英语听力：Prophet Muhammad 先知穆罕默德 - 15（在线收听） |
With Byzantine artisans, they had decorated it with golden mosaics of an Islamic paradise. The Great Mosque of Damascus would become a model for new mosques to come all across the empire. The Arabs transformed their conquered lands, maintaining, improving, or expanding the infrastructure. In Tunisia, building on Roman ruins, they devised an ingenious system of water purification, using gravity to separate fresh water from sediments. Part of this system were these two enormous basins that they built outside the city walls. The clean fresh water would flow over into the larger basin, where would then be distributed by pipes to the city. This is, you know, hundreds of years before anyone in Europe ever thought of having running water. All over you will find schemes for bringing water from the mountains where there was more water to the plains where there might be less water.
They resurrected elaborate irrigation systems, filling the old stone aqueducts with precious water. Agriculture flourished as life-giving staples like wheat were introduced to the Mediterranean region. But Muslims saved their most monumental feat for the Holy City of Jerusalem.
Islam’s first great work of art is the Dome of the Rock. It was built in the city that was holy to Christians and Jews, and it's spectacular.
Like Mecca and the Kaaba, the significance of this holy site goes back to Abraham, for the rock within, it's said to be the place he nearly sacrificed his son. It was built to rival the nearby Church of the Holy Sepulcher where Jesus was said to have been buried.
What's extraordinary about the Dome of the Rock is how perfect it is. People revered this site as some place that was holy to Abraham and to Isaac. Imagine, if you will, these new guys coming in and taking over this piece of prime real estate, and building a new building for a new religion that sits on top of a mountain and sparkles and glitters in the sunlight for everyone to see. |
| 原文地址：http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/wenhuabolan/2008/339791.html |