12th February 2020 3:21:52 PM
2 mins readHistory confirms that the Moors ruled in Europe -- primarily Spain and Portugal -- for almost 700 years. They were known for their influence in European culture, but not many people know that the Moors were actually Europeans of African descent.
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Moors were usually depicted as being "mostly black or very swarthy, and hence the word is often used for negro," according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
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Several written works at the time also confirm that. The 16th century English playwrights William Shakespeare used the word Moor as a synonym for African and Christopher Marlowe used Moor and African interchangeably.
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Author and historian Chancellor Williams said "the original Moors, like the original Egyptians, were black Africans." An Arab chronicler also described Moorish Emperor Yusuf ben-Tachfin as "a brown man with wooly hair."
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In European Art, Moors are also often shown with African features: pitch black, frizzled hair, flat and wide face, flat-nosed, and thick lips. The Drake Jewel, a rare documented piece of jewel from the 16th century, seemed to show a profile of a Black king dominating the profile of a white woman.
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Moreover, Moors were known to have contributed in areas of mathematics, astronomy, art, cuisine, medicine, and agriculture that helped develop Europe and bring them from the Dark Ages into the Renaissance.
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Generations of Spanish rulers have allegedly tried to abolish this era from the historical record. But recent archaeology determined that Moors indeed ruled in Al-Andalus for more than 700 years -- from 711 A.D. to 1492.
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Source: blackhistory.com
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