Today, December 2nd, 2012 , Mr. Azeem Farooki made a great presentation in the meeting on “The Golden Age of Islam”. It was followed by a lively and robust discussion. After the presentation, some of the question/topics raised and discussed were;

1- Causes of downfall  after Golden Age? 2- What contributed to the Golden Age? 3- Was Golden Age co-incidental 4- Al-Farabi, Averroes  and similar thought philosophers’ impact on Gleden Age 5- Alghazali , Al-Arabi , Rumi & Sufism and its impact on Golden Age..6- Islam and Philosophy.

Below is the lecture by Azeem Farooki. Please comment on any aspect, especially causes of downfall.    

The Golden Age of Islam 

The Golden Age of Islam is the most productive period in history from 8^th to 13^th centuries of an Islamic society that valued learning, acquiring knowledge, and seeking education.  The word Qur’an means reading, it refers to the text which is read as Kitab, meaning the written book. The very first words revealed to the Prophet (peace be upon him) were “Read in the name of your Lord”, followed by concepts of “reading”, “learning”, “knowing” and “pen” in the first two lines of the scripture.  The Prophet (pbuh) emphasized and advised pursuit of knowledge.  The Islamic civilization evolved into a diverse society, and drew its strength from the interaction of many cultures, ethnicities, and faiths.  Muslim scholars compiled, decoded, and improved upon the ancient knowledge of Babylon, Greece, Rome, Persia, Egypt, and India.

After the death of the Prophet (pbuh), the Islamic Community was led by a series of Caliphs.  The first four are known as “rightly guided” and they were elected by the community.  Thereafter, the caliphate became hereditary starting with the Ummayad clan who ruled 661-750, from Damascus, Syria.  The next dynastic Caliphs were known as Abbasid and they ruled 750-1258, from Baghdad, Iraq.  After the fall of Damascus, one Ummayad prince Abdul Rehman who survived the genocide, fled to Spain and founded the Western Ummayad dynasty.  During the next 500 years, competition between Abbasid and Western Umayyad promoted Muslim innovations.  In 15^th century, the Turkish Ottomans took over the caliphate, and it lasted for 400 years. Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, the founder of Turkey, abolished it in 1924 and exiled the last Caliph Sultan Abdul Majid II (1868-1944) to Europe from Istanbul.

There were two major centers of excellence during The Golden Age of Islam:

1. Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad, Iraq      

In ancient times the land area between the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates plain known as Mesopotamia was called the Cradle of Civilization, now known as Iraq.  Various nations came to the Babylon land, Cyrus the Great came in 539 BC and Alexander the Great arrived in 331 BC. Khalid ibn al Waleed conquered the Euphrates delta in 634 and Arabic replaced Persian as the official language. Abbasid Caliph Abu Jafar al-Mansur founded the City of Baghdad in 758 on the west bank of the river Tigris.

Baghdad became a major commercial and cultural city. Intellectual activity in the field of Islamic law, which started in Madinah during the Umayyad period, now moved to the new metropolitan city of Baghdad. Caliph Harun al-Rashid (763-809) became the fifth Caliph of the Abbasid dynasty in 786, and established cultural, intellectual, and scientific disciplines. His opulent court is romanticized in the renowned story book: The Thousand and One Nights, includes popular tales like Aladdin’s Lamp, Ali Baba and Forty Thieves, and Sindbad the Sailor Man. Al-Mamun (813-833) became the sixth Abbasid Caliph and established the famous House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) in Baghdad in 830.

House of Wisdom contained an extensive library, an academy, a translation bureau, and several astronomical observatories. Where no Arabic terms existed, the Greek terms were transliterated and brought new words into language, for example:

Falsafah = Philosophy, Jumatriya = Geometry, Jughrafiyah = Geography.

Byzantine Emperor provided manuscripts of Euclid (300 BC) known as The Elements and it was translated.  All manuscripts from the House of Wisdom were translated from Arabic into Latin and in Hebrew, thus providing the fundamental knowledge in philosophy and science to European scholars. In 10^th century, Baghdad was considered the intellectual and cultural center of the world. In recognition to the Caliph al-Mamun’s contributions to astronomy, one of the craters on the Moon is named al-Mamun.

