Come dressed in your finest silk. Sip lemon sherbet in the shade of a fragrant almond tree while the throbbing beat of a water-wheel brings new life to once barren fields, now abundant with apricots and pomegranates. Walk paved and lighted streets through Iberia's finest cities , while mediaeval Londoners dragged their feet in the mud of our petty metropolis. Paradise is a word the Arabs gave to the world, but they gave to their own people the reality of its meaning. Mediterranean trade flourished across the Islamic world, importing new ideas in art and architecture, medicine and music, and above all a passionate love of learning. In 1492, with the sigh of the last Moor, that world evaporated, yet its legacy is all around us, in our own history and even in our contemporary life.