Science and Islam_A History_Icon Science

by Ehsan Masood

  Remarkably, out of that night of unimaginable bloodshed was to emerge one of the greatest and most unexpected triumphs of the Islamic revolution. Hidden away in the palace as the slaughter went on were the two teenage Umayyad princes Abd al-Rahman and Yahya. With the aid of their faithful Greek servant Bedr, the pair escaped before the alarm was raised. The Abbasids caught up with them as they swam for their lives across the Euphrates river. Yahya was beaten by the current and driven back into the hands of the Abbasid soldiers, who directly beheaded him. Alone, sixteen-year-old Abd al-Rahman and Bedr made it across, and began an adventure that took them through Egypt and across North Africa and into Spain, dodging Abbasid soldiers all the way. But it was not Abd al-Rahman’s escape that was to prove the most extraordinary part of his story.

  Islam comes to Iberia

  Muslims had already set foot in Spain some fifteen years before young Abd al-Rahman was born, when a freed slave turned general called Tariq went to southern Spain to fight the Christian Visigothic King Roderick. Tariq’s men won battle after battle against the much larger Visigothic armies – partly since many of the Visigoths switched over to Tariq. A great rock was later named after him, Jebel al-Tariq (Gibraltar, or Tariq’s mountain).

  By the time Abd al-Rahman reached North Africa, many parts of southern Spain, or al-Andalus as they called it, were being ruled by Muslims. But there was considerable discontent, not so much, ironically, among the Christians as among some of the Muslims who had helped achieve victory but were now being sidelined by rulers as they carved out their own domains and city states. This was the situation that the young Umayyad prince would encounter and take advantage of as he sailed across the Straits of Gibraltar to Andalusia.

  The ornament of the world

  Small numbers of Muslims joined Abd al-Rahman as he progressed through Spain. He was able to defeat the leader of Cordoba, then one of Spain’s principal cities, allowing him to declare himself ruler in his place. Over the next decade, with remarkably adept leadership, Abd al-Rahman, who became known as the Falcon of Andalus, extended his influence.

  Yet he was not content to simply gain control. He wanted to restore the glory of the Umayyads, and his way of doing that was to recreate Damascus in faraway Spain. When he arrived, Cordoba was important but possibly run-down. Abd al-Rahman created a city that turned out to be a focus of culture, learning and science to rival Abbasid Baghdad. Umayyad Cordoba was to have its own Golden Age of learning.

  At the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I, the nun Hroswitha of Gandersheim wrote in 955 that

  The brilliant ornament of the world shone in the west, a noble city newly known for its military prowess that its Hispanic colonisers had brought, Cordoba was its name and it was wealthy and famous and known for its pleasure and resplendent in all things, and especially for its seven streams of wisdom …

  (Quoted in Ornament of the World by Maria Rosa Menocal, Little, Brown, 2002)

  At Cordoba’s heart was a new mosque that was ultimately to become one of Islam’s most magnificent, but the city was said to have hundreds. It is also said to have had many bath-houses and hospitals. For himself, Abd al-Rahman built a palace, nostalgically named the Damascus Palace, in the midst of beautiful gardens, created to recall his grandfather’s country retreat in Syria, complete with palms and many other plants seen in Spain for the first time – hence the poem at the head of this chapter.

  Beyond the gardens, elegant villas, courtyards and fountains, green spaces and broad paved streets made Cordoba one of the most desirable places to live in all of Islam, and it soon attracted a wealth of talent. Inventive minds and ample cash ensured that the city had access to modern amenities, from running water in every substantial house to street-lights. Meanwhile, the introduction of the latest farming techniques and irrigation methods turned the countryside around into productive farmland, with vast new orange and olive groves as well as cereal fields, to ensure that the city stayed well fed.

