A history lesson:
"In late 1492 King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castille succeeded in driving the Muslims from Spain" - posted at a website
This statement, so often made, seems at first glance both true, and innocuous. I mean, wasn't that what happened? Wasn't 1492 the year that those Christians expelled from Spain the Jews and the Moors? I can hear it even now being used at some Interfaith-Healing Meeting, possibly by an unctuous Muslim cleric oozing sincerity and goodwill and attempting to win points from some terminally naïve rabbi, as he insists that "the fates of the Jews and Muslims are linked" and "we Muslims like you Jews have been victims" and "why should we, the Muslims, pay for the crimes of others - the Christians of Europe?" and, as the piece de resistance, "we Muslims are the new Jews." And among the statements to be made in passing will be a reference as to how, as a symbol of that shared pain, both "the Jews and the Moors were expelled from Spain in 1492."
But that isn't true. That assertion - that "the Jews and Moors were expelled from Spain in 1492" -- constitutes a small but significant example of the many half-truths, the slightly-off-truths, the complete untruths, that by themselves may not mean too much, but when they are added up, manage to provide a pseudo-narrative that Muslim apologists have proven adept at exploiting, particularly as they appeal to the West's misplaced sense of guilt. If the Moors can be likened to the Jews, expelled in the same year, and impliedly, out of the same baseless bigotry that the West exhibits, then the Muslims can claim or at least try to claim victimhood equivalent to that of the Jews. That in their own lands, and in their own lives, Muslims treat Jews terribly, and regard them with an inculcated hatred that comes not from European traditions of antisemitism but, quite independently, from sources in Islam, does not embarrass them in the slightest (although that Islamic-inspired antisemitism is no doubt, here and there, given the flavoring nowadays of the antisemitism that was part of Western Christendom, sometimes virulent, sometimes dormant, sometimes acted upon, sometimes not). They are happy to exploit that victimhood and to appropriate it as their own, or as something shared by them, in order to score points against the quite properly alarmed Infidels all over the West.
By "misplaced sense of guilt" I mean that many, though not all, of the current inhabitants of the West often unthinkingly assent to all kinds of charges made against them. And they do this gladly, even with relish, without doing the work to find out if indeed the charges are true or only partly true, or possibly false. Many enjoy, it seems, owning up to the sins of "colonialism," but these same people seldom ask nowadays for a precise definition of this term. They do not ask ourselves if there were differences in the way colonialism worked itself out, if there were gains as well as losses even to those held to be victims of colonialism. And they do not inquire too deeply into what position, what "original position," to appropriate, shamelessly, and apply differently, a Rawlsian term, many of these colonized peoples would be in had the Europeans never arrived. Would they everywhere have been better off? Or only in some places? Or perhaps colonialism brought benefits that should be recognized, as the writer N. S. Chaudhuri argued should be done by Indians in regard to the British.
Nor do we ask ourselves, or ask others to start asking themselves, about the other forms of domination and conquest that have transformed lands and peoples far more devastatingly and cruelly and completely than Western "colonialism." We just don't know enough, don't know enough even to raise the matter. Who was it who first enslaved vast numbers of black Africans? Which slave trade was it that started long before, and ended long after, and claimed as many or more victims than, the slave trade in Africa conducted by Europeans? Who enslaved Europeans, too, raiding the coasts of Europe for many centuries? Who established slavery as a way of life and way of governing? Who was it who conquered territories and managed to convince or force many peoples to abandon their own faiths, their own ways, to forget their own histories, or to ignore them, to forget their local languages, to succumb to cultural and linguistic imperialism?
When we let a little untruth go by, the kind of untruth that plays into an Arab or Muslim or Muslim Arab narrative of victimization, we do ourselves harm, for we aid the forces of Jihad.
Let's start, one more time, back in 1492.
Four important things happened in Spain that year.
Let's go over them again.
First, of course, Columbus, a Genoese explorer, having been rejected by the kings of Portugal and England as potential sponsors for his trip to find a new way to the Indies (the old route having been blocked by the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Muslims, and the consequent sealing-off of land routes to the East by the Muslim conquerors), finally found new sponsors in King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, Los Reyes Catolicos. And after many months, and the nautical dangers he had to pass, Christopher Columbus discovered - surely this comes as no surprise - the New World, and he claimed it for Spain.
And the second important thing that happened in Spain in 1492 was that over more than 500 years of the Reconquista, the forces of Christian Spain conquered the last remaining Muslim redoubt in the Iberian Peninsula, the Kingdom of Granada.
And the third thing that happened in 1492 in Spain was the expulsion of the Jews, who were given only a short time to end their presence (a presence that went back to long before the time of the Visigoths), and to leave Spain forever. They were expelled not because they had once ruled over Spain and remained a potential threat, but in the main because they could be expelled, and because the fanaticism of the Inquisition had transformed anti-Judaism into racial antisemitism, perhaps because the Christians of Spain had become more ferocious during the Reconquista. The influence of fighting the Reconquista might also explain the particular ferocity of Spanish treatment of the indigenous inhabitants of the New World by some - not all - of the conquistadores and their men. The Leyenda Negra, consisting of an uninterrupted narrative of Spanish atrocities, has been subject to withering criticism by historians.
But the Moors were not expelled in 1492 along with the Jews.
With the conquest of Granada, the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella now had within their dominion large numbers of Muslims, unwilling to be forcibly converted, and still a potential source of trouble, unsettlement, and revolt. The wisest policy would be to take that into account, rid Catholic Spain of the other alien element - as the Reyes Catolicos saw it -- that was understood to be too weak to resist, that is, the Jews, simply because they could be expelled without trouble, and because that might serve as a warning to the Muslims as to what might happen if they didn't behave.
As to the Moors, the Catholic kings would bide their time. In the terms of the Capitulation and treaties, the Muslims of Granada were permitted to continue to practice their religion. But in 1499, Cardinal Ximenes (he of the celebrated Complutensian Polyglot), insisted that the Muslims should not be allowed to remain, as practicing Muslims, in Spain. They began to leave, not all at once, and not overnight. And many stayed, stayed and practiced Islam openly (where the Spanish government's writ did not completely run) or covertly, as secret Muslims. They were not reconciled to their defeat, and they harbored -- how could they not, given what Islam taught? - revanchist dreams. It was only in 1568, however, under Philip II, that the Muslims of Spain, the so-called "Moros," were given the command to leave. And even then many stayed, and it was not until the reign of Philip III, in 1609, after a century of intermittent troubles and uprisings, that the definitive expulsion of the Moors took place.
