By
Constant Mews
July 14,
2019
Algebra,
alchemy, artichoke, alcohol, and apricot all derive from Arabic words which
came to the West during the age of Crusades.
Even more
fundamental are the Indo-Arabic numerals (0-9), which replaced Roman numerals
during the same period and revolutionised our capacity to engage in science and
trade. This came about through Latin discovery of the ninth-century Persian
scholar, Al-Khwarizmi (whose name gives us the word algorithm).
This debt
to Islamic civilisation contradicts the claim put forward by political
scientist Samuel Huntington in his book The Clash of Civilizations some 25
years ago, that Islam and the West have always been diametrically opposed. In
2004, historian Richard Bulliet proposed an alternative perspective. He argued
civilisation is a continuing conversation and exchange, rather than a uniquely
Western phenomenon.
Even so,
Australia and the West still struggle to acknowledge the contributions of
Islamic cultures (whether Arabic speaking, Persian, Ottoman or others) to
civilisation.
In an
initial curriculum proposed by the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, only
one Islamic text was listed, a collection of often-humorous stories about the
Crusades from a 12th-century Syrian aristocrat. But Islamic majority cultures
have produced many other texts with a greater claim to shaping civilisation.
Philosophical
And Literary Influences
Many of the
scientific ideas and luxury goods from this world came into the West following
the peaceful capture of the Spanish city of Toledo from its Moorish rulers in
1085.
Over the
course of the next century, scholars, often in collaboration with
Arabic-speaking Jews, became aware of the intellectual legacy of Islamic
culture preserved in the libraries of Toledo.
Their focus
was not on Islam, but the philosophy and science in which many great Islamic
thinkers had become engaged. One was Ibn Sina (also known as Avicenna), a
Persian physician and polymath (a very knowledgeable generalist) who combined
practical medical learning with a philosophical synthesis of key ideas from
both Plato and Aristotle.
Another was
Ibn Rushd (or Averroes), an Andalusian physician and polymath, whose criticisms
of the way Ibn Sina interpreted Aristotle would have a major impact on Italian
theologist and philosopher Thomas Aquinas in shaping both his philosophical and
theological ideas in the 13th century. Thomas was also indebted to a compatriot
of Ibn Rushd, the Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides, whose Guide to the Perplexed
was translated from Arabic into Latin in the 1230s.
While there
is debate about the extent to which the Italian writer Dante was exposed to
Islamic influences, it is very likely he knew The Book of Mohammed’s Ladder
(translated into Castilian, French and Latin), which describes the Prophet’s
ascent to heaven. The Divine Comedy, with its account of Dante’s imagined
journey from Inferno to Paradise, was
following in this tradition.
Dante very
likely heard lectures from Riccoldo da Monte di Monte Croce, a learned
Dominican who spent many years studying Arabic in Baghdad before returning to
Florence around 1300 and writing about his travels in the lands of Islam. Dante
may have criticised Muslim teaching, but he was aware of its vast influence.
Domenico di
Michelino, Dante and the Divine comedy, fresco, 1465. Dante is thought to have
been influenced by Islamic cultures.
Wikimedia Commons
Islam also
gave us the quintessential image of the Enlightenment, the self-taught
philosopher. This character had his origins in an Arabic novel, Hayy ibn
Yaqzan, penned by a 12th-century Arab intellectual, Ibn Tufayl. It tells the
story of how a feral child abandoned on a desert island comes through reason
alone to a vision of reality.
Hayy ibn
Yaqzan was published in Oxford, with an Arabic-Latin edition in 1671, and
became a catalyst for the contributions of seminal European philosophers
including John Locke and Robert Boyle.
Translated into English in 1708 as The Improvement of Human Reason, it also
influenced novelists, beginning with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in 1719.
The sources of the Enlightenment are not simply in Greece and Rome.
Civilisation
is always being reinvented. The civilisation some call “Western” has been, and
still is, continually shaped by a wide range of political, literary and
intellectual influences, all worthy of our attention.
Source: The Conversation
URL: http://www.newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/constant-mews/intellectual-legacy-of-islamic-cultures-influenced-western-civilisation/d/119213
https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-western-civilisation-owes-to-islamic-cultures-101195