A History of the Muslim World to 1405
Page 39
The Legacy to Europe
Although the study of science and philosophy was increasingly constrained within the Dar al-Islam, the scientific and philosophical contributions of Muslims began to be noticed by a western Europe that was slowly recovering from the sustained economic crisis of the early medieval era. Medieval Europe had preserved very little from its Greco–Roman heritage. A few of Aristotle’s treatises on logic and Plato’s Timaeus survived in monasteries, but little else. Europeans knew Islamic culture through the two areas closest to them, Andalus and Sicily, and as early as the tenth century monks from France were crossing the Pyrenees to study “Arabic learning.” In the tenth and eleventh centuries, some of these monks began to translate texts from Arabic to Latin. The most important of these efforts were the translations of Galen by Constantine the African in the third quarter of the eleventh century.
During the last quarter of the eleventh century, two developments in Christian Europe provided the stimulus for a wholesale appropriation of Arabic texts. The first was that Europe was beginning to experience an economic revival. The new urban centers were enjoying a building boom, universities were emerging, and a middle class was growing. The second development was the European military expansion that began annexing formerly Muslim territories. Normans established their kingdom in Sicily and southern Italy between 1060 and 1091. In Palermo, Roger established a cosmopolitan court where Greek, Arabic, and Latin were all in use, and he patronized several Muslim scholars. Southern Italy and Sicily had maintained their commercial contacts with Constantinople, and the international atmosphere in the new Norman kingdom stimulated the translation of numerous Greek and Arabic texts into Latin. When Toledo fell to the Reconquista in 1085, a more massive process of translation began that matched the accomplishments of the Bayt al-Hikma two centuries earlier.
Although not formally organized in the way that al-Ma’mun’s institution had been, the production of Latin translations of Arabic texts in the Iberian Peninsula attracted scholars from all over Europe, and it soon became systematized. Translation centers were established in the Ebro valley, Pamplona, and Barcelona, among other places, but the most famous was at Toledo. The Toledan school developed after 1165 under the leadership of Gerard of Cremona, and was most notable for its translation of the works of Aristotle. The translation technique that became characteristic of these institutes was for native scholars who were fluent in Arabic (a few of whom were Muslims, but most of whom were Jews) would translate the texts into a Romance dialect (usually Castilian or Catalan), and a Latin specialist would then translate into Latin. Alternatively, since much of the corpus of Arabic texts had already been translated into Hebrew by the Jewish community of Andalus, the texts were rendered directly from Hebrew into Latin. The translators found that many of the Arabic terms used in the philosophical, mathematical, alchemical, agricultural, and other texts (some of which had themselves been borrowed from Greek or Persian) had no equivalents in Latin or in the spoken languages of Europe. As a result, they were introduced into the Latin texts almost unchanged, introducing numerous new words into Europe (for examples of English words which are derived from Arabic, see the list in the accompanying table).
ENGLISH WORDS DERIVED FROM ARABIC
A Select List
admiral azure jar satin
adobe camel jasmine sequins
albatross candy lemon sherbet
alchemy carafe lilac sine
alcohol carat lute soda
alcove caravan magazine sofa
alfalfa cipher marzipan spinach
algebra coffee mascara sugar
algorithm cotton mask syrup
alkali crimson mattress taffeta
almanac damask monsoon talc
amalgam divan mummy tambourine
amber elixir muslin tariff
apricot gazelle myrrh tarragon
arsenal ghoul nadir zenith
artichoke giraffe orange zero
assassin guitar racquet
azimuth hazard saffron
Hundreds of texts were translated. The first Latin Qur’an was produced in 1143, and two years later al-Khwarizmi’s algebra appeared in Latin. The works of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Euclid, Galen, and other Greek scholars were finally available to medieval Europeans, and the Muslim scholars who elaborated upon their work, such as al-Razi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd, were acknowledged to be as authoritative as the Greeks themselves. By the thirteenth century the pace of translation from Arabic decreased in the Iberian Peninsula, while it increased in Italy and Sicily due to the patronage of Frederick II (1198–1250).
The results of the translations were explosive. As in the Dar al-Islam, the introduction of Aristotle’s works into Christian Europe caused an uproar. The primary battleground was the University of Paris, where the faculty of liberal arts fought the faculty of theology over the issue. Aristotle, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) were intellectual heroes to the former and villains to the latter. In 1210, a council of bishops met in Paris to denounce heretical doctrines deriving from Aristotelianism, such as the eternity of the universe. In 1215, the university prohibited the teaching of Ibn Sina’s recently translated commentaries on Aristotle, upon pain of excommunication from the Church. Despite the dangers, groups such as the “Aristotelians” and “Latin Averroists” sprang up. The scholars Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon championed the reception of Aristotle’s works, but the most famous Aristotelian of the period was Thomas Aquinas. Although he tried to mediate between the Averroists and those who adhered to the Platonic–Augustinian tradition, the masters of Paris condemned twelve of his own Aristotelian theses in 1277, three years after his untimely death.