Why does any of this matter? Why make a big deal of this, given that in the end both the Jews and the Moors were expelled? Why worry about that phrase "the Jews and the Moors were expelled in 1492"?
Well, because it is indeed used by Muslim propagandists, and also by those in the West who want so eagerly to believe that Muslims have been the victims of Europe, of European "colonialism" and European "racism." And in that false narrative, the phrase "the Spanish expelled the Jews and the Moors in 1492" is valuable. Those who use such a phrase, and efface the difference between the two groups, allow themselves, and those who listen to them, to ignore the fact that the Jews had been inoffensive, had contributed greatly to Spanish culture and development, had never ruled over the Christians, not in Spain and not anywhere else, and had no designs to do so, whereas the Muslim armies had arrived in the eighth century, and had conquered almost all of the Iberian Peninsula save a strip in the far north. Some - Maria Rosa Menocal being only the latest - have sung the praises of a "convivencia" of whose existence they are convinced and make much of, but apparently the people who lived through that "conviviencia" were not quite so convinced. For Maimonides wrote, in his famous Epistle to the Yemen, to other Jews telling them that the treatment of Jews by Muslims in Spain was horrifying, and as for the Christians of Spain, apparently they did not agree that "convivencia" really existed either, because they spent half-a-millennium trying to push out the Muslim (Arab and Berber) invaders.
The Jews were expelled in 1492 not because they were constituted a real threat, but because they were largely helpless. The Muslims were expelled only over time, because time after time they were given chances to prove that they would not harbor revanchist plans of re-conquest of what they had lost, and over the next century, they proved that they could not be trusted.
And now, more than 500 years later, we have Muslim propagandists telling us that "Muslims are the new Jews." They want us not to find out that for many centuries, right up until the 18th century, Muslims raided up and down the coasts of Western Europe, seizing property, killing many, kidnapping others - men, women and children - and bringing them back to Muslim lands where they were enslaved. They went as far as Ireland, and even once to Iceland. The people of the coasts of Europe were well aware, for centuries, of the Muslim threat from the south. And when Europeans became military more powerful, so they could defend those coasts, the Muslims continued to attack Christian shipping in the Mediterranean, seizing cargoes and ships, and kidnapping Christian seamen and enslaving them. Only the reaction of the Americans against the Barbary Pirates, and then the final exasperated seizure of Algeria by the French in 1830, put an end to those attacks. And in Eastern Europe, too, and in the Caucasus, other Muslims enslaved south Slavs - took them as slaves - and raided, too, especially for Christian women who were brought back for harems from Georgia and Circassia.
Yet we are not to understand that the Jihad never let up, that is, never let up until the Western world managed to become militarily stronger and fight back successfully. There was not, then, any foolish because vain attempt to win Muslim hearts and minds. It was understood by everyone who had anything to do with the matter - John Quincy Adams, as a diplomat, or General Gorchakov, as a military man - that Muslim mendacity and duplicity and enmity toward the Infidels was permanent and only other measures would succeed in protecting the non-Muslims from Muslim depredations. Of course no one in his right mind, for the past 1400 years, in the Western world, would ever have contemplated allowing Muslims to settle deep within their own, non-Muslim, midst - that is, no one until the last few decades, when in a collective act of criminal negligence, the political and media elites of the Western world, forgetting all of their own history, allowed exactly that settlement deep within by Muslims, that is, by those who regarded their Infidel lands as a still-to-be-conquered Dar al-Harb.
Part of the criminal negligence was based on extraordinary forgetfulness about their own history. And part of that forgetfulness is expressed in that phrase that is so misleading, the one with which I started this little essay, about how in 1492, "the Jews and the Moors" were expelled from Spain.
Now, about forgetfulness. I wrote that there were four important events that took place in Spain in 1492. The first was the sponsoring by Ferdinand and Isabella (with the actual funding coming from a Monjte, one of the tribe of the soon-to-be-expelled Jews) of the voyages of Columbus to find a new route to the Indies, given that the conquest of Constantinople, and final triumph of the Osmanli Turks over the remaining Orthodox all over Anatolia barred that land route to the East that had remained to merchants from Western Christendom.
And the second was the conquest of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold. Much later, in the early 19th century, that conquest would become a subject for Romantic writers both in North America and in Western Europe. When Chateaubriand wrote "Le Dernier des Abencerages" and Washington Irving wrote "Tales of the Alhambra," both wove fictions about the marvels of Muslim Spain, and that celebrated "convivencia." Later, careless people right up to the present day would take those fictions about the Moor's last sigh, and so on, and present it as historical truth. See, do, The Ornament of the World by Maria Rosa Menocal or, still better, google and find out what has been written about her book at this site.
And the third thing was the expulsion of the Jews, Spain's great loss and Amsterdam's (and later, Salonika's) great gain.
But I seem to remember that above I wrote that four important things happened in Spain in 1492. My god, what was the fourth?
Oh, yes, I remember. The fourth thing was the publication of Nebrija's Gramatica de la Lengua Castellana, the first grammar not only of Spanish, but of any Romance language. For Spain, and for philology, what the good doctor of Salamanca did was important. So remember that name: Antonio de Nebrija, or Antonius Nebrissensis in his fashionably Latin version, and his place in the annals of philology. Come to think of it, some philologists in modern Spain have a literary significance that philologists in other lands (save possibly Russia) do not have. Think of Menendez Pidal, Menendez y Pelayo, and the man Borges called, in polemical fashion, "Don Americo Castro."
There. Now when someone asks you, not what you had for breakfast, or what did grandfather do in the war, daddy, but rather, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, in fourteen hundred and ninety-two, what else happened in Spain, you will be well-prepared, you will be ready to tell them. Please do. And please make sure you do not say that "in 1492 the Jews and the Moors were expelled." And be ready to explain exactly why it didn't happen that way, and why it matters.
Here endeth the lesson.
Which group would you expel first: Unarmed Jews v perhaps armed mus?
Fast forward to Nazi Germany... Jews were no longer able to own firearms -- firearms were at first registered, limited to 'hunting' and then confiscated, and we all know what that led to.
