Light on Dark Ages: Black rulers in Europe

Scott Reeves (loveexploring.com via MSN, 4/4/23); B. Hughes; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

Historian Bettany Hughes

We can blame 14th-century scholar Petrarch for believing the "Dark Ages" were a time of primitive living.

[Actually, as British historian Bettany Hughes makes perfectly clear, it was the time when for seven centuries Europe was ruled by "the Moors," Black rulers from North African, who prospered at this time then were assiduously erased from white history books.]

For centuries afterwards, historians repeated his idea that the early medieval period – roughly AD 400 to AD 1100 – was a dismal era when Western Europeans forgot the great achievements of classical antiquity in [Mediterranean] Greece, [Latin] Rome, [Middle Eastern] Persia, and beyond.

But many archeological discoveries found in the centuries since suggest that the Dark Ages weren’t so bleak after all. Join in the exploration of the surprisingly advanced civilizations of the not-so Dark Ages. More

• Who knew Africans were so advanced? Scholars, historians, and anyone paying attention. A mysterious ancient temple has just been discovered in Africa
• And there was advanced technology in the Americas, too? America's ancient ruins you probably didn't know existed

When the Moors Ruled in Europe

This a documentary film presented by English historian Bettany Hughes, a two-part series on the contribution Black people from Africa and Spain (the part of Europe that borders Africa), the Moors, made to Europe during their 700-year reign in Spain and Portugal ending in the 15th century.

It was first broadcast on Channel 4 on Saturday Nov. 5, 2005, having been filmed in the Spanish region of Andalusia, mostly in the cities of Granada, Cordoba, and the Moroccan city of Fes in Africa.

The era ended with the Reconquista ("reconquest") during which Catholic authorities burned over 1,000,000 Arabic texts of wisdom, math, history, religion, and architecture. More