by Peter Watson
113. Warwick Bray and David Tramp, The Penguin Dictionary of Archaeology, London: Penguin Books, 1970, page 130.
114. Geary, Op. cit., page 73.
115 Ibid., page 79. See Moynahan, Op. cit., pages 191ff, for a vivid account of pagan conversions to Christianity.
116. Geary, Op. cit., page 81.
117. Wells, Op. cit., pages 116–117.
118. Ibid., page 118.
119. Ibid., pages 118 and 126.
120. Ibid., page 123–see map there.
121. Ibid., page 114.
122. Jones and Pennick, Op. cit., page 81.
123. Ibid.
124. Wells, Op. cit., pages 163ff.
125. Ibid., page 185.
126. Jones and Pennick, Op. cit., pages 120ff.
127. Wells, Op. cit., page 256.
128. Geary, Op. cit., page 93.
129. Ibid., page 109.
130. Borst, Op. cit., page 6. Moynahan, Op. cit., page 197, describes pagan and Christian practices that existed side-by-side ‘for many centuries’.
131. Borst, Op. cit., pages 6–7.
CHAPTER 11: THE NEAR-DEATH OF THE BOOK, THE BIRTH OF CHRISTIAN ART
1. Joseph Vogt, The Decline of Rome, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967, page 51.
2. Ibid., page 183.
3. Ibid., page 185. Moynahan, Op. cit., pages 150–151.
4. Vogt, Op. cit., page 187.
5. Lionel Casson, Libraries in the Ancient World, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001, page 137.
6. Vogt, Op. cit., page 188.
7. Ibid., page 198.
8. Moynahan, Op. cit., page 153fn.
9. Vogt, Op. cit., page 236.
10. Ibid., page 234.
11. Reynolds and Wilson, Op. cit., page 48.
12. Anne Glynn-Jones, Holding Up a Mirror, London: Century, 1996, page 201.
13. Ibid., pages 201–202.
14. Freeman, Op. cit., page 321.
15. Richard E. Rubenstein, Aristotle’s Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages, New York and London: Harcourt, 2003, pages 77–78.
16. Freeman, Op. cit., page 325.
17. Ibid., page 327.
18. Ibid., pages 322–323.
19. Vogt, Op. cit., page 202. Moynahan, Op. cit., page 101.
20. Freeman, Op. cit., page 323.
21. Ibid.22. Vogt, Op. cit., page 203.
23. Casson, Op. cit., page 139.
24. Ibid., page 140.
25. Reynolds and Wilson, Op. cit., page 53.
26. Ibid.27. Ibid., page 59. See also: Michael Angold, Byzantium: The Bridge from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001, pages 138–139, for the schools of Constantinople.
28. Nigel Wilson, Scholars of Byzantium, London: Duckworth, 1983, page 50.
29. Ibid., page 51.
30. Ibid.
31. Colish, Op. cit., page 43.
32. Cantor, Op. cit., page 82.
33. Colish, Op. cit., page 43.
34. Ibid., page 48.
35. Cantor, Op. cit., page 82. Angold, Op. cit., page 98.
36. Colish, Op. cit., page 51. Charles Freeman, personal communication, 30 June 2004.
37. Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilisation, Op. cit., page 288. See also below, Chapter 12, note 47.
38. Reynolds and Wilson, Op. cit., page 63.
39. Ibid., page 65.
40. Ibid., page 66. Bischoff, Op. cit., page 183.
41. Reynolds and Wilson, Op. cit., page 67. Angold, Op. cit., pages 89–90, for the survival of some manuscripts.
42. Reynolds and Wilson, Op. cit., page 68.
43. Ibid., page 61. Angold, Op. cit., page 124, for the role of Bardas. See Bischoff, Op. cit., pages 97, 150ff, 170 and 176 for abbreviations.