Fast forward to today ... firearms are now registered and placed under many limits, some cosmetic. Imagine if computer printers were subject to 'reasonable' laws: registration, paper trays limited to 10 pages, you could only buy 1 printer every 30 days... I mean, after all, the Founding Fathers were limited to parchment and quills. Infringement of the Bill of Rights is infringement whether or not you're a fan of the 2nd Amendment.
I am sure the Jews of Spain were surprised at their expulsion, and the Jews of Germany were surprised at their fate in the following years. I hope there are no surprises for us in the next few years.
Unarmed = subject.
Armed = citizen.
The revolt against Christianity that has marked Western intellectual life for the past three centuries has left too many wide open to the kind of falsification of history which Hugh attacks in this post.
The romanticism of the 19th century, which used the supposed "tolerance" of Ummayad Spain as a foil against the persisting anti-Jewish prejudices that marked much of Europe, especially Germany, cause many to conflate the whole history of Moorish Spain into an idealized "Andaluz" supposedly done in by the bloodthirsty Reyes Catolicos. Forgotten were the fanatical chapters written by the Almohads and Almoravids; forgotten were the shifting alliances among rival Christian and Muslim states (including occasional alliances of certain Muslims and Christians against certain other Muslims and Christians) during the 11th-13th centuries which are reflected in El Poema Del Cid.
Could it also be that the ferocity of Los Reyes Catolicos stemmed from the fact that they represented the last stage of a war of decolonization? Maybe the comparable chapters to the fall of Granada are not in the Crusades, but in the various liberation movements of Africa and Asia that followed WWII?
Well stated Hugh. "Andalus" is deeply embedded in Muslim victimhood psychy, and it is used to enforce their sense of self righteous "islam's tolerance" that look what the Christians did to us in Spain, meanwhile we let them live in Dhimmi peace in "our" lands.
Self inflicted western liberal naivety, tolerating an intolerant idioligy, will come to a crashing realization one day, that only a cure a la Philip III would be in order
Ummmmm ...
But, the Spanish did eventually expel all Muslims, right? Just not in 1492.
It should also be remembered that in 1492, when the Jews WERE expelled, it was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire who sent ships to rescue the Jews and move them to eight major cities within the Ottoman Empire, because they were (at the time) still considered the "Elder Brother" in Ottoman Islamic tradition. They were settled there in UNWALLED cities, and the Ottomans built housing and synagogues for them. Does that mean there was no anti-Semitism? No. But I think it does mean that at the time there was no Martin Luther in the Ottoman Empire saying that Jews could be killed with impunity on the roadways (while he was also spouting egregious anathema about the evils of women). So there was far less to fear for Jews in the Ottoman Empire than in the Christian West, then going through the worst mortificatio and reductio in its history.
Anyhow, the Sultan's ships were so many that they clogged the harbor at Cadiz and jammed its docks, and Columbus wasn't able to sail from that Spain's main Atlantic port. He had to go south along the coast to Ponte de la Frontera, a small port on the Atlantic Spanish coast, now filled with sand. His ships were stocked there and he set sail, carrying with him the deadly cargo of shipworms picked up at Frontera, an infestation that would take the ship out in the Caribbean: According to scholars of oceanobgraphy, the Santa Maria ran aground on Christmas Day 1492, but researchers think that the hull broke due to weakening by shipworms.
Now, all that said, the Christians DID expel the Muslims. When it happened is less important than THAT it did.
But the terrible shift now is that there is almost no place in any Muslim-majority area that Christians can safely live, and the attacks on them, which fill the pages of Jihad Watch constantly, are ongoing, vicious, and increasing. The Western press, which screamed "ethnic cleansing" (which was based on religion as well as ethnicity) in the Balkans seem to have nothing to say about the fact that Christians of every race and denomination are being systematically purged from Muslim lands by murder, dispossession of property, jihad rape, and terrorism.
The bogus argument is that if Christians did it to the Jews in 1492 or the Muslims in 1609, it's quite all right for Muslims to reclaim all previously ruled lands and expel people of non-Muslim religions in ones ruled now based on the fact that Christians did it before.
That's like saying that if an ancestor was raped by a Chinese 500 years ago, it's OK for you to rape a Chinese today.
Anybody want to live in that world?
I didn't think so.
A previous error, aggression, crime or inhumanity does not excuse another one.
Besides, while the Christian Inquisition and ethnic and religious cleansings were underway in the West, Islam was being spread and enforced from Arab areas during the entire 1400 years of Islam's existence -- on non-Muslims, but on Muslims themselves. So some claim that Christians were worse then than Muslims is bogus as well.
Best, though, that we don't try to pretend the Christians didn't expel the Muslims from Iberia based on a quibbling about the date. They definitely did it.
'Nuff said.
Muslims living in Western countries are once more are proving that they are "not be trusted." They are proving this by their actions and words every day, by their jihad, both by terror, and by other means that Robert and Hugh have highlighted on this site so often.
At what point does the patience of the current non-Muslim inhabitants of Western countries wear out? At what point do those current inhabitants demand the same solution that Phillip III finally implemented in 1609 - the expulsion of any remaining Muslims from the country? I don't know the answer, but Muslims would do well to learn from history if they don't want it repeated.
When we let a little untruth go by...
And therein lies the whole problem. By the incrementalism inherent in the ways of Moslems, derived from the Islamic scriptures, is to hit large and small, head on and obliquely, announced or unannounced, violently or rhetorically, interpersonally or politically, locally or hegemonically... gives Moslems the ability to maintain a Fictive Reality today based on a fake history being laid down non-stop, as if the Moslems -- based on the words and deeds of Mohammed -- have built a colossal road-laying machine that puts down info instead of tar or cement.
Informationally, this is a death of a thousand cuts, each slice an increment.
*** 2:6 ***
Cognition and memory are influenced by how the info is taken in. Used to be info was taken orally, with some books, read by only a few, in the form of religious texts written every thousand years or so. Stable.
*** 2:9 ***
Then newspapers came along to let the common man peruse info, daily info, at his leisure. Freedom.
*** Bukhari Vol 6 Bk 60 Nbr 662 ***
And now it's TV, with instant info in segments presented in the framework of an entertainment, blizzards of info through which it's hard to see. All this leaves the common man two options: let the news entertainers (including professors)do the sorting, or do it yourself. 99% choose the former, and accuracy has suffered mightily.
