"I'm in the deserts at the eastern end of the Mediterranean in Jordan." "People have been wandering through these lands for tens of thousands of years the Bedouin." "they're almost entirely dependent on their domesticated animals." "their sheep and their goats. the one which seems to have little practical value to them." "nor use it as a beast of burden." "It's this ... the horse." "The Arabs are great judges of horse flesh and great riders. which up to 30 years ago (1957) were so much a part of their lives. once lived over much of Europe and central Asia." "stiff manes that stand more or less upright and a bold black stripe running down their back." "000 years after initially in order to eat them." "000 BC he had found that he could use them to pull carts and wagons." "The Egyptians harnessed them with wide reins low around their necks and used them for pulling their war chariots. into the horse's mouth and controlling it much more effectively." "even in Greek times." "That invaluable aid for riding probably originated far away in the steppes of central Asia. virtually live on horseback." "they still play the ancient and violent game in which the ball is a sand-filled skin of a freshly killed goat." "Roman writers said that the wild tribes who regularly raided settlements along the frontier of the empire the women and children following behind in wagons." "nor planted any crops." "They lived entirely on milk and meat." "who had such a taste for it." "they skinned their slaughtered enemies and slung the bloody pelts over their horses as trophies." "This passion for horses spread right round where it still flourishes." "the mounted tribes living along wherever they went." "The Huns rode west around the Caspian Sea into Hungary. and on into France and Spain. and sack Rome." "were joined by Goths and the civilisation that had grown up under its protection. were already in decline. but now stripped of their cover of natural vegetation were badly eroded and could no longer provide the food to support a large population. the columns of the temples tumbled" "began to wane." "How far nomads were responsible for this change is a matter of argument among historians. so the surviving peoples took to a more pastoral way of life the goat." "The goat has the most extraordinary mouth." "It seems impervious to the sharpest thorns and goats will eat vegetation that no sheep or cow will tackle." "That means that they can live in near desert." "It also means that because they eat every seedling they keep the land a near desert. the camel." "a camel driver had profound religious visions and began to preach a new faith." "Islam." "Mohammed's revelations were recorded the Qur'an. which included detailed instructions on how to care for the horse and this account of its origin. and created the horse." "And he said unto it:" "I create thee and name thee Arab." "Goodness I tie to the hair of thy forelock." "Booty shall come from the strength of thy back." "wherever you are." "making you lord of them all." "I make you obedient to your master and able to fly without wings." "You are destined for flight and pursuit. the horsemen of Islam set off on a series of lightning campaigns to this new faith." "No foot soldiers or baggage trains accompanied this swashbuckling cavalry." "They lived off the land and they carried their swords and the Qur'an all round the Mediterranean. they rode north to Jerusalem and on to Constantinople. and into Spain. the one-time nomads who had ruled Spain for three centuries. and gained another." "They established their Spanish capital here at Córdoba" "They partly demolished the Christian basilica and using marble columns rescued from the Roman ruins they converted it into a mosque." "000 mosques in this one city." "They installed street lighting and public sanitation." "They established a university." "And so they converted Córdoba with its half million inhabitants into one of the great cities of Islam." "They also greatly enlarged this mosque by building a forest of pillars." "they needed no specifically Islamic they built a mihrab. and epitomises the dazzling artistry and craftsmanship of these people. built himself a magnificent citadel on the hill above the city" "Alhambra. they lavished great care and skill on conserving and controlling water." "which still survive in Syria. for a thousand years. along which it flows throughout the city to irrigate its gardens." "For them a garden was literally paradise." "They used the same word for both." "and harsh sun of the desert. the colour and perfume of flowers." "here in Spain just as they had back in Africa." "And they brought with them many of their favourite plants." "this ... the orange. as several oranges are still today." "They also imported peacocks from the eastern territories to glorify their gardens with their astounding displays." "were particularly knowledgeable and skilled in the handling of birds." "Pigeons were probably the first birds