Arab Muslim rulers imported high culture into ninth-century Spain

Evidence

Suddenly, Spanish Christians were confronted with the large-scale importation of high Islamic culture. The situation is very different from Syria, where Arabs had participated in Greco-Semitic culture long before Muhammad, and where Islamic court culture gradually evolved out of a mix of Syriac, Greek, Arab, and Persian elements. This culture had been, on the whole, absent in Spain during the first century of Muslim rule: Spanish Christians considered their new masters to be formidable militarily and politically but not culturally or religiously. Indeed, it was Muslim muftîs such as Yahyâ b. Yahyâ who (in the first half of the ninth century) warned Muslims not to celebrate Christian holidays such as Christmas. Suddenly Christian Spaniards were confronted with massive onslaught of imported culture; suddenly their Arab Muslim overlords had culture, literature, music: and it all risked making the tired Latin culture of the Christians look pale by comparison. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 496