*** 92:8 ***
Now that the elites have have taken control thanks to thef discovery of the new sciece of Opinion Programming, one can only look back and tip your cap to Orwell and McLuhan.
*** Bukhari Vol 2 Bk 24 Nbr 555 ***
The recent evolution in media has been all good for the Moslems. Plays right into their hands. Can the Internet counteract the disastrous effects of TV? I doubt it.
*** Tabari 6:110 ***
In case you're wondering, the medium of books really isn't much of a player in all of this. You write your book, he'll write his book back, the two of you appear on TV and the interviewer let's the medium decide.
Hugh:
In fact, the last Moslems were booted out in 1609/10 in Valencia. The expulsions resulted in a third of the population being kicked out.
In fact there's a book in Catalan very recently published on the subject. I'll have to verify the title and the authour. However, her has some verrrry interesting things to say.
He blows away the romantic conceit of Mendoca and the peaceful coexistence of the 3 religions. He states that 150 years after the 1492 explusions, there were complaints from the Christian Valencians that the Moslems (moriscos) refused to assimilate, still spoke Arabic and preferred to live in ghettos. By inference, they antagonized the majority population.
Though the authour didn't say it in his interview, everyone forgets that the Moslems were raiding the Mediterranean up until 1830 when the French finally conquered and occupied what is now Algeria
So there was also a strategic decision to eliminate an obvious 5th column in the Iberian peninsula (Valencia was an autonomous kingdom within the kingdom of Catalunya-Aragon)
xavier
In this book (
http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/HB-37339/The-Great-Arab-Conquests.htm) the author demonstrates how religious minorities (jews in christian lands and christians in jewish lands) would aid the muslim conquest by for example pointing out the secret entrances to fortified towns. Maybe the Spanish christians made a note of this and decided that the jews could not be trusted not to undermine their security.
Also when you consider our betrayal by our modern leadership you can't ignore the west's dependence on oil, for without this dependence which the arabs exploit to it's fullest advantage there is absolutely no reason to allow muslims to enter Europe without concessions. If the west starts kicking muslims out without a backup power source, the Arabs will divert their oil to China and India. Then millions of Europeans will face the prospect of mass starvation as food is not able to be shipped from source to the market, or war on the Arabs to secure the oil. All the more reason to invest heavily in new alternate sources, and another failure of European governments that they have not done so already.
On the hypocrisy of muslims who tell us that it's pay back time for the west for colonising africa and asia - well most muslim countries are arab colonies. As soon as islam takes hold, arabization starts.
And ironically, as we speak, Spain, under its present Presidency of the Council of the European Union, is pushing to accelerate the membership negotiation for Turkey to join the EU.
As the respected author-journalist Peter Scholl-Latour points out Turkey joining the EU would be the end of the union.
The Truth of the matter is really quite simple -
World War 1 did not begin in 1914-
World War 1 began in 630 AD; when, on behalf of Allah the Lord of Sirius, Mohamet declared war on the World to covert everybody by fire and sword to Islam.
BRAVO, Hugh. Encore!
Whatever they're paying you, it ain't enough.
Your post was worth the time it took for me to learn of John Rawls and his convoluted "Theory of Justice."
And thank you for highlighting the West's most tragic threat: forgetting its own history, and replacing it with myopic relativism, and adopting it as a worldview.
It's a malignant mindset brought to fruition in the latter half of the 20th century, and, curiously, a strange lingering legacy of Hitler's Nazi Germany and its execrable Arian Race philosophy. In short, we, in the West, are so scared of being "anti-Anything" (and labeled bigot, fascist, intolerant, etc), that we are willing to accept, condone, facilitate - and even give legal sanction to - everything, no matter how obvious the danger.
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You appear to wish to justify or minimize the Christian Spaniards’ expulsion of Mohammedans after the Christian conquest of Al-Andalus. Although you do not say so openly, that is one conclusion that may be drawn from your remarks.
Perhaps I misconstrue you. But in any case I would like to point out that no less an authority than the noted historian of Spain Prescott – not suspected of being a dhimmi -- condemned the expulsion of most of the Mohammedans who were forced to leave Spain in various episodes in the 17th & 18th centuries. I don't recall the details. I admit there were sporadic Mohammedan rebellions against the Christians. However some of them were provoked by Christian persecution and may thus be justified.
The American Historical Association is having its annual meeting right now in sunny San Diego. I doubt if those attending realize that the best among them have a cheering squad, at this and similar websites, wishing them more money, more positions, more influence, more power, more everything, if that money is used, those positions filled, that influence exerted, that power deployed, that everything used, rightly, both in intelligent and scrupulous research by the well-prepared, and, what is even more important nowadays, in the transmission to the young, by teachers possessing knowledge both broad and deep, Geschichtsgefühl, and classroom allure.
Also recommended:
"The Myth of the Golden Age of Tolerance in Medieval Muslim Spain"
(by Norman Berdichevsky)
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=4205&sec_id=4205
What follows represents my knowledge of this specific historical record. It differs from Hugh's in a few particulars.
As of 1502, all Muslims were ordered to leave Spain (Castile et al. and Aragon et al.) UNLESS they converted to Christianity. Those who did convert were called Moriscos and not Moors. Most Moriscos were suspected of not being sincere Christians and in the 1560s liablilites were placed upon them to rid them of traditional Muslim customs like the wearing of the veil and taking hot baths. This led to a revolt by the Moriscos which was put down by Don Juan, Philip II's half-brother, in 1570.
Thereafter, the Moriscos were expelled from Andalusia but not all of Spain. In 1609 under Philip III they were expelled from Valencia and thereafter further decreees were fortcoming which expelled them from all parts of Spain by I believe 1614. But as of the Pragmatica of 1502, technically Islam was no longer legally capable of being practiced in Spain. Anywhere. This is my understanding of things but I would welcome additional information on this matter.
I must admit that I was very ignorant on this subject until I heard a teaching series by Pastor John Hagee. I really enjoyed the story and the informative posts here today. Thats why I am a JW member, thanks.