to be domesticated by man anywhere." "and even broke their wings so as to fatten them for the table." "allowed them to fly free like these in Egypt. inside which the birds nest. collecting scattered grains of corn and other tiny particles of food. which accumulate in the bottom of these towers and constitute a magnificent fertiliser." "But falcons are the Arabs' passion. wherever they went." "The tradition continues unbroken." "is the houbara bustard. which must have both strength and courage if they're to bring one down." "The hood is an Arab invention." "It has drawstrings around the neck so that light is totally excluded from the bird's eyes and it immediately settles down and stays calm." "These portable perches were also devised by the Arabs." "the falconers make a point of handling both to keep them tame such as broken feathers. and the value of its meat." "This is exactly how falcons catch their prey in the wild." "an entirely free agent." "The falconer allows his bird a share of its catch." "the lungs and the heart." "the falcon might not continue to hunt. and they will eat it with particular relish. where real hunger continually afflicts most animals and men." "The Europeans also hunted with falcons for many centuries but their techniques were less sophisticated spread from places such as Sicily and also of course from Islamic Spain." "Although the people of Medieval Europe were learning their beliefs about them and their attitudes towards them remained in many instances rooted in a pre-Christian pagan past." "They credited some animals with the most extraordinary powers." "where the moss-covered rocks they believed they occasionally could find one of the most lethal and poisonous creatures in the whole of creation." "A 13th-century writer describes how the army of and during the night" "000 horses died." "And this is the creature they were so terrified of." "it's entirely harmless." "It's a kind of large newt that spends most of its time on land." "Being an amphibian it has a moist skin ... and is rarely seen. a salamander might come out of it; and if the log were the fire might be put out. and extinguish it." "we call this species the fire salamander." "Even as inoffensive and harmless a creature as a moth a creature of dread." "people believed as they lay sleeping." "And all because it had on its body a mark that looked like a death's head. and entice birds to fly down and feed on its corpse." "and catch them." "The eagle was thought to be immortal. worn-out feathers and dived into the waters of a lake. with a fish in its talons." "Maybe the artist had seen an osprey fishing." "This species of wild goose is a rare visitor to southern Europe and no one living there in medieval times could have seen its nest." "these geese must come into the world bedraggled feathers inside them." "only birds have feathers. obligingly showed exactly how that came about." "Nonsense?" "... of course." "like any other bird." "in the Arctic. ... a goose barnacle." "There were also superstitions about plants." "on a rocky islet in Malta. though now it has been found in one or two other places as well." "it was thought not only to be rare but a very powerful medicine against a whole variety of diseases." "it was extremely valuable." "in Malta to prevent thieves." "and sent it as a most valued gift to all the crown heads of Europe." "The mandrake contains a drug that produces hallucinations and was used by apothecaries in potions." "was believed to be shaped like a human being." "And close inspection could determine whether it was male or female. and anyone who heard that dreadful sound would be struck dead immediately." "So an apothecary gathering a mandrake and plug his ears with beeswax. which he had to tie to the mandrake." "blowing his horn to drown the dreadful shriek he could draw the root in safety." "Not all of these pagan beliefs have completely died. an ancient animal cult still flourishes. a statue of St Dominic is brought out from the church." "He is being adorned with snakes." "The snakes are harmless; they are four-lined and Aesculapian snakes. they tend to cling to the statue. for there are dangerously poisonous snakes in the countryside. to be able to cure toothache. was once bitten by a poisonous snake to grant protection to others." "But it's likely that the origins of this bizarre cult are rooted in practices of a far more distant past." "Many pagan myths became absorbed into Christian practice and some were even built into the fabric of the churches themselves. is an inheritance from the myths of Greece." "that of Islam." "For this church in Le Puy in southern France has arches reminiscent of the mosque in Córdoba." "Le Puy stands on the pilgrim road leading one of the most holy sites in all Christendom." "But Compostela was not far from the Spanish territories and the Bishop of Le Puy must have regarded Islam as a very real threat." "the Pope arrived here from Rome to confer with the