The Impact of Islam

by Emmet Scott

  In spite of this negative conclusion, the writer has to admit that the use of observation of nature did become important in Europe in the fourteenth century. As an example of this, says Painter, “one can take a subject of primary significance for the physical sciences – the nature and cause of motion. Aristotle believed that all material bodies had a natural motion toward the center of the universe. Motion in any other direction required a violent impetus. Observation soon raised doubts about this theory. If it were correct, an arrow should fall to the ground as soon as it left the bow. And how account for the increasing speed of falling bodies? Soon a theory was developed that once a body was put in motion the commotion caused by it in the air kept it moving. This same force increased the speed of falling bodies. Unfortunately the view was open to a serious objection; if it were correct, an arrow would never fall. Then, in the fourteenth century a group of scholars at the university of Paris arrived at a more satisfactory explanation: once started, the impetus of the motion itself kept the body moving. The problem of the perpetual motion of celestial bodies was neatly solved in true medieval fashion; they received their impetus from God. Thus observation was used to refute accepted hypothesis, and reason was called upon to provide more satisfactory ones.”[16]

  On the whole however Painter has a decidedly negative view of medieval science and philosophy:

  “The men of the Middle Ages accepted the classical theory that the earth was composed of four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. The scholars of the early Middle Ages believed that the earth was flat, with the land mass occupying the center and the water flowing around the edge. Although this crude idea probably continued throughout the period in the minds of the uneducated, it did not survive among scholars after the absorption of Greek and Arab learning. Later scholars thought of the earth as a sphere. The basest matter, earth, formed the center, then there was a layer of water, then one of air, and finally came the finest element, fire. In the northern hemisphere, the force of the stars drew the earth above the water in some places. Beyond the earth, the universe consisted of spheres. All these spheres except the outermost revolved about the earth under the impulsion of spirits. The topmost sphere, Heaven, remained still. As time went on, observation obliged scholars to make some modifications in this scheme. Thus the eight sphere carried the stars, but it was clear that not all the stars moved in the same direction. Hence they produced the hypothesis that subsidiary spheres revolving independently were attached to the eighth sphere.”[17]

  The above cosmogony does sound primitive and naïve to a modern, yet it has to be stated that it was no more primitive, and a good deal less so, than other contemporary civilizations. Incidentally, the claim that scholars in the early Middle Ages believed the earth was flat is without foundation, and part of the general “flat earth” myth invented by Washington Irving in the early nineteenth century, and now thoroughly debunked.[18] In spite of his generally negative view of medieval science, Painter does however concede that real progress was made in the practical fields of technology and medicine:

  “In assaying the progress made in the development of human knowledge during the Middle Ages, it is important to distinguish between the theoretical and purely pragmatic. Thus in medicine little or no progress was made in theory over the classical and Arab physicians. Hippocrates and Galen remained the accepted authorities. But decided progress was made in the use of herbs and other practical remedies, and physicians were continually concocting new and ingenious therapeutic devices. Some of these brought them into difficulty with the ecclesiastical authorities. Thus, in the twelfth century there was a general belief that a man could be cured of certain ills by having intercourse with a virgin; but the church could not be expected to approve this remedy. Nevertheless, in the course of their experiments the medieval physicians invented some methods of treatment that have found support in modern medical theory. Increase of knowledge by observation and experience was particularly great in agriculture and industrial techniques. The invention of the horse collar was a development of enormous importance. By the thirteenth century the best agriculturalists had discovered that crops were improved if the seed came from other land. In building, working metals, making colored glass, and many other fields, mediaeval technologists made important discoveries. Finally, the alchemists who devoted their efforts to attempts to turn base metals into gold observed many chemical reactions and were the ancestors of the chemists of today. In short, experience guided men with considerable accuracy in many things that we consider to lie within the domain of science. Workmen with no exact knowledge of the laws of physics, of comparative stresses and strains and of strength of materials, built magnificent Gothic cathedrals, which only occasionally fell down.”[19]

