This article provides a comprehensive overview of the history of Islamic science as well as current issues and future trends in the discipline. Significant references to modern scholarship on Islamic science and medicine, including the transmission of knowledge to the West, are reviewed to illustrate the rich heritage and ongoing research in this field.
Islamic civilization provides a rich field for the historian of science. History of Islamic science is a relatively young field, having developed only since World War II, with new discoveries being made regularly. Discussions of science in Islam in the past, and still to a certain extent within the generalist literature, have suffered from the shortcomings of the Orientalist paradigm, which holds as axiomatic the following: Islam is an inferior religion and culture to that of the Judaeo-Christian, and now secular West; and Islamic civilization was merely an intermediary between the classical Greeks and the Renaissance, then Enlightenment West. The consequences of this paradigm for scholarship are exemplified by the following untenable assertion that still appears, in one form or another, in the literature: science in Islam declined beginning in the 11th century and eventually died out, either due to the forces of religious conservatism, or to Mongol invasions, or both. The present historical outline, which re-addresses these and other conclusions, owes much to George SALIBA (Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance, 2007), the most recent overall re-assessment of the subject.
How to designate the science of Islamic civilization in English is a problem. The Arabic word for “science” ‘ilm means an intellectual discipline generally, much like German Wissenschaft. Several terms have been employed by scholars to designate the scientific tradition of Islamic civilization, among them: “Arabic science” and “Islamic science”. The former has the advantage of referring to the linguistic tradition, but it ignores important works written in Persian; the latter, preferred by the present author, emphasizes the dominant culture and civilization within which these scientific activities took place.
Figure 4. A student sitting with Aristotle (right), in Kitāb naʿt al-ḥayawān (Book of the Characteristics of Animals), Ibn Bakhtīshūʿ, probably Baghdad, c. 1225. London, British Library, Or. 2784 (Wikipedia)
An Islamic scientific tradition began during the period of the 7th-century conquests, as Muslims came into closer contact with Byzantium and Iran. The translation of the administrative apparatus from Greek and Persian into Arabic and the displacement of the former bureaucratic class, which began during the reign of caliph ‘Abd al-Mālik (r. 685-705), precipitated social factors that drove the pursuit of science for centuries, and led to the epochal Graeco-Arabic translation movement of the early Abbasid period (Dimitri GUTAS, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, 1998; George SALIBA, Islamic Science, 2007).
The early Abbasid period (mid-8th to 10th c.) presented increased opportunities for scientists to be useful to the needs of society. The presence of three astrologers assisting in the founding of Baghdad (762 C.E.) attests to the existence of an established astronomical tradition by that time, as astrology required advanced technical ability in applied mathematical astronomy. Progress in the sciences was motivated by competition for positions at court. A climate of scrutiny was fostered, which encouraged scientists to be as precise as possible, and even affected translations into Arabic. For example, the translation of Ptolemy’s Almagest involved a critical reading and correction of the text, updating it to the current observations and methods, such as the substitution of the newly invented trigonometric functions for Ptolemy’s chord tables.
The concentration of wealth in Baghdad and the motivation of the regime to possess the fruits of science and technology ensured the presence of the best scientists in the capital. Among them were the Banū Mūsā, three brothers (“Sons of Musa”), who used their positions and fortunes to advance the sciences, both through patronizing translations from accomplished translators such as Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (d. 873), who commanded large fees, and through original research.
Figure 5. Folio from Akhlaq-i Nasiri (The Ethics of Nasir), 1235, by Nasir al-Din Tusi (d. 1274). Reproduced in Lahore, Mughal period, circa 1595 CE. (Source)
By the mid-9th century, Islamic scientists had attained a level of competence that enabled them to devise wholly new disciplines and sub-disciplines. Astronomers distanced themselves from the astrological aspects of their field, redefining the discipline as a purely descriptive science (‘ilm al-hay’a, the science of the configuration [of the heavenly bodies]”). Focusing on physical structure alone made the physical inconsistencies of the Ptolemaic system obvious, the solution of which became a major concern of Islamic astronomers for several centuries, as described below. In mathematics, Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (d. ca. 850) devised the science of algebra, which was advanced much farther by Ghiyāth al-Dīn Jamshīd ibn Mas’ūd al-Kāshī (d. 1429) and Omar Khayyām (d. 1131). The practical needs of navigation and religion, in determining prayer times and the direction of Mecca, led to the invention of spherical trigonometry. Astronomical instruments, such as the astrolabe, were developed. A portable analog computer containing a model of the heavens, the astrolabe was used for a variety of calculations, including timekeeping, astrological horoscopes, and the sighting of stars.
