Islams Gifts [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Islam and Intellectual
Advance

Most Westerners are ignorant of the debt their civilisation owes to Islam,
even for modern industrial transformation, scientific advance and philosophical
enterprise.

Islam came into the world in the bosom of one of the most backward of
peoples. In a very short time it had raised those tribes to pre-eminence in
every field.

Its greatest miracle was its appearance as a fullgrown adult of the spirit
in so degraded and poverty -stricken an environment.

Its second miracle was the raising of that environment, by sheer force of
inspiration, without any extraneous aids, to an unmatched destiny.

Its third was to create a cultural focus from which strong waves radiated,
stimulating renascence in other peoples of every background throughout the
world.

The changes it wrought compose history's greatest revolution so far, a
revolution in sense and sensibility, in thought and intellect, in relations of
individuals and communities, and indeed in every department of human life.

By the end of its first millennium Islam stretched from the Atlantic coast
of Africa in the west to the Great Wall of China in the east, from the
Mediterranean to the Sahara in Africa. In Spain its troops took first Andalusia,
then all Spain up to the Pyrenees, and even penetrated the south of France as
far north as Tours. All the "Jezirat-ul' Arab" was of course Muslim. From Muslim
Iran and Afghanistan other troops took Sind, the Punjab and the Gobi - and this
within a few short centuries.

In all its dominions the principles worked out in the Arab homeland were
applied to the new societies under its sway. In particular its justice, equality
and brotherhood, humane fruits of its meticulous care for the individual and his
place in society, which are the distinguishing marks of Islam, set their stamp
on the communities over this entire vast area.

The first task was the overthrow of tyrannies : the second was the
establishment of sound Islamic rule and respect for human rights : the third was
the illumination of intellect, research and thought: the fourth was the
propagating of the faith by its calm appeal to reason and logic and by its
profundity and breadth of vision: the fifth - and perhaps the most glorious
because the most anonymous-was the infection of other nations, of all creeds and
none, with its own superior moral, mental and spiritual outlook.

This last achievement not merely raised the general level of peoples of
every religion throughout the world, but also drew many proselytes to itself
from the idolaters of Arabia, the animists of Africa, the Magians and
Zoroastrians of Iran, and the Christians of Egypt and Syria.

Pre-Muslim Arabia had no trace of culture, no science, no erudition, no
economics; for geographical reasons Arabs lived in penury and squalor, the prey
of superstitions, isolated from world currents. Islam changed all that, and went
on to open the hearts and brains of men everywhere to new possibilities.

In far-off Andalusia a school of scholars, writers, mathematicians,
scientific researchers and philosophers arose, inspired by Islam to revive the
level of thought reached by the Greeks 1500 years earlier, and to move on up
from there to heights never before touched by man.

Modern scholars in every country,. even those whose prejudices would make
them prefer to maintain a critical and hostile attitude to Islam, more and more
draw attention to the speed of the spread of the Muslim faith, to its beneficent
results for mankind's prowess in thought and study, and the progressiveness of
the ideas which it brought to other stagnant civilisations.

It should be noted by all our "progressives" everywhere, that this brilliant
advance for all humanity was the concomitant of a moral self-discipline, of an
eschewing of the dissipation which follows upon loosing the reins of passion,
and of a deliberate control of the creative instincts, which channelled them
into works of artistic, intellectual, and social creativity worthy of mature
human beings. This inner discipline, which man needs, promotes the inner freedom
he desires; and it is one cause of Islam' s wide dominion over the minds of men
of the early Middle Ages. For it offered not merely sounder outward forms of
living but reassurance to the inner core of the spirit. It abolished the wild
persecutions brought about by purblind bigotry and by narrow-minded fanaticism.

It was for this reason that the Sultan Kemal-ul-Mulk, nephew of Saladdin,
talked as man to man, and as scion of the same spirit, to Francis of Assisi when
the Saint crossed the lines from the camp of the Crusaders under King Louis,
whom the Muslims had halted before Damietta. It was the same universal humanity
which caused the vast contrast between Omar's merciful treatment of the
Christians in Jerusalem when he conquered it, and the barbarous massacre of
Jerusalem's Muslim inhabitants by the European Crusaders who took it back for a
brief period 300 years later. Islam replaced such savagery with a constitutional
rule, a humanely regulated society, an overarching philosophy embracing all
mankind.