The rigorous demands of scientific rationalism had confronted Christians in Europe just as they had Muslims several centuries earlier. It would require several centuries for the dust to settle, but the course of events took a different turn in western Europe from that of the Muslim world. Eventually, a Western philosophical tradition emerged that was independent of theology, and the Scientific Revolution is widely regarded to be at least in part the ultimate result of the assimilation of an Aristotelian attitude that takes the material world more seriously than did the Platonic one. Those developments are far too complex to be accounted for here, but some scholars suggest that they were made possible in part because of the institutional structure of education in western Europe. In western Europe, universities began to emerge out of cathedral schools in the twelfth century. Their basic curriculum was that of the seven liberal arts: the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy). Further study could be pursued in law, theology, and medicine.
Unlike the madrasa, then, the cathedral school and the university provided an institution within which scientists, philosophers, and theologians studied in adjacent facilities. As a result, intellectuals in all disciplines were forced to grapple with issues raised in the others. Just as important in the long run was the fact that both the cathedral schools and the universities were legal corporations whose rights were guaranteed by charters. As a result, the faculties were able to set their own curriculum regardless of who endowed the school. As a consequence of these two factors, science and philosophy were able to continue to develop with institutional support despite vehement objection from critics who felt that vital religious principles such as God’s absolute sovereignty were at risk. As we shall see, science and philosophy by no means disappeared in the Dar al-Islam, but the lack of a nurturing institutional environment did gradually impose handicaps on their further development.
Conclusion
The period 950–1260 was crucial to the development of doctrines and institutions that we identify with Islam today. It is important to recognize that fact, and it is important not to distort it. Some historians have called this the Golden Age of Islam, as though the centuries after 1260 represent a decline. Others have assumed that Islam attained a fixed form during this period and has not changed signif
icantly since then. Neither of these positions is tenable. The history of Islam shows strong parallels with the history of Christianity, in which the first three centuries were crucial for narrowing the possible routes of development of doctrine, and the next three centuries witnessed the development of its most characteristic institutions and doctrines. Both traditions have continued to evolve and adapt to changing circumstances.
The period from the tenth through the thirteenth centuries is remarkable in light of the great intellectual achievements that were made in the teeth of upheavals and destruction. At a time when Europe and China were enjoying centuries of immunity from invasion, the Dar al-Islam experienced repeated episodes of destruction. Despite these obstacles, the life of the mind flourished. The impact of al-Ghazali’s work in the Almoravid empire is illustrative: Al-Ghazali had written his The Revival of the Religious Sciences in the first decade of the twelfth century in Tus, and, within a decade of his death in 1111, it was causing an upheaval in Morocco and Andalus, 3700 miles and many frontiers away. A similar rate of transmission and assimilation of a book across a comparable distance is inconceivable in any other part of the world at the time. A more well-known testament to the creativity of Muslim intellectuals during this period was the intense engagement with their thought that took place in European universities after the century-long process of translating their works into Latin.
The violence of the period may not have been without its cultural consequences, however. The rise of the khanaqa coincided with the decrease in the scope allowed for philosophical exploration among Sunnis. Some scholars have suggested that the flourishing of Sufi lodges and the proliferation of tariqas were responses to the grim security conditions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Sufi brotherhoods, or orders, can be viewed as voluntary support groups that provided material and spiritual sustenance and were often linked to the futuwwa, the self-defense groups often found in city quarters in the eastern half of the Dar al-Islam. When the civil and military institutions failed to provide security, the brotherhoods provided spiritual comfort, collective defense, and communal aid.
Philosophical reasoning, on the other hand, was viewed by many people as a threat to the community rather than as an instrument of defense and security. That has been a common reaction in every society from the time of Socrates until now. It is a particularly characteristic response in societies whose religion is based on divine revelation, because of the difficulties in defining the proper scope of reason as opposed to that of revelation. The thirteenth-century uproar in western Europe that resulted when Aristotelianism was introduced from Andalus is a case in point. The contrast between the fate of philosophy in western Europe (where it subsequently thrived) and in the Dar al-Islam (where it subsequently struggled) is quite striking. No definitive explanation is possible at this time, but it is useful to keep in mind that Christians in western Europe no longer worried about the survival of their civilization. They were actually confident and aggressive. Muslims of the thirteenth century, on the other hand, had to wonder what God had in store for them next. From Andalus to eastern Iran, entire societies had been destroyed or were under siege. This was a time to conserve what was certain and not to speculate on the possible, particularly when such speculation could injure the faith. Twelver Shi‘ite scholars could exercise reason more confidently in this regard than their Sunni counterparts, for they knew that the Hidden Imam would not allow them to mislead his community.