Following a long period of critique, Islamic astronomy began to reach maturity in the late 13th century at the Maragha observatory in northwestern Iran. Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 1274), Mu’ayyad al-Dīn al-‘Urḍī (d.1266) and several other scientists revised planetary models in the course of their observations. The tradition of reform continued down well past the 15th century, and some of the mathematical models developed in this tradition by Ibn al-Shāṭir (d. 1375) and others found their way into the work of Nicholas Copernicus (d. 1543).
Islamic physicians, though based in Greek medicine, made original contributions to medical thought and exerted a formative influence on the European medical tradition. Greek humoral pathology in the Hippocratic and Galenic traditions became dominant, reaching its fullest expression in the Canon of Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) (d. 1037). The Canon was attractive both to Islamic and Western medical scholars because it presented essentially Galenic medicine in an easier-to-use format than that of the ancient Master.
Figure 6.Avicenna Crater is an impact crater on the far side of the Moon, lying in the northern part of the crater Lorenz. The name was given in honour of the medieval scientist, philosopher and physician Ibn Sina (980–1037), Latinised as Avicenna, and was approved by the International Astronomical Union in 1970. The crater was formed during the Donektarian period
Although originating in Christendom, under Islam, the hospital became a more sophisticated institution, a place of treatment of the sick and wounded, an asylum for the mentally ill, a hospice for the dying, and a facility for medical instruction. One of the most enduring examples was the Manṣūrī hospital of Cairo, established in 1284 and which functioned through the 19th century.
The translations from Arabic to Latin were especially important for the creation of a medical curriculum in late medieval and Renaissance Europe. The major translation centers were in Salerno and Toledo. The Canon eventually became central to medical instruction in the Italian universities. Nancy SIRAISI has shown that the Canon continued to be used in the Italian universities well after Greek medical texts had become available, and after the new medical discoveries as part of the scientific revolution (Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities After 1500, 1987).
In the earlier period of the Arabo-Latin translations (11th—12th c.), the Latin West benefited not only from Arabic versions of ancient Greek scientists and philosophers, but also directly from the translated contributions of scientists such as Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (d. 1039) and Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) and philosophers such as al-Ghazālī (Algazel) (d. 1111) and Ibn Rushd (Averroës) (d. 1198).
Figure 7. Ibn Sina (980–1037), Latinised as Avicenna, b. Transoxiana (Uzbekistan), Samanid Empire Figure 8. Ibn al-Haytham, Latinised as Alhazen (964-1040) b. Basra (Iraq), Buyid Emirate, Figure 9. Al-Ghazali (1058-1111), Latinised as Algazelus, b. Tus (Iran), Seljuk Empire, Figure 10. Ibn Rushd (1126-1198), Latinised as Averroes, b. Córdoba, Al-Andalus (Spain)
3. History of the Discipline
The discipline of history was important to Muslim scholars from the early period of Islam, since they understood their civilization to be the heir to the empires of the ancient world and to their intellectual legacies, especially that of the Greeks. They further understood the Christian Greeks to be special rivals of Islam, since the still-powerful Byzantine Empire was the greatest political and ideological obstacle for Islam. Therefore, the appropriation of Greek science was seen as a kind of victory for Islam, in particular since the Byzantines — then wracked by theological controversy and economic upheaval — had little interest in it (GUTAS, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, 1998). Although credit for the invention of the history of science as a discipline is given to the modern West, scholars within Islam from early times recognized the epochal significance of their science, and attempted to account for it historically. The Islamic tradition of scholarship about its own science is rich and sophisticated, but has remained largely unknown to non-specialists.