A famous scholar of the House of Wisdom was Mohammed ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (780-850). His book Hisab al-Jabr wa’l-Muqabalah translated as Mathematics of Transposition and Cancellation laid the foundation of algebra. He introduced Indian numerals 0-9 for calculation. It was the Latin transliteration of the title word al-Jabr, that originated the term “algebra” in Europe, and the book remained a textbook for a long time. Al-Khwarizmi was transliterated as Al-goritimi from which the European word “algorithm” was derived. In recognition of his contributions to mathematics and astronomy, the Soviet Union issued a special stamp in 1987 bearing his resemblance. Also, another crater on the Moon is named al-Khwarizmi.

2. Ummayad Caliphate in Cordoba, Spain

Spain was ruled by the Byzantine King Roderick during the Umayyad Caliphate of Al-Walid (705-715) in Damascus, Syria. Musa ibn Nusair and Tariq ibn Ziyad defeated King Rodriguez in 710, captured the cities of Cordoba, Toledo, and Seville, and established Muslim rule in Spain and Portugal that lasted for the next 900 years. It was known as al-Andalus. Today the southern province of Spain is known as Andalusia.

Emphasis on learning and education was the centerpiece of Muslim Spain resulting in advances in science, medicine, and philosophy. Translation work, including Sanskrit books from India, was carried out and continued into the 12^th century. Italian translator Gerard of Cremona (1114-1187) translated 71 books from Arabic into Latin. In Cordoba, there were seventy libraries with 60,000 books. There was no city like Cordoba in Europe and students from France and England came to learn in Cordoba. Irrigation systems were developed that turned the dry plains of Spain into an agricultural paradise and new fruits, grains and vegetables were introduced to Europe.

Muslims brought the tropical fruit crops from India and introduced lemons, bananas, almonds, pomegranates, dates, figs, peaches, apricots, oranges, watermelons, sugarcane, cotton, saffron, rice, cumin, cucumbers, coriander, and artichoke in the dry climate of Spain, Central Asia and the Mediterranean.

The intellectual society of Cordoba known for its equality and justice for all residents, produced Muslim and Jewish scholars like Ibn Rushd / Averroes (1126-1198) and

ibn Maymun / Maimonides (1135-1204).  Many scholars, scientists, and philosophers such as: al Kindi (801-873), Ibn Sina (980-1037), al Razi (865-925), az-Zahrawi (936-1013), Ibn Haytham (965-1040), Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), al-Ghazali (1058-1111), al-Idrisi (1099-1166), Attar (1145-1146), ibn Arabi (1165-1240), Rumi (1207-1273), ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), and Ulug Beg (1394-1449) emerged from Baghdad and Cordoba.  So far, 24 craters on the moon are named after Muslim scholars, the last name is Ulug Beg for his contributions to astronomy at the Ulug Beg Observatory in Samarqand.

Accomplishments

According to Michael Hamilton Morgan in his book The Lost History, Khwarizmi showed the way of not only building of 100 story towers and mile long bridges but the very essence of designing the modern computers; calculating the point at which a space ship will intersect with the orbit of Jupiter’s moon; the reactions of nuclear physics; the cellular processes of biotechnology; pharmaceutical and marketing research; the calculus of global economy; the language and intelligence of computer software and the confidentiality of modern phone conversations.

In the book The Genius of Islam – How Muslims Made the Modern World, the author Bryn Barnard wrote that Islam’s best known contribution to humanity is the translation of ancient knowledge into Arabic, and when this knowledge became known to medieval Europe, it started the Renaissance, which is the starting point of the modern world.

He highlights the Islamic achievements as follows:

1. Mathematics was upgraded to calculate charity, inheritance, and taxes; astronomy was retooled to accurately establish the direction and precise times of prayer and fasting and used to create maps and navigational tools to the pilgrimage to Makkah; architecture evolved to build mosques, palaces and homes: irrigation and horticulture were developed to keep a growing population fed; medicine and pharmacology were expanded to keep people healthy; efficient communications methods were invented to keep them informed.  Muslim merchants in India liked the Hindu Indian numeral systems of nine numerals and zero the decimal and positional system. In the 13^th century, Muslim numerical system was adopted in Spain and Italy allowing later on to understand Newton’s calculus and Einstein’s theory of relativity in time and space.