I don't think what is written above constitutes a corrective to what I wrote. I made clear that by 1499 Cardinal Ximenes had urged that Muslims not be allowed to openly practice Islam:
"As to the Moors, the Catholic kings would bide their time. In the terms of the Capitulation and treaties, the Muslims of Granada were permitted to continue to practice their religion. But in 1499, Cardinal Ximenes (he of the celebrated Complutensian Polyglot), insisted that the Muslims should not be allowed to remain, as practicing Muslims, in Spain."
Those who stayed on had to practice Islam in secret, but the desire to reclaim power was not extinguished, and various flamings-up are what, in the end, led to the final expulsion of all Muslims remaining in Spain, following the decree of 1609.
You wrote that Philip II ordered the Muslims to leave in 1568. This decree came in 1570, not 1568. An earlier decree of 1567 ordered Moriscos (not Muslims, of which theoretically there were none since the 1502 royal decree) to desist from speaking Arabic, taking baths (here the Moriscos had gotten this one right), wearing the veil, etc. This led to a revolt which began in 1568 and took almost two years to put down, which then resulted in the 1570 decree which demanded the Moriscos to vacate Granada (Andalusia), not Spain in its entirety as your "to leave" implies. Also, you seem to indicate that the "definitive expulsion" from all of Spain took place in 1609 when, in fact, this was not completed until 1614. In 1609, the Moriscos were expelled from Valencia and not yet all of Spain. That event was still some five years off. I don't mean to be picky, just scrupulously accurate (a fine line between the two I know).
A cute comment I read recently in another forum regaring the "repatriation" of Islam away from Spain: "Instead of Barcelona we would have had Kandahar, rather than Seville, we would've had Mogadishou and in place of portugal there would be Waziristan"
All the details of what the Spanish did to the Muslims/Moriscos as recounted above by Hugh and Wellington above seem to me to be entirely justified, considering that Spain had been violently conquered and violently occupied for centuries by Muslims. Those dates -- 1492, 1570, 1609, etc., -- should be celebrated with pride by all Westerners; and the Inquisition regarded with admiration, not -- as it currently is under the unofficial but dominant regime of PC MC -- as one major bullet point in the Litany of Western Shame.
I read the biography of Christopher Columbus a year ago and recall that his request to the king and queen was delayed by one or two years because they were taking back the control of Spain from the Moors. As I recall that happened the year before (1491) maybe wrong. I did not read anything about Jews being involved although there is a history of antisemitism in catholic Spain. Columbus did sail west in 1492 and found the new world in the way to India/China.
One interesting side note is that Columbus's desire to go west and the Portuguese sailing around the tip of Africa were all a result of Muslim interference in the shortest most direct way to the spices of the far east. Spices were the high tech/oil of the middle ages.
We are in the same fight and they are still the same problem.
Reply to Blue Niles:
I agree Mohammedans are bloodthirsty -- but don't forget that it's not only against Christians, but also among themselves. Shia-Sunna feuds can be as deadly and cruel as attacks on Christians. Perhaps you can take comfort in the fact that their agressiveness is ecumenical.
On the other hand, let's not forget that only 2 centuries ago many Christians were just as ferocious in their religious quarrels as many Mohammedans are today.
"By "misplaced sense of guilt" I mean that many, though not all, of the current inhabitants of the West often unthinkingly assent to all kinds of charges made against them."
Hugh's phrase "many, though not all" makes it sound like a smattering of people; a curious phrase considering that the sense of shame about Western history and particularly Western colonialism has been rampant througout the West for decades. This sense of shame has become deeply appropriated and inculcated into the hearts and minds of certainly the vast majority of Westerners, for whom it has become a reflexive given that of course, we mistreated horribly all those lovely Noble Savages, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, from the blacks (the "African-Africans") in Timbuktu to the Red Man ("Native Americans") in the Americas; and everywhere in between.
A more reasonable phrasing would wish to imply that only a very small minority throughout the West are not ashamed, overall (sans the exceptions that human imperfection always entails), by our history of beneficent colonialism -- indeed, by far the most beneficent colonialism in the history of Mankind.
Carl, Are you suggesting that it would have been preferable to allow the Muslims to stay in Spain? Knowing what we now know about Islam? That seems sort of crazy to put it mildly. One can only believe that any remaining Muslims would have continued to make trouble in Spain and throughout the rest of Europe. To whatever extend other parts of Europe fell to Islam or remained in perpetual war with it, surely the entire development of the West including the creation of America and all of the great things that has meant would have been drastically different perhaps even what one would call a Dark Ages that never ended.
Give the full name of your authority, and better yet reference some work or article please.
A poster far above ("bluenile 23") makes a series of claims.
Here is one:
"But, the Spanish did eventually expel all Muslims, right? Just not in 1492."
Yes, eventually, because the Muslims continued not only to practice Islam but more importantly, to offer resistance, in revanchist attempts to regain, where they could, control of territory. Muslims had ruled over the Christians (and Jews) for many centuries; it made no sense, in Islamic doctrine, for those Muslims who had once possessed a land to ever abandoned their claim to rightfully rule over them. And today, wherever you see an Al-Andalus Street intersecting with a Palestine Street -- and as it happens the American consulate in Jiddah (or perhaps another major Saudi city) can be found at that intersection, you know it is to remind people not only of the past, but of a claim that does not die, for if Spain was once under Muslim rule, then it goes to the top of the Things-To-Do List for Muslims, that territory which deservedly should be conquered -- because the conquering would constitute a re-conquering -- first.
The expulsion of the Jews of Spain and the Muslims are different things, though so easily linked. The Jews had never been the rulers, had not been slowly pushed out over 500 years of the Reconquista. They made no claim to Spain; their only claim was to their homeland, the Land of Israel then, and for centuries to come, under Muslim rule. The expulsion of the Jews had to do with the desire for la limpia sangre, the pure --- i.e. Catholic – blood, not to be contamined in Spain. Their expulsion (or forced conversion, which for many would not be quite enough) was undertaken only out of the hysteria of the Inquisition, in which -- very likely because of the great fear pf deception that Muslims had provoked -- anti-Judaism became racial antisemitism, meaning that even Jews who became Christians could be subject to anti-Jewish persecution. that dealing with Muslims had not for well-justified political fears of (half did become, some of them only outwardly, Christians, and remained in Spain, and among those Spanish who went to the New World (as of the Portuguese who went to Brazil) a very large number were of Jewish descent. See Benzion Netanyahu’s “The Origins of the Inquisition.”