Figure 11. “A day is better for the scholar than a lifetime for ignorance”, Anna Maria van Schurman – Arabic, Latin and Greek texts – Utrecht, 13 September 1638. Page 61.
Beginning toward the end of the Graeco-Arabic translation period, when a scientific culture was already flourishing in Islam, works of intellectual biographies of prominent scientists and thinkers began to appear in Arabic. The development of this genre is related to that of the biographies used by the Traditionist scholars to verify reports about the Prophet for the use of jurists in applying Islamic Law. The Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 995), toward the end of the translation era, and the ‘Uyūn al-anbā’ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ of Ibn Abī ‘Uṣaybi’a (d. 1269), well into the supposed era of decline, for example, were biographical encyclopedias of the intellectuals active in their eras, which provide modern scholars with rich insight into the development of scientific activity in Islam. The number of lives and works recorded shows that during the lifetimes of these authors, there was already a critical mass of practicing scientists and physicians who they could write about. This fact is strong evidence in favor of the existence of a true scientific culture in Islamic civilization.
Figure 12. Ibn Khaldūn autograph, al-Muqaddima,14th century, MS Atıf Efendi 1936, fol. VIIa, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Istanbul
An example of a mature Islamic historical self-consciousness is found in the works of Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406). In the introduction to his History, he outlines a sociological and economic approach to historical analysis (The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz ROSENTHAL, 1958). The work contains lengthy discussions of the sciences and their place within Islamic civilization, a fact that reflects the importance he placed on these activities, which he characterized as the epitome of the activities of civilized man, whom God has created and endowed with the gift of rational thought. The pseudo-sciences of astrology and alchemy he refutes, primarily because they are not open to public scrutiny. He understood that science can exist only in sedentary cultures, and that it is disrupted when urban centers have been disturbed by war or famine. Regarding the decline of science in the Islamic world, Ibn Khaldūn observed that science had declined in some regions, such as Baghdad, which he attributed to its destruction by the Mongols (1258).
However, he left open the possibility that decline might occur at different times and for different reasons, suggesting that there was no uniform decline of science in Islamic civilization.
4. Criticisms of Greek Science
Scientific research in Islam was driven by a sophisticated historical consciousness, the product of a well-developed scientific tradition. This began as a critique of the Greek sciences and ultimately led to advances in the sciences far beyond the Greek legacy. The competitive climate of Baghdad encouraged this critical stance, as each scientist sought to outdo his rivals. In time, the critique became more clarified and precise, resulting in many new discoveries.
In connection with the critique, there arose a genre called shukūk “doubts” (cf. dubitationes), that first appeared in the treatise Doubts about Galen, by Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyā al-Rāzī (Rhazes) (d. 925), in which he attacked Galen’s medical doctrines. The shukūk genre was a register of doubts and difficulties with scientific works of the past, which provided practicing scientists with a place to begin fresh approaches to old problems, without repeating the mistakes of their predecessors. This genre implies the existence of a continuous high-level scientific culture and tradition. In the astronomical tradition, about a century later, Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (d. 1039) wrote his Doubts about Ptolemy, in which he catalogued all the elements of Ptolemaic astronomy that were physically inconsistent or impossible, among other aspects of Ptolemaic science. Ibn al-Haytham’s work led directly to the greatest reform of Ptolemaic astronomy, in the Maragha tradition, mentioned earlier.
Figure 13. Aristotle teaching astronomy while using an astrolabe on an Arabic Manuscript… (Source)
The tradition of criticism of Greek medicine has been less studied than astronomy, perhaps because it provides less clear-cut examples than the exact sciences. Nevertheless, there are scattered examples of observations by Islamic physicians that disagree with Galen’s doctrines. For example, ‘Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (d. 1231), observing many human skeletons during a famine in 1200, failed to find the features of the lower jaw and sacrum bones that Galen had described. The Syrian physician Ibn al-Nafīs (d. 1288), working in Cairo, failed to find the porosity of the cardiac septum described by Galen, through which the blood was supposed to pass from the venous to the arterial systems. He proposed instead the “pulmonary transit” whereby blood passes between systems via the lungs. It is too much to conclude, as some modern scholars have done, that this discovery is a direct precursor to William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation (1628) or to Michael Servetus’s earlier theological musings (1553) (Nancy SIRAISI, Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice, 1990, covers both Islamic and medieval European medical traditions. Peter E. PORMANN and Emilie SAVAGE-SMITH, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 2007, is the most recent discussion of the Islamic medical tradition).
