Ancient Islamic Empire and Scientific Achievement

[Sela]

I frequently here this from the Muslims I talk to. An enumeration of the various scientific achievements of Muslims in their golden age of science (during the European dark ages). Of particular note would be the idea that the Abbassid dynasty were patrons of the arts and sciences. My question is what is the validity of the following claims:

1.) That era Islamic empire fostered both religious tolerance/understanding AND a nurturing environment for science, philosophy, and arts?

2.) Muslim scientists/engineers/scholars were on the forefront of scientific and engineering breakthroughs. I specifically mean 'Muslim' here, as I already found out that it was in fact the hindu Indians that invented the zero, which Muslims often take credit for?

3.) If it turns out that claims are either totally or even somewhat true for 1 & 2 above, then why don't we see the same today?

I recognize that this is a *very* lazy attitude to take on my part with regards to how little of my own research and reading I'm putting in. Chalk it up to being a med student and not having enough background and time to even know where to look let alone to devote proper study. I'm just hopeful there's someone here who's either well-versed in the subject or knows exactly where I can look to get well versed. Thanks!

[hongi]

1.) That era Islamic empire fostered both religious tolerance/understanding AND a nurturing environment for science, philosophy, and arts?

Religious tolerance? Well, relatively speaking. They allowed Christians and Jews to practice their religion coupled with some discriminatory policies. That's better than outright killing them I suppose. They did provide a nurturing environment for science, philosophy and the arts. It came directly from the top, the Abbasid Caliphs were patrons and funded the philosophical translation movement.

2.) Muslim scientists/engineers/scholars were on the forefront of scientific and engineering breakthroughs. I specifically mean 'Muslim' here, as I already found out that it was in fact the hindu Indians that invented the zero, which Muslims often take credit for?

The way that scientific knowledge works is that it has no boundaries. Indian numerals were taken in by Persian mathematicians, they worked with it, then they introduced it to Europe. Cut any of the link out of that point and you have nothing. They all should get recognition. It's much the same with Arabic philosophy, yes they took it from the Greeks, but they didn't just borrow it, they developed it to an extent that the Greeks never imagined. Islamic neo-Platonism (which survives in certain Shi'ite circles) is great stuff.

And yes, they were doing some pretty amazing stuff. Setting up the first hospitals? Developing theories on how sight works? Good work there.

3.) If it turns out that claims are either totally or even somewhat true for 1 & 2 above, then why don't we see the same today?

I have no idea.

[Metahive]

3.) If it turns out that claims are either totally or even somewhat true for 1 & 2 above, then why don't we see the same today?

Would you doubt roman military prowess just because Italy fared poorly in most recent wars? Is it reasonable to doubt that Alexander was a great conqueror just because Macedon today is but a small strip of land that hasn't done anything impressive in millenia?

Things like that happen in history all the time, nothing is made for eternity. Circumstances, attitudes and policies are subject to a perpetual change and that change isn't upward most of the time, hence so-called "Golden Ages" being a rarity.

[Juubi Karakuchi]

3.) If it turns out that claims are either totally or even somewhat true for 1 & 2 above, then why don't we see the same today?

Had the Abbasids continued as before, or had their attitude been passed on to later regimes, then we might well have seen the same today. Under the Abbasids, the Caliphate fractured into various autonomous polities (notably the Ghaznavids) and lost a lot of its prestige. It was effectively destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century, what remained of it falling under the control of the Mamluks (it's own creation, ironically enough), and later the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Selim I taking the title of Caliph after conquering Egypt in 1517. The biggest single blow to Islamic scientific achievement was the destruction of Baghdad (the Abbasid Capital) by the Mongols in 1258, a disaster that put the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria in the shade.

As I see it, science needs four things in order to flourish. Firstly, it needs a supply of suitably educated practicioners. Secondly, its practicioners need to be able to access, store, and transfer information without hindrance. Thirdly, it needs access to sufficient physical resources. Forthly, it must have no constraint upon its lines of inquiry, that is, there must be no unaskable questions and no unacceptable answers. The Abbasids offered all three, and the libraries of Baghdad were a boon in the second case. The loss of Baghdad meant the loss of all the knowledge stored there, forcing future scientists to rediscover it in order to advance. This would have slowed down Islamic scientific achievement, but should not have stopped it.

