A CONTINUATION OF ARABIC-ISLAMIC CIVILISATION

 

 Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society

MODERN CIVILISATION:

 

A CONTINUATION OF ARABIC-ISLAMIC CIVILISATION

The present civilisation is, in respect of its merits, the continuation of the Islamic civilisation, with the difference that theocentricism, integralism and comprehensiveness have dropped off under the stress of certain well-known historical circumstances, culminating in its transformation into a purely sensate civilisation. However, its tragic inadequacy and diseased condition is now taken notice of by all sane-thinking Westerners, together with the necessity  of adopting the Islamic philosophy of civilisation for restoring the balanced accommodation of all the values and thereby reverting to the original Islamic civilization from which it sprang up. The thick curtain of hatred against Islam, nurtured assiduously for centuries by a scheming priesthood, is the only obstacle. But the goodness of human nature is bound to win the day, and the yearnings of the human soul for Truth and Beauty and Justice are bound to attain realisation. The light of reality has already begun to shine forth, as manifested in the following considered judgment of Prof. H.A.R. Gibb, the famous British orientalist:

 

“… in its foundations we have seen that Islam belongs to and is an integral part of the larger Western society. It is the complement and counterbalance to European civilisation, nourished at the same springs, breathing the same air. In the broadest aspect of history, what is now happening between Europe and Islam is the reintegration of western civilization, artificially sundered at the Renaissance and now reasserting its unity with overwhelming force. The student of history, though fearfully conscious of the pitfalls of analogy, cannot help recalling two earlier (though even then not the earliest) moments in this secular process of creative interaction between the two halves of the western world. It was the glory and the greatness of the Roman Empire that it united them under its imperium and that from that unity were born the spiritual forces which have governed the course of Western history ever since. Halfway between that age and ours occurred the first great intellectual adventure of Islam, when it absorbed the heritage of Hellenism and brought it to a new flowering, the seeds from which contributed to the Renaissance in Europe.

 

“The process could not end there. It is going on before our very eyes, on a wider and vaster scale, though the contrast offered by the Islamic world as a whole to the amazing technical progress of Europe may still blind us to it: and it may be that the sequel will be the same, that we must wait upon the Islamic society to restore the balance of Western civilization upset by the onesided nature of that progress … At all events Islam stands side by side with Europe in distinction from the true Oriental societies of India and the Far East … for the fullest development of its cultural life, particularly of its spiritual life, Europe cannot do without the forces and capacities which lie within Islamic society…

 

“Within the Western world Islam still maintains the balance between exaggerated opposites. Opposed equally to the anarchy of European nationalism and the regimentation of Russian communism, it has not yet succumbed to that obsession with the economic side of life which is characteristic of present day Europe and present-day Russia alike. Its social ethic has been admirably summed up by Professor Massignon: ‘Islam has the merit of standing for a very equalitarian conception of the contribution of each citizen by the tithe to the resources of the community; it is hostile to unrestricted exchange, to banking capital, to state loans, to indirect taxes on objects of prime necessity, but it holds to the rights of the father and the husband, to private property, and to commercial capital. Here again it occupies an intermediate position between the doctrines of bourgeois capitalism and Bolshevist communism’. 

 

“But Islam has a still further service to render to the cause of humanity. It stands after all nearer to the real East than Europe does, and it possesses a magnificent tradition of inter-racial understanding and co-operation. No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity, and of endeavour so many and so various races of mankind … Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of East and West is to be replaced by co-operation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition. In its hands lies very largely the solution of the problem with which Europe is faced in its relation with the East. If they unite, the hope of a peaceful issue is immeasurably enhanced. But if Europe, by rejecting the cooperation of Islam, throws it into the arms of its rivals, the issue can only be disastrous for both.”^[1]

 

Besides the above judgment of H.A.R. Gibb, the verdict of Arnold J. Toynbee, the fanatical crusader against Islam and zealous upholder of Christian cause, is also worthy of note. He says (Civilisation on Trial, London, 1957; pp. 87, 88, 205-209):

 

“What value are we to place on Islam ourselves? … Islam’s creative gift to mankind is monotheism and we surely dare not throw this gift away … Islam remains, with a mighty spiritual mission still to carry out … (italics, present writer’s). 

 

“Two conspicuous sources of danger—one psychological and the other material—in the present relations of this cosmopolitan proletariat (—i.e, westernised humanity—) with the dominant element in our modern Western society are race consciousness and alcohol; and in the struggle with each of these evils the Islamic spirit has a service to render which might prove, if it were accepted, to be of high moral and social value. 

 

“The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding moral achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue … It is conceivable that the spirit of Islam might be the timely reinforcement which would decide this issue in favour of tolerance and peace.  

