Ancient Islamic Empire and Scientific Achievement

[Simon_Jester]

Remember, "Islam" is not just the Ottoman Empire. It's the entire belt stretching across North Africa, down into sub-Saharan Africa (where Islam had made considerable inroads already) the Mediterranean coast and Arabia (mostly under Ottoman control by this time, yes), on into Persia (not under Ottoman control), south again along the east coast of Africa, and east, on through Muslim-dominated parts of India, and even through to Indonesia.

Traveling through those regions, you don't see unified political rule, but you see the same prayers, many of the same religious laws and institutions, often similar styles of dress, a few common languages that will be spoken by educated people everywhere (Arabic, Farsi, Turkish), and so on. This is the same level of unity that lets us speak of 'European' culture, but on a considerably larger scale.

So our hypothetical man from Mars in the late 1400s would see a great many independent Muslim rulers. The big names were the Ottomans and Timurids- and the Timurids were in decline, but were in the process of splitting into Persia in the west and the powerful Mughal Empire in the east. And along with that you've got relatively smaller-scale rulers like the Mamelukes in Egypt, still significant regional powers, assorted smaller kings and kinglets down to the scale of city-states... no political unity. But taken together "Islam" as a unifying cultural framework contained very large numbers of people. It's the combination of these relatively powerful Muslim states that is impressive, that they stretched over such a wide range of cultures, climates and territories.

And that's what I'm basing my contention on- that where "Christendom" was still restricted to Europe at this time, and where "China" was a very powerful and prosperous single nation-state, "Islam" was the unifying cultural theme of a large number of different states spread out across two continents and about a dozen time zones.

To spot that Europe was on the rise and would soon overtake both China and the Islamic world, you would have to be quite keen in your analysis. Which is not to say you couldn't be, but that's not my point; my point is that insofar as we can talk about a Muslim narrative of history, that history had a fairly solid upward trend (interrupted mainly by the Mongols, and even they were converted and brought into the fold in the end)... until you get to the 1600s and 1700s and the rise of European colonialism.

Again, this kind of history does lend itself to "Golden Age-itis," because the Muslims don't have to invent their Golden Age; they already had one, during which they could make a very plausible claim to being the widest-spread, most advanced civilization in the world.

[bz249]

Sure one could say the Islam was a dominant (indeed expanding) culture in this period, and at least geographically more widespread than Christianity. However the population difference was not so large (and maybe even favored Europe... demographic estimates are scattering from that period, but total Europe was in between 50 and 100 million by that time) and what really mattered is population. The fact that the largest empires were carved by Spain, Portugal and England (all are insignificant periphery of the contemporary Europe) well that´s astonishing (although geographic location helped a lot).

In the Golden Ageism stuff I completely agree anyway (Being a Hungarian, it is pretty much the same here, although in a way smaller scale, so I know how this feeling works).

[Bedlam]

This might be a topic for another thread but why did Europe come out on top? From the previous posts everyone's saying its eventual domination was a complete suprise but what factors lead to its eventual domination? Was it that Europe significantly rose or that the Islamic world stagnated or declined?

[Thanas]

This might be a topic for another thread but why did Europe come out on top? From the previous posts everyone's saying its eventual domination was a complete suprise but what factors lead to its eventual domination?

Nobody is saying that.

[bz249]

This might be a topic for another thread but why did Europe come out on top? From the previous posts everyone's saying its eventual domination was a complete suprise but what factors lead to its eventual domination? Was it that Europe significantly rose or that the Islamic world stagnated or declined?

A lot of factor helped Europe in comparison with the Islamic world.
Geographic things: long coastline and lots of closed, calm seas so navigation and shipbuilding had a chance to evolve (and crossing the Atlantic was finally possible, which offered large landmasses to dump the extra population and gain resources); mild climate, which allowed high crop yield and thus high population density (also lack of natural disasters, thus individual farm could thrieve)

From political factors, the deeply divided nature of the continent fueled endless wars, thus external competitiveness become more important than the stability of the society (this was somehow a result of the broken terrain, which was different from the eastern area). The hereditary nobility could build their own powerbase to oppose the ruler.

The specific nature of the Christianity: secular law was somewhat different than canon law; the Church and the State was partly separated and the power balance constantly shifted which allowed a more dynamic society, the Islamic states (or Byzantium also) were essentially theocracies and the rulers were "tyrants" (sometimes good ones, sometimes bad ones, but their power was in principle limitless)

And helluva lot of other factors... but what was important is large population and dynamic society (by contemporary standards of course).

[Guardsman Bass]

This might be a topic for another thread but why did Europe come out on top? From the previous posts everyone's saying its eventual domination was a complete suprise but what factors lead to its eventual domination? Was it that Europe significantly rose or that the Islamic world stagnated or declined?

It was a mixture of both, really, although I don't know as much about stagnation or decline in the Islamic World.

In Europe, though, you had

1. Several increasingly powerful states (I won't call them "nation-states" at that point), particularly newly unified Spain and France, and eventually England and the Netherlands in the 17th century.