The usual narrative is that the Ottoman Empire dropped the ball, scientific advancement being stifled both by religious orthodoxy and misgovernment. Religious opposition seems to have been a major factor, opposing certain lines of thought (especially metaphysics), though this should not necessarily have prevented the advancement of technology. Other factors would be disinterest on the part of governments, mismanagement, and devastation in various wars.

[Pelranius]

Don't forget that Tamerlane came back a century or two later after the Mongols to devastate Mesopotamia and Syria yet again.

[Winston Blake]

Religious opposition seems to have been a major factor, opposing certain lines of thought (especially metaphysics), though this should not necessarily have prevented the advancement of technology.

Expanding on this:

The religion of Islam has contributed to great strides being made in the fields of algebra, geometry, architecture, and astronomy, among others. The reasons all tie back to faith: one, calculating astronomy allows you to pinpoint where Mecca is, so you can pray in the proper direction, and two, understanding the universe and its awesome wonder is considered a way to praise God and the works He has made.

Also, because Islam forbids pictures of people in their temples, they make use of geometrical patterns called arabesques to design their holiest places. It's astounding the beauty they can render with some tile and sheer math.

In fact, so far as these things can be nailed down, the decline of the intellectual dominance of the Islamic world in Western thought can be said to begin with al-Ghazali (in the 11th century) famously claiming that rather than the world working by understandable laws (the clockwork universe so beloved by the Enlightenment), things happen precisely because Allah wills them, down to the last detail; for example, when cotton is placed in flame, the cotton burns specifically because Allah wills it, not as a direct result of the nature of cotton and of flame. In short, al-Ghazali (quite influentially) argued that there was a vital religious duty to favor revelation over empiricism, that applying reductionism, trying to explain things, was sinful. This is detailed in his book The Incohererence of Philosophers.

...Averroes, however, was also a Muslim and thought he was being a punk. As detailed in his book "The Incoherence of The Incoherence".

[hongi]

Me and Simon_Jester have gotten in several debates about this. Suffice to say, I don't think you can blame Mr al-Ghazali for the downfall of Islamic civilisation and as far as I can tell, no scholar of Islam argues the same either. Besides, it's hard not to like the man's brutal adherence to God's omnipotence no matter where that would lead.

[Simon_Jester]

Calling him single-handedly responsible... if I ever did that, I shouldn't have. That's going waaay too far by the standards of any evidence I'm even slightly aware of.

Saying that he's symptomatic of a problem among the Islamic intelligentsia, insofar as that term can be used... I think there's at least something to that. At some point, the socially accepted path for scholarly people in the Muslim world shifted away from scientific inquiry towards theological and legal commentary, and I would argue that did contribute to the decline of science in the lands of Islam.

Al-Ghazali couldn't have done it alone, and I don't think he can be called a major cause. But insofar as the mindset he promoted became a common one among Islamic societies, one that you could be marginalized from the scholarly communities for opposing, that would tend to weaken the position of science in Muslim civilization.

[Skylon]

3.) If it turns out that claims are either totally or even somewhat true for 1 & 2 above, then why don't we see the same today?

Had the Abbasids continued as before, or had their attitude been passed on to later regimes, then we might well have seen the same today. Under the Abbasids, the Caliphate fractured into various autonomous polities (notably the Ghaznavids) and lost a lot of its prestige. It was effectively destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century, what remained of it falling under the control of the Mamluks (it's own creation, ironically enough), and later the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Selim I taking the title of Caliph after conquering Egypt in 1517. The biggest single blow to Islamic scientific achievement was the destruction of Baghdad (the Abbasid Capital) by the Mongols in 1258, a disaster that put the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria in the shade.

This would contribute to what I was going to say I recalled, that the Crusades resulted in a more ethnocentric Islamic culture. One that felt that not only, the west was an entity to be feared (and perhaps with good reason as they had attempted on repeated occasions to invade Islamic lands, and were busy expelling them from Europe) but didn't even have anything to learn from them. You go from building off Greek and Roman science to ignoring the developments coming out of Europe in the Renaissance and later the Scientific Revolution.

[Chirios]

Me and Simon_Jester have gotten in several debates about this. Suffice to say, I don't think you can blame Mr al-Ghazali for the downfall of Islamic civilisation and as far as I can tell, no scholar of Islam argues the same either. Besides, it's hard not to like the man's brutal adherence to God's omnipotence no matter where that would lead.

