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Do you speak Arabic without realising it?!
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As the great Scottish Orientalist William Montgomery Watt (himself a priest in the Scottish Episcopalian Church) pointed out in his book The Glory That Was Islam, when Christian Europe began to show an interest in the discoveries of its 'Saracen' enemies in around 1100 AD, Arab science and philosophy were at their apogee. Europe had to learn everything that there was to be learned from the Arabs, without whom European science and European philosophy would never have been able to develop as they did. However, the importance of the Greek and Roman heritage in science and the arts was long so exaggerated in the West that the debt that is owed to the great civilisations of the Near East was underestimated or ignored altogether. Received wisdom held that Christian Europeans were the natural heirs of the thought of Athens and the splendour of Rome. At best, the Arabs were seen as the mere guardians through the "long night" of the Dark Ages of a sum of knowledge that they had acquired in translation. But during the golden age of ancient Greek thought, which extended from the 6th to the 4th centuries BC, the Egyptian and Babylonian civilisations were still very much alive. There were, in fact, reciprocal influences and exchanges; indeed, the scholars of ancient Greece recognised that they were the inheritors of the wisdom of the orient. After the collapse of the Greek city states (338 BC), the Near East once more became the main centre of scientific thought, and remained so throughout a prolonged "Hellenistic" period (from the 3rd century BC to the 5th century AD). For a period of 800 years, the greatest thinkers, whose works were later to be translated into Arabic, may have spoken or written in Greek but hailed from Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and the whole of western Asia. The spread of Christianity affected the Emperors far more than it did the scholars of late Antiquity in the eastern Mediterranean. After the Emperor Justinian shut down the School of Athens in 529 AD, many scholars sought refuge with the King of Persia at Jundi-Shahpur, which became the meeting point of Greek, Syriac, Persian and Indian influences. Other centres of scholarship flourished at Edessa and, above all, at Harra in Upper Mesopotamia, a Sabaean city which became the depository of the teachings of Babylonian astrology, neo-Pythagoreanism and Hermeticism. The Arab conquest of these regions brought with it the seeds of a new enthusiasm for science: - a language which was emerging as a means of international communication; - a strong, centralised government; - and a religion which exalted knowledge (the Qur'an, for example, states that the ink of the scholars is more precious than the blood of the martyrs). By contrast, the western Europe long remained reserved, not to say hostile, towards these foreign doctrines, before it in turn finally appropriated and enriched them. At the high point of Arab civilisation, in the 8th to 13th centuries AD, the boundaries between academic disciplines were still vague, and the thirst for knowledge was such that scholars would frequently, depending on their individual tastes and enthusiasms, study both medicine and astronomy, alchemy and optics, and so on. Not all were born Arabs, but they wrote and taught about their discoveries in Arabic, which was the language of the political elite. The Arab contribution to civilisation spans art and philosophy as well as the 'hard' sciences. It includes a certain number of specific, ground-breaking inventions and theories, but in addition to these strokes of genius it also has a more subtle dimension. For the golden age of Arab science and philosophy was one of contacts and exchanges between cultures, of spontaneous borrowings, and of two-way influences. |
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Contrary to a widespread misconception, the main waves of the Arab/Muslim conquest did not result in a single culture and a single system of beliefs being imposed uniformly and systematically on the subjugated majorities. To begin with, Jews and Christians (the "peoples of the Book") were not legally obliged to convert to Islam if they did not wish to do so. If they recognised the authority of the Muslim sovereign, notably by paying a special tax, they were accorded the sovereign's protection, and hence were referred to as dhimmis (the 'protected'). Dhimmis remained, nonetheless, 'infidels' in the eyes of the Muslim conquerors. Secondly, the fact that converts legally enjoyed the same rights and privileges as any other Muslim did not always suit the conquerors themselves, who were keen to hold onto their quasi-aristocratic advantages over the unbelievers and who mistrusted any excessive show of religiosity on the