CULTURAL OSMOSIS AS A VEHICLE FOR DIALOGUE AMONG CIVILIZATIONS

Gholamreza Vatandoust

G. Vatandoust is currently Assistant Professor of History
at Shiraz University. He holds a PhD in Middle East History and Civilization
from the University of Washington. He has worked on a number of anthologies
and bibliographical surveys, including Introduction to Iranian Studies: A
Bibliographical Survey, Selected Texts: A Reference Guide to the History of
Iran (Vol. I), Readings on the Roman, Christian, and Islamic Civilizations,
and Readings on the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Persian, and Greek
Civilizations.

This paper attempts to look at the contributions of the Islamic
civilization as it emerged and served as a bridge after the fall of the Roman
Empire, and the disintegration and gradual development of European medievalism.
Following the onslaught of the Germanic tribes that forced their way across
Europe and into the Roman Empire, the disintegration of the European world
seemed inevitable. However, correspondingly, with its birth and rise in the
7^th century, the newly founded religion of Islam had much to offer
mankind. As the third and final monotheistic religion of the world, its message
was a universal message of brotherhood. Thus, while Islam sought to combine the
integral message of Judaism and Christianity, its universal message, together
with its advancement in science and philosophy, served as a critical link
between the medieval world and the Renaissance. In fact, it was the Islamic
Renaissance between the 8^th and 12^th centuries that did
much to help Europe emerge from its nearly 1000 years of medievalism. The West
tends to credit the Islamic world as a mere transmitter of Greek knowledge to
the Christian civilization. This paper tries to show that this assumption is
certainly incorrect and that Muslim, including Iranian, scholars managed to
break fresh grounds and present new postulates and theories in nearly all fields
of human endeavour.