Bishop." "We can't be certain exactly what they talked about but we do know for sure that the Pope had been receiving urgent pleas for help from the Christians of Constantinople who were under continuous attack by the armies of Islam." "And it seems likely that they were planning a holy war." "the Pope summoned all 50 miles from here." "the Pope preached a sermon to an enormous congregation just outside the city of Clermont. that Jerusalem and the Holy Land should be in the hand of the infidel." "And he called for an army to go and free it." "The sermon was met with wild enthusiasm." "The Bishop of Le Puy was one of the first to volunteer and was put in charge of the whole enterprise." "men from all over Europe started marching eastwards to assemble in Constantinople and to go on the first Crusade. crossed the straits of the Bosphorus and set off eastwards for Asia." "the going was rough. unsuited for such country." "and were eaten by the hungry troops." "By the time the Christian army reached the desert even goats and dogs. and trying to unseat them with a lance." "They could then butcher them with their swords. surprise raids." "they defended themselves with spears and arrows. and tunneled beneath them. or to batter them down. each siege ending only too often in a wholesale massacre of the inhabitants. was reclaimed for Christendom." "the Crusaders set up a chain of huge castles round the eastern end of the Mediterranean." "The most perfectly surviving (1987) is Krak des Chevaliers in Syria. 000 Christian souls in the case of this particular castle. and many more foot soldiers and locally recruited servants and helpers. the knights had their lodgings where they slept." "Beyond that stood the vaulted refectory where they ate they all prayed." "is a vast hall where they stabled all their horses." "vaults that held enough supplies for them to withstand sieges of months or even years. cut deep in the rock." "the Christian soldiers who patrolled these walls began to adopt the local customs." "They developed a taste for spicy food even turbans. and surrounded by an outer ring of walls studded with towers." "and beyond that another line of walls." "The only way in was over a drawbridge and through a heavily-guarded gate. sloping passage." "they were faced behind which a fresh band of defenders could be waiting." "And up this passage there was a new peril." "Holes in the roof." "Through them poured a lethal hail of boulders and arrows and boiling pitch and oil." "an attacker in the inner courtyard. no invader fought his way as far as this." "these defences were so carefully planned that the castle was virtually impregnable." "the defence of a castle depends on an adequate number of men." "And after a century and a half the Europeans were beginning to lose their zeal." "a much depleted garrison in exchange for a safe passage down to at Tripoli." "the rest of the Crusaders straggled back home." "They took with them and something that ultimately was to devastate all Europe." "It crept on board the ships of the returning armies and traveled with them. in previous centuries." "But the rats the Crusaders inadvertently carried with them had come from the ports of the eastern Mediterranean where plague was rampant and endemic." "The rats were infected with a form of which eventually killed them." "They couldn't transmit this directly to man." "But they were also infested with fleas ... and they could." "Some fleas are very particular about their hosts and will bite only one kind of animal." "that was not so with these fleas." "The fleas fed by sucking the rat's blood. and passed on the bacillus by injecting it when they next fed into the blood of their new host." "As the rats spread through the increasingly so did the disease." "The great pestilence broke out in 1347." "but soon it was raging all over the continent." "Boils appeared on people's bodies." "Their breath became foul and they vomited blood. sometimes within a few hours." "Nobody knew what caused the disease." "Nobody knew how to stop it." "it had killed one person in three." "was covered with forest." "there were still vast tracts largely unaffected by man. still flourished." "and they regularly interbred with domesticated pigs that wandered out into the forest." "and much hunted for their excellent meat." "which today is almost entirely restricted common in rivers right down to the coast of the Mediterranean." "too." "was still people's primary fuel. crops and herds." "this animal had a particular responsibility for a breed which was introduced in the 13th century into Spain by the Arabs from North Africa." "huge herds of them from south to north. during the last few centuries towns have grown up in their path." "No matter ... the traffic must stop to let the sheep past. and the sheep have to get to the grass that is now sprouting in the mountains." "were a sensation." "Their wool was longer than any other known until then and it made a marvelous cloth." "and