part of the newly converted. Finally, in an epoch when the peasantry accounted for 80-95% of the population, Arab influence in such domains as modes of dress, vernacular architecture or household furnishings remained limited. It was the urban merchants and notables who first began to adopt Arabic names in parallel with their Christian or Jewish names (such as Bishop Johannes of Cordova, who is also known as Asbag Ibn Abdullah) and to imitate the appearance and styles of dress of the victors. For example, Mozarabic (Arabised Iberian Christian) women began to wear the veil outside the home. Such influences were gradual. They affected various fields of daily life, be it diet (consumption of pork tended to decline), personal hygiene (a new-found desire for cleanliness brought people of all faiths to the public baths) or even personal status (some wealthy Christians did not balk at polygamy). Fashion also had a role to play, prompting young people to imitate the gestures and manner of speech of this or that Arab singer – to the chagrin of Arab purists. The conquerors had their reservations about the spread of their culture, over which they wished to retain control. The boundaries of their tolerance were variable, especially when it came to matters of religion. Thus Christian tradesmen, for example, would be severely punished for invoking the name of the Prophet Muhammad. In Andalusia, when the Reconquista began to make headway in the 12th century AD, Mozarabic communities in Seville and elsewhere were accused of conspiring with the Christian Kings – whereas two centuries previously, many of them had thrown in their lot with the Muslims against their northern coreligionists. Arab culture was, even then, being "globalised". But the dividing line was between Arabisation and Islamisation. |
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Language is a marvellous recorder of meetings between cultures, a living museum. For proof of this, one need look no further than the ports of the Mediterranean, where linguistic boundaries are scorned and their rules broken; thus are linguae francae created. The following lines (freely translated from Sigrid Hunke's Le soleil d'Allah brille sur l'occident: notre héritage arabe) are a playful presentation of just some of the terminology – and objects – that the West has borrowed from the Arabs. The Spice of Daily Life. Or, Arab Names for Arab Gifts. "Might I invite you to have something with me in this café? Take off your jacket and sit down here on this sofa, unless you would rather sit on the divan with the crimson mattress, of course. Would you like a cup of coffee – with one sugar lump or two? Or perhaps a nice cool carafe of lemonade, or even something alcoholic? "But of course! Let me buy you lunch! I think artichokes would be a lovely starter, don't you? And how about capon with rice and spinach to follow? For dessert, what would you say to a piece of apricot tart, or an orange sorbet? And at the end of the meal we'll have a cup of mocha. There is no reason, of course, for any of these things to appear in any way strange or exotic to you – they have been part of our daily life for such a long time. But did you know that they were all borrowed from a foreign culture, namely Arab culture? This café and the demitasses of coffee they serve, the sugar without which any menu would be almost unimaginable, the lemonade and the carafe, the jacket and the mattress, we owe them all to the Arabs. And it doesn't stop there: in most European countries, these things are known by their Arabic names! And the same goes for candy, bergamot, oranges, sherbet and many other good things besides. Well, you might say, there's nothing so surprising about fruits that grow in hot countries (and even certain foodstuffs and drinks) coming from the Orient; and, that being the case, why shouldn't they keep their original names, after all? As for the sofa or the divan, or the ottoman in the alcove, on which it is so nice to flop down – well, any child could tell you that such exotic sounding words could only be 'foreign'. Morocco leather – there's another easy one. But what about the textiles that you might find alongside your morocco leather bags in the same shop? There's muslin and other cotton cloths, soft and supple mohair, elegant satin, distinguished taffeta, shimmering moiré, sumptuous damask (originally from the city of Damascus), and all in such a range of shades, from saffron through orange and carmine to lilac. So many gentle reminders that it is to the Arabs that we owe these useful and precious fabric as well as their striking colours. But you also encounter a host of Arab "discoveries" whenever you set foot in a pharmacy or a herbalist's. You only need glance at the labels on the jars and draws: you might find camphor, benjoin and benzine, soda, borax and saccharine, perhaps also amber, gum Arabic and cumin, not