5. Modern Scholarship
Figure 14. Page iv from A History of Science: Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece by George Sarton, Harvard University Press, 1952.
Although Western scholars have been interested in Arabic scientific writings as part of their own research agendas, from the 11th century down through the Renaissance, a systematic effort to study the history of science in Islam per se did not begin until the 20th century. The pioneer researcher in the history of this subject was George SARTON (d. 1956), who was also the founder of the history of science in general as a modern academic discipline. SARTON made the scholarly world aware of the work of Arabic scientists, and he provided an initial rough chronology of the subject. Although SARTON’s monumental Introduction to the History of Science (1927-1948; 3 vols.) is, on the whole, an outdated survey, it facilitated many subsequent discoveries.
The history of Islamic science became a respected field in the post-WWII era through the research of Edward S. KENNEDY (Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences, 1983), Abdelhamid I. SABRA (see below), David A. KING (see below), Willy HARTNER (Oriens-Occidens: Ausgewählte Schriften zur Wissenschafts- und Kulturgeschichte, 2 vols., 1968-1984), George SALIBA, and others. For a broad-ranging survey of the various sub-fields of Islamic science, see Roshdi RASHED (Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, 1996). The discipline began with a surprise: Edward S. KENNEDY’s accidental discovery in the 1950’s of the debt of Copernicus to Islamic predecessors, as well as subsequent research by HARTNER and others, awakened scholars to a wealth of new material in the period of the supposed “decline” of Islamic science, although their announcement was greeted in the West by some with hostility. The very idea that Copernicus might have derived a crucial idea from Islamic thinkers is rejected by many without giving the evidence a hearing. It is very likely that Byzantine émigré scholars in Italy who contributed to the Western Renaissance brought key ideas of Islamic science with them, including knowledge of Ibn al-Shāṭir’s work in astronomy, on which Copernicus’s astronomy is partly based. These Byzantine scholars, products of the Palaeologan Renaissance that was partly inspired by contacts with the Islamic world, most likely derived their knowledge of Islamic astronomy from men such as Gregory Chioniades (d. 1302), who travelled into Muslim lands to study astronomy, then returned and established an astronomical research center at Trebizond. David PINGREE, Maria MAVROUDI, and others have begun to investigate Islamic-Byzantine connections. (David PINGREE, The Astronomical Works of Gregory Chioniades, 2 vols., 1985, 1986; Maria MAVROUDI, A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources, 2002).
Figure 15. A manuscript of Ibn al-Shatir (in Arabic) with tables showing movements of stars per years, months, and days. Credit: The Leiden University Libraries.
There are multiple facets to the history of Islamic science, and many of the founding scholars of the discipline are still living. Those active in the study of scientific instruments are mainly David A. KING and his students, including François CHARETTE and Benno VAN DALEN (François CHARETTE, Mathematical Instrumentation in Fourteenth-Century Egypt and Syria: The Illustrated Treatise of Najm al-Din al-Misri, 2003; From China to Paris: 2000 Years Transmission of Mathematical Ideas, ed. Benno VAN DALEN, 2002). David KING’s monumental two-volume survey of Islamic scientific instruments has recently appeared (In Synchrony with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization, 2005). Abdelhamid I. SABRA has written extensively about Islamic optics, as well as about science in Islam generally (The Optics of Ibn Al-Haytham: Books i-iii: On Direct Vision. 2 vols., trans. Abdelhamid I. SABRA, 1989). One of his students, F. Jamil RAGEP, published an edition and study of the important Tadhkira of al-Tusi (Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s Memoir on Astronomy (al-tadhkira fi ‘ilm al-hay’a), 2 vols., 1993). Another, Elaheh KHEIRANDISH, has published on the tradition of optics in Islam (The Arabic Version of Euclid’s Optics (Kitāb Uqlīdīs fī Ikhtilāf al-Manāẓīr), 2 vols., 1999).
