Now, the Moors have a
huge impact on European culture. Very
sophisticated, beautiful culture
in so many ways, very smart,
a lot of the great thinking of classical
Greece was lost to Europe, absorbed into
Islam, and given back to Europe
through the Moors in Spain.
Now of course when you have Moorish art,
it cannot have pictures of people or
statues. You have calligraphy, you have
Quranic verses, you've got propaganda
phrases, you've got
phrases of praise,
praise about the
prophet and so on,
and when you go to a church
you'll see a statue of St.
Peter or a statue of Jesus or Mary.
You go to a mosque,
you can't see a statue. What you see is
a banner with calligraphy writing in a
very beautiful way that
would say Mohammed or
whoever, whatever prophet
they're celebrating.
So it's equivalent
of a church, but
they can't have images so you get the
calligraphy, and you see that in those
mosques.
