Sintra, often referred to as a wonderland, is located 25KM from Lisbon or a quick 40-minute train ride from Rossio station, in the historic heart of the city. It is in this landscape of fairytale forest and castles where I had my first real brush with the beauty of Arabic culture.
711 and 1492: two dates, which should resound with many Americans, help to understand and bookend the influence of the Arabic culture on the Iberian peninsula. In 711AD, the Moors, an exonym for the Arabs that lived along the northern coast of the African continent, from Egypt in the east to Morocco in the west, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into what is modern-day Spain and Portugal. Their exact motivation for doing so is unclear. Some have said it was in search of more fertile land; at that time as it is today, the north of Africa is predominantly arid with little rainfall. Others have said it was to spread the religion of Islam, which began a little more than a century prior. Or Perhaps it was something far more uncomplicated: to fulfill that innate human curiosity to see what else was out there.
FUN FACT. The Strait of Gibraltar is a narrow waterway that separates Europe and Africa; it is also where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. Despite its anglicized name, the Strait’s moniker derives from Tariq Ibn Ziyad, the commander who led the Moors northward in 711AD. In Arabic, the promontory bordering the northern coast of the channel and where the commander made landfall was called Jabal Tariq (“Mount of Tariq”) or, in its corrupted form, Gibraltar; the corruption of Arabic place names, commonplace in that region of Europe.