It's true that you cannot blame one man alone, but people have a tendency to look at history with a determinist view, i.e. that something had to happen a certain way because it did happen a certain way. I don't know about this al-Ghazali man but I can believe that he could have been a major influence at the time, if only because history has shown that certain charismatic individuals can, under the right circumstances, change the way that people think about things. Do I believe that he was the only reason? No. Do I believe that people, with their own desires, might plug his arguments throughout ancient Islamic culture, leading to his ideas being adopted into law, leading to science being underfunded, leading to universities decaying, leading to an end in scientific progress whilst the rest of the world continues learning? Yes.

[Thanas]

I frequently here this from the Muslims I talk to. An enumeration of the various scientific achievements of Muslims in their golden age of science (during the European dark ages). Of particular note would be the idea that the Abbassid dynasty were patrons of the arts and sciences. My question is what is the validity of the following claims:

1.) That era Islamic empire fostered both religious tolerance/understanding AND a nurturing environment for science, philosophy, and arts?

Completely true. They expanded upon the neoplatonic philosophers whose school of thought was discriminated against in christianity, showing great appreciation for the classics and the science. All the way to the 12th century, the school of Baghdad was considered one of the best, if not the best, universities out there (together with Alexandria, Damascus, Constantinople and eventually Paris and Bologna). The difference of course being that the latter cities were not sacked by the Mongols and the population deported/killed.

2.) Muslim scientists/engineers/scholars were on the forefront of scientific and engineering breakthroughs. I specifically mean 'Muslim' here, as I already found out that it was in fact the hindu Indians that invented the zero, which Muslims often take credit for?

A lot of scientific discovery in the middle ages was either introduced from the east or based on those discoveries. Not only were there inventions, but more importantly transfers of knowledge. Just one example - most classical texts we read today were either transcribed by muslim scribes, or came from Byzantium. The importance of these two cannot be overstated enough.

While the west was backwards, it were the Muslims and the Byzantines who had anything approaching a "modern" civilization.

3.) If it turns out that claims are either totally or even somewhat true for 1 & 2 above, then why don't we see the same today?

- Destruction of the most important university/library by the mongols
- universtities being funded in the west coincided with a strong economic advantage for the west, greater population numbers etc, which in turn led to western nations being superior
- A general decline in muslim philosophy, being brought upon by intellectual conservatism as well as the more advancing west.
- Muslim power in general declining due to losing their economic advantage (spice trade taken over by the Portugese/Dutch, the influx of Gold from the New world, the great manufacturing centers of Europe being more productive than the Muslim ones as well as sheer geography - the west can sustain a far larger population base than the east, once it stopped killing each other and importing technologies).

All of the above are very broad strokes of course.

[Zed]

3.) If it turns out that claims are either totally or even somewhat true for 1 & 2 above, then why don't we see the same today?

It's the norm - periods of intense scientific activity tend to end.

[Simon_Jester]

This would contribute to what I was going to say I recalled, that the Crusades resulted in a more ethnocentric Islamic culture. One that felt that not only, the west was an entity to be feared (and perhaps with good reason as they had attempted on repeated occasions to invade Islamic lands, and were busy expelling them from Europe) but didn't even have anything to learn from them. You go from building off Greek and Roman science to ignoring the developments coming out of Europe in the Renaissance and later the Scientific Revolution.

I'm not so sure of this. Compared to the Mongols a century later, the Crusades were a regional nuisance- a problem in Egypt and the Levant, but not so relevant for someone in Spain or Persia. The lands of Islam didn't develop a strong collective 'fear' of the Franks at this time; for the bulk of the Muslim world there just wasn't much to be afraid of yet. Though the image of 'crusaders' as barbarian reavers was certainly in play.

Other factors during the period that strike me as possible alternate explanations, if we're looking at wars and dynasties rather than economics:

-Obviously, the Mongols, who did far more damage and had far more impact on the Crusaders. The Crusaders may have been as brutal as the Mongols in any number of cases, but they were nowhere near as effective, and they didn't penetrate to ravage the main centers of the Islamic world. The Mongols did.
-The shift from Arab ruling dynasties in the first three to four centuries anno Hegira, towards Turkic and later Turko-Mongol dynasties that came from a different cultural template and may have had different attitudes toward scholarship.