to mention tarragon, ginger and saffron – all of them Arab drugs with Arabic names. The gauze, talc or hair lacquer that you might buy at the pharmacy are also of Arabic origin, as are numerous chemical terms such as alkali or aniline. There's no denying that a great many of the Arabic words which have found their way into our language designate items of everyday use to which the Arabs introduced us. Nor that these things have added countless delicate touches to our previously insipid – even rather squalid – lives, literally "spicing" them up, enriching them with new colours and new scents. In fact, we in the West ought to thank the Arabs for making our lives healthier and more hygienic, as well as more comfortable and elegant. So there you are – checkmated! And once again, we're using Arabic without even thinking about it. Because the expression "checkmate" – which comes of course from chess, a game that is said to have been introduced to Europe by an emissary of the Caliph Harun Al-Rashid, who taught Charlemagne's court how to play it – is a direct derivation of the Arabic al-shah mat, meaning simply "the king (shah) died"! |
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The Cordova Caliphate Al-Andalus is the other great centre of transmission of Greek/Arab thought to the Christian West. In 756 CE, a member of the Umayyad dynasty, 'Abd Al-Rahman Ibn Mu'awiya, established an independent emirate at Cordova, in Spain, which later transformed itself into a caliphate, rivalling Cairo and Baghdad. Having survived the massacre of the Umayyads by the first Abbassid Caliph, Al-Saffah ('the bloodletter'), 'Abd Al-Rahman fled to Spain, which at that time was the scene of rivalries between a host of different ethnic groups (Arabs, Yemenites, Berbers, converted or Christian Spaniards, Jews, Goths, and so on). Although he arrived in Spain as an outsider with no local support, 'Abd Al-Rahman nonetheless managed to found a regime that prospered remarkably. The Cordova Caliphate steadily extended its territory, waging war against the Christian kingdoms to the north, but also against the Fatimids in North Africa. There the Andalusians took Tangiers, and founded the city of Oran. At the same time, the Cordova Caliphate revived urban life in the lands under its sway, bringing dormant cities such as Seville and Toledo back to life. Thanks to the well developed administration of the state and the wealth of its rulers, luxurious palaces were built. Agriculture also developed: improvements in irrigation raised the yields of traditional crops, such as grapes and olives, while a host of new crops were introduced, including sugar cane, citrus fruits, and dates. On the other hand, the emirate/Caliphate had to devote considerable time and energy to putting down internal revolts (in the city of Toledo, for example, and even in Cordova itself), as well as to countering external pressures and Norman raids. The Caliphate ultimately proved unable to withstand these conflicting forces, and at the beginning of the 11th century the so-called reyes de taifas (from the Arabic muluk al-tawa'if, or kings of the factions) divided up what was left of it between them, founding over twenty independent principalities. Each of these petty sovereigns claimed to be the rightful inheritor of Cordova (or of Al-Andalus, from the name of the valley of the Guadalquivir river, the very centre of the Caliphate). Their courts strove to outshine one another in prestige, playing host to philosophers, scholars and poets. Annexed by the North African empires of the Almoravids and the Almohads, reduced in scope by the conquests of the Christian kings (who took Toledo in 1085), Al-Andalus remained the locus of the most intense contacts between the Arab world and western Europe – be it through warfare or, perhaps even more so, through intellectual interaction |
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Al-Biruni (d. 1050 CE) remains perhaps the clearest example of a man of letters who, immersing himself in Arabic culture, brought it a universal dimension. Born in Khawarizm (in the Caspian basin), Al-Biruni wrote in both Persian and Arabic. He stated his relationship to language thus: "I was brought up in one language (that of Khawarizm) … I learnt Arabic and Persian later, and I therefore come as an outsider to both these languages, my command of which I strive to perfect. But I must confess that I would rather be insulted in Arabic than praised in Persian." It is a harsh judgement, but nonetheless one which expresses well enough the attraction and federative power of the Arabic language in a context (i.e. Baghdad) where Persian-speakers actually formed a majority. Dating from the first half of the 8th century CE, the "first masterpiece" of Arabic literature, Ibn Al-Muqaffa's Kalila Wa Dimna, is also a testimony to the nature of this epoch. For it is nothing else