In Europe's Dark Ages, while the Church established its power over the
different nationalities, and fettered them in restraining bonds in a status quo,
Islam was building up a many-sided culture which laid the basis for that
flowering of science, knowledge, and artistic and technological creativity which
is called the "Renaissance". This was while the Church was condemning Galileo
for confirming Copernicus' theory of the orbiting of the earth round the sun,
and forcing him to his famous recantation: "I, Galileo Galilei, in the 70th year
of my age (1633 AD), on my knees before your Reverences (the Pope and Bishops)
with the Holy Scriptures before my eyes, take them in my hands and kiss them
while repenting and denying the foolish claim that the earth moves, and regard
that claim as a hateful heresy," even while he muttered rebelliously sotto
voce "Eppure si muove".

Yet 500 years previously our own great astronomer and mathematician Omar
Khayyam of Nishapur (floruit 2nd half of 11th century AD, when William the
Bastard was conquering England) had provided Iran with the Jalali Calendar which
to this day enables us to start our new year not merely on the day, but on the
exact hour, minute, and second that the earth terminates one orbit and starts
another round the sun at the vernal equinox! How few Westerners know this! They
think of him as a poet, though he was an indifferent one, but do not realise
that if they had picked up his wisdom they might have avoided all their
Gregorian alterations of the Julian calendar, and the loss of their "11 days"!

Roger Bacon (1214-1292 AD) the Franciscans' "Doctor mirabilis", was in the
reign of Edward I of England compelled to give up the experimental research into
science to which his lectures in Paris on Aristotle's works and in particular on
the " Liber de Causis" had led him', and was driven out from Oxford back to
Paris to be kept under the Church's eye-an eye too narrow and bigoted to see the
wealth of the scientific treasures he was offering them. He was arraigned as a
dabbler in devilish and satanic alchemy: and the mob was incited to yell for
this sorcerer's hand to be cut off and this Muslim' (!) to be exiled."

Nowadays European and American historians and scholars all recognise and
relate the fundamental contributions made by Islam to all modern advances in
science, mathematics, technology, philosophy, in many ways of which this brief
chapter has only been able to touch the fringe.

Cultural Revolution

No better evidence of the passion of Islam for the spread of erudition, from
its very inception, can be given than the words of the Prophet himself who said,
after the battle of Badr and the Muslims' victory, to the huge crowds whom they
had taken prisoner, that any of them who wished to buy their freedom but had no
cash for a ransom could employ their literacy as their resources; and any
polytheist who trained ten Muslims to read and write should win freedom. His
pronouncement was put into practice; and it was thus that a large number of his
original adherents were started on the road of education.

His nephew and successor, Imam Ali, on whom be blessing, declared that
the spreading of science and knowledge and culture and intellectual ability was
one of the merits to be coveted and achieved by every Muslim government. In the
record of his words it is reported that he said: "O people! I have rights over
you and you have rights over me. Your right over me is to insist that I shall
always give you guidance and counsel. and seek your welfare, and improve the
public funds and all your livelihoods, and help raise you from ignorance and
illiteracy to heights of knowledge, learning, culture, social manners and good
conduct."

215 years after the Hejra the Abbasid Caliph Ma'amoun founded a "House of
Wisdom" in Baghdad to be a centre of science, and furnished it with an
astronomical observatory and a public library for which he set aside 200,000
dinars (the equivalent of some 7 million dollars). He gathered together a large
number of learned men who were acquainted with foreign languages and different
disciplines, like Honain and Bakht-eeshoo' and Ibn Tariq and lbn Muqafa' and
Hajaj bin Matar and Sirgis Ra'asi, and others too numerous to mention, and set
aside a large sum for them, dispatching many of them to all the different
countries of the world to collect books on science, medicine, philosophy,
mathematics, and fine literature, in Hindi, Pahlevi, Chaldean, Syriac, Greek,
Latin and Farsi. It is said that the vast collections they sent to Baghdad
exceeded 100 camel loads!

Europe had not one university or cultural centre to show for itself in those
centuries when Islamic lands had large numbers staffed by experts and
specialists in all branches of knowledge. These Islamic centres were beginning
to radiate waves of brilliant new thinking to the world at the very moment when
the Crusades were launched. In fact it might be said that it was the new
learning fostered by Islam which itself furnished the Europeans with some of
their new thinking that made possible whatever prowess they achieved in those
disastrous wars and fired the passion of jealousy and cupidity which made the
West wish to seize for itself the treasures which they saw Islam bringing to the
nations under its sway.