David PINGREE made groundbreaking contributions to the study of Islamic astrology and has shown important interconnections between Greek, Sasanian, Indian, Byzantine, and Arabic sources (“Indian Reception of Muslim Versions of Ptolemaic Astronomy,” in RAGEP, ed., Tradition, Transmission, Transformation, 1996, 471-85).
One of the pioneer historians of Islamic astronomy was Aydin SAYILI, whose The Observatory in Islam: And Its Place in the General History of the Observatory (1960, rpt. 1981) is a classic in this field. George SALIBA has devoted his career to the study of planetary theories in Islam, and the transmission of Islamic science to Europe (A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories During the Golden Age of Islam, 1994). His students Ahmad DALLAL and Robert G. MORRISON have written about Islamic planetary theory, and the latter has also written about the connection between astronomy and religion (Ahmad S. DALLAL An Islamic Response to Greek Astronomy, 1995; Robert G. Morrison, Islam and Science: The Intellectual Career of Nizam al-Din al-Nisaburi, 2007). Another student of SALIBA’s (and of D. GUTAS’s also), the author of the present article, is a Graeco-Arabist active in the study of the transmission of medicine and astronomy between the Greek and Arabic traditions (Glen M. COOPER, Galen’s Critical Days in the Graeco-Arabic Tradition, Ashgate, forthcoming). George SALIBA’s major contribution has been to present a fresh scenario about the beginnings of science in Islam and its later transmission to the West, which can explain more than predecessor theories (SALIBA, Islamic Science, 2007). One of George SALIBA’s key insights is the role of the non-Arabic-speaking diwān administrators, displaced after ‘Abd al-Mālik’s reforms, mentioned earlier, who sought to restore their lost positions by using their knowledge of the sciences along with their native fluencies in the older languages (Syriac and Persian) to acquire even greater competence in these sciences in order to make themselves indispensable to the government. Thus he has shown that scientific expertise became a means to powerful court positions, such as personal physician or astrologer to the caliph himself.
Figure 16.Aydın Sayılı and George Sarton. (Photo, courtesy of Dr. Hüseyin Gazi Topdemir)
Roshdi RASHED, J. Lennart BERGGREN, and Jan P. HOGENDIJK have published extensively and made important discoveries about Islamic mathematics. Sonja BRENTJES has written about Euclid’s Elements in Islam (J. Lennart BERGGREN, Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam, 1986; Roshdi RASHED, Les mathématiques infinitésimales du IXe au XIe siècle, vol. V: Ibn al-Haytham: Astronomie, géométrie sphérique et trigonométri, 2006; Jan P. HOGENDIJK, Ibn al-Haytham’s Completion of the Conics, 1985. Sonja BRENTJES, “An Exciting New Arabic Version of Euclid’s Elements: MS Mumbai, R.I.6,” Revue d’histoire des mathématiques 12, fascicule 2 (2006): 169-97).
In Islamic medicine, there are several recent important studies. Nancy SIRAISI has written about the influence of Islamic medicine in Europe in the late medieval and early Renaissance period (Nancy SIRAISI, Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice, 1990). A selection of this scholarship includes: Manfred ULLMANN, Die Medizin im Islam, 1970; Gotthard STROHMAIER, Von Demokrit bis Dante: Die Bewahrung antiken Erbes in der arabischen Kultur, 1996; Emilie SAVAGE-SMITH, “The Practice of Surgery in Islamic Lands: Myth and Reality,” The Year 1000: Medical Practice at the End of the First Millennium, ed. Peregrine HORDEN and Emilie SAVAGE-SMITH, 2000, 308-21; Michael DOLS, Majnun: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, Oxford 1992; Françoise MICHEAU and Danielle JACQUART, La médecine arabe et l’Occident médiéval, 1990.