than an Arabic adaptation of a Persian translation of a collection of Indian fables – of which both the Persian and the original Sanskrit versions have since been lost. The time was ripe for a literary explosion. Arab grammarians were already establishing the rules of a language that was supposed to be as pure and as close to its origins as possible, and the first Arabic dictionaries began to appear. The paper industry began to develop. Rulers took a liberal approach towards the arts, and there were plenty of patrons to be found among the aristocracy. Literary genres flourished, ranging from the epistle and the short story (risala) to the maqama (a blend of fiction and reality, in rhythmic prose, in which the action revolves around one central character). And a new value became prevalent: the necessity of culture. Religious studies and the secular sciences developed, with frequent controversies. In this intellectual hot-house, there was consensus on the need for a 'code of conduct' between conservatives and the champions of reason, as between those who stood for the purity of the Arabic tongue and those who favoured openness to other languages. This 'code' consisted of a set of values, the values of the man of letters, known as adab. Jahiz (d. 868 CE) and Ibn Qutayba (d. 889 CE), both of them encyclopaedic minds, polemicists and popularisers of science, were champions of culture who took an interest in all branches of knowledge while cultivating wit and eloquence. Poetry began to explore new themes. Al-Mutanabbi (d. 965), a haughty courtier, feted the great victories and of his protectors and sang their praises, but on occasion also turned against them. Abu 'Ala Al-Ma'ari (d. 1058) expressed hope and revolt, but also bitterness at the ways of the world, in his poetry. Blind since the age of four, he put into verse his despair while cultivating a sceptical approach towards both religion and humanity. Abu Nuwas (d. 815) was able – on the strength of his immense talent, combined with his close personal friendship with the caliphs – to get away with some particularly scandalous and provocative lines. He subverted traditional poetry and sang openly of wine and illicit love (for both men and women). Literature was a shared experience, 'consumed' in public in the evening and into the night. The common people also adored public speaking. In city squares, storytellers would recite poetry, often illustrated with gestures. Each narrator would be the master of his text and of his audience: to keep the public's attention, he would introduce variants, begin stories within stories, or break off at the moments of greatest tension. The Arabian Nights (Alf Layla Wa Layla, literally 'a thousand and one nights') is the very epitome of this popular art form, this 'peddlers' literature'. Together with the epic of 'Antar, mariners' tales and the love songs and romances of Majnun, the Arabian Nights is part of an itinerant folk memory. Arab-Muslim Andalusia also flourished, and saw the rise of a poetry and a broader culture all its own. Ibn Hazm (d. 1063 CE), who was a jurist and a theologian as well as a poet, invented the codes of courtly love in his Tawq Al-Hamama ('the collar of the dove'). The troubadours were the inheritors of his art of the strophe and of mixing languages. |
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As the great historian of Arab-Islamic art Oleg Grabar explains, art in Islam has never been considered an end itself. What made the artists of the Islamic world unique, says Grabar, is that they showed that water is better when drunk out of a beautiful glass, and that light is more beautiful when it comes from a richly decorated chandelier. |
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Calligraphy and illumination The introduction of paper and the spread of books contributed to the development of illustration and illumination. Initially, it was chiefly works of medicine, zoology and astrology that were illustrated, while the practice of illuminating copies of the Holy Qur'an became widespread. It was rarer for works of fiction to be thus adorned. But there were some exceptions: Kalila Wa Dimna, which was used as a model for teaching refined Arabic; the Maqamat of Al-Hariri of Basra (d. 1122), which recount the adventures of the cunning Abu Zayd; or Firdawsi's Shahnama, a Persian poem of no fewer than 60,000 distiches, which provided the subject matter for the most spectacular illuminations. Calligraphy lies at the very heart of Arabic-Islamic art. According to Islamic tradition, writing is a gift of God, first taught to Adam. Furthermore, Arabic is the language in which God is held to have transmitted his message to mankind, through the Prophet Muhammad. The perfection of the Qur'an is held to be proof of the divine nature of the text, which is believed to be inscribed on a celestial tablet that only angels are