Before the Advent of the Black Moors of Africa who ruled parts of Spain for 700 years there was Medieval Europe a classic rat hole. Until the Blacks came in from Africa and cleaned it up.
In this installment, we present to our readers an article from Pravda describing all that had been achieved in European history just before the advent of the Black Moors of Africa. The Black Moors of Africa gave the Europeans, African sciences (now falsely termed as western science), African commerce, African architecture, African culture, African governance, African libraries and African hygiene.
Other installment will do a comparison of the state of development attained by the medieval age Black Moors of Africa who built Granada, Cordoba, Toledo, and other cities of Southern Europe.
Don Jaide
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The stench of medieval Europe still echoes today
22.01.2008
People normally associate different epochs with different smells. The Middle Ages smell of sewage and decaying bodies. German writer Patrick Suskind, the author of a well-known novel “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,†wrote in his book that the stench of European cities in the late Middle Ages period was unbearable. His work conveys the terrible smell of human faeces and urine in the streets, decaying wood and rat dung, spoiled coal and animal fat, mouldy dust and chamber pots.
Stench used to be an inseparable part of all human activities, constructive or destructive. The Queen of Spain Isabel of Castle (the end of the 15th century) confessed that she had taken a bath only twice in a lifetime – when born and married. A daughter of one of French kings died of lice. Dysentery and scab caused fatal terminations to Popes Clement V and Clement VII correspondingly. Duke Norfolk neglected bathing for religious reasons. As a result of such disregard numerous abscesses dotted his body.
A billet-doux sent by the inveterate Don Juan Henry of Navarre to his sweetheart Gabrielle d’ Estrées became an anecdote. Its contents conveyed the following meaning: “Do not wash yourself, my sweetheart, I’ll visit you in three weeksâ€. The king himself took a bath only thrice in a lifetime, twice coercively.
Russian ambassadors at Louis XIV court wrote that His Majesty stunk like a wild animal. Europeans considered Russians perverts because it was a tradition for the latter to take steam baths once a month.
European cities were buried in sewage. Town residents splashed the contents of garbage pails and washtubs out into the street on the heads of carefree passers-by. Stagnated slops made stinking pools; and a great number of town pigs crowned the whole picture. People emptied chamber pots right out of their windows making streets look like cesspools. Bathrooms were the rarest luxury. Fleas, lice and bugs swarmed in rich and poor houses of London and Paris.
Unsanitary conditions, diseases and starvation personify medieval Europe as it was. Even the noble class could not afford to eat their fill. Noble families were happy if at best two or three of ten children survived. Delivery was quite an undertaking for women: a third part of them died in labor. Street illumination also was poor – oil lamps, splinters or wax candles at best. Hunger, smallpox, leprosy and syphilis disfigured people’s faces.
There were not any cleaning agents or the notion of personal hygiene in Europe up to the middle of the 19th century. One Italian nobleman said in his memoirs that in the 16th century it was impossible to walk along the streets that resembled a fetid stream of turbid water. He had to hold a scented handkerchief or a small bouquet to his nose not to vomit. But not only faeces poisoned the air. Butchers slaughtered and disembowel cattle right in the streets. They would scatter guts around and pour blood out onto the pavement.
In late Middle Ages people learned to process wastes and faeces. Urine, for example, was used to tan leather and bleach cloth, animals’ bones – to produce flour. In days of old painters placed barrels for urine near the farms, they used it to knead paints. In Ancient Rome they sold even the urine from latrines to wool dyers and leather tanners. What could not be processed was left in the street.
Rain was the only street cleaner in those times. And still, notwithstanding its sanitary function, rain was considered a providential punishment. Rains washed dirt out of all cracks, and raging sewage streams rushed through the streets. Just like this there appeared a small river Merderon in France (from French “merde†– shit).
If there were stinking funds in the country, in cities people defecated in narrow side streets and yards. Only after the ‘hydraulic revolution’ aqueducts and gutters appeared; they provided houses with water and removed the sewage.
People were not cleaner than the streets where they lived. “Water baths warm the body, but weaken the organism and widen pores. That’s why they can be dangerous and cause different diseases, even deathâ€, a medical treaty of the 16th century runs. Medieval doctors thought that infectious air could penetrate through the cleaned pores. Owing to this cause all social bathhouses were abolished. In 15-16th centuries rich citizens had a bath at least twice a year, in the 17-18th centuries they decidedly stopped to wash themselves. The French king Louis XIV had a bath only twice in his life on doctors’ advice. But the procedure shocked the sovereign so, that he made a vow not to do it anymore.
All hygienic arrangements included only hands and mouth rinsing, but not the whole face. “By no means you should wash your face, – wrote medics in the 16th century, – as it can cause catarrh or weaken the eyesight.†As for women, they had a bath only two or three times a year.
The majority of aristocrats used scented rags to rub the body. It was recommended to moisten armpits and groin with rose water. Men wore small bags with fragrant herbs between the shirt and waistcoat. Women used only fragrant powder.