  Cordoba’s jewel, though, was its library. The Umayyad library in Cordoba was just one of more than 75 in the city, yet it is estimated to have contained 400,000 books – at a time when the largest library in Europe held much less. Edward Gibbon underlined its huge scale by pointing out that the catalogue for the library alone ran to 44 volumes. A lot of books have survived from this period of Islamic rule, but this vast number suggests that it is only a small fraction of the books in circulation at the time, the rest burned or lost as the Umayyads’ power in Spain waned. It is tantalising to think what might have been in these books, and what contributions to science they might have made. Perhaps the most important books were physically saved, or carried away to safety in the minds of leading thinkers like Musa bin Maymun (Maimonides) and Walid ibn-Rushd (Averroes). But there is no way of knowing.

  Attracting talent

  For centuries under the Umayyads (who finally declared themselves caliphs in opposition to the Abbasids in Baghdad in 929) Cordoba shone, and many of Islam’s brightest and best began to think of Cordoba and Andalusia as the place to be rather than Baghdad. There was both money and a very attractive lifestyle.

  One of the talents drawn here was the extraordinary Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn-Nafi, usually just known as Ziryab, which means ‘blackbird’. Originally a slave from Iraq, Ziryab was brought to Cordoba in 852 by the ruler Abd al-Rahman II with a handsome salary. Very soon, the blackbird excited people with his new five-string version of the oud (an early version of the Spanish guitar) and with his love songs. People cut their hair short like him. They followed his fashion for vividly coloured cotton and silks in summer and richly hued woollens in winter. He introduced them to fine porcelain tableware, simple three-course meals, playing chess and polo, and even toothpaste. Indeed, it seemed there was barely an aspect of leisured life for which Ziryab did not set a striking new fashion.

  Yet it was not just for fine living that many talented people came to Andalusia; it was a magnet for scholars, too – and particularly thinkers and philosophers. The Umayyad leaders and their wealthy entourage ensured that Cordoba and other Andalusian cities such as Toledo and Seville all had well-stocked libraries and well-paid jobs for intellectuals. Like Baghdad, Cordoba was a cosmopolitan city, and Christians and especially Jews found that they were welcome here. For many centuries, Jewish intellectual life flourished in what has been called the Jewish Golden Age, and many Jewish thinkers were involved in what is called the Toledo School, translating works of Arabic into Latin.

  In addition to Muslims, other scholars were Christians, or Mozarabs – Christians who had learned to speak Arabic and who had adopted Arab lifestyles. Mozarab scholars were later to play a key role in the transmission of the new knowledge from Arabic into other parts of Europe. They were invaluable conduits, just as the Nestorian Christians had been, in the translation of classical knowledge to Arabic in Baghdad.

  The presence of different religious communities in Spain, later called convivencia, is sometimes compared with today’s multi-cultural societies in Western countries. There were undoubtedly some similarities with the present. For example, just as today, science, learning and innovation in those earlier centuries was the product of researchers and scholars from different nations and different cultural backgrounds working together, or sharing the same space. But there were also differences. Christians and Jews in al-Andalus had a different status in law compared with Muslims. As was the case elsewhere in the Islamic world, non-Muslims paid a different set of taxes, they were exempt from military service, and they were not entitled to be considered for the post of ruler or caliph. Moreover, there were restrictions on preaching religions other than Islam, or speaking ill of notable figures from Islamic history. As a result, in the 9th century, 48 Christians known as the Martyrs of Cordoba killed themselves in protest at not being allowed to violate Islamic law.

  Wings of fire

  One of the first of the Andalusian scientists of this period was Abbas ibn-Firnas. Born in Izn-Rand Onda (modern Ronda) in 810, he w
as originally brought to Cordoba to teach music. But once there he began to show his extraordinary range of talents as an inventor. He had a special interest in glass, and is claimed to have produced clear drinking glasses. Colourless, transparent glass had been around since Roman times, but by manipulating the mix, he created glass so clear that the contemporary poet al-Buhturi said it was as if the contents were standing there without the container. Presumably such clear glass would also have been useful for the lenses ibn-Firnas made to correct sight and to magnify things. One of his most talked-about inventions was a sky simulation room. Inside the room, there was not only a giant machine that showed how the planets moved, but people were also astonished to see stars, clouds, thunder and even lightning produced by hidden mechanisms in the inventor’s basement.

