italy. Muslims ruled Sicily for 300 years.
Right for 300 years, it was under Islamic rule the whole of the Mediterranean, all the islands, Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, Malta were Islamic
under Islamic rule, and many times it was Al Andalus, as well, that managed to help in navigating and building these things. The Sahaba arrived in Sicily, say North man, even our fan, developed our first Navy under Mao era, the Alon, and they arrived in Sicily, the Sahaba arrived in Sicily, but they never could they were not able to conquer Sicily. It was only later on. We know that Africa was captured that a dynasty in North Africa. Basically, they came and they the same way Spain was conquered, the Sicily was conquered. And it's a long story of houses. It was conquered. But you know, one of the things what happened was Sicily broke away from the Catholic Church. And they were
one of the generals was on the run. And so he went to North Africa and he asked the Muslims, can you help me? And if you send an army to help me then you can get a piece of the pie and to the Muslims. In fact, the Muslims origin said no, the Muslims said no, there is no reason why we need to send our Navy and our fleet to your country and help you we have our own problems to deal with. And the Emir said no, but he's chief kadhi the chief Mufti of the of the Muslims in North Africa.
He was a student of Imam Malik, a student of Imam Malik. And that's why the Maliki madhhab is so prevalent in North Africa. He said to the emir, a non Muslim is asking you for assistance and help so you can you can have an opportunity to spread Allah's word you don't have you don't have a choice, you must go. And so the immediate basically the time when the Obama carried some Wait, eventually he agreed with what the Amiga says what the Mufti said, and he sent his army And subhanAllah the Look at this man, this man was in his 70s, this army in the chef and he said, just to show you this legitimate jihad, I am going myself and this Allium chef, the one of the top
students of Imam Malik is buried in Sicily. He goes and he goes with the, with the army, and
basically the Christians and the Muslims. Once they come and they conquer the area. They agree for him to be the Emir. He's the most respected man in Sicily. And so for a few years, this chef Mowlana, he's the Emir of Sicily. And after a while, eventually the Muslims take full control of Sicily. And after 300 years, the capital of Sicily. Palermo is the second largest city in western Europe, what's the biggest one Cordoba in Spain, this is bigger than Rome, with more people in Palermo in Sicily than there is in Rome. And it becomes a self sufficient, I mean, eat this up. It's almost sounds crazy. Read this up. SubhanAllah. It becomes
the Amini chroniclers who says that we visited the island of Sicily, and it was like a heaven on earth in terms of how well it was run, and how successful the people were the eventually the majority of the population becomes the majority of societies population became Muslim. For a while the Muslims even had an emirate, a little kingdom on mainland Italy. They managed to cross over and they had for about 30 years, a little outpost in Italy, and they conquered this the island of Malta, that is an island called Malta. That was also under the rule of the armies of Sicily. But of course, like with Al Andalus, the exact same thing happened as andalas was going through its civil war,
Sicily was going through its own civil war, three Amir's all wanting to rule the little island, and the sorts of stuff and you we shake our heads like Can't you guys get the picture? What's happening today? exactly what's happening today is what is being repeated over and over. And Allah says, this is the problem. Three Amigos are fighting one another. Eventually, one AMITA says, Well, if I can't win here, I'm going to contact the Christians of Italy, the Normans come in helped me take out my fellow Muslims. And when they are done, you can go back to Italy, you think they're gonna go down when they're gonna go back. So once the Normans came in, they opened the gates, they of course,
started taking out the muscles one by one, and eventually they didn't want to leave. And with that, the island of Sicily collapsed. And they said this, this happened five years, five years, after the fall of Toledo, Islamic Sicily fell to Christianity as well. So there's another major, major loss and in the island of Malta, there's something very interesting about Sicily, because the majority of the people were Muslim, the king that took over Sicily, the Christian king, his name is King Raja
Christian king, spoke Arabic as his first language, had a great respect for Islam. Even though they ruled the island I had a great respect for Islam. And unlike what we would see in Spain, he told the Muslims you are under me, but there'll be no persecution and you may continue living, you're in peace, if you want to leave, you can leave if you don't want to, you are allowed to live and practice freely. And it was the most tolerant Christian kingdom for Muslims under Muslim under under Christian rule. And one of the one of the things that obviously he recognized them was seems that knowledge and skills, he had many of the Allama asked him to stay into many Alama of different
sciences he wanted to build, he wanted to have the first Atlas of the world. And he commissioned a Muslim traveler explore the EDC to draw the most comprehensive map of the world. And there you will see this map is the map of Al idrisi. In the book kitab. Raja, the book of Raja kitab. Raja, that's the name of the book in Arabic. And if you see that's the map, that's North Africa, and what's obviously you can see, because this man was a Muslim, the, what do you call the geographer, the center of the map is marker. The same time if you if you Google the map, actually upside down. In that time the North was the North was Africa, and South was was was Europe. So it actually looks up.