A striking characteristic of this period is that Iraq ceased to be the center of intellectual creativity. Important work continued to be produced there, but the intellectual “stars” tended to come from Andalus and Iran. Particularly noteworthy is the Persian renaissance of this period. This was a movement that began in the mid-ninth century, but gained momentum only under the Samanids in the late tenth century. Thereafter work in the Persian language became remarkably creative. For the first time, the religion and culture of Islam became available in a language other than Arabic. Remarkably, most of the powerful Turkish dynasties that ruled large areas of the Dar al-Islam for the next seven centuries adopted the Persian culture for their court, with the result that Persian styles became dominant from Anatolia to India. Arabic continued to be the primary language of the religious disciplines and of science and philosophy, but Persian became the language of belles lettres and was increasingly used as a language of scholarship, as well.
NOTES
1.
From The Shambhala Guide to Sufism, by Carl W. Ernst, Ph.D., (c) 1997 by Carl W. Ernst. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., www.shambhala.com. The discussion on pp. 157–178 is particularly useful. For another excellent discussion of Sufi poetry, see Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975), pp. 287–343.
FURTHER READING
Science and Philosophy
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Three Muslim Sages: Avicenna, Suhrawardi, Ibn ‘Arabi. Delray, New York: Caravan Books, 1976.
Peters, F.E. Allah’s Commonwealth: A History of Islam in the Near East 600–1100 A.D. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973.
Turner, Howard R. Science in Medieval Islam: An Illustrated Introduction. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1995.
Watt, William Montgomery. Islamic Philosophy and Theology: An Extended Survey. Reprint Edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996.
Watt, W. Montgomery. The Formative Period of Islamic Thought. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973.
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Arabs.xhtml
Consolidating Institutions: Sufism
Cornell, Vincent J. Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1998.
Ernst, Carl W. The Shambhala Guide to Sufism. Boston & London: Shambhala, 1997.
Knysh, Alexander. Islamic Mysticism: A Short History. Leiden, Boston, Koln: Brill, 2000.
Schimmel, Annemarie. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975.
Trimingham, J. Spencer. The Sufi Orders in Islam. Reprint, intro by Voll. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Consolidating Institutions: Shi‘ism
Daftary, Farhad. The Ismailis: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Madelung, Wilferd. Religious Trends in Early Islamic Iran. Albany, New York: Persian Heritage Foundation, 1988.
Momen, Moojan. An Introduction to Shi‘i Islam. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1985.
The Transmission of Knowledge
Berkey, Jonathan. The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Chamberlain, Michael. Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190–1350. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Colish, Marcia L. Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 400–1400. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997.
Halm, Heinz. The Fatimids and Their Traditions of Learning. London: I.B. Taurus in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 1997.
Huff, Toby E. The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Pedersen, Johannes. The Arabic Book. Trans. GeoffreyFrench. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984.
CHAPTER 9
The Muslim Commonwealth
The Arabs involved in the conquests of the first century of Islamic history had been driven by an esprit de corps that allowed them to dominate their huge empire for a century, despite serious internal feuding. By the Abbasid period, however, no single ethnic group could generate a similar dynamism. Moreover, the fact that the new empire attempted to base its legitimacy on a monotheistic religion practically guaranteed eventual fragmentation. Whereas polytheism offers a wide range of religious expression for a society’s members a
nd can defuse conflicts over religious issues, monotheism is typically plagued by clashes over the correct interpretation of the one true faith. Ethnic, religious, and purely personal factors had splintered the political unity of the Muslim Umma within a short time.
On the other hand, among many Muslims, the sense of belonging to a single community provided a powerful bond that transcended many of the linguistic and other cultural differences that could have proved ultimately divisive. A Muslim empire ruled by an Arab oligarchy was gradually replaced by what some scholars call a “Muslim commonwealth,” in which individual Muslims found a common identity with others all across the Dar al-Islam. The fact that there were multiple caliphs did not create sharp divisions among Muslims. The Qur’an was the common text of all Muslims, regardless of sect, and one’s devotion to it made him or her a self-conscious member of a well-defined community, clearly set apart from those who did not recognize it. It was written in the Arabic language, which also served as the medium of commentaries on the Qur’an, devotional materials, and legal thought. Despite the decline of the political importance of the Arabs themselves, their language permeated the entire Dar al-Islam as the primary language of learning, even in the face of the persistence—and even revival—of certain local languages. By mastering Arabic, an individual could converse with educated Muslims everywhere and could take advantage of a valued skill that could lead to high-status careers in law or education in general. Travel between independent Muslim states (and even between Muslim states and their non-Muslim neighbors) was practically unrestricted, enabling merchants and scholars to foster ties with Muslims in other areas.