  In fact, the advances made by the doctors, alchemists, architects, metallurgists, and agriculturalists during the Middle Ages were much more dramatic than Painter admits and he fails, as do almost all historians, to recognize that Europe was virtually unique in this regard during these centuries. From the early eleventh century universities began to appear throughout the continent, and by the twelfth century Christendom had caught up with the House of Islam – and then began to overtake it. Towns grew dramatically in wealth and population and from the early thirteenth century a spate of cathedral-building, in the new “Gothic” style, would bequeath to future generations some of Europe’s most magnificent monuments. No one who has viewed these structures, with their complex geometry and stunning artwork, can be under the illusion that the society which produced them was in any way “primitive.” Nothing to compare with these houses of worship ever appeared in the Islamic world. As the cathedrals were being built, new technologies were developed wholesale. The thirteenth century saw the appearance of gunpowder, magnifying glasses and spectacles, as well as elaborate mechanical clocks and a host of other things. These were followed by further revolutionary innovations during the fourteenth century. Firearms evolved rapidly during the fourteenth century and revolutionized warfare; giving Europe the advantage in future conflicts with the Islamic world and with other civilizations. During the fifteenth century the Turks who besieged Constantinople were compelled to rely on the services of a renegade Transylvanian armorer to build them cannons with which to assault the city walls.

  It is not true that the Renaissance began in the fifteenth century. Rather it began in the late tenth and simply moved up a gear during the fifteenth. The whole period in between was dynamic and progressive. Populations grew and so did towns. Literacy became more and more widespread as trade increased and business life expanded. New technologies appeared regularly, and all this process simply reached a crescendo in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. So much for Europe’s repressive theocracy!

  Yet a truly repressive theocracy did indeed exist in the Middle Ages. The Islamic world, which impressed itself so strongly on Europe during the tenth and eleventh centuries with its wealth, splendor and cruelty, was, by the fifteenth century immersed in squalor and poverty. It is futile to blame this development on outside enemies, as Bernard Lewis has noted. The fact is, Europe was a largely rural backwater in the tenth century, when the House of Islam incorporated the great cities and population centers of the Middle East and North Africa. During this period it seems that the Arabs did permit and even encourage new research. That most of this research was not carried out by real Arabs is almost beside the point. At this stage, Islam did at least permit learning and research. But then again what kind of learning was it, and what was its purpose? Even Islamophilic writers such as Briffault admit that the early Arabs, those supposedly imbued with an almost unquenchable thirst for knowledge, had little or no interest in the histories and cultures of the great civilizations they conquered.[20] The truth of this is demonstrated in the fact that by the eighth century Arab writers had no idea who constructed the Great Pyramid or indeed any of the monuments of Egypt. Yet this knowledge had been widely available in the writings of such clas
sical authors as Herodotus and Diodorus, whose works were preserved in the great libraries of Egypt and Babylonia. Take for example the comments of Ibn Jubayr, who worked as a secretary to the Moorish governor of Granada, and who visited Cairo in 1182. He commented on “the ancient pyramids, of miraculous construction and wonderful to look upon, [which looked] like huge pavilions rearing to the skies; two in particular shock the firmament …” He wondered whether they might be the tombs of early prophets mention in the Qur’an, or whether they were granaries of the biblical patriarch Joseph, but in the end came to the conclusion, “To be short, none but the Great and Glorious God can know their story.”[21] The complete ignorance of the Arabs in this regard strongly suggests that they did indeed (as Christian polemicists for centuries argued) destroy much Classical literature – at least that literature not of any practical or utilitarian import. In Persia too, the newly-converted Muslims quickly lost track of their own inheritance. By the time of poet and mathematician Omar Khayyam (eleventh-twelfth century), the natives of the country had forgotten almost everything about their illustrious history. Thus the ancient city of Persepolis, capital of the Achaemenid kings Darius I and Xerxes, was believed by the poet to have been built by the genie king Jamshid; and the same daemon was credited by him with raising the pyramids of Egypt. Islamic chroniclers in Egypt itself had their own mythical figures and genie-kings to whom they attributed the erection of the pyramids. Such was their regard for the literature of the classical age and for the critical method!