2.  Muslim learned to make paper when they spread into Central Asia in 8^th century.

Before Islam, Arabia’s main art was oral poetry. The Qur’an itself was initially only recited. When the Qur’an was finally written down – the art of Calligraphy flourished, resulting in the demand for paper. The Islamic world evolved from a memory based oral culture to a scribal and printing society which now uses 300 million tons of paper in one year worldwide.

3.  In architecture, Islam’s most influential element is the pointed arch allowing building walls to be thinner and buildings higher. The pointed arch was first used in 705 in building the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

4.  Islam gave the idea of a hospital. In Persia, sick people went to a center called Beemaristan “place of the ill” – where they were treated by a specialist. The first Muslim Beemaristan was built in Damascus in 706. By 1106, there were sixty in Baghdad and fifty in Cordoba, Spain. The first European medical school was founded in Palermo, followed by Montpellier, Bologna, Padua in Italy and then in Paris, France. Designed on Muslim templates, they were called – hospitals – from the Latin word for “guest”.

5.  Few things are more fundamental to modern civilization than crank-and-connecting-rod mechanism like wheel, a crank, and rod of an automobile. The wheel is a prehistoric idea. The crank is a Chinese invention of a rod or knob attached to the side of a wheel, allowing it to be pushed and pulled. When a hinged rod is attached at a right angle to the end of a crank, the turning wheel moving the crank around pushes and pulls the rod back and forth. This simple invention was first outlined in 1206 by the Arab engineer Isma’il ibn al Razzaz al-Jazari (1136-1206) in his “Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices” in Arabic Kitab fi ma’rifat al-hiyal al handaiyya, along with descriptions of several mechanical devices.

6.  Considered as the most important document in the history of medieval engineering, the crank and rod mechanism allowed Muslim engineers to use waterwheels that drove many kinds of machines. This resulted in: Steam powered automobile with back and forth pistons in 1769; Steam powered ship with cranked rotating paddles in 1803; Gasoline powered airplane with cranked spinning propellers in 1903.

According to Bryn Barnard, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that this medieval Islamic invention makes the modern world go around; he further cites the following examples.

7.  Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (965-1040), 11^th century Muslim mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer introduced the idea of the bending of the light i.e. the Law of Refraction which was used by the Renaissance Europeans to create all manner of glass lenses. This discovery resulted in the design of camera, microscope, telescope, binoculars, projector, and glasses

8.  Islam’s impact on Western music world is significant, to say the least. Nearly every instrument in classical orchestra and pop music ensemble started out as a musical instrument from Arabia, Persia, Turkey, North Africa, or another part of the Islamic world. The marching band and the Western orchestra’s percussion section started as Muslim military music. Western composers Hayden, Mozart, and Beethoven composed Turkish music that used drums, a triangle, and cymbals. Muslim warrior music of Ottoman Empire is now regularly played at the Super Bowl.

This libraries and translation centers in Iraq and Spain attracted the best scholars from all over the world and laid the foundation for centuries of Muslim innovation. The books would become the West’s link to a Greek past, seen from then on through Muslim eyes.

Scholars & Philosophers

As the Islamic empire grew larger an elaborate system of religious law was developed called Sharia, preserving fundamental Islamic beliefs, and its application called Fiqah. There are four sources to look for answers and come to conclusion:  The first is Qur’an. The second source is Traditions – Hadees to see what the Prophet (pbuh) said and acted in a similar situation. If the two primary sources prove insufficient or inapplicable, then two additional sources Ijma and Qiyas are utilized to come to a decision. Ijma is the consensus of the Muslim community, meaning the view held by majority. Qiyas is to try to find similarity on an issue so that a comparison may be made based on Qur’an, Hadees, and then coming to one’s own conclusion. The Shia scholars added Opinion of the Shia Imams as the fifth source for Sharia and follow the Jafari school of thought, developed by the sixth Shia Imam Jafar al Sadiq (702-748).  The Sunni scholars developed four schools of thoughts on Islamic Jurisprudence and its legal system applied to all aspects of Muslim life:  Hanafi by Abu Hanifa (699-787); Maliki by Malik ibn Anas (715-795); Shafi by Mohammad Al-Shafi (768 – 820); and Hanbali by Ahmad Ibn-Hanbal (780- 855) who founded the most strict Hanbali school of thought.