  Most famously, though, ibn-Firnas is said to have been among the early pioneers of flight. Some sources say he was inspired by seeing in 852 a stuntman called Armen Firman surviving a leap from the top of one of the minarets near the Grand Mosque wearing a very loose silk cloak stiffened with wooden struts. Others say that the stuntman was actually ibn-Firnas himself, and Armen Firman is simply a latinised form of his name, which seems likely. Survivor or onlooker, ibn-Firnas decided he could do better. For the next attempt, he constructed a large wing like a modern hang-glider from silk and eagle feathers on a light wooden frame. After a few successful trial runs out in the desert, he decided it was time to make a public attempt.

  A large crowd gathered as ibn-Firnas, now nearly 70, strapped on his wings at the top of a high cliff in Cordoba’s Rustafa garden. Then, with amazing courage, he leaped into the void. To everyone’s astonishment, he did not plummet straight down. Instead, he floated out in the air, circled a few times for up to ten minutes, then gradually came in to land. Unfortunately, he hadn’t realised how much he would need to slow down, and he crashed into the ground, breaking the wing and badly injuring his back. Later, he realised that birds use their tails to slow down when landing – and he had crashed because he didn’t have one. But he was too old now to try again. Or so the story goes. As with so much of science from the Islamic era, our knowledge of ibn-Firnas comes from third-party reports, rather than the man himself.

  Surveying time

  Nothing quite matched ibn-Firnas’s flight for sheer spectacle, but some of the devices made by al-Zarqali (Arzachel) in Toledo in the 12th century were even more ingenious. Al-Zarqali started off as a simple metalworker, but he was apparently so skilful in making astronomical devices that Toledo’s astronomers urged him to learn more about the theory of astronomy. After studying for several years, al-Zarqali began to design his own astronomical devices.

  In particular, he came up with a sophisticated new astrolabe design which set the standard for centuries to come. There were very down-to-earth practical uses for this elaborate astronomical device. A later Andalusian scientist, Maslama al-Majriti (of Madrid), found that he could use the astrolabe for surveying fields accurately, so sorting out some of the complicated inheritance problems that often beset landowners. Al-Zarqali also came up with an easy-to-use astrolabe designed for someone with little astronomical knowledge. His model dispensed with the complex ‘spider’ which showed the movement of the planets, and so was easy for a beginner to master. Such junior astrolabes were used in astronomy, surveying, and also in astrology.

  Al-Zarqali’s pièce de résistance was an ingenious water clock that told not only the hours of the day but the phases of the moon – important in Islam for working out the beginning of the new lunar month. This device was a tourist attraction in Toledo for many centuries to come, until a curious inventor was given permission to take it apart to see how it worked – and couldn’t put it back together.

  Al-Zarqali’s work wasn’t simply practical, though. He made a number of key contributions to astronomy. He proved that the aphelion – the point at which the distance between the sun and earth is greatest – shifts very slightly each year against the fixed background of the stars. He measured this minuscule movement, and worked out that it was shifting at 12.04 seconds each year. Modern measurements put it at 11.8 seconds. His accurate measurements also helped him to contribute to the astronomical Tables of Toledo,1 renowned for their accuracy and later quoted by Copernicus. And he created the first al-manakh (almanac), which contained tables that allowed people to compare the Islamic calendars with others very simply and easily for the first time.

  Doctors of Spain

  The Prophet’s injunction to care for the sick meant that medical science, too, flourished in the Islamic era, and Cordoba, like other cities, became renowned for its healthcare. Cordoba had hospitals with running water, baths, separate wards for different ailments each headed by a specialist, and a requirement to be open 24 hours a day to anyone who was sick. There were also numerous physicians, many of whom trained at the hospitals of Baghdad. When they came back to Spain, some were lucky enough to be housed in the palace complex outside Cordoba at Medinat al-Zahra (the city of Zahra, named after Muhammad’s daughter).