44. Reynolds and Wilson, Op. cit., page 60.
45. Warren T. Treadgold, The Nature of the Bibliotheca of Photius, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, Center for Byzantine Studies, Trustees for Harvard University, 1980, page 4. See Angold, Op. cit., page 124, for a perspective on Photius.
46. Cyril Mango, Byzantium, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980, page 62.
47. Ibid., pages 71–72.
48. Ibid., page 80. See also Angold, Op. cit., page 70. Moynahan, Op. cit., page 96, says there were 4,388 buildings of ‘architectural merit’ in the city’s heyday.
49. Lawrence Nees, Early Medieval Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, page 31.
50. Mango, Op. cit., page 258. For Diocletian, see: John Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, London: Penguin, 1970/1979, page 14.
51. Mango, Op. cit. See also: Moynahan, Op. cit., page 96.
52. Mango, Op. cit., page 259.
53. Nees, Op. cit., page 52. David Talbot Rice, Byzantine Art, London: Penguin Books, 1935/1062, page 84, considers Ravenna superior to Rome. For purple codices, see Beckwith, Op. cit., pages 42–43.
54. Mango, Op. cit., page 261. Angold, Op. cit., pages 35f, for imperial themes in Christian art.
55. Nees, Op. cit., page 52. Dominic Janes, Gold and Gold in Late Antiquity, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
56. A word here about Christian art in books. The development of the codex, between the second and the fourth centuries, was, as we have seen, at least partly associated with the rise of Christianity, the codex being harder to forge than the scroll. The earliest illustrated biblical manuscript is that known as the Quedlinburg Itala, a much-damaged version of the book of Samuel. No less a person than Jerome himself, the creator of the Vulgate, criticised the production of luxuriously illustrated books, suggesting they were a new phenomenon. The Quedlinburg Itala had illustrations with loosely-painted atmospheric backdrops, and with shadows on the ground, each scene being painted in a small square frame. There was nothing like this in antiquity, says Lawrence Nees (except illustrated parchment codices of Homer and Virgil), which suggests that these illustrated books were central to Christian society and probably helped it become even more a religion of the book. Nees, Op. cit., pages 94–96.
57. Ibid., page 141. Beckwith, Op. cit., page 59, for Justinian.
58. Ibid., page 142. See Talbot Rice, Op. cit., page 147, for the ‘golden ages’ of Byzantine art, and page 149 for the schools of icon painting. Beckwith, Op. cit., pages 125–126.
59. Nees, Op. cit., page 143.
60. Mango, Op. cit., page 264.
61. Nees, Op. cit., page 146. Moynahan, Op. cit., pages 210ff; Angold, Op. cit., pages 70ff; Talbot Rice, Op. cit., pages 22ff. Beckwith, Op. cit., page 168.
62. Cantor, Op. cit., page 173. Moynahan, Op. cit., page 211. Beckwith, Op. cit., page 169.
63. Nees, Op. cit., page 149.
64. Beckwith, Op. cit., pages 151 and 158. Nor should we overlook the fact that the iconoclasts did not object to the use of human figures in non-Christian art. Cyril Mango says that the Milion arch in Constantinople, for example, marked the start of a great road that crossed the entire Balkans. This arch was dominated by an elaborate sculpture of the emperor’s favourite charioteer. No one thought of attacking this. Mango, Op. cit., page 266.
65. Ibid., page 267. See Moynahan, Op. cit., page 211, for how the iconodules were themselves mocked.
66. Mango, Op. cit., pages 271–272. See Talbot Rice, Op. cit., page 151, for painting techniques. Beckwith, Op. cit., page 191.
67. Mango, Op. cit., page 278, for the ‘intense aura’. See Angold, Op. cit., for a similar interpretation. Beckwith, Op. cit., page 346.