[Sela]

Thank you all for your very insightful posts, I honestly hadn't realize just how much of the vaunted claims were in fact legitimate. I guess it's just that I hear modern-day Muslims trotting it out so often that it kinda made me suspect it as being a case of "over-hyped claims". Still, it's good I guess that Islam -at least at some points in its practice- was not like the classic science-crushing catholic church.

Pity we don't see scientific innovation and inquiry continuing to thrive in the Muslim world today; with 1billion+ Muslims, it's a huge segment of the global community that would have been awesome to have on board.

[Simon_Jester]

Hell, the classic science-crushing Catholic Church is overrated; while the Church could be brutally, brutally oppressive towards people who deviated from the party line on religious matters, they were more flexible when it came to investigation of the physical sciences. They also often worked to create sheltered communities of scholars who were academically productive.

This is not to say there was no oppression, or that it's all been blown hopelessly out of proportion. But the image of a Catholic Church obsessed with keeping everyone stuck in the Dark Ages isn't really that accurate, from what I know.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Hell, the classic science-crushing Catholic Church is overrated; while the Church could be brutally, brutally oppressive towards people who deviated from the party line on religious matters, they were more flexible when it came to investigation of the physical sciences. They also often worked to create sheltered communities of scholars who were academically productive.

This is not to say there was no oppression, or that it's all been blown hopelessly out of proportion. But the image of a Catholic Church obsessed with keeping everyone stuck in the Dark Ages isn't really that accurate, from what I know.

Weren't there like monasteries where works were carefully kept and transcribed? I remember a joke made by a Math professor about monks dutifully working out integrals, but never got around to verify the authenticity of it.

[Simon_Jester]

That's one example. There were also monks who engaged in actual research- consider Grimaldi and his work on diffraction.

[Thanas]

Weren't there like monasteries where works were carefully kept and transcribed? I remember a joke made by a Math professor about monks dutifully working out integrals, but never got around to verify the authenticity of it.

Depends on what works.


And Simon, I think your interpretation swings too much in the other direction. Just look at the number of chemists the church burned.

[hongi]

Thank you all for your very insightful posts, I honestly hadn't realize just how much of the vaunted claims were in fact legitimate. I guess it's just that I hear modern-day Muslims trotting it out so often that it kinda made me suspect it as being a case of "over-hyped claims". Still, it's good I guess that Islam -at least at some points in its practice- was not like the classic science-crushing catholic church.

Muslims generally suffer from Golden-Ageitis. Like Tolkein, they glorify the ancient days. Heck, they believe that the closer you get to Muhammad, the more righteous and just the people were. The military, economic and cultural high point of the Islamic civilisations was during the Middle Ages and shortly after, so unlike most Westerners, they love the Middle Ages. Just point out that their vaunted Golden Age was the age in which slavery was widespread, and Islam abolished it pretty much only because the Western colonial powers pressured them to do it.

[Simon_Jester]

To be fair, hongi, it is a LOT more tempting to suffer from Golden Age-itis when your civilization had a genuine Golden Age in which its power rose to the point where it dominated the globe, followed by a genuine decline which led to it becoming a stagnant backwater dominated by foreigners who were at best indifferent and at worst hostile to your well-being.

[EDIT: It's like an Italian in 1500 being nostalgic about ancient Rome. Which, come to think of it, a lot of them were.]

Even after the Mongol invasions, Islam remained one of the dominant cultural forces in the world for a long time- if you'd looked at a world map circa 1490, you would probably have predicted that the world was more likely to become Muslim-dominated than Christian/European-dominated, just looking at relative scale and populations- it would take analysis bordering on prescience to predict how far the Muslim world would wind up outmaneuvered and left behind by world events.

Things didn't really start to turn sour for the Muslims until, oh, some time in the 16th or 17th century. Before that, they had about eight centuries of cultural dominance, and for most of that time also had more raw military muscle than almost anyone else on the planet. The exception, of course, the Mongols... but even if they did face military devastation at the hands of the Mongols, the Mongols never threatened to annihilate Islam as a religious institution, never posed the threat of an alternate model for how human communities ought to work over the long term. And the Mongol overlords who set themselves over Islamic countries converted to Islam within a few generations, merging with the Turkish ruling dynasties that dominated much of the rest of the Middle East.