  One of the most popular Andalusian doctors was ibn-Shuhaid. He recommended that his patients improve their diet, and treated them with drugs only if this proved ineffective. The majority of the Andalusian doctors were very likely to be good practical physicians rather than groundbreaking medical theorists. Al-Zahrawi, who died in 1013, became one of the most famous surgeons in Europe, and his manual of surgery became a standard textbook for centuries. Meanwhile, ibn-Zuhr (Avenzoar) wrote al-Taysir around 1150 for Almohad Caliph Abd al-Mu’min. It became a guide to therapeutic treatments in universities.

  New thinking

  Undoubtedly, philosophy is among the strongest legacies from Islamic Spain. Three names in particular stand out: these are ibn-Rushd (Averroes), ibn-Arabi and Musa bin Maymun (Maimonides, a leading thinker in Judaism). Maimonides and ibn-Rushd worked in many fields, but all three asked fundamental questions about the nature of religion and science.

  As we’ll see later, ibn-Rushd wrote a famous treatise, the Incoherence of the Incoherence, to rebut al-Ghazali ’s polemic against science in his Incoherence of the Philosophers. Al-Ghazali had asserted that conclusions reached by reason and human intellect alone were not enough to understand the complexities of the natural world and, moreover, were incompatible with the teachings of the Prophet.

  Ibn-Rushd countered that the Qur’an instructed humans to look for knowledge, so the search must at least be right. He believed revelation to be the highest form of knowledge, but felt that the majority of people were ill-equipped to grasp the complexities of the religious experience and therefore needed something simpler, which was a theology based on human reason. Ibn-Rushd had a significant influence on thinkers in the Latin world, such as Thomas Aquinas.

  The year 1165 saw the birth of Muhammad ibn-Arabi in Murcia in the south of Spain (he died in 1240 in Damascus). Ibn-Arabi positively revelled in letting his imagination roam far and wide and scale new heights. He was confident in his abilities, and set about thinking how to create a theory of everything. At the same time, he also attracted charges of heresy from some in the Muslim mainstream. This may have been because ibn-Arabi believed that (apart from the Prophet Muhammad), God had endowed special powers on a select number of individuals and that he was one of them.

  Ibn-Arabi believed that human reason is both useful and powerful, in explaining the world and in creating great works of learning. But for him, human reason is but one of many components in what constitutes ‘knowledge’, and he would point out something that even the best scientists are well aware of: that sometimes in science, the answers to difficult and seemingly intractable problems, or even ‘breakthroughs’, happen for reasons that cannot be explained by ‘reason’ alone. Scientists often talk about being inspired, or how sudden moments of inspiration helped them to make progress. Is a flash of inspiration an example of human reason, ibn-Arabi asked? For him, there was clearly some other unexplained force that worked alongside reason. Harnessing that pow
er would be the key to ‘knowledge’.

  Ibn-Arabi focused his energies into an idea which later historians have called the ‘unity of existence’ – and which stands as his greatest legacy. The unity of existence says that everything that exists in the universe is connected together and also to God. Ibn-Arabi was not the clearest of writers, which has meant that ideas such as this have been interpreted in different ways, or completely misinterpreted. Did ibn-Arabi mean that God, the planets, humans, plant and animal species all come from the same material? Or is he saying that they have characteristics in common? Is all of creation a kind of giant and complex super-organism? Or taken another way, does he mean that humanity and the wider environment are like a large family and that the actions of one individual will have consequences for others? Yet another interpretation of the unity of existence is that there can be no outsiders or ‘others’, which could make ibn-Arabi an early anti-racist.

  Final flowering

  By the 11th century Umayyad control was waning, and in 1090, eight years before ibn-Rushd’s death, Cordoba was captured by the Almoravids. This is a Spanish name for a group of Muslims from North Africa known in Arabic as al-Murabitun, or those who stand together for the defence of the faith. They were distinguished by a face muffler, which they wore rather like the Tuareg, to whom they are distantly related. The Almoravids were against what they saw as the luxury and decadence of the Umayyad courts, and they conquered in the name of returning Andalusia to Islam’s fundamentals – a development that has happened so often in Islamic history.