Articles of Dialogue of Civilization [Electronic resources]

Lotfolah Afrasiabi, Nezameddin Faghih, Shireen. T. Hunter, Saied Reza Ameli, Vida Ahmadi ,

نسخه متنی -صفحه : 48/ 18
نمايش فراداده

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 7th 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 8th and 12th 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.