Dr. Gustave Le Bon writes on page 329 of volume III of his "History of
Islamic and Arab Civilisation". "In those days when books and libraries meant
nothing to Europeans, many Islamic lands had books and libraries in plenty.
Indeed, in Baghdad's 'House of Wisdom' there were four million volumes ; and in
Cairo's Sultanic Library one million; and in the library of Syrian Tripoli three
million volumes; while in Spain alone under Muslim rule there was an annual
publication of between 70 and 80 thousand volumes."

G. l'Estrange in his "Legacy of Islam" page 230 writes: "The Mustansariyya
University was furnished with equipment and built in a huge campus with college
edifices of such splendour that its peer exists neither in the Muslim world nor
elsewhere. Its four law-colleges, each with 75 students and a professor who
taught the pupils gratis, paid its professor a monthly salary, while each of the
300 students was given a gold dinar a month. A college kitchen provided the
daily meals. Ibn-el-Farat says that the library contained priceless and unique
volumes, on many branches of science, for any student to borrow. Pens and paper
were provided for the notes anyone might wish to take. The university had
hammams (baths) and infirmaries. Its doctors conducted a daily inspection of the
colleges, and wrote prescriptions for any who were ill. The college stores were
able to dispense drugs prescribed, immediately. All this at the beginning of the
13th century AD!"

Dr. Max Meyerhof writes: "In Istambul the mosques possess between them more
than 80 libraries, with tens of thousands of books and ancient manuscripts. In
Cairo, Damascus, Mosul, Baghdad, and in cities of Iran and of India there are
other great libraries full of treasures. A proper catalogue of the precious
volumes in all these has not yet been published complete in print. Moreover the
Escorial library in the Iberian Peninsula contains a huge section filled with
books and manuscripts produced by the Islamic scholars of the West, which also
awaits completion of its cataloguing."

Dr. Gustave Le Bon writes on pages 55778 of his "Islamic and Arab
Civilisation". "The Muslims pursued the sciences with profound application. In
any town they took, their first act was to build a mosque and thereafter a
college. This led to the production of majestic institutions of learning in a
vast number of cities. Benjamin Toole (ob. 1173 AD) said that in Alexandria he
found more than 20 colleges at work. Baghdad, Cairo, Cordova, and other places
all had great universities with laboratories, observatories, huge libraries and
all the other requirements for tackling intellectual problems. In Andalusia
alone there were 70 public libraries. The library of Al-Hakem II in Cordova
contained 600,000 volumes and it took 44 volumes to catalogue the library' s
contents. When Charles the Just, four centuries later, founded the Bibliotheque
Nationale of Paris he was only able to assemble a total of 900 volumes, and that
after great labours, while one-third of that 900 were books on religion."

The same author on page 562 adds: "The Muslims launched science on the road
of exactitude, experiment and forward-looking discovery by hypothesis, with a
particular enthusiasm, while producing books and treatises and high schools that
spread their intellectual prowess to all corners of the world. They thereby
opened for Europe the road to its renaissance. So it is with justification that
the title of "Europe's Professor' is given to the newly-arisen Islamic power,
since it was through them that the treasures of ancient Greek and Roman science
were rediscovered and enhanced and given back to Europe as she began to emerge
from the Dark Ages."

Josef Marc Kapp writes, concerning the first centuries of Islam's progress
in culture, in his book '"Muslim Splendour in Spain" (p.170). "Even the lowest
classes in society were athirst to learn to read; and humble workers limited
their expenditure on food and clothing and spent their last sou on buying books.
One worker collected such a library that men of learning flocked to him. Freed
slaves and the children of slaves entered the ranks of the learned; and men like
V afyat-ul- A'iyan lbn Khalkan laid the foundations for great progress".

Nehru wrote concerning the benefits conferred on social progress and the
cultural revolution of the Muslims in Andalusia in his book "A Glimpse at World
History" (p.413): "Cordova had over a million inhabitants, a magnificent public
park of about 20 kilometres and suburbs stretching40 kilometres, with 6,000
palaces, mansions and great houses, 200,000 smaller houses of beauty, 70,000
stores and small shops, 300 mosques, 700 hammams with hot and cold baths for
public use. There were innumerable libraries of which the most comprehensive and
important was the Royal Library, which contained 400,000 volumes. Cordova
University was famous throughout Europe and in western Asia. At the same time
education was provided for the poor. Indeed one of their contemporary historians
writes that nearly everyone in Spain in those days could read and write, while
in the rest of Christian Europe, apart from the monks and clearly persons who
were educated through religious houses, no one, including the highest members of
the nobility, thought it worth his while even to attempt to master basic arts of
reading." To illustrate these claims I append eight extremely brief chapters,
each on a different branch of science or culture; my debt I gladly acknowledge
to Arnold and Guillaume's ."Legacy of Islam" (publ. O U.P. 1931) to which I
refer any reader who wishes to extend his information.