In addition to the religious scholars or Ulema, another group of thinkers was interpreting all previous knowledge into a single system, a group known as the philosophers. The religious scholars divided the world between Muslims and non-Muslims. However, the philosophers placed the believers who were committing sins into a third category as Mutazilites or secessionists, and believed that every human act was not pre-ordained, man was a free agent, and reason is the main tool to discover truth independently of revelation. A rift now developed between religious scholars and philosophers when Abu Bakr al-Razi (841-925) said the miracles are just legends and heaven and hell are imaginary concepts and not physical entities. Nevertheless, the scholar-theologian Abu al-Hasan al-Ashari (874-936) had a theory that cause and effect were determined by God and he formed the Asharite group.

Abu Hamid Muhammed al-Ghazali (1058-1111) wrote The Aims of the Philosophers to explain Aristotle. He wrote a second book Incoherence of Philosophers and argued that faith can never be based on reason as reason’s function was to support revelation and all the truth we need we can find from the revelation. Ghazali came to the rescue of Asharites who were constantly competing with the Mutazilites doctrine. Ghazali also wrote Alchemy of Happiness and The Revival of the Religious Sciences explaining how the Sharia law is compatible with the Tariqa of Sufism. People loved his writings and the Mutazilites doctrine was discarded. Ghazali had a mental breakdown for several years and eventually became a Sufi – a movement which believed that reason does not lead you to ultimate truth but mystical ecstasy and obliteration of the self surely will. Regardless, the impact of not studying the sciences and inadvertently discarding reason and research was devastating to Muslim minds.

Unexpected Tragedies & Impact

After the reign of al-Mamun, the Abbasid caliphate was weakened by internal strife, and eventually fell under the control of Persians and Turks.  The Mongols, Genghis Khan (1162-1227) and later on his grandson Hulagu Khan (1217-1265) indiscriminately destroyed many cities. All books were burned, canals ruined and Caliph al-Mustasim was killed in Baghdad along with thousands. As a final touch, Tamerlane (1336-1405), the Mongol prince of Samarqand, decided to destroy Baghdad one more time in 1401, along with hundreds of other Islamic towns.

In Muslim Spain, internal fighting among the rulings kings resulted in disintegration into small kingdoms known as the Party of Kings. They built mini-alliances, sided with the Christian armies to defeat their own brothers, and eventually lost and destroyed their infrastructure. Result was a complete humiliation, annihilation, and defeat of an empire that took hundreds of years to build. The last ruler Abu Abd Allah was forced to leave his beloved Granada in 1492, in shame and misery, and died in Morocco in 1527.

The impact of the external forces along with internal strife decimated Baghdad, its Islamic culture and society. Religious scholars discouraged study of science and mathematics. West started learning new things from the vast translation efforts of Baghdad and Cordoba and making discoveries in 16^th century.

Aristotle is considered the founder of Western thought, forgetting that Ghazali, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd, wrote extensive commentaries and made Aristotle’s difficult ideas understandable to Europeans. Europe set out to deliberately forget its Islamic heritage. In 1345, the Tucson poet and scholar Petrarch demanded the expulsion of all Arab learning from European education and claimed Muslim inventions as their own. They replaced Arab star names with Latin ones. John Freely describes this in his book Aladdin’s Lamp – How Greek science came to Europe through the Islamic World. He says eventually the Muslim contributions to the West were barely a memory to all.

Michael Hamilton Jordan in his book Lost History describes the commonly held beliefs that the greatness of the West is based on the knowledge acquired from the Greek and Roman societies. He says history is simplified by assigning a period of Dark Ages when the West was hibernating and then suddenly the great scholars, scientists and mathematician wake up to create an industrial revolution. Religion plays an important part and the Judeo-Christian faith provides the catalyst to the awakening. This gives scant attention to anything that the Golden Age of Islam produced and preserved. The author says several theories exist to explain the past 1400 years. Oriental group theory says the Muslim world during the 8^th thru 13^th centuries developed a society which showed brilliance of thought; their curiosity led them to study books beyond their times and shores; the intense effort of translation from Greek, Roman and Sanskrit literature allowed discoveries in every field of human thought. A second group believes that Islam is inherently incapable of intellectual freedom, democratic values and hence social and scientific progress. A third group gives credit to Muslims in scientific superiority over West until the 15^th century as they could not keep up due to internal turmoil. The fourth liberal group emphasizes the higher values of Islam: quest of knowledge, equality of all before God, and thus is still hopeful of contributing. The fifth group takes credit for everything ever discovered.