  Within a short time worse was to follow. Muslim rulers began to systematically plunder the ancient monuments of Egypt, and an official department existed whose purpose was the location and despoliation of pharaohnic tombs. The larger monuments were plundered for their cut-stone, and Saladin, the Muslim hero lionized in so much politically-correct literature and art, began the process by the exploitation of the smaller Giza monuments. From these, he constructed the citadel at Cairo (between 1193 and 1198). His son and successor, Al-Aziz Uthman, went further, and made a determined effort to demolish the Great Pyramid itself.[22] He succeeded in stripping the outer casing of smooth limestone blocks from the structure (covered with historically invaluable inscriptions), but eventually canceled the project owing to its cost.

  And that attitude to learning was displayed in the treatment meted out to two of the biggest luminaries of Muslim Spain, Averroes and Maimonides. Despite being an Islamic judge, Averroes was banished, his books burnt, and he was forced to emigrate to Morocco (in 1195) where he died in 1198. Maimonides in his turn had to flee in order to escape Almohad persecution.

  Louis Bertrand issued this cautionary note to those who extol Islamic learning: “When we are told about Musulman tolerance and about the cult of literature, science, and art at the court of the Caliphs, when the praises of the universities of Cordova, Seville, and Toledo are sung to us, it would be very naïve to judge them by our standards, and to see in these universities something like the Sorbonne, even that of the Middle Ages.”[23] Illustrating his point, Bertrand looks at the work of the Arab historians. “The Arab ‘histories,’ as they are generously called, can only be regarded from our point of view as dry annalists or, in general, compilers without any critical faculty. As Gobineau has already remarked, in connection with the Persian writers, they do not possess the sense of what we understand by truth, or, more exactly, the sense of Yes and No. They have a hazy idea of the boundaries of history and poetry, properly so-called.

  “Thus their histories are strewn with long fragments of poetry, to which they attribute the value of historical evidence; they accept the most fabulous legends and traditions without interpreting them; they fall into all kinds of Oriental exaggeration; and, when they quote figures, they let themselves go to astronomical valuations. As for marshalling of narrative and methodical exposition, nothing could be further from their habits of mind. Everything is put on the same plane – trivial incidents and important events which led to changes of regime or the fall of empires.”

  Bertrand complains too of the chopping of narrative into annual sections, a feature that “produces extraordinary complexity and intricacy, something like the inextricable labyrinth of lines in an arabesque.” In the end; “These histories – if one dare give them that name – only too often leave us with the impression of an absurd and unintelligible chaos.”[24]

  Schools certainly existed in the Spanish Caliphate; yet they were not schools as we imagine them: “These schools … were strictly sectarian, and the teaching was purely religious. Those which Hakam [II] subsidized were intended to ‘teach the Koran’ to poor children of the capital. That did not even mean that the children were taught to read and write in Arabic. Teaching the Koran means teaching recitation of the suras of the Holy Book by heart.”[25] As for the “universities,” Bertrand notes: “Learning, as we understand it, had only the most restricted place in them. It was regarded with suspicion by the religious intolerance of the faquis, which was often translated into very drastic prohibitions and persecutions. During periods of extreme rigour, all that was permitted to students of mathematics was to acquire the knowledge necessary to orientate the mosques in the direction of Mecca and determine the seasons, the phases of the moon, and the exact hour of prayer. Everything else was regarded as dangerous.”[26]

  Some areas of research were more acceptable to the religious sensibilities of the imams: “Medicine and botany, by reason of their practical utility, escaped the severity of religious censorship. There were famous Spanish doctors and surgeons … who were mostly of Christian or Jewish origin.” Yet the medicine practiced “makes us smile to-day.” And, “All this so-called science had nothing in common with ours. It was the liquidation of the old Greco-Latin empiricism plus an Alexandrine and Oriental endowment. It was a farrago which the modern age had to abandon.” Bertrand concludes that, “The bulk of this teaching – terrible in its verbalism and almost entirely theological – reduced itself to some ideas of medicine, mathematics, and astronomy, but especially of astrology, alchemy, and demonology. The occult part of the Judeo-Arab learning was what most attracted the Christians, not only of Spain, but also of the whole of medieval Europe.”[27]