Medical Science

Dr. Meyerhof writes in "The Legacy of Islam" (p.132). "Muslim doctors
laughed at the Crusaders' medical attendants for their clumsy and elementary
efforts. The Europeans had not the advantage of the books of Avicenna, Jaber,
Hassan bin Haytham, Rhazes. However they finally had them translated into Latin.
These translations exist still, without the translators' names. In the 16th
century the books of Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Avicenna (Ibn Sina) were put out
in Latin translation in Italy and used as the basis of instruction in the
Italian and French universities."

On page 116 of the same work he writes that after Rhazes' death the works of
Avicenna (AD 980-1037) were taken up. His influence on thought and philosophy
and general science was profound, and his medical works (based on the works of
Galen which he had found in the Samarqand library in Arabic translation) had a
sensational outreach. Other scientists followed - Abu'l-Qais of Andalusia;
lbn-Zahr of Andalusia; Abbas the Irani ; Ali ibn-Rezvan of Egypt; Ibn Butlan of
Baghdad-Abu Mansur Muwaffaq of Herat. Ibn Wafeed of Spain; Masooya of Baghdad;
Ali Ibn-Esau of Baghdad; Ammar of Mosul; Ibn-Rushd (Averroes) of Andalusia.
whose works translated to Latin were used in European universities. Europe knew
nothing of the cholera bacterium when Islam entered Spain, and the people there
regarded the disease as a punishment sent from heaven to exact the penalty of
sins : but Muslim physicians had already proved that even the bubonic plague was
a contagious disease and nothing else.

Dr. Meyerhof writes of Avicenna's book "The Canon" that it is a masterpiece
of medical science which proved its worth by being printed in a series of 16
editions in the closing years of the 15th century AD, 15 Latin and one Arabic.
In the 16th century more than a score of further editions were published,
because of its value as a scientific work. Its use continued throughout the 17th
and 18th centuries, so that it became the most widely known. of all medical
treatises. It is still consulted in medical schools.

Will Durant writes that Mohammad ibn Zachariah Razi (Rhazes) was one of
Islam's most progressive physicians, author of 200 treatises and books well
worth studying today. in particular his

1. "Smallpox and Measles" (published in Latin and other European tongues in
40 editions between 1497 and 1866), and 2. "The Great Encyclopedia" 20 volumes
mostly unobtainable nowadays: five volumes were devoted to optics; translated
into Latin AD 1279. printed in five editions in 1542 alone; known as the most
authoritative work on the eye and its ailments and treatment for centuries; one
of the nine basic works on which Paris University composed its medical course in
1394 AD.

Surgery made similar progress in the hands of Islamic practitioners, who
even used anaesthetics, though these are assumed to be of modern origin. They
employed a henbane base.

Among Rhazes' innovations was the use of cold water to treat persistent
fever, of dry-cupping for apoplexy, of mercury ointment and animal gut for wound
sutures, and many others. Further information on Islamic medicine can be sought
from the many books on the subject. The diagnosis of tuberculosis from the
fingernails, the cure of jaundice, the use of cold water to prevent hemorrhage,
the crushing of stones in bladder and kidney to facilitate their removal, and
surgery for hernia are among advances too numerous to mention in detail. The
greatest of Islamic surgeons was Abu'l-Qasem of Andalusia, affectionately called
Abu'l-Qays, and sometimes Abu'l-Qasees, floruit 11th century AD inventor of very
many surgical instruments and author of books to describe them and their uses -
books translated and printed in innumerable editions in Latin and used all over
Europe, the last such edition being in 1816.

Pharmacology

Gustave le Bon writes : "Besides the use of cold water to treat typhoid
cases - a treatment later abandoned, though Europe is taking this Muslim
invention up again in modern times after a lapse of centuries-Muslims invented
the art of mixing chemical medicaments in pills and solutions, many of which are
in use to this day, though some of them are claimed as wholly new inventions of
our present century by chemists unaware of their distinguished history. Islam
had dispensaries which filled prescriptions for patients gratis, and in parts of
countries where no hospitals were reachable, physicians paid regular visits with
all the tools of their trade to look after public health."

