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Science Under Islam - Rise, Decline and Revival

LULU EDITION

Publisher: Lulu.com

ISBN 978-1-84799-942-9

The book can be ordered from http://www.lulu.com

See also http://www.scienceunderislam.com

S. M. Deen, 2007All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without theprior written permission of the author.


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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Today Islam is often equated with backwardness, and is treated as a

creed that cannot face the world moving forward and hence is al-ways looking backward. It is viewed in the West as anti-science and

anti-intellectual, a religion that has nothing to offer to "man and hisworld" in the science-driven 21st century. Yet, it was Islam that car-

ried forward the torch of enlightenment from the Greeks to the mid-dle ages, laying down a foundation from which arose not only the

European Renaissance, but also the early modern science with all its

associated triumphs from the Copernican heliocentric planetarysystem to modern-day hospital practices. So, how is it that the Islamthat had created a civilisation when there was so little of anything,

has become so sterile when there is so much more of everything. It is

a story of rise and decline in the pursuit of intellectual excellence

that should be of interest to all human beings, and particularly toMuslims, who have a legitimate craving to recreate their past glory.

This book attempts to tell this story in terms of the scientific devel-

opments that took place, the reasons for the subsequent intellectualdecline that can be discerned and the spirit for revival that can be re-kindled.


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The Golden Age of Islam began in the mid-eighth century, withthe Abbasid takeover of the Khelafa from the Umayyads, when the

military conquests for the Islamic empire was replaced by a strong

desire to achieve intellectual conquests on behalf of Islam itself byrevealing its greatness and universality in harmony with rationalism.The inspiration came directly from the hadiths such as: Go even as

far as China to seek knowledge. The knowledge seekers travelled notonly to China, but also to India, ancient Mesopotamia, ancient

Egypt, and to Greece where they collected the thoughts of Aristotleand other Greek giants. Their approach was based on freethinking

and their objective was to reach the frontiers of knowledge from alldirections, and to apply the knowledge gathered to define an intellec-

tual universal Islam, as a choice for all men who inhabited this earth.But soon orthodox Muslims, who looked backward rather than for-

ward, struck back eventually succeeding in banishing the foundationof rationalism from Islam and in creating an Islam that is backward,

anti-intellectual and anti-science. The conservatives carried withthem the largely uneducated masses, by frightening them with the

imagery of the eternal hell-fire that would consume them in the af-terlife if they did not tow the orthodox line.

In this book we shall examine the rise and decline of scienceunder Islam, and explore some thoughts on the revival of science in

Muslim societies, particularly the change in attitude that would berequired for such a revival. As regards this chapter, the presentation

will include a background of Muslim interest in knowledge and sci-ence from religious perspectives, the start of the Golden Age of Is-

lam and the dreams of Khalifa Mamun. Since the Islamic GoldenAge was based on Greek science, we shall also present below brief

notes on Greek science and its subsequent plight under Christendom,leading to its cultivation under Muslim rule.

1.1 Quran and Hadiths on Science and Knowledge

The Quran and hadiths (sayings of the Prophet) often exhort Mus-

lims to seek knowledge and to ponder the mystery of God's Creation,

the universe and its content. About an eighth of the Quran talks

about tafakkurand tashkeel1

, which can be interpreted as science and

1two words together imply meditation (or thinking about) [i.e. tafakkur] on the

form and structure [i.e. tashkeel] of the God's creation.


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technology. The entire universe and its content are signs of God's ac-tivity which the Muslims are urged to reflect upon and understand.

No religion has given a more powerful incentive for the study of sci-

ence. Science is thus essential for fulfilling the Quranic recommen-dations. There are also many hadiths exhorting Muslims to seekknowledge. Here are some of them [Tur97]:

1. Go even as far as China to seek knowledge.

2. Scholar's ink is holier than martyr's blood.3. He who pursues the road to knowledge, God will direct him

to the road to paradise.4. The brightness of a learned man compared to that of a mere

worshiper is like that of a full moon compared to that of allthe stars.

5. Obtain knowledge; its possessor can distinguish right fromwrong, it shows the way to Heaven.

6. Seeking knowledge is required for every Muslim

The early Abbasid scholars believed in these Prophetic endorse-ments, to seek knowledge to reveal the mystery of the God's Crea-

tion and thus to build an intellectually vibrant and flourishing Islam.This they achieved with the help of Arabs, non-Arabs, Muslims and

non-Muslims.

1.2 The Spirit of the Abbasids

There were many factors that helped create the Abbasid Golden Age.Under the Khalifa Mansur (754-775 CE), Rashid (786-809 CE) and

Mamun (813-833 CE), a major drive for learning was initiated, bor-rowing ideas from the