Jazz comments:

but didn't the Crusades go 0-9 for the Church?

And Max replies:

Surely 0-9 is a little harsh? After all, Jerusalem was taken and held for a while during one of the Crusades. As morally repugnant as the Crusades were, I think the score was probably closer to something like 2-7. Just my $0.02
(see)
http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=8800&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&part=4&vc=1

but from a linguistic point of view, (and cultural) they were a rounding success. Not only did we get the word algebra, we got algebra! And alchemy, and lest we forget, it was the moors who introduced coffee to Spain, and from there it went to the Spanish court- Isabella gave up wine as court drink (an offering) and drank coffee instead–a bitter drink to remind herself of the bitter effort of ridding Spain of the moors. From there it went (over the next hundred years) on to the rest of Europe–except of course to England. There was some political dispute about a divorce...

But the crusades gave us a lots of other words and concepts.

And since most of Europe was pretty unhappy about the plague, and didn't want that to happen again, we also got the Italian solution– isolation until infestation has past. A quarantine (14 days? 40 days?) check with bob young, since I am off to the store to buy 4 kilos of sausage or was it a 1/4 kilo? i know just enough to know 4 and ten are in the word–but is it 4 and ten? Or 4 times 10? One of them!

Any other words you can think of from our arabic neighbors?



my other obsession