Bernard R. GOLDSTEIN and Y. Tzvi LANGERMANN have written about Islamic science in the Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic tradition. Charles BURNETT’s subjects deal with subjects that include astrology and the transmission of Islamic science into Latin. Juan VERNET, Julio SAMSÓ, Merce COMES, and others have researched science in Islamic Spain. Donald R. HILL wrote a fundamental text on Islamic technology and engineering. S. Nomanul HAQ has studied the alchemical tradition in Islam, especially the figure of Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber). (Bernard R. GOLDSTEIN, The Astronomy of Levi ben Gerson (1288-1344), 1985; Y. Tzvi LANGERMANN, The Jews and the Sciences in the Middle Ages, 1999; Charles BURNETT, Scientific Weather Forecasting in the Middle Ages: The Writings of Al-Kindi (with Gerrit Bos), 2000; Juan VERNET, Historia de la ciencia española, 1975; Julio SAMSÓ, Islamic Astronomy and Medieval Spain, 1994; Donald R. HILL, Islamic Science and Engineering, 1994; S. Nomanul HAQ, Names, Natures, and Things: The Alchemist Jâbir ibn Hayyân and His Kitâb al-Ahjâr (Book of Stones), 1994).
The Graeco-Arabic translations are being studied as a historical phenomenon (GUTAS, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, 1998), and in lexical detail (Gerhard ENDRESS and Dimitri GUTAS, A Greek and Arabic Lexicon(GALex): Materials for a Dictionary of the Mediaeval Translations from Greek into Arabic, 1992-present). One of Dimitri GUTAS’s insights in these publications is a reassessment of the translation movement. His careful attention to the sources ruled out the special role that Western scholarship has often attributed to the caliph al-Ma’mūn (r. 813-833 AD) such as single-handedly beginning the Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement and sponsoring science in response to a dream about Aristotle, or as part of his rationalist theological pet project, Mu’tazilism.
Furthermore, there are journals and a newsletter that publish research. For example, Michio YANO publishes a journal, SCIAMVS: Sources and Commentaries in Exact Sciences, that includes articles about the exact sciences. SUHAYL: Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilization is published by the University of Barcelona. F. JAMIL and Sally RAGEP maintain a bulletin (http://islamsci.mcgill.ca/) for the Commission on History of Science & Technology in Islamic Societies, part of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science, which provides a great service to the field, keeping scholars informed of conferences and research. Scholars publish in the following journals, among others: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, Early Science and Medicine, Journal for the History of Arabic Science, and Journal for the History of Astronomy.
Figure 17. Galen, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Hippocrates – the three authorities on medical theory and practice – in a woodcut from a title page of a Latin edition of Avicenna’s The Canon, Pavia, around 1512. (Source).
Once the obstacle of the outmoded paradigm about the rise and decline of Islamic science has been superseded, the major challenge to scholarship in this subject is the inaccessibility of source texts. Primary sources were written in languages, such as Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, which, most still in manuscript form, are scattered in libraries and private collections all over Europe and the Muslim world. Finding aids, such as Fuat SEZGIN (Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, 1967-1984, 9 vols.), are a great help in locating extant manuscripts, but occasionally new manuscripts come to light and mistakes in existing catalogues are discovered, and there does not yet exist an effective way to share this information between scholars. Furthermore, the most useful of these, SEZGIN’s, is rendered less useful in that it does not extend past 430 AH (1038-1039 C.E.). The decision to end there was perhaps influenced at the outset by the former paradigm of decline of Islamic science, which seems odd, for even SARTON much earlier was aware of significant scientific activity in the Islamic world during the period after this cutoff date, described above. However, by the time volume 6 appeared (1978), SEZGIN had become aware of the creative science in the later period, of Maragha and the new planetary models.