Medieval ‘neat’ persons often changed their clothes. They considered that it absorbs all dirt and cleans the body. But our ancestors were rather selective on this issue. Clean starched shirt for every day was a privilege for rich people only. That is why white crimped collars and cuffs that were the evidence of wealth and cleanliness of their owners became fashionable. Poor men neither washed nor changed their clothing. Most of them had only one shirt. No wonder – clothes were extremely expensive. The cheapest canvas shirt and one milk cow, for example, had the same price.
Source: Pravda.Ru URL:
http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/103574-stench-0
Translated by Ksenia Sedyakina
Pravda.ru
And in reference to your quotation from the site I offered, it would be better to reveal the “full” story:
‘Old Arab descriptions of “blacks” also reveal that what they meant by “black” is not necessarily what we understand it to mean today. Some medieval Arab writers such as al-Jahiz applied the term “blacks” to practically all peoples darker than the average Arab, and “whites” to peoples lighter than the norm’ – just as northern Europeans considered those darker than themselves “swarthy” (as Benjamin Franklin considered the Swedes, Russians, Germans etc!), so too did the arabs ascribe “white” to persons lighter than themselves and “black” to those darker than themselves.
Sceptic
This tread is about the backward Europeans. It was written by a European woman of Russian descent.
If you wish to discuss the Moors or their racial background, I had posted about three threads related to the Moors for you. Go to those sections.
The backward tendencies of Europe as described in the article above is one that few Europeans want to discuss. Because it exposes the lie of white supremacy.
Europe was the most backward continent on Earth until 300 years ago when they took piratical acts to a next level.
Europe was so retrogressive that Black Africans had to come up from Africa to civilize Europeans. And what did we get for that…lies, hatred, murder, slander and sceptic racists arguing about shades of Black.
Get it clear now…Black Africans simply means melaninated Africans since noone is black scientifically speaking. There are shades of brown (which marks the Blacks Africans) and shades of pink (which defines the pale Europeans).
Anytime you speak of dark brown and brown colour think Africa and Africans. We were there to give melanin to all the peopleof the earth.
When you think pale or pinkness, think Europeans.
Swarthy comes from a Germanic root word Schwartz. It means Black in German!!! In the old German forests and right across the entire face of Europe there had lived a Black indigenous population. Until the pales came down from The Pale in 500 A.D. Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Saxons, Angeles, they all arrived western Europe after 350 A.D. Prior to that time it was all Africa and Africans.
One last word on Moors: Here is the image of the Moorish Saint of Corsica. It was originally made by the Spaniards but the Corsicans also adopted it in 1946:
http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en&q=moor+flag+corsican&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
Jahdey
Jahdey:
Your ‘arguments’ on this page consist of:
1. The Moors of Spain were “black”.
2. Europe wasn’t “civilised”
3. The black Moors of Spain civilised Europe.
1. I have already addressed the argument of “The Moors of Spain were black” – and I will also check the other pages relating to the Moors on which you recommended for further opposing argumets.
2. “Civilisation” is a rather elastic term:
FreeOnlineDictionary: “An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions.”
Each Native American tribe considered themselves more “civilised” than their surrounding tribes, yet the Europeans considered them irredeemably “uncivilised”. Yes, hygiene was…’primitive’ in Europe and superstition held sway over most of the population, regardless of class – however, this “primitive” culture gave the world such wonders as Michelangelo’s David, Mozart’s Requiem etc. Also, you are using a notoriously unreliable ‘source’ – Pravda, which is a ‘fringe’ publication to put it lightly.
3. The ‘blacks’ did not give Europe anything – the Arabs did. All those “African” institutions are merely arabic institutions, some of which came to them by way of the Greeks, surprisingly enough!
Also, the rule of the Moors in Spain was oppressive of the native Spanish population to a horrifying extent – this is similiar to saying that the European colonists “civilised” Africa, regardless of the oppression of the native cultures.
Also, you fail to mention “Byzantium”, one of the most ‘civilised’ places in the world before it was conquered by the Ottomans.
“The backward tendencies of Europe as described in the article above is one that few Europeans want to discuss. Because it exposes the lie of white supremacy.”
I wouldn’t say that, most Medieval history makes special reference to the Europeans ‘hygine’, or lack thereof.
“Europe was the most backward continent on Earth until 300 years ago when they took piratical acts to a next level.”
In comparison to:
North America?
Sub-Saharan Africa?
Australia?
“Europe was so retrogressive that Black Africans had to come up from Africa to civilize Europeans. And what did we get for that…lies, hatred, murder, slander and sceptic racists arguing about shades of Black.”
Please, don’t make me laugh – the Europeans were ‘civilised’ by arabic ideas, mostly developed from Greek/Roman ideas. The only way black Africans found their way to Europe from the Medieval Era onwards was as either arabic, or European, slaves and servants.