CHAPTER 12: FALSAFAH AND AL-JABR IN BAGHDAD AND TOLEDO
1. Philip K. Hitti, A History of the Arabs, London: Macmillan, 1970, page 90.
2. Ibid., page 25.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., page 91.
5. In fact, in certain circumstances it was more. The Arabian poet, the sha’ir, was understood to be privy to secret knowledge, not all of which was good and some of which might come from demons. As a result, the eloquent poe
t could bring misfortune on the enemy at the same time that he inspired his own tribe to valour. Even in peacetime he had a role, Philip Hitti says, as a sceptic to subvert the ‘claims and aims’ of demagogues. See Angold, Op. cit., page 60, for the place of poetry in Arab society.
6. Some of the pre-Islamic poets are household names in the Arabic world, even today. The love poems of Imru’ al-Qays and the moral maxims of Zuhayr are probably better-known than most. Apart from poets, high prestige also attached to the orator (khatib) and the rawi, who related the legends of bygone ages. Their stature dominated that of the scribes who became significant only after the rise of Islam. Hitti, Op. cit., page 56.
7. G. F. von Grunebaum, Classical Islam, London: Allen & Unwin, 1970, page 24.
8. Hitti, Op. cit., pages 64–65.
9. Ibid., page 112.
10. Anwar G. Chejne, The Arabic Language: Its Role in History, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969, pages 7–13. Hitti, Op. cit., page 123.
11. Bernard Lewis, The Middle East, London: Phoenix, 1995, page 53.
12. Hitti, Op. cit., page 118. See Angold, Op. cit., page 61, for a discussion of the qiblah.
13. Lewis, Op. cit., page 53.
14. Hitti, Op. cit., page 128.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., page 129.
17. Originally, Allah asked to be prayed to fifty times a day, but Muhammad reached a compromise when he was in heaven on his nocturnal journey there.
18. Hitti, Op. cit., page 132. The prohibition on alcohol, incidentally, may not have been insisted on from the beginning. One of the chapters in the Qur’an contains a suggestion that it was introduced early on to prevent disturbances during the Friday service.
19. Ibid., page 124. For Islamic judgement see: Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, page 64.
20. Hitti, Op. cit., pages 124–126.
21. Chejne, Op. cit., page 25.
22. Ibid., page 28.
23. Ibid., page 356.
24. Lewis, Op. cit., page 54. Angold, Op. cit., page 60, on the battles for the caliphate.
25. Lewis, Op. cit., page 64.
26. Ibid., page 65.
27. Ibid., page 68. Angold, Op. cit., pages 57–59, for the role of coins.
28. Hitti, Op. cit., page 242. See Angold, Op. cit., pages 61ff, for the Umayyads and, in particular, their architectural achievements.
29. Hitti, Op. cit., page 393.
30. Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Beauty in Arabic Culture, Princeton, New Jersey and London: Markus Wiener/Princeton University Press, 1998/1999, page 126. Angold, Op. cit., page 62, for the Dome of the Rock and page 65 for the Great Mosque of Damascus.
31. Behrens-Abouseif, Op. cit., page 124.
32. Ibid., page 132.
33. Lewis, Op. cit., page 37. Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991, pages 56ff.
34. Behrens-Abouseif, Op. cit., page 148.
35. Angold, Op. cit., page 67. Calligraphy was important in all walks of life, political as well as religious, and many objects were adorned with writing or, in some cases, simply with beautiful letters which had no intrinsic meaning relevant to the context. Two forms of calligraphic script in particular developed in tenth-century Baghdad. These were Kufic and Nashki, the first of which emerged in a religious tradition, and the latter in a secular, bureaucratic tradition. Kufic tends now to be used in traditional religious contexts, whereas Nashki is used for historical purposes, often against richly decorated backgrounds. Hourani, Op. cit., page 56.
36. Apart from its prohibitions on the visual depiction of the human form, Islam was also inherently hostile to music. In yet another hadith, Muhammad described the musical instrument as ‘the devil’s muezzin’, the means by which he called people to worship him. Despite this, the Umayyads did patronise music at their court, to the extent that ‘four great singers’ are still remembered, one of whom, Ibn Surayj (c. 634–726), is credited with being the man who introduced the baton for conducting musical performances. Hitti, Op. cit., page 275.