A new paradigm has appeared, arguing that scholars ought to view the sciences not by isolated language or culture, but in an entire region of sibling cultures, as part of an “Islamo-Christian” civilization (Richard W. BULLIET, The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, 2004). The increasingly obsolete designation “Judaeo-Christian civilization,” although acknowledging the debt to Jewish civilization, inaccurately excludes Islam from the historical scenario. Bulliet’s useful paradigm enables one to understand the varied transformations of science in the greater Mediterranean region as part of a long intercultural tradition, with various collateral descendants — language, cultural, religious, and political differences notwithstanding.
Earlier scholars, eager to find connections on the basis of superficial evidence, were hindered by what is now referred to as the “Myth of Gondeshapur” (Arabic: Jundaysābūr). The narrative is as follows: Gondeshapur in southwest Iran had become an outpost of Hellenism, a haven for intellectual and religious refugees from the persecutions of Emperor Justinian (d. 565) and other Christian Roman emperors. There these intellectuals — so the narrative proceeds — established an academy of translation, hospitals, libraries, etc. The Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mūn (d. 833) then engaged the services of one of the Syrian Bakhtīshūʿ family of physicians, who brought all of this knowledge and tradition to Baghdad, where the Hellenistic tradition then continued. This Western scholarly reconstruction was an attempt to account for the transmission, by providing a ready resource for the Graeco-Arabic translations. The problem with this account is that it is based on one late source; there is no other evidence except supposition. Another tendentious anti-Christian account, by the philosopher al-Fārābī (d. 950), tries to show how the sciences, persecuted by Christian empire, found a home and intellectual freedom only under Islam. The reality is somewhat more complex, and infinitely more interesting (SALIBA, Islamic Science, 2007).
7. Science and Religion
Islamic civilization provides a rich source for the study of the relationship between science and religion in society. The usual Western view is that science and religion necessarily are in conflict, for which the notorious “Galileo affair” is cited as an example. Islamic civilization, on the other hand, offers many examples of non-antagonistic, even constructive relationships between scientists and the religious establishment. The old Western paradigm of Islamic science suggested that science had lost the battle against the religious forces, and eventually died out in Islam. While it is true that religion forced some Greek-derived disciplines such as astronomy to redefine themselves, more often scientists served religion, as for example religious scholars — many of the scientists were also legal scholars or theologians, or time-keepers of the mosque, a famous example being Ibn al-Shāṭir (d. 1375), of Damascus. And it is also clear that science never completely died out as claimed, and that there was a continuous, though perhaps uneven, tradition down well into Ottoman times. There have been a few recent studies of the connection between knowledge and religion in Islam, such as MORRISON (Islam and Science: The Intellectual Career of Nizam al-Din al-Nisaburi, 2007).
Figure 19. Imaginary debate between Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and third-century philosopher Porphyry. Monfredo de Monte Imperiali Liber de herbis, 14th century
8. The End of the Sciences in Islam?
A major question that has been asked by some scholars since the study of Islam began in earnest in the 19th century, and one that continues to be of interest to the public is this: If there were so many leading scientists in Islamic civilization during the “golden age” of Islamic civilization, and then science vanished — how and why did it disappear?
The early Western orientalists proposed reasons for the failure of the Islamic world to sustain its lead in the sciences: Ernest RENAN (1823-1892), Max WEBER (1864-1920), Gustave E. VON GRUNEBAUM (1909-1972) advanced essentializing, reductive, or simply racist reasons for the ultimate failure of Islam to maintain its lead in science. More sophisticated (but still essentializing and reductive) scenarios have been advanced since, including: 1) the conflict between science and the religious establishment; 2) the negative influence of al-Ghazālī’s (d. 1111) devastating attack on Greek thought; 3) the inherent inferiority of the Islamic religion; and, 4) the dominance of the non-rational aspects of Islam, etc.
In the West, the trend has been (and still is to some degree) to apply methods and paradigms derived from the issues and particulars of Western society and its history to Islam (Michael MITTERAUER, Warum Europa? Mittelalterliche Grundlagen eines Sonderwegs, 2003). The results have often been distortions, if not caricatures of their subject, for example, in the application of WEBER’s theories to Islam. The Orientalist-inspired paradigm of decline has implications beyond the Western academy as well: some contemporary scholars from the Muslim world, having been educated in the West and having been imbued with the earlier distorting paradigms about science, have written about their native scientific traditions in the terms bequeathed them from the West. Careful attention to the scholarship of George SALIBA (Islamic Science, 2007) and his colleagues can help to reverse this trend.