It is true that over more than a century, the Muslims of Spain were slowly, and then abruptly, finally expelled, but the fear of them, fear of their conceivable attempts to re-take possession of part of the territory they had once ruled over, hardly far-fetched given that just across the Straits of Gibraltar lay the military power of their co-religionists, and that, to the East, the Ottoman navy was expanding its power (and in the next century would take territory, such as the island of Cyprus, from formerly powerful Venice). This is quite different from the expulsion in 1492 of the Jews, who posed no such threat.
Here is another from the same posting:
"It should also be remembered that in 1492, when the Jews WERE expelled, it was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire who sent ships to rescue the Jews and move them to eight major cities within the Ottoman Empire, because they were (at the time) still considered the "Elder Brother" in Ottoman Islamic tradition. They were settled there in UNWALLED cities, and the Ottomans built housing and synagogues for them.....Anyhow, the Sultan's ships were so many that they clogged the harbor at Cadiz and jammed its docks, and Columbus wasn't able to sail from that Spain's main Atlantic port."
There is a good deal of nonsense to disentangle from the true in this. The bald statement that the Ottoman ships were just waiting, crowded at Cadiz, to take on board Jews from Spain, and then to transport them to “UNWALLED cities” (why the capital letters, and what is an “unwalled city” and why does it matter?) where the “Ottomans built housing and synagogues for them” and then we are further told that the Sultan’s ships so “clogged the harbor at Cadiz” that Columbus had to take off from another port – I’d be willing to entertain some of this, if there were sources give, sources other than those of Islamic apologists who like to stress how wonderful life was for Jews (and Christians, too, when they think they can get away with it) under Islamic rule in Spain.
Henry Kamen, a specialist on this period of Spain’s history, estimates that about 50,000 Jewish families left Spain in 1492, and that only a few thousand of those went then to Turkey. Some went to North Africa, and were, on the whole, wretchedly treated -- often not admitted to the cities, to die in the desert. The single place in North Africa where they were well received appears to have been Tlemcen. Many returned to Spain, and accepted the cruelty of forced conversion; apparently that was preferable to what they experienced in North Africa. Some went to Turkey, some spread out in various Italian cities (Naples was welcoming, for example), and others ended up, as we know, in other European cities, including famously tolerant -- at least later on -- Amsterdam.
In Salonika, by the way, the Jews who arrived from Spain actually replaced another population of Jews that had lived there previously but had been removed by the Ottoman authorities who wanted to increase the population of Constantinople (Istanbul). Salonika did indeed become a center of Jewish life in the Ottoman Empire for 450 years, thanks to that influx from the Iberian peninsula which began with some families in 1492 (and was added to in future years, as Jews from elsewhere found a “Jewish city” naturally an attractive place to settle) until that fateful day in 1942, when the Nazis – including that unpunished war criminal (for what he did in both northern Greece and in Yugoslavia) Kurt Waldheim, rounded up all of Salonika’s Jews, making the men and boys stand for hours in the city’s main square in the midsummer sun, with some dropping dead from the ordeal (while all the while the wives of German soldiers, from houses ringing the square, looked on delightedly at the spectacle), and eventually all being sent, along with the Jewish women and children, to be killed in the extermination camps, and that was the end of Jewish Salonika.
But I’d like to request of the poster above "bluenile" -- very alan-moreheadesque) to list his sources for the Ottoman ships clogging Cadiz, and so on. Then they can be checked, and we can all be happy.
Curious that no one in the thread has wanted to discuss Nebrija's Grammar, or why so many philologists -- Menendez Pidal, Menendez y Pelayo, Don Americo Castro (mocked by Borges for one thing, taken to task by Claudio Sanchez-Albornoz for his "convivencia" business that has done such damage, especially since the many convincing correctives to it seem never to filter down to the masses who gobble up "The Ornament of the World" by Maria Rosa Menocal and suchlike comforting and "inspiring" stuff -- yes, there are those who want their history "inspiring.").
Okay, next time it's going to be John Minsheu's
Dictionary, with all the trimmings.
bluenile23 says:
"It should also be remembered that in 1492, when the Jews WERE expelled, it was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire who sent ships to rescue the Jews and move them to eight major cities within the Ottoman Empire..."
What? "Rescue the Jews"? Good grief. Does Bluenile have any clue as to how the Ottomans would have regarded this? If they indeed sent the ships, they would have most probably regarded the Jews as property to be acquired, a source of income, as in the classical Islamic tradition and as established by Muhammad. Did the sultan in question not take seriously Islamic doctrine and law? In addition, one suspects a political motive also.
On the other hand, I am willing to entertain the idea that a particular sultan might have abandoned traditional Islamic law in this respect, by allowing Jews more freedom than afforded under the traditional dhimma, if Bluenile will present evidence to that effect.
But the idea that the Ottomans "rescued the Jews"--a phrase that implies some kind of altruistic humanitarian mission--seems, frankly, preposterous.
-------
Hugh writes, “…right up until the 18th century, Muslims raided up and down the coasts of Western Europe, seizing property, killing many, kidnapping others - men, women and children - and bringing them back to Muslim lands where they were enslaved. They went as far as Ireland, and even once to Iceland.”
Indeed...and we can add to this list Newfoundland and, as I recall, the shores of New England.
Kinana of Khaybar.
Yes. And certainly English people were the victims of Muslim enslavement:
"White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves"
(by Giles Milton, 2004)
A brief review: "Britain's 200 year jihad"
(by Melanie Phillips):
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001423.html
Indeed a very interesting post. It is good to know history but, at the same time, it is dangerous to judge the past from our comfortable present (no so comfy on these days, we must admit).
If you go to the Valencia region these days, you will find on the coast many villages and towns. You will notice, in many occasions, that the old town is built at some distance from the sea (with a fortress at the top of a hill when possible). The traditional barred windows are not as much linked to spanish jealousy, even if it exists, (maybe an arab legacy) but to be able to resist some time before troops could be rallied and sent to drive the corsairs back.
In Spanish they use to say "No hay moros en la costa" (There are no moors on the coast) meaning there is no danger, you can speak freely. That is not bigotry, just history.
Islam is evil but most moslems are not. If they haven´t found out how ruthless the Koran is by themselves, there is nothing we can do about it.