allowed to see. In light of this, the act of writing is a way of entering into contact with the divine, while to copy the Qur'an is, in a sense, to touch fleetingly God's own word. For these reasons, Arab-Islamic culture has historically attached immense importance to writing beautifully. However, the most ancient forms of Arabic writing, in early Kufic script, are angular and irregular. This was largely due to the fact that the main medium used at the time was stone. Later, as other media such as paper, parchment, wood, ceramics and textiles came to be used, writing styles became more ornate and varied. Kufic script itself grew more harmonious and rhythmic, evolving leafy, plaited and quadrangular styles of its own. Ibn Muqla (d. 940 CE), Vizir at Baghdad and the "prince of calligraphers", codified the proportions of letters to be respected in handwriting and calligraphy as well as defining the six basic scripts (from the simple "copyist's script" to the most ornamental styles). Later, other scripts were added to this classical repertoire, such as ghubar (miniature writing) or makus (mirror writing). Thanks to Ibn Muqla, calligraphy became a science of proportions as well as an art, drawing on geometry as well as elegant, sweeping gestures. Calligraphies came to be much sought after and costly works of art, reaching sometimes astonishing prices on a thriving art market – a development which encouraged forgers. Calligraphers enjoyed the highest social status among artists. But the notion of art in the Arab-Islamic world differs from that which developed in the West. For the calligrapher does not produce independent and autonomous works of art, but rather brings an aesthetic added value to pre-existing, functional objects such as crockery, books or walls. A calligrapher is therefore an artisan who, as it were, decorates reality, a craftsman whose job it is to put the finishing touches to the outer envelope of things. Calligraphy provides the key to Arab-Islamic ornamentation. This is an art form which shies away from realistic representation of nature, in favour of the decorative value of lines and interlacing. It tends therefore towards abstraction, via exuberant plant-like designs and imaginative geometrical figures. |
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Arabesques Arabesque, or ornamentation 'in the Arab manner', is an unbroken rhythm, a non-realistic vegetation, an unending movement, with unceasing variations. The first Muslims were desert dwellers, to whom the Qur'an opened up a view of paradise as "a sublime garden where one need only reach out one's hand to gather its fruits"; as conquerors, they encountered the gardens of Isphahan and Grenada. Little wonder, then, that the plant-like arabesque style was resonant for them with a promise of eternal life. |
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Geometrical ornamentation With its geometrical style of ornamentation, Arab-Islamic art moved into the field of pure abstraction. Some have spoken of an art of mathematicians and astronomers, perhaps because it derives from a series of adjustments to and superposing of star-like polygons with six, eight, ten or twelve points. Nonetheless, these designs, with their innumerable foci, also constitute an invitation to meditate. |
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Architecture "[The Caliph] Al-Mu'tassim summoned a number of architects and instructed them to choose the most appropriate places, and they went ahead and selected several sites for palaces. He then told each of his courtiers to build a palace […]. Then he had plots of land marked off for military and civilian officials, for the population at large, and for the Great Mosque. And he had markets built around the Mosque, with wide rows, since all the different sorts of merchandise had to be clearly separated from one another." Thus did the historian Al-Ya'qubi (d. 897 CE) describe the architectural frenzy which seized the Abbasid Caliph when he transferred his capital from Baghdad to Samarra (some 100 km to the north) in about the year 836 CE. Of the original "city of peace" at Baghdad there remains scarcely a trace – ironically because its very splendour had exerted such a magnetic effect on the marauding hordes of Central Asia. Samarra, on the other hand, was not destroyed by the Mongols and remains as a testimony to the rapid development of secular and religious architecture. The Great Mosque (which was the largest in the world at the time of its construction) looks more like a fortress when viewed from the outside. A wall more than two metres thick surrounds an area of 240 metres by 160 metres. Its 50-metre high minaret, with its helical ramp, was inspired by the ziggurats of ancient Mesopotamia. As for those palaces, their names alone suffice to give an idea of their beauty: the Lover's Palace (Qasr Al-Ashiq), for example, was to be found on the same bank of the river Tigris as the Bride's Palace (Qasr Al-'Arus). The decorations of the palaces and other buildings of Samarra abounded in niches, stucco-work, frescoes and mosaics. The genius of Andalusian civilisation, meanwhile, consisted in creating balance out of diversity. Its fundament – notwithstanding certain political upsets – was its tolerance of religious and ethnic differences. The Great Mosque of Cordova is the symbol of this harmony. Its gabled roofs are Syrian. Byzantium provided the mosaics. The vaults are of Tunisian inspiration and the arches Iranian, while the alternation of stone and brick is a Roman invention. |