 

“As for the evil of alcohol, it is at its worst among primitive populations in tropical regions which have been ‘opened up’ by Western enterprise … the fact remains that even the most statesmanlike preventive measures imposed by external authority are incapable of liberating a community from a social vice unless a desire for liberation and a will to carry this desire into voluntary action on its own part are awakened in the hearts of the people concerned. Now Western administrators, at any rate those of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ origin, are spiritually isolated from their ‘native’ wards by the physical ‘colour bar’ which their race-consciousness sets up; the conversion of the natives’ souls is a task to which their competence can hardly be expected to extend; and it is at this point that Islam may have a part to play. “In these recently and rapidly ‘opened up’ tropical territories, the Western civilization has produced an economic and political plenum and, in the same breath, a social and spiritual void… 

 

“Here, then, in the foreground of the future, we can remark two valueable influences which Islam may exert upon the cosmopolitan proletariat of a Western society that has cast its net round the world and embraced the the whole mankind; while in the more distant future we may speculate on the possible contributions of Islam to some new manifestation of religion.”

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[1] Whither Islam?, London 1932, pp. 376-379. (Italics, present writer’s).

Source

to be continued . . . . . 

Quranic Foundation & Structure Of Muslim Society In The End Times

THE ISLAMIC CIVILISATION IN IT’S AGE OF GLORY 3-3

 

 Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society

THE ISLAMIC CIVILISATION IN IT’S AGE OF GLORY

 

“… Christians and Moslems intermarried freely; now and then they joined in celebrating a Christian or Moslem holiday, or used the some building as church and mosque … Clerics and laymen from Christian Europe came in safety and freedom to Cordova, Toledo, or Seville as students, visitors, travelers.  

 

 “… Cordova … extraordinary general prosperity … streets were paved, had raised side walks, and were lighted at night; one could travel for ten miles by the light of street lamps, and along an uninterrupted series of buildings … was the focus and summit of Spanish intellectual life, though Toledo, Granada, and Seville shared actively in the mental exhilaration of the time. Moslem historians picture the Moorish cities as beehives of poets, scholars, jurists, physicians, and scientists; al-Maqqari fills sixty pages with their names. Primary schools were numerous, but charged tuition; Hakam II added twenty-seven schools for the free instruction of the poor. Girls as well as boys went to school; several Moorish ladies became prominent in literature or art. Higher education was provided by independent lecturers in the mosques; their courses constituted the loosely organized University of Cordova, which in the tenth and eleventh centuries was second in renown only to similar institutions in Cairo and Baghdad. Colleges were established also at Granada, Toledo, Seville, Murcia, Almeria, Valencia, Cadiz. The technique of paper-making was brought in from Baghdad, and books increased and multiplied. Moslem Spain had seventy libraries; rich men displayed their Morocco bindings, and bibliophiles collected rare or beautifully illuminated books … Scholars were held in awesome repute in Moslem Spain, and were consulted in simple faith that learning and wisdom are one.  

 

“… Abu Muhammad Ali ibn Hazm (994-1064), besides serving as vizier to the last Umayyads, was a theologian and historian of great erudition. His Book of Religions and Sects, discussing Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and the principal varieties of Mohammedanism, is one of the world’s earliest essays in comparative religion … Maslama ibn Ahmad (d.1007), of Madrid and Cordova, adapted the astronomic tables of Khwarizmi to Spain … Ibrahim al-Zarqali (c.1029-87) of Toledo made an international name by improving astronomical instruments; Copernicus quoted his treatise on the astrolabe; his astronomical observations were the best of his age, and enabled him to prove for the first time the motion of the solar apogee with reference to the stars; his ‘Toledan Tables’ of planetary movements were used throughout Europe. Abul Qasim al-Zahrawi (936-1013), physician to Abd-er-Rahman III, was honored in Christendom as Abulcasis; he stands at the top of Moslem surgeons; his medical encyclopedia, al-Tasrif included three books on surgery which, translated into Latin, became the standard text of surgery for many centuries. Cordova was in this period the favorite resort of Europeans for surgical operations. 

 

“… Cairo, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Baalbek, Aleppo, Damascus, Mosul, Emesa, Tus, Nishapur, and many other cities boasted of colleges; Baghdad alone had thirty in 1064. A year later Nizam al-Mulk added another: the Nizamiya; in 1234 the Caliph Mustansir founded still another, which in size, architecture, and equipment surpassed all the rest; one traveler called it the most beautiful building in the city. It contained four distinct law schools, in which qualified students received free tuition, food, and medical care, and a monthly gold dinar for other expenses; it contained a hospital, a bath-house, and a library freely open to students and staff. Women probably attended college in some cases, for we hear of a Shaikha—a lady professor—whose lectures … drew large audiences (c.1178) … Muhammad al-Shahrastani, in a Book of Religions and Sects (1128) analyzed the leading faiths and philosophies of the world, and summarized their history; no contemporary Christian could have written so learned and impartial a work.  