2. Very important and profitable trans-oceanic trade in the 16th and 17th centuries, and not just to the New World. Trade to East Asia and the African coastlines was extremely important in explaining the rise in commercial power in the West (voyages along the African coastline, as well as the colonization of the Canary and Azores Islands, preceded the European exploration and colonization of the Americas).

3. Growing populations, as has been mentioned.

4. Crucial innovations not just in technology, but in organization as well (Timur Kuran's book is mostly about the development of business and financial organization in Europe and the Islamic World, with special emphasis on how financial organization under Islamic Law was at first a major boon for the Islamic World, but eventually became a major liability by the 16th and 17th centuries).

5. The new colonial empires (particularly in the West Indies, where sugar was extremely profitable).

[Prannon]

I think attention also needs to be paid to The Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution that occurred in Europe during the 17th through 19th centuries. And, as someone else mentioned, the Church in Europe was never a state of its own. Independent monarchs existed that enabled individual states to assert their own secular authority that slowly unbound itself from the authority of the Church.

[Simon_Jester]

In the Muslim world, "Islam" was never a state either. The difference was that Islam was far more focused on the legal code and the exercise of building a Muslim cultural and political community, and somewhat less on grand sweeping philosophies of salvation and redemption and whatnot. So from the very early days of the religion, Muslim scholar-priest types were 'joined at the roots' to Muslim leaders, and that relationship remained strong.

The Muslim world's legal, philosophical, and religious minds were all drawn from more or less the same body of men, and the monarch was expected to enter a commensal relationship with that body: he supported the scholarly community, and in return the scholars helped serve the spiritual and judicial needs of his people and his government.

In Europe, if anything, the reverse was true during the Middle Ages- the Church did have a strong independent political existence, and there were bishops who controlled large tracts of land just like feudal lords. That meant that the Catholic Church, at least, was always competing with the secular monarchs for influence: it owned rich properties and carried on its own independent diplomacy.

Whereas in the Muslim world, the scholar/priest/lawgiver class were subjects of the monarch like everyone else, and had no independent political authority beyond their judicial role.

So I think you've got it a little off, Prannon; in the Muslim world the monarchs never had the need to unbind themselves from religious authority, because religious authorities were a vital part of their bureaucracy and not a threat to their rule. Whereas in the Christian world, religious authorities were less essential to the functions of government, and yet more of a competitor for money and political power- witness the rivalries between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope during medieval times, which have no equivalent in the Muslim world.

[Prannon]

Fair point, Simon. I think the big thing I was aiming for was that the Islamic identity and the state were well bound together, while the Church and the state in Europe was slowly unbound over time, or at least made into independent identities. You're right in that the Church in Europe maintained its own independent authority that competed with the secular states, so I stand corrected.

[Simon_Jester]

Fair point, Simon. I think the big thing I was aiming for was that the Islamic identity and the state were well bound together, while the Church and the state in Europe was slowly unbound over time, or at least made into independent identities. You're right in that the Church in Europe maintained its own independent authority that competed with the secular states, so I stand corrected.

Indeed, I would argue that the church and state became separate in Europe because the Catholic church maintained an independent authority that competed with the secular states.

That helped make dissent from the Catholic church politically popular in Northern Europe during the Reformation- rulers had financial and strategic incentives for freeing themselves from their ties with Rome, from confiscating Church property, getting a divorce so they could (theoretically) remarry and produce an heir, and so on. Obviously, not all European rulers did so, but the ones that did set the pattern.

In the Muslim world, the political dynamic was different and there was no reason- less than no reason- for a monarch to cast off the strictures of religious law in order to govern more freely.

[Stargate Nerd]

Remember, "Islam" is not just the Ottoman Empire. It's the entire belt stretching across North Africa, down into sub-Saharan Africa (where Islam had made considerable inroads already) the Mediterranean coast and Arabia (mostly under Ottoman control by this time, yes), on into Persia (not under Ottoman control), south again along the east coast of Africa, and east, on through Muslim-dominated parts of India, and even through to Indonesia.


So our hypothetical man from Mars in the late 1400s would see a great many independent Muslim rulers. The big names were the Ottomans and Timurids- and the Timurids were in decline, but were in the process of splitting into Persia in the west and the powerful Mughal Empire in the east. And along with that you've got relatively smaller-scale rulers like the Mamelukes in Egypt, still significant regional powers, assorted smaller kings and kinglets down to the scale of city-states... no political unity. But taken together "Islam" as a unifying cultural framework contained very large numbers of people. It's the combination of these relatively powerful Muslim states that is impressive, that they stretched over such a wide range of cultures, climates and territories.
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I hate to be nit picking but in 1490 the Ottomans didn't have much in the way of Arabic provinces yet. Maybe parts of Syria but that's pretty much it.

Sure one could say the Islam was a dominant (indeed expanding) culture in this period, and at least geographically more widespread than Christianity. However the population difference was not so large (and maybe even favored Europe... demographic estimates are scattering from that period, but total Europe was in between 50 and 100 million by that time) and what really mattered is population. The fact that the largest empires were carved by Spain, Portugal and England (all are insignificant periphery of the contemporary Europe) well that´s astonishing (although geographic location helped a lot).
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To be honest I think the number of Muslims in Northern India and Persia alone would be close to those numbers.