Georgi Zeidan writes: "Modern European pharmacologists who have studied the
history of their profession find that Muslim doctors launched many of the modern
beneficial specifics centuries ago, made a science of pharmacology and compound
cures, and set up the first pharmacies on the modern model. So that Baghdad
alone had 60 chemists' shops dispensing prescriptions regularly at the charges
of the Caliph. Evidence of these facts can be seen in the names given in Europe
to quite a number of medicines and herbs which betray their Arabic, Indian or
Persian origin." Such are "alcohol, alkali, alkaner, apricot, arsenic," to quote
some 'a's alone.

Hospitals

Georgi Zeidan continues: "Within two centuries of the death of the Prophet,
Mecca, Medina and the other great Muslim cities all had hospitals, while the
Abbasid governors and their ministers competed each for his own region to have
the best such institution for the care of the sick. Baghdad alone had four
important hospitals. By three centuries after the Hejra the governor
Adhud-ud-Dowleh Deylamy had founded the Adhudi Hospital with 24 specialists,
each master of his own particular field, a hospital which soon earned the
reputation of excelling all hospitals throughout Islam, though in the course of
time it too was surpassed.

The order and arrangement of Islamic hospitals was such that no distinctions
of race, religion or occupation were recognised, but cure was administered with
meticulous care to any patient. Separate wards were allotted for patients of
specific diseases. These were teaching hospitals where the students learned
theory and observed practice. In addition, there were travelling hospitals which
carried doctors and their gear by camel or mule to every district. Sultan
Mahmoud the Seljuk travelled with a hospital which required 40 camels for its
transport."

Dr. Gustave le Bon writes: "Muslim hospitals went in for preventive medicine
and the preservation of health as much as if not more than for the cure of the
already diseased. They were well-aired and had plenty of running water. Muhammad
bin Zachariah Razi (Rhazes) was ordered by the Sultan to seek out the healthiest
place in the Baghdad neighbourhood for the construction of a new hospital. He
visited every section of the town and its environs, and hung up a piece of meat
which he left while he looked into infectious diseases in the neighbourhood and
studied climatic conditions, particularly the state of the water. He balanced
all these various experimental tests and finally found them all to indicate that
the place where the portion of meat was the last to putrefy and develop
infectious bacteria was the spot on which to build. These hospitals had large
common wards and also private wards for individuals. Pupils were trained in
diagnosis and brought observation and experience to the perfecting of their
studies. There were also special mental hospitals, and pharmacies which
dispensed prescriptions gratis."

Marc Kapp writes: "Cairo had a huge hospital with playing fountains and
flower-decked gardens and 40 large courtyards. Every unfortunate patient was
kindly received, and after his cure sent home with five gold coins. While
Cordova, besides its 600 mosques and 900 public hammams, had 50 hospitals."

Chemistry

Jaber ibn Haiyan, disciple of the sixth Imam Ja'afar-i-Sadeq, became known
world-wide as "the Father of Chemistry" and of Arab alchemy. His influence on
Western chemistry and alchemy was profound and long lasting. Some hundred of his
works survive. Of him the late Sayyid Hebbat-ud-Din Shahristani of Kadhemain,
once Iraq's Minister of Education, writes: "I have seen some 50 ancient MSS of
works of Jaber all dedicated to his master the Imam Ja'afar. More than 500 of
his works have been put into print and are for the most part to be found among
the treasures of the National Libraries of Paris and Berlin, while the savants
of Europe nickname him affectionately 'Wisdom's Professor' and attribute to him
the discovery of 19 of the elements with their specific weights, etc. Jaber says
all can be traced back to a simple basic particle composed of a charge of
lightning (electricity) and fire, the atom, or smallest indivisible unit of
matter, very close to modern atomic science."

The blending of colouring matters, dyeing, extraction of minerals and
metals, steelmaking, tanning, were amongst industrial techniques of which the
Muslims were early masters. They produced Nitric Acid, Sulphuric Acid,
Nitro-glycerine Hydrochloric Acid, Potassium, Aqua , Nitrate, Sulphuric
Chloride, Potassium Ammonia, Sal Ammoniac, Silver Nitrate, Alcohol, Alkali (both
still known by their Arabic names), Orpiment (yellow tri-sulphide of arsenic:
arsenic is derived from the Persian zar = gold, adjective zarnee = golden,
Arabised with article "al" to "al-zernee" pronounced "azzernee" and so taken
into Greek where it was turned to the recognisable word "arsenikon" which means
"masculine" since the gold colour was supposed to link it with the sun, a
masculine diety!): and finally - though this does not close the list we might
cite-Borax, also an Arabic word booraq. Further, the arts of distilling,
evaporation, sublimation, and the use of Sodium, Carbon, Potassium Carbonate,
Chloride, and Ammonium were common under the Abbasid
Caliphate.