But this is this is how the map looks, this makes more sense. And so this is a strange kind of of mixture and Alhamdulillah. Muslims still survived and lived in Sicily for many, many years. But of course, once it was lost, it was never recaptured. And something even more strange if we go to the island of Malta. So we see the island of Malta, very close to Sicily, a small island. This, the Muslims also lost this to the Christians, however, because the majority of the people who were Christian or Muslim, and the language is Arabic, until today, the spoken language of Malta Maltese is not the chocolate Maltese Maltese today is
is exactly a dialect of Arabic. So if you go to Google Translate, and you type the God is great in Maltese, it's Allahu Akbar, you're right there we are fasting, it is Allah who saw him. That is the language. Maltese is basically Arabic, let unquote Arabic anymore today to show you the influence that Islam had on these areas on these regions. Now, last point, with the fall of Toledo, and the fall of Sicily, this is really the start of the Renaissance. Because what the Christians did when they because they lived so closely with monsoon for so long, there was some level of respect. And when they enter Toledo and Sicily and all these places that didn't burn down the the the the
universities or the libraries use, they converted the massage to the cathedrals, I mean, you can still see today, and this began the first one they call the translation movement in Europe. This is the first time Europe now Christian Europe, made an effort to translate all the books in Toledo into Latin, and into the language into into Spanish. And this would be the beginning of the Spanish Empire, in terms of getting technology in terms of getting, they basically had an upgrade in terms of the in terms of the knowledge, and that's why it's Panama we all know that. I gave this talk before in math, when you solve for you solve for x. Why do we solve for x who decided that letter?
Because in Arabic, the word that is used to solve algebra to solve for the unknown is shape. Machine Sheen was ready to use for the unknown shamans. Something che is something in Spanish you don't have the latest sheen, they have a chuck and chuck in Latin x. So this is how they will Hulett X became the unknown because they took the Arabic books translated it they said we don't have a little sheen. Let's use x as our thing. And Euro basically took from from the Spanish it became an almost took over you can see civilization shifting from the Muslim world to the European world. And this will be the beginning of of as we said you could really see the beginning of the Renaissance movement starts
with the conquest of Toledo, the fall of of Sicily and the fall of Malta.
But with these three catastrophes,
Toledo 1086, Malta, Sicily, five years later, the biggest catastrophe would be the fall of Jerusalem, which is gonna happen in five, six years from now. We'll talk about that tomorrow with Allah. We ask Allah Subhana Allah for guidance, I mean,
quick questions who established the Morabito chef Abdullah bin Yacine amazing one person, one person could reform an entire area and one on one chef so Hala can change everything.
See
have side if the
math yeah fugit Oh my show. Okay, so salsa. And honey if Sally.
The one day is Nadia.
One day, isn't it? Yeah. Shame.
Amar from Hamilton.
No.
Usually Williams. Yes. That was Marshall. Okay. In today's question, which city was the most populous and prosperous city in Sicily in the 18th century, when it was ruled by the Muslims Toledo Messina Palermo Trapani, the capital of Sicily inshallah okay, just UCLA played was Allah say no, Muhammad was someone selling Hamlet without I mean, it's an ironic with regard to