Hypotheses

There is a strange contrast between the intellectual prowess of the Caliphate of Cordoba during the 10th century and its political divisiveness during that period, although this impression may be nothing more than a fiction of the desire to believe intellectual advance to be a unifying force. Then again, perhaps it is evidence of the ever ambivalent human spirit, or the strain of a warlike era.

Toward the end of Ch. 4 in Fletcher's Moorish Spain, he discusses the torrent of intellectual activity coming from extensive patronage of the arts. The Moors were assimilating the works of Ancient Greece, translating Ptolemy and others, and discovering unknown intricacies of mathematics and astronomy. . .

During the same period, Abd' al-Rahaman III declares himself Caliph over al-Andalus, plunging the region into explicit conflict with the rest of the Muslim world. Furthermore, they campaigned northward into Christian territories, striking Leon, Castile, and others.

Perhaps the spoils of war are more than land, but also culture and ideas. Though now, I'm faced with a chicken-and-the-egg sort of problem. I suppose this is nowhere near so definite a question as that, the case can be made either way: Intellectual pregnancies are sometimes miscarriages, as World War II amply testifies. On the other hand, war brings with it the spoils of culture - hence the survival of the works of Aristotle. Then again, perhaps the two are independent.

. . . One can take this either optimistically, supposing it evidence that the intellect of man needs neither the strife of war nor the pleasantries of peace to aspire to greatness, or one may take the dismal route, admitting that war is a constant, neither sharpened nor shaken by the accomplishments of the mind. The latter, though, at least comes with the hopeful proviso that intellectual activity is a constant as well.