The wounded civilization of Baghdad continued to flourish for a while in Egypt under the rule of Fatimid Caliphs but simply could not continue after the Mongol attack on Baghdad. There were glimpses of grandeur and splendor during the Ottoman, Safavid, and Moghul Empires up to the 18^th century. Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566) is known as The Lawgiver – in Arabic al-Qanuni, for creating hundreds of laws that remain in effect to this day. He introduced the uniforms and band in his army. His chief architect Mimar Sinan (1490 – 1588) built the most majestic mosques in Istanbul and Ankara.

The Safavid (1502-1736) Empire excelled in fine arts, paintings and building cities like Isfahan (called Nisf-Jahan – half the world). Its Naqsh-e-Jahan square with beautiful boulevards, gardens, and mosques is considered by UNESCO as World Heritage Site.

The Moghul Empire (1526-1857) in India left its mark of kings and monarchs that ruled in religious freedom, justice, peace, and harmony, and gave the world architectural monuments like Taj Mahal. However, the spirit of creation and innovation never really regained the original passion, despite attempts to rekindle the flame by the likes of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Allama Sir Muhammad Iqbal, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

I believe the problem with a majority of Muslim population worldwide today is not the socio-religious groups and their ideology and practice, or lack of religious schools and mosques, but an apathy and disinterest of learning and acquiring modern education, especially computer science. Some Muslim professionals prefer to have their children become Hafiz instead of becoming professionals like themself.  I was asked to fund tuition of a college bound girl of a poor Muslim family in Madras, India, her parents preferred that she get a degree in arts, than computer science.  In Hyderabad India, a Muslim family rents their apartment not to Muslims but to Hindu boys who pay rent on time because they are computer engineers. Compare this to the majority of Auto Riksha drivers in the city who are illiterate young Muslims, barely speaking English, seldom making ends meet, and their main goal in life is to acquire Steve Jobs gadgets.

In the United States, ask ourselves the question how a non-Muslim Indian Professor was selected to become the Dean of Business School of Harvard University? What qualities are we lacking to achieve such a prestigious honor? Is it not a tragedy that after diligently studying, getting degrees in medicine, engineering and business sciences from prestigious colleges, the brightest Muslim minds protesting in the name of religion, waste their lives either by killing themselves or attempting to kill innocent people, destroying public property, and as a result languishing in prison for life.

One way to interpret the modern predicament is the current mentality by some that any thought originating outside the revelation is evil and haram and other cultures are bad influences on Muslims. This could be due to colonialism and domination, its memory is still fresh on our minds. Some have visceral hatred for the West and some hate for its political policies. I think abandoning the very first command of “Iqra” – its emphasis on reading, learning, knowing, searching for reason – and instead looking for answers unwittingly from a single source, was akin to committing intellectual suicide.

I know that it is equally important to develop, besides scientists and computer engineers, Muslim politicians, journalists, writers, and artists in the civil society to keep the backward thinkers on the fringe.  I am still hopeful that the Best Days of Islam are yet to come, as I certainly have faith in the grit and resilience of our young generation, but until the majority of us break the cycle of accepting that ignorance is bliss, continue to blame our faults and actions on the Western countries, we will not only maintain our status quo but will slide downward.

I like to remind us what Allama Iqbal expressed poetically by quoting directly from the Qur’an Chapter 13, Verse 11:  “God never brings a positive change to a nation (Umma), unless the nation is determined to change itself”.

Compiled by: Azeem Farooki

Acknowledgement: Information in this article is extracted from Internet and history books listed below.  Errors in dates, names, and description of events are unintentional.

1. Lost History – Michael Hamilton Jordan              2. Aladdin’s Lamp – John Freely                                              3. Destiny Disrupted – Tamim Ansari                     4. The Genius of Islam –  Bryn Barnard