  The rejection of reason is said by some apologists for Islam to have been the fault of philosopher/theologian Al-Ghazali (1058-1111). Yet, as Catholic priest and physicist Stanley Jaki has explained, the rejection of reason is implicit in the Qur’an. There is no question that Al-Ghazali, one of the pillars of Islamic jurisprudence, “denounced natural laws, the very objective of science, as a blasphemous constraint upon the free will of Allah.”[28] Yet from the very beginning, “Muslim mystics decried the notion of scientific law (as formulated by Aristotle) as blasphemous and irrational, depriving as it does the Creator of his freedom.”[29] Robert Spencer quotes social scientist Rodney Stark who notes that Islam does not have “a conception of God appropriate to underwrite the rise of science. … Allah is not presented as a lawful creator but is conceived of as an extremely active God who intrudes in the world as he deems it appropriate. This prompted the formation of a major theological bloc within Islam that condemns all efforts to formulate natural laws as blasphemy in that they deny Allah’s freedom to act.”[30]

  Allah’s freedom to act is seen all too clearly in the outlandish events of Muhammad’s life, where sacred moral laws are broken by the Prophet and his followers, only to be vindicated – afterward – by new “revelations” from Allah.

  We have already seen, in Chapter 1, what Maimonides thought of Islamic “science,” and indeed the antipathy of the Islamic world to all forms of scientific research and even technical innovation since at least the twelfth century – and probably earlier – is well known and denied by no one, not even Bernard Lewis. Thus for example in What Went Wrong? Lewis mentions the thirteenth century Syrian physician Ibn al-Nafis, who theorized on the circulation of blood, but whose ideas remained ignored and forgotten until the modern age
.[31] Again, Lewis notes the case of the Egyptian (or perhaps Syrian) astronomer Taqi al-Din, who in the sixteenth century constructed a great observatory, “comparable in its technical equipment and its specialist personnel with that of his celebrated contemporary, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe.” But it was there, as Lewis concedes, that the comparison ends; for whereas Tycho Brahe’s observatory “opened the way to a vast new development of astronomical science,” Taqi al-Din’s observatory “was razed to the ground by a squad of Janissaries, by the order of the sultan, on the recommendation of the Chief Mufti.”[32] Lewis might also have mentioned the Ottoman refusal, on religious grounds, to allow the opening of a printing press until the late eighteenth century, and the resistance to the development of new technologies of all kinds on the same grounds.

  In summary, whilst Europeans may not have been perfectly free in terms of thinking and beliefs during the Middle Ages, they were a lot freer than most of the contemporary world’s peoples; and this is particularly so when compared with those of the Islamic world. Furthermore, we cannot finish without remarking upon the astonishing dynamism of medieval Europe and the incredible progress it made in five centuries. At the dawn of the tenth century most of Europe was a rural backwater. All of the lands east of the Elbe (and almost all east of the Rhine) were barbarian-infested wastelands without a trace of literate civilization. Those to the west, in Gaul and Britain, and even in Italy, were not much better. In this region there prevailed an almost universal illiteracy and a subsistence barter economy of the most primitive kind. There existed only a handful of towns with more than 30,000 people, and even these were nothing like the towns of the Roman period. England had none, with the possible exception of London. Even Rome had little more than the same figure. Yet by 1492, when Columbus set out on his great voyage of discovery, Europe stood on the verge of world domination. The continent, from the Atlantic to the Urals, was full of towns and cities built partly of stone and brick, with dozens of universities and a thriving economy. The whole of Europe was crisscrossed with roads which conveyed an astonishing array of wealth and produce from one region to another. Printed books were everywhere, and literacy was extremely common, even among the relatively poor.