I planned to finish translating this essay into Chinese in my last blog, but it is so long that I have to divide it into 2 parts.
History: How African Muslims "Civilized Spain" (part 2).
历史：非洲穆斯林如何教化西班牙(2)
source
The Moors’ scientific curiosity extended to flight and polymath, Ibn Firnas, made the world’s first scientific attempt to fly in a controlled manner, in 875 A.D. Historical archives suggest that his attempt worked, but his landing was somewhat less successful. Africans took to the skies some six centuries before the Italian Leonardo Da Vinci developed a hang glider.
摩尔人对科学的好奇延伸到了飞翔领域，博学家Ibn Firnas于公元875年在一种可控方式下，进行了世界首例科学性试飞，历史档案材料显示，他的尝试成功了，但是降落地面时不尽人意。(如此看来，)非洲人从事飞行探索比意大利达芬奇发明悬挂式滑翔机早了足足6个世纪。
Clearly, the Moors helped to lift the general Europeanpopulace out of the Dark Ages, and paved the way for the Renaissance period. In fact, a large number of the traits on which modern Europe prides itself came to it from Muslim Spain, namely, free trade, diplomacy, open borders, etiquette, advanced seafaring, research methods, and key advances in chemistry.
很显然，摩尔人帮助提升大量欧洲人口走出黑暗中世纪，为后来的文艺复兴铺平了道路。事实上，大量现代欧洲人引以为傲的特性源自西班牙穆斯林，比如，自由贸易、外交活动、开放边境、礼仪、先进航海和研究模式以及化学上的关键优势。
At a time when the Moors built 600 public baths and the rulers lived in sumptuous palaces, the monarchs of Germany, France, and England convinced their subjects that cleanliness was a sin and European kings dwelt in big barns, with no windows and no chimneys, often with only a hole in the roof for the exit of smoke.
在那个时期，摩尔人建造了600座公共浴室，统治者们居住在奢华的宫殿里，而德国、法国和英国的君主们正说服他们的臣民们，清洁是一种罪。欧洲的国王们住在大谷仓似的房子里，没有窗户没有烟囱，仅留屋顶上的一个孔用来排烟。
In the 10th century, Cordoba was not just the capital of Moorish Spain but also the most important and modern city in Europe. Cordoba boasted a population of half a million and had street lighting, fifty hospitals with running water, five hundred mosques and seventy libraries, one of which held over 500,000 books.
十世纪时，科尔多瓦不仅仅是摩尔人统治下西班牙的首都，而且是欧洲最重要和摩登的城市。科尔多瓦有50万人口，有街道照明设施，50座有自来水的医院，500座清真寺和70个图书馆，其中一个图书馆拥有500,000图书。
All of these achievements occurred at a time when London had a predominantly illiterate population of around 20,000 and had largely forgotten the technical advances of the Romans some six hundred years before. Street lamps and paved streets did not appear in London or Paris until hundreds of years later.
所有这些成就发生时，同时期的伦敦有约20,000万的多数人口是文盲，且大都遗忘了600年前的罗马科技发展(成果)。直到数百年后伦敦或巴黎才出现了街灯和铺面道路。
The Catholic Church forbade money lending which severely hampered any efforts at economic progress. Medieval Christian Europe was a miserable lot, which was rife with squalor, barbarism, illiteracy, and mysticism.
天主教堂禁止借贷，严重阻碍了经济发展的努力。中世纪基督教统治下的欧洲是一个令人悲惨的境遇，充斥着肮脏、野蛮、无知和迷信。
In Europe’s great Age of Exploration, Spain and Portugal were the leaders in global seafaring. It was the Moorish advances in navigational technology such as the astrolabe and sextant, as well as their improvements in cartography and shipbuilding, that paved the way for the Age of Exploration. Thus, the era of Western global dominance of the past half-millennium originated from the African Moorish sailors of the Iberian Peninsula during the 1300s.
在欧洲伟大的地理大发现时代，西班牙和葡萄牙成为环球航行的先锋。这是由于摩尔人在航海科技领域的先进发明诸如星盘(天体观测仪)和六分仪以及他们在绘制地图和造船领域的提升，为大航海时代铺开了道路。因此，在过去的500年里，由西方主导世界的时代(实质是)源于公元1300年期间的伊比利亚半岛的非洲摩尔人水手们。
Long before Spanish Monarchs commissioned Columbus’ search for land to the West, African Muslims, amongst others, had long since established significant contact with the Americas and left a lasting impression on Native culture.
在西班牙君主派遣哥伦布向西航行寻找新大陆很久之前，非洲穆斯林们以及别人已经和美洲建立了重大联系，并给当地文化留下了深远的影响。
One can only wonder how Columbus could have discovered America when a highly civilised and sophisticated people were watching him arrive from America’s shores?
人(们)不由会纳闷，哥伦布是否原可到达美洲时，一群高度文明和智慧的人们正观看着他从美洲海岸登陆到达呢？