[Guardsman Bass]

To be fair, hongi, it is a LOT more tempting to suffer from Golden Age-itis when your civilization had a genuine Golden Age in which its power rose to the point where it dominated the globe, followed by a genuine decline which led to it becoming a stagnant backwater dominated by foreigners who were at best indifferent and at worst hostile to your well-being.

[EDIT: It's like an Italian in 1500 being nostalgic about ancient Rome. Which, come to think of it, a lot of them were.]

Even after the Mongol invasions, Islam remained one of the dominant cultural forces in the world for a long time- if you'd looked at a world map circa 1490, you would probably have predicted that the world was more likely to become Muslim-dominated than Christian/European-dominated, just looking at relative scale and populations- it would take analysis bordering on prescience to predict how far the Muslim world would wind up outmaneuvered and left behind by world events.

I wouldn't necessarily go that far. Aside from the Five Dynasties Period, the Chinese had an extremely prosperous period during much of the same time when Islamic Civilization rose to its greatest heights. If the Jurchen in the 12th century and later Mongols hadn't hammered northern China . . .

[PainRack]

I wouldn't necessarily go that far. Aside from the Five Dynasties Period, the Chinese had an extremely prosperous period during much of the same time when Islamic Civilization rose to its greatest heights. If the Jurchen in the 12th century and later Mongols hadn't hammered northern China . . .

China was relatively religiously tolerant during the Tang dynasty and the like,resulting in the promotion of officials and intergration of the muslim tribes in western china then too.

Even after xenophobia "relatively" swept through the country during the Ming, Islam wasn't that actively persecuted. Admiral Zheng He was a muslim afterall.

So while not an arabic civilisation(neither was the Mulghal Empire), Islam prominence in Asia didn't go into a decline until after the West began their massive evangelisation and colonisation efforts.

[TC Pilot]

Actually, China is a rather interesting comparison to the Muslim world in terms of the scientific revolution that never was. It was arguably the most advanced nation of the entire world for centuries, a comparably tolerant, prosperous, wealthy, cultured society, and even had a philosophical underpinning in the form of Zhu Xi's brand of Neo-Confucianism.

[Simon_Jester]

To be fair, hongi, it is a LOT more tempting to suffer from Golden Age-itis when your civilization had a genuine Golden Age in which its power rose to the point where it dominated the globe, followed by a genuine decline which led to it becoming a stagnant backwater dominated by foreigners who were at best indifferent and at worst hostile to your well-being.

[EDIT: It's like an Italian in 1500 being nostalgic about ancient Rome. Which, come to think of it, a lot of them were.]

Even after the Mongol invasions, Islam remained one of the dominant cultural forces in the world for a long time- if you'd looked at a world map circa 1490, you would probably have predicted that the world was more likely to become Muslim-dominated than Christian/European-dominated, just looking at relative scale and populations- it would take analysis bordering on prescience to predict how far the Muslim world would wind up outmaneuvered and left behind by world events.

I wouldn't necessarily go that far. Aside from the Five Dynasties Period, the Chinese had an extremely prosperous period during much of the same time when Islamic Civilization rose to its greatest heights. If the Jurchen in the 12th century and later Mongols hadn't hammered northern China . . .

Well, I picked 1490. China would be another contender, definitely, so yes I'm overstating the case. You're right.

But essentially, going by size, population, economic productivity, and the ability to spread their culture to others, it'd be a contest between China and the dar-al-Islam. Europe would be a fairly distant third, unless you had excellent analytical capability.

[bz249]

Well, I picked 1490. China would be another contender, definitely, so yes I'm overstating the case. You're right.

But essentially, going by size, population, economic productivity, and the ability to spread their culture to others, it'd be a contest between China and the dar-al-Islam. Europe would be a fairly distant third, unless you had excellent analytical capability.

By 1490 Europe was mostly recovered from the plague, and France alone for example had a population of 15-20 million people (depending on the estimate) making it one of the most populous state in the world (okay that´s still only 1/5-1/6th of China´s pop, but larger than the later Ottoman Empire encompassing practically all the Western Islam), so the population concentration, the natural resources were given and also the will to expand. So third placed maybe, but definitely not distant third.