We simply have to make clear that we live our lives our way and we are not going to apologize for what happened centuries before, specially since the have not apologized for what they are doing right now.
Kind regards to everyone.
Hugh's comment @1:24 - was that an assignment or treasure hunt? Where were you when I was a student? Nonetheless, glad you're here forcing us to catch up.
Coincidentally, I'm in the middle of reading "Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean" by Edward Kritzler, which deals intimately with Columbus and other seafaring adventurers.
Essentially, Spain and Portugal, in the grip of the Inquisition, a phenomenon not a little caused by Spanish xenophobia stirred up after seven centuries of Muslim rule and possibly copying Muslim intolerance of unbelievers, were the evil empire of the day. Many Jews, after expulsion in 1492, went to Amsterdam (New Jerusalem) and aided the Dutch and English in their fight against the Spanish, and some, like Sinan, Barbarossa's chief naval officer, aided the Ottomans against the Spanish. Jewish piracy meant profit and vengeance.
In any case, modern evidence shows that Columbus wrote in Ladino, a Jewish version of Spanish, and was most likely a converso, or secret Jew, one of at least 100,000 then in Spain. He had many crucial converso partners; Jews were prominent in shipping and navigation. That explains why his children arranged that Jamaica be ceded in perpetuity to his family by the Crown after his death, with the proviso that the Church not be permitted to have primary authority there, as it could then expose and persecute conversos. As a result, Jamaica became a safe-haven for many Portugese conversos.
Also, about 50,000 Jews who fled in 1492 found refuge in Fez, Morocco, in the Mellah, or small ghetto next to the royal palace. They lived there with classic dhimmi restrictions, but at least were safe from the Inquisition.
Ok, thanks Hugh for this contribution.Of course none of us were there at the time.All we have is hystory.I have in front of me all volumes of Ramon Menedez Pidal Hystory of Spain.I nmy desk volume XVII part two is open by the chapter II: The expulsion of the jews.Now, this has always been an interesting issue to me. Why they were expelled.I have some jew friends living in america, i always tell them to allow me some time to study this matter.Menendez Pidal says the Fernando and ISabel were not , by principle, hostile to the jews..."many examples show us the documents neccesary to prove it...." ...It is possible that they were dissapointed with the number of conversions after the famous decrete of expulsion in 1492...." ..And what about the Rapt and martyrdom of the Santo Niño de la Guardia? Where a boy was rapted and ritually crucified by jews and it became one of the causes that influenced more in the expulsion of the jews for the influence it had in the spanish people.."
Even if this act was real or not, Menedez Pidal says we have to understand that for the mentality of that time, it must have surely have had such a deep impact so as to assit in the final decission.
I mean, come on, you just cant leave this issue without a big reason, can you.There must have been "something big "
about the jews.
All in all, the moors case was a war case.The jews case , was a religious case.Now, we have both things in one with this jihad war.
These men spend years studying to be doctors and engineers,
and then become suicide bombers.Instead of building structures to house their fellow man,or trying to find cures for the myriad of diseases that plague mankind,they
blindly follow the perverted dogma of a religion which
promises a life of sexual splendour in some mythical paradise.
The CIA should have learned a lesson from this experience.
It would seem that these agents were naive enough to gather
around this guy all at the same time.Like putting all your
eggs in one basket.Never fully trust a "reformed jihadist".
For a view of Muslim-Christian relations in Aragon in the 1300's look here.
http://libro.uca.edu/boswell/rt.htm
To what extent were Christian beliefs and actions affected by Islam, particularly in Spain, with regard to the Islamic demonization of the Jews, and the use of violence and force in pushing the religious agenda? Could a case be made that the actions of the Spanish were at least colored by what they had heard and seen from the Muslims over so many centuries?
Hugh,
Thanks for another excellent essay. I was wondering if you could start providing a short list of references for future essays for those interested in further reading.
Ken
Jewdog wrote:
Also, about 50,000 Jews who fled in 1492 found refuge in Fez, Morocco, in the Mellah, or small ghetto next to the royal palace. They lived there with classic dhimmi restrictions, but at least were safe from the Inquisition.
....................
Perhaps so. There was plenty of room in that ghetto, though, since Muslim mobs in Fez had murdered thousands of Jews in 1465. There were reportedly only *eleven* survivors of the massacre.
Conversion or expulsion seems to be a rather minor infraction to pay for 700 years of invasion, subjugation sedition and murder.An exceptional consideration given that this took place 500 years ago.
The Jews had lived in the Iberian Peninsula since the time of Christ. After the sword wielding muslims invaded the Peninsula and where able to settle the mostly southern regions , the Jews had no choice but to adapt as they always have, and they did so with great success. Their skills and know how where used by especially the muslim sultans in everything from medicine to tax generation. Once liberation from the muslims came, certainly some doubt arose as to the "trustworthiness" of those who for hundreds of years "collaborated" with the enemy. The very tragic expulsion and taking of wealth of the Jews arose in this
need to secure the newly formed Spain from the invading muslims.
APF - you've forgotten two sources in your list of media.
Firstly, we not only have Orwell, and McLuhan, but John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos. Read it - thoroughly. You'll find within it the exact problems faced by Western societies in relation to the Muslim populations and the rationales being juggled ie how do we stay "civilised" and yet survive this overwhelming threat?
SPOILER!
The solution in the book is a little too pat but i do find it interesting that it is the philosopher who actually takes decisive action.
Second source - the radio. One phone call to talkback radio can achieve a lot - a nugget of info to hundreds/thousand listeners, locally and (via the web-streaming), internationally. Consider it. It has its own conventions but is very useful. Lots of people listen to the radio.
"The Midwich Cuckoos." Making a mental note now.
Kinana:
I knew about Muslim slave raids on Ireland and Iceland, but not Newfoundland and New England (were they not successful?). Where can I get a citation for this? I'd very much like to quote it.
Hugh, I'd be interested in discussing the philologists. What did you mean when you said in the article: "Come to think of it, some philologists in modern Spain have a literary significance that philologists in other lands (save possibly Russia) do not have."
Forgive me if this is a silly question, but I do not have the background that you do in this history.
Sounds justifiable to me. You articulated all the salient points to clarify the justification.