 

“Europe knows Persian Poetry chiefly through Omar Khayyam. … His Algebra, translated into French in 1857, made significant advances both on al-Khwarizmi and on the Greeks; its partial solution of cubic equations has been judged ‘perhaps the very highest peak of medieval mathematics’. Another of his works on algebra (a manuscript in the Leiden Library) studied critically the postulates and definitions of Euclid. In 1074 the Sultan Malik Shah commissioned him and others to reform the Persian calendar. The outcome was a calendar that required a day’s correction every 3770 years—slightly more accurate than ours … 

 

“Jalal-ud-Din Rumi (1201-1273) … wrote several hundred poems. The shorter ones, collected in his Divan or Book of Odes, are marked by such depth of feeling sincerity, and richness, yet naturalness, of imagery as place them at the top of all religious poetry composed since the Psalms. Jalal’s main work, the Mathnawi-i-Ma‘nawi (Spiritual Couplets), is a … religious epic outweighing in bulk all the legacy of ‘Homer’. 

 

“The Moslems continued, in this period (1057-1258), their unchallenged ascendancy in science. In mathematics the most signal advances were made in Morocco and Azerbaijan; we see here again the range of Islamic civilization. In 1229 Hasan al-Marraqushi (i.e., of Marraqesh) published tables of sines for each degree, and tables of versed sines, arc sines, and arc cotangents. A generation later Nasir ul-Din al-Tusi (i.e., of Tus) issued the first treatise in which trigonometry was considered as an independent science rather than an appendage to astronomy; his Kitab shakl al-qatta remained without a rival in its field until the De Triangulis of Regiomontanus two centuries later. Perhaps Chinese trigonometry, which appears in the second half of the thirteenth century, was of Arabic origin. 

 

“The outstanding work of physical science in this age was the Kitab Mizan al-hikmah … written about 1122 by … Abu’l Fath al-Khuzini. It gave a history of physics, formulated the laws of the lever, compiled tables of specific gravity for many liquids and solids, and proposed a theory of gravitation as a universal force drawing all things towards the centre of the earth. Water wheels … were improved by the Moslems; the Crusaders … introduced them into Germany.  

 

“In 1081 Ibrahim al-Sahdi of Valencia constructed the oldest known celestial globe, a brass sphere 209 millimeters (81.5 inches) in diameter; upon its surface, in forty-seven constellations, were engraved 1015 stars in their respective magnitudes. The Giralda of Seville (1190) was an observatory as well as a minaret; there Jabir ibn Aflah made the observations for his Islah al-Majisti, or Correction of the Almagest (1240). The same reaction against Ptolemaic astronomy marked the works of Abu Ishaq al-Bitruji (Alpetragius) of Cordova, who paved the way for Copernicus by destructively criticizing the theory of epicycles and eccentrics through which Ptolemy had sought to explain the paths and motions of the stars. 

 

“The age produced two geographers of universal medieval renown. Abu Abdallah Muhammad al-ldrisi was born at Ceuta (1100), studied at Cordova, and wrote in Palermo, at the behest of King Roger II of Sicily, his Kitab al-Rujari (Roger’s Book). It divided the earth into seven climatic zones, and each zone into ten parts; each of the seventy parts was illustrated by a detailed map; these maps were the crowning achievement of medieval cartography, uprecedented in fullness, accuracy, and scope. Al-ldrisi, like most Moslem scientists, took for granted the sphericity of the earth. Rivaling him for the honor of being the greatest medieval geographer was Abu Abdallah Yaqut (1179-1229) … he completed his Mu‘jam al-Buldan (1228)—a vast geographical encyclopedia which summed up nearly all medieval knowledge of the globe. Yaqut included almost everything—astronomy, physics, archaeology, ethnography, history, giving the co-ordinates of the cities and the lives and works of their famous men. Seldom has any man so loved the earth. 

 

“Botany, almost forgotten since Theophrastus, revived with the Moslems of this age. Al-ldrisi wrote a herbal, but stressed the botanical rather than merely the medicinal interest of 360 plants. Abu’l Abbas of Seville (1216) earned the surname of al-Nabati, the Botanist, by his studies of plant life from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Abu Muhammad ibn Baitar of Malaga (1190-1248) gathered all Islamic botany into a vast work of extraordinary erudition, which remained the standard botanical authority till the sixteenth century, and marked him as the greatest botanist and pharmacist of the Middle Ages. Ibn al-Awan of Seville (1190) won a like pre-eminence in agronomy; his Kitab al-Falaha (Book of the Peasant) analyzed soils and manures, described the cultivation of 585 plants and fifty fruit trees, explained methods of grafting, and discussed the symptoms and cures of plant diseases. This was the most complete treatment of agricultural science in the whole medieval period.  

