If I were some tweed-jacketed scholar recently retired from Harvard University’s department of physics, and words like “nucleosynthesis” and “selenocentric” were in my everyday jargon, I’d probably credit the planispheric astrolabe as the Moor’s greatest contribution to their almost 800-year reign over the Iberian Peninsula — modern day Spain and Portugal.
The highly sophisticated bronze instrument was designed for a multitude of purposes, including telling the times of the day the tide would rise and fall, finding particular stars in a galaxy and most importantly, since the Moors were Muslim, the direction of Mecca.
Just so happens, I’m a food writer who throws around words like “étouffée” and “braise,” so just by vocational default, I believe sfiha is the Moors’ greatest contribution to the Iberian Peninsula (sorry, Neil deGrasse Tyson). Sfiha, an open-faced meat pie typically filled with minced lamb before being topped with onion and pine nuts, is widely considered to be the first version of the modern empanada.
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