37. Lewis, Op. cit., page 75.
38. Ibid., page 77.
39. Hitti, Op. cit., page 301.
40. Ibid., page 303.
41. In 988, al-Nadim composed al-Fihrist, a sort of compendium of books then available in this city and this gives some idea of the range of ideas and activities then current. He refers to manuscripts devoted to such subjects as hypnotism, sword-swallowing, glass-chewing and juggling. But there were more serious subjects too.
42. Howard R. Turner, Science in Medieval Islam, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995, pages 28–29 and 132–133.
43. Boyer, Op. cit., pages 211ff.
44. P. M. Holt et al. (editors), The Cambridge History of Islam, volume 2, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1970, page 743.
45. Hugh Kennedy, The Court of the Caliphs: The Rise and Fall of Islam’s Greatest Dynasty, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004, pages 246 and 255. William Wightman, The Growth of Scientific Ideas, Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1950, page 322.
46. Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, London: Routledge, 1998, page 132. Kennedy, Op. cit., pages 258–259.
47. The translation of Greek, Persian and Indian authors was encouraged by the introduction of paper. This was a Chinese invention, probably from the first century AD. According to tradition, paper reached the Middle East in 751 after the Arabs had captured some Chinese prisoners at the battle of Talas (in modern Kyrgystan, 150 miles north-east of Tashkent). On this account, the prisoners taught their conquerors how to manufacture the new product and their lives were spared. This is now thought unlikely, however, as it appears that Chinese painters, weavers and goldsmiths were living in Kufa, in southern Iraq, at the time of the Arab conquest. Almost certainly they were familiar with papermaking as well. But it doesn’t change the point that this was another important idea/invention that flourished in Baghdad having come from outside. The ancient Arabic word for paper, kaghdad, is derived from Chinese. In Baghdad, there was an area of the city known as the Suq al-warraqin, the Stationer’s Market: lining its streets were more than a hundred shops selling paper. Baghdad was an important centre of papermaking and, for the Byzantines at least, it was the best. They referred to paper as bagdatixon and the standard size, 73 cm × 110 cm, was known as a ‘Baghdadi sheet’. There were many different types, usually named after rulers: Talhi paper, Nui paper, Tahiri paper. Paper was the new technology and the Arabs were the masters. Jonathan Bloom, Paper Before Print, Op. cit. See also Gutas, Op. cit., page 13.
48. Howard R. Turner, Science in Medieval Islam, Op. cit., page 133.
49. Ibid., page 139.
50. Hitti, Op. cit., pages 364–365.
51. His book on this subject went through forty editions between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Turner, Op. cit., page 135.
52. He was born in the ninth century in the central Asian region of Bukhara and, early on in his career–to great acclaim–cured the local ruler of an illness. This gave him access to that ruler’s formidable library which, combined with Ibn Sina’s phenomenal memory, turned him into one of the most impressive synthesisers of all time.
53. Turner, Op. cit., page 136. See: Wightman, Op. cit., pages 165 and 335–336 for a chronology of translation. Ibn Sina’s grave, at Hamadan, in Iran, is now an impressive monument. These two were the greatest doctors but far from being the only ones: Hunayn Ibn Ishaq’s ninth-century treatise on the eye opened the way for modern optics; al-Majusi discovered the capillary system of the blood in the tenth century; and in the twelfth Ibn al-Nafis described the circulation of the blood between the heart and lungs, some centuries before William Harvey discovered the greater, or complete circulation (see Chapter23). Turner, Op. cit., page 137.
54. Boyer, A History of Mathematics, Op. cit., page 227. See also: Bernal, Op. ci
t., volume 1, pages 275ff.
55. Boyer, Op. cit., page 227.
56. Ibid., page 229.
57. Ibid., page 237.
58. Boyer, Op. cit., page 234.
59. Turner, Op. cit., page 190.