only Spain produced it." "More and more Spanish aristocrats acquired bigger and bigger herds." "The King of Spain put a tax on the head of every merino sheep and every pound of wool they produced." "became a great sheep owner." "By the 16th century there were 3 million merino sheep in Spain." "And their wool was a major element in the country's economy." "The King of Spain did everything he could to protect them his wealth. so as to protect the country's monopoly." "And he did his best to protect these; the cañadas. but to feed on." "The 500-mile journey took them a month or so and they had to eat as they traveled. or even to drive the sheep away if they started feeding on their crops. and if a farmer objected he could be put to death." "as this one is." "Up in the mountains the pastures were also greatly expanded." "The forests that had once come close to the summits were cut down." "and then the whole mountain had been stripped bare to provide grass in the summertime for the searching muzzles of thousands of sheep. and up here into the mountains were sacrificed for the merino sheep." "the King of Spain where he also owned vast territories." "And the same thing happened there." "there was another reason for the wholesale felling of trees. but was a group of independent states." "the most serene republic and certainly the greatest naval power and richest trading nation in the western Mediterranean. was rode in great states down the Grand Canal to be ceremonially wedded to the sea on which the city's prosperity depended. and ships required trees." "Venice owned vast forests that stretched almost unbroken to the flanks of the Alps." "And in them were all the different kinds of trees her shipwrights required." "deck beams and keels; and beech for oars." "She built two very different kinds of ship. which carried her bulk trade. and carried valuables like spices and gold. for they were also the most powerful of the state's fighting ships." "These yards were the base of the navy that dominated the western Mediterranean." "The fleet was essential to Venice's survival." "The war between Christendom and Islam had not ended when the Crusaders had returned from the Holy Land." "It was now being fought at sea." "Turkish fleets were attacking Venice's eastern colonies." "were sailing and plundering her merchantmen. when the massed fleets of Christendom met the might of Islam in a narrow strait in Greece called Lepanto." "The battle lasted only one day." "000 men were killed or seriously wounded." "and the westward expansion as one of the great turning points of history. oar-driven galleys played a decisive part." "and improvements made them out of date. has been reconstructed as this full-sized replica." "it is appalling evidence of what men will do to other men. who were chained to their oars." "brewed in those great iron pots." "They were cleaned simply by throwing buckets of water over them. until such time or they died." "But this ship is also evidence of the great impact that these naval wars had on the forests of the Mediterranean." "To build this one ship involved felling 59 beech trees for the oars alone." "Over 300 pine and fir trees for the planking and the spars. over 300 oak trees to build the ribs and the hull. together with over 200 smaller ships." "274 fighting ships." "where many of these great ships there had to be felled over a quarter of a million mature trees. but here in Barcelona in Spain." "And by the end of the next century the majority of ship building had shifted where the shipwrights could get their timber from the great forests of the Baltic." "On the deforested land the horse still ruled." "Armies depended on their well-drilled cavalry and skills of horsemanship had reached extraordinary levels." "still preserves them." "Breeding horses to produce the different kind of animals had now become a highly expert business." "can trace their ancestry back to just three stallions from the Middle East." "can trace them back to just one." "A horse that was imported by the British consul to Syria for a gun." "and by that time the sport of horse racing was already well established." "King Charles II had become a fanatical racehorse enthusiast." "And he started the custom of bringing to see the races." "became the idols of the public." "painted to show them to their best advantage gives some notion of the ideal horse that breeders had in their minds and which owed so much to the horses that were ridden by the nomads in the Middle East. are of course a matter of experience in judgment and opinion." "But in general the animal should have a deep chest here so there's plenty of room for a big heart and lungs. to give it speed. powerful hind quarters because it's from here that you get the speed. surely the horse is one of the loveliest of animals. the horse has now been displaced" "by the internal combustion engine." "But it still retains a unique place in human affections and in human history."