Figure 20.1001 inventions “House of Wisdom” Canvas inspired by Raphael’s “The School of Athens” painting: Scholars from all over the Muslim world worked at the Abbasid dynasty’s House of Wisdom in Baghdad. The illustration depicts scholars, both male and female and of many faiths, who came to study and research at Baghdad’s and the Abbasids’ centres of higher education
There were, in fact, major changes in the Islamic world in several centuries since the beginning of the supposed decline in the 11th century, and the period of these Orientalists in the 19th century. It has become increasingly known, beginning in the 1950’s through the pioneering work of KENNEDY (Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences) and others, that original science continued to be produced well into the 16th century, and probably beyond. Furthermore, many pre-colonial era Western scholars knew this to have been the case, since, due to the research of SALIBA, it is now understood that several European thinkers were reading the works of Arabic scientists and philosophers well into the Renaissance and beyond, searching for useful material for their own research. They or their agents scoured the Middle East in search of scientific texts in which they expected to find material to assist them in their own scientific projects, not unlike the manner in which 9th-century Arabic translators sought out Greek texts (GUTAS, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, 1998). No less a figure than John Locke studied the works of Ibn Ṭufayl (d. 1185), and early aspects of his own epochal philosophy were formatively influenced thereby (Gül A. RUSSELL, “The Impact of the Philosophus Autodidactus: Pocockes, John Locke and the Society of Friends,” The ‘Arabick’ Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. G. A. RUSSELL, 1994, 224-65. See also Gül A. RUSSELL, The Mind as a ‘tabula rasa’: John Locke and the Arabic Philosophus Autodidactus, forthcoming).
Furthermore, it is now better understood how the economics of a society are interconnected with the extent of scientific practice that a given society can support. Some reasons for the decline in Islamic science must be sought outside of that civilization, in the significant economic changes that have occurred in the West after the Renaissance — changes that dramatically altered the balance of technology, trade and intellectual exchanges between these societies. Two of the most important of these events — discussed by Saliba — were, first, the discovery of the New World and, next, the discovery of a direct water route to the actual Indies. The former produced, through the exploitation of human and natural resources, tremendous wealth in Europe that was used to drive a scientific and technological revolution. The latter adversely affected the economy of the Middle East, which had long benefited from overland trade along the Silk Route, and was now mostly cropped out of the picture.
The history of science in Islam is an exciting young field, attracting talented scholars. There are formidable challenges, as is the case with all new disciplines, but the field is wide and ripe for the scholarly harvest, provided one is equipped with the proper tools. This field forces scholars to jettison old and cherished stereotypes of European cultural (or racial) superiority or uniqueness. It forces all scholars to confront their own intellectual heritage in fresh ways that reveal the intercultural nature of the great scientific movements and discoveries of the past.
Dimitri GUTAS, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th Centuries) (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).
Jan P. HOGENDIJK and Abdelhamid I. SABRA, ed., The Enterprise of Science in Islam: New Perspectives (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003).
Tradition, Transmission, Transformation: Proceedings of Two Conferences on Pre-Modern Science Held at the University of Oklahoma, ed. F. Jamil RAGEP, Sally P. RAGEP, and Steven LIVESEY (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, ed. Roshdi RASHED, 3 vols. (London and New York: Routledge, 1996).
George SALIBA, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, MA, and London: The MIT Press, 2007).
Fuat SEZGIN, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, 9 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1967-1984); Manfred ULLMANN, Die Medizin im Islam, ed. B. Spuler, Handbuch der Orientalistik (Leiden and Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1970).
Figure 21. An early 17th-century margin drawing from the folio in Jahāngīr’s Album showing an astrologer surrounded by his equipment—an astrolabe, zodiac tables and an hourglass (courtesy: Werner Forman Archive/Naprestek Museum, Prague)
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