 

“In this as in the preceding age the Moslems produced the leading physicians; of Asia, Africa, and Europe. They excelled especially in ophthalmology … Operations for cataract were numerous. Khalifah ibn abi-Mahasin of Aleppo (1256) was so confident of his skill that he operated for cataract on a one-eyed man. Ibn Baitar’s Kitab al-Jami’ made medicinal-botanical history; it listed 1400 plants, foods, and drugs, 300 of them new; analyzed their chemical constitution and healing power; and added acute observations on their use in therapy. But the greatest name in this acme of Moslem medicine is Abu Marwan ibn Zuhr (1091-1162) of Seville, known to the European medical world as Avenzoar. He was the third in six generations of famous physicians, all of one family line, and each at the top of his profession. His Kitab al-Tasir, or Book of Simplification of Therapeutics and Diet, was written at the request of his friend Averroes, who (himself the greatest philosopher of the age) considered him the greatest physician since Galen. Ibn Zuhr’s forte was clinical description; he left classical analyses of mediastinal tumors, pericarditis, intestinal tuberculosis, and pharyngeal paralysis. Translation of the Tasir into Hebrew and Latin deeply influenced European medicine.    

                             

“Islam led the world also in the equipment and competence of its hospitals. One founded by Nurud-din at Damascus in 1160 gave free treatment and drugs during three centuries: for 267 years, we are told, its fires were never extinguished. Ibn Jubayr, coming to Baghdad in 1184, marvelled at the great Bimaristan Adadi, a hospital rising like some royal palace along the bank of the Tigris: here food and drugs were given to the patients without charge. In Cairo, in 1285, Sultan Qalaun began the Maristan al-Mansur, the greatest hospital of the Middle Ages. 

 

Within a spacious quadrangular enclosure four buildings rose around a courtyard adorned with arcades and cooled with fountains and brooks. There were separate wards for diverse diseases and for convalescents; laboratories, a dispensary, outpatient clinics, diet kitchens, baths, a library, a chapel, a lecture hall, and particularly pleasant accommodation for the insane. Treatment was given gratis to men and women, rich and poor, slave and free; and a sum of money was disbursed to each convalescent on his departure, so that he need not at once return to work. The sleepless were provided with soft music, professional story-tellers, and perhaps books of history. Asylums for the care of the insane existed in all the major cities of Islam. 

 

“… Mohammedanism produced its greatest theologian, the Augustine and the Kant of Islam. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali was born at Tus in 1058 … wrote his most influential book— Tahafut at-Filasifa (The Destruction of Philosophy). All the arts of reason were turned against reason. By a ‘transcendental dialectic’ as subtle as Kant’s … seven centuries before Hume, al-Ghazali reduced reason to the principle of causality, and causality to mere sequence … In his Ihya Ulum al-Din (Revival of the Sciences of Religion) he expounded and defended his renovated orthodoxy with all the eloquence and fervour of his prime; never in Islam the sceptics and the philosophers encountered so vigorous a foe … 

 

“Abu Bekr (Europe’s Abubacer) ibn Tufail (1107-1185) … found time to write, among more technical works, the most remarkable philosophical  romance in medieval literature (Hayy ibn Yaqzan). It took its title from Ibn Sina, and (through Ockley’s English translation in 1708) may have suggested Robinson Crusoe to Defoe. 

 

“… known to Islam as Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Rushd (1126-1198), and to medieval Europe as Averroes—the most influential figure in Islamic Philosophy … In 1169 Averroes was appointed chief justice of Seville; in 1172 of Cordova … His work in medicine has been almost forgotten in his fame as a philosopher: he was, however, ‘one of the greatest physicians of his time’, the first to explain the function of the retina, and to recognize that an attack of smallpox confers subsequent immunity. His encyclopedia of medicine (Kitab al-Kulliyat fil tibb), translated into Latin, was widely used as a text in Christian universities … he added several works of his own on logic, physics, psychology, metaphysics, theology, law, astronomy and grammar … Maimonides followed in Averroes’ steps in seeking to reconcile religion and philosophy. In Christendom the Commentaries (of Averroes), translated into Latin from Hebrew, fed the heresies of Siger de Brabant, and the rationalism of the School of Padua, and threatened the foundations of Christian belief. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote his Summae to stem this Averroistic tide; but he followed Averroes in the method of his Commentaries, in divers interpretations of Aristotle … Roger Bacon marked Averroes next to Aristotle and Avicenna, and added … ‘The philosophy of Averroes today (c.1270) obtains the unanimous suffrage of wise men’. 

 

“The influence of Islam on Europe was varied and immense.” 

 

Source

to be continued . . . . . 

Quranic Foundation & Structure Of Muslim Society In The End Times