Tom, I believe it is referenced in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/White-Gold-Extraordinary-Thomas-Million/dp/0312425295
Hi Tom,
Sorry I can't find the references. I've done some googling and have checked my own files, but can't find the references for what I recall reading about the extent of the Muslim pirate raids for slaves (i.e., reaching to Newfoundland and New England). The secondary sources that I did come across do not point directly to sources for the raids on the eastern shores of North America, but they generally mention Robert Davis' research in this context.
Robert Davis' book may have the information re Newfoundland and New England.
Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan)
Davis may have other information about this in his other published work.
While we're on the general subject of historical falsification-how many people-esp African Americans-are aware that Muslim countries not only initiated the African slave trade but maintained slavery long after Christian powers abolished it- Saudi Arabia didn't abolish slavery unitl 1962 and Mauritius until 1980?
(Or is it "Islamophobic" to point this out?)
Terry
In my experience of things, not many. Not many at all. Enjoy pointing out this historical fact, though, to as many as I can, especially to black Americans.
LA INDEFENSIÓN DE ESPAÑA
Es difícil que la generación actual que empieza a tener peso en la sociedad española tenga conciencia del peligro que corre puesto que es víctima de dos influjos negativos:
El primero es un DESCONOCIMIENTO TOTAL DE LA HISTORIA DE ESPAÑA. Con la Constitución de 1978 y la creación de 17 Comunidades Autónomas, la enseñanza racional de la Historia de España ha si olvidada, siendo sustituida por 17 historias autonómicas que no enseñan nada de nuestro pasado como nación y geográficamente no van más allá de los caseros límites autonómicos. Es sabido que UN PUEBLO QUE NO CONOCE SU HISTORIA ES COMO UN NIÑO QUE NO TIENE RECUERDOS.
El segundo condicionante es CONSECUENCIA DE LOS AÑOS DE DICTADURA Y LA REACCIÓN HACIA EL EXTREMO OPUESTO, la ideología socialista y comunista que tuvo mucho peso en los primeros gobiernos democráticos y se ha presentado como un ideal de salvación. Pese a los descalabros del comunismo y del socialismo a nivel mundial SIGUEN CON UN MURO MENTAL QUE LES IMPIDE VER QUE EL MURO DE BERLIN SE HA CAÍDO.
El mismo Presidente actual de Gobierno es un ejemplo de este espejismo de esta falsa ideología salvadora. No hay más que ver su inclinación hacia el Dictador Castro, el Venezolano y otros iluminados de Iberoamérica.
Su ceguera es tal (y también la de muchos españoles) que después de llevar al país al mayor desempleo de su historia, siguen predicando que tienen el remedio del empleo con lo que están añadiendo añadiendo un nuevo engaño al inicial cuando prometieron el pleno empleo para ganar las elecciones. Algo semejante hizo Felipe Gonzáles que prometió crear 800.000 puestos de trabajo y acabó creando un millón más de parados y dejó la Caja del Estado en bancarrota
La duda es si realmente creen en la política que están practicando o por el contrario pertenecen al género de políticos hipócritas que “VIVEN DEL PUEBLO PERO NO VIVEN COMO EL PUEBLO”.
De hecho, lo primero que hacen cuando se hacen cargo de la Caja pública es mudarse a los barrios de la gente bonita, practicar cacerías, comprarse coches lujosos y enviar sus hijos a estudiar al país que más dicen odiar: los Estados Unidos. De paso no se cansan de denigrar su sistema de salud pero cuando tienen un problema no tardan en solicitar la curación de las clínicas norteamericanas.
Con estos antecedentes no es de extrañar que malinterpreten la tolerancia. CREEN QUE SER TOLERANTES ES SOPORTAR CUALQUIER IDEOLOGÍA Y PRÁCTICA CULTURAL AUNQUE SUS PRINCIPIOS VAYA EN CONTRA DEL PLURALISMO Y LA DEMOCRACIA.
De otra manera no se explica la legislación de España que permite que los delincuentes de todo el mundo prefieran ser juzgados y encarcelados en España. O una legislación de inmigración que no tiene procedimientos para impedir la invasión de España por gentes indocumentadas , permitiendo a los extranjeros conductas que se sancionan en los nacionales.
El colmo de nuestra política de inmigración lo revela el hecho de que El Rey de Marruecos haya amenazado el Gobierno de España, a propósito de la crisis de la huelga de la saharaui Aminatu Haidar, con lanzar miles de pateras con emigrantes para invadir España. Es la política del chantaje y el engaño que siempre han practicado los musulmanes a lo largo de toda su historia y que está autorizada por el Korán cuando de infieles se trata.
A las información de los comentaristas sobre la piratería que han practicado los muhammaduns hasta que los europeos se apoderaron del Norte de Africa, quiero añadir que durante 5 años tuvieron preso en Argel a nuestro mayor escritor Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra apresado cuando hacía un viaje desde Italia a España. Aquella experiencia le dio pié para escribir LOS TRATOS DE ARGEL, LOS BAÑOS DE ARGEL. Y la HISTORIA DEL CAUTIVO
Y sobre la tolerancia islámica histórica durante la reconquista poco que añadir a los detalles apuntados por los comentaristas como no sea la tradición de que Almanzor destruyó Santiago de Compostela (porque iba camino de convertirse en centro de devoción en competencia con La Meca) y obligó a los cristianos a llevar a hombros las campanas hasta Córdoba. Dos siglos más tarde El Rey Fernando III obligaría a los musulmanes de devolverlas a hombros a Santiago.
Claro que los multiculturalistas actuales califican de barbarie esta revancha de los cristianos pero no califican de igual manera el previo atropello de los musulmanes.
I admit your conjectures are plausible. My remark was not designed to foster any retrospective policy recommendations. I merely cited a distinguished historian whose opinion of the matter should be taken into account.
Dear Mr Worry:
You peremptorily demand that I provide page number, publisher, etc, of a book I read forty years ago. I find such a demand out of place and have no intention of complying. I find your demand resembles a member of an audience heckling a speaker.
William Prescott's works are no longer under copyright and I am sure you can find them on the web, and having found them, will be able to search for terms such as "Moors", "Moriscos", "expulsion", etc. until you find the passage (perhaps it was a whole chapter) on the expulsion of the Moors that I referred to.
Nowadays, thanks to the Web search machines, it is often unnecessary to provide full details of a source.
I suggest that you adapt your bibliographical demands to current technological capabilities.