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" The history of the word 'zero' is an informative tale. The Arabs borrowed their numerical system – which is far better adapted to arithmetic than the Roman system – from ancient India. When they did so, they named the '0' al-sifr, literally 'void'. The Arabic word was Latinised as cephirum and cifra, which in Italy was deformed to zefero, and then zero. It is the latter which passed into English and French as the name for the symbol indicating the absence of quantity or magnitude. At the same time, French borrowed the Medieval Latin word cifra, transforming it into chiffre ('number'), to designate numerical characters in general. It is from this same origin that English derived the word 'cipher', originally designating both 'nought' and '[any] Arabic numeral', before taking on its present-day meaning of 'code' (from the technique of transposing letters according to a numerical key). The history of mathematics is full of Arab inventions. The word 'algorithm', for example, comes from the name of the great mathematician Al-Khawarizmi, who is the father of algebra – another Arabic word, coming from the title of Al-Khawarizmi's work Kitab Al-Jabr (from jabara, 'to set bones'). The Arabs are also ultimately responsible for the fact that mathematicians the world over today use the letter 'x' to designate the unknown quantity – 'x' being the first letter of the Spanish word xay, which is a deformation of the Arabic shay, meaning simply 'thing'. In the golden age of Arab science, mathematical research was frequently carried out by great polymaths such as the poet Omar Khayyam, who in addition to penning his famous Quatrains also proposed solutions for equations of the third degree. But such research generally had a practical end in mind, such as calculating surface areas in order to assist in urban planning, for example. The study of astronomy was likewise encouraged with a view to practical ends, and more specifically with a view to predicting the future. On the basis of ancient Persian astrology, numerous Arab-Islamic scholars established longitudes, reformed the calendar, and went against Ptolemy's teachings by building a planetary model centred on the sun. Much later, Copernicus was in part inspired by their writings. |
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AIn the Middle Ages, the Arabs, having conserved the science of Antiquity and the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen, were the pioneers of medical research. In particular, they took up the theory of humours, according to which illness is the result of imbalances between four bodily fluids – blood, phlegm, yellow bile (or choler) and black bile (or melancholy) – which govern the body and the personality. Treatments prescribed under this system aimed to re-establish the initial balance, through medication and diet. Arab doctors developed these teachings, leaning on a logical conception of ailments and a methodical approach. Thus they listed and described symptoms, improved the art of diagnosis and clinical practice, and laid down the basis of a professional code of conduct. Their contributions to medical science were legion, encouraged by the construction of hospitals (in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Samarkand and elsewhere), each under the command of a master. The basic principles of hygiene (asepsis, and the isolation of contagious cases) were discovered, at a time when Europe believed that leprosy and the plague could be transmitted by sight, and a very wide range of medications was developed thanks in part to wide-ranging international trade, be it by caravan or by sea. Countless plants, animal extracts and minerals were used in plasters, unguents, cataplasms and tablets. Avicenna's famous Canon (or Qanun) was a monumental medical encyclopaedia, which presented and categorised almost 800 remedies. European medical vocabulary to this day bears traces of the pharmacological inventiveness of the Arabs, in the form of words with Arabic etymologies such as 'alcohol', 'benzine', 'benjoin', 'elixir', 'soda', 'talc', 'amber', 'senna' and so on. Avicenna (the Latinised form of the Arabic name Ibn Sina) was of course the outstanding figure in medieval Arab medicine. Born in 980 CE, Avicenna began to practice medicine at the age of 16. It is to him that we owe the first descriptions of meningitis and pleurisy, as well as over 100 medical and philosophical works. His Canon was translated into Latin and published in Europe for the first time in 1473. Less than a hundred years later, it had already run to 36 editions. |
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In the fields of optics and mechanics, the Arabs did not merely content themselves with preserving the heritage of Antiquity – they pushed beyond its limits, inventing astonishing automata and precious new techniques (notably for agricultural purposes, such as presses for olives and sugar cane, or the bucket waterwheel). Al-Jazari built a monumental clock, in which moving circles represented the movement of the zodiac, the sun and the moon, while mechanical birds dropped marbles onto cymbals to strike the hour and animated figurines played drums and other instruments. Arab alchemists, meanwhile, managed to create new substances (acids, alcohols, etc.). Starting out from the quest for the 'philosopher's stone' that would turn base metals into gold, some of them ended up turning their backs on magic altogether, preferring to concentrate on pure experimentation. |
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"It is inconceivable that God could have singled out certain men that they should prevail over the mass of their fellows." – Al-Razi. The Arab passion for books and the great wave of translation (from Greek to Syriac, and then to Arabic) effectively saved works by Aristotle, Plato and others from being lost to humanity. Public libraries became commonplace (there were more than 100 in Baghdad by the year 900 CE). The library of Cairo contained some 1,600,000 volumes. The passion for ideas was a distinguishing mark of men of quality. Inevitably, therefore, in a society structured by the precepts and practices of Islam, the question of the relationship between reason and faith was posed. The most radical position was adopted by Al-Razi (d. 925), who rejected all revealed religions en bloc, along with miracles. His atheism was based on a progressive conception of knowledge as both provisional and perfectible. But for most medieval Arab thinkers, Islam remained the anchor of their falsafa (philosophy). A commonly adopted principle was that truth is one and indivisible, be it revealed or obtained by reason, and no matter whether it was of Arab or non-Arab origin. This was the thesis of Al-Kindi (d. 873), traditionally honoured as the "philosopher of the Arabs", who in the end gave divine knowledge the benefit of the doubt and became a mystic. After him, Farabi (d. 950) wrote numerous commentaries which tried to demonstrate the compatibility of the writings of Plato and Aristotle with Islamic thought. His "model city" is effectively an adaptation of Plato's Republic. However, philosophical thought touched on such delicate topics as the oneness of creation or the survival of the body and/or the soul after death, and any reference to "Arab science" remained, for most believers, dangerously innovative and suspiciously close to heresy. The counter-attack against the Arab philosophers was led by Al-Ghazali (d. 1111 CE). He condemned the impurity of their ideas (for example their denial that the world was created and would come to an end, or that the bodies of believers would be resurrected). Al-Ghazali underlined the importance of sciences that are useful to the community, but his distinction between religious and non-religious (ghayr shar'iyya) sciences pushed philosophy out to the farthest margins of what was religiously acceptable. There was to be no real riposte to Al-Ghazali until a century later, when Ibn Rushd argued in favour of the compatibility of Qur'anic doctrine and the philosophical enterprise, and, above all, in favour of the right to use one's reason to its fullest extent. Ibn Rushd (whose name was Latinised as Averroes) no doubt left a more profound mark on human thought than any other Andalusian. A doctor, an administrator and an astronomer as well as a philosopher, Averroes built up an enormous reputation in both the Arab world and Christendom. Anecdotes about his life present him as an archetypal atheist, but his works are more concerned with reconciling faith and reason. His commentaries on Aristotle express the need for incredulity as well as the diversity of ways of expressing the truth. Averroes exerted a deep influence on medieval scholasticism. But his works could hardly satisfy Christian theologians such as St Thomas Aquinas, who were ill disposed to consider philosophy as an independent discipline. The Arabs had already burnt Averroes' books; the Christians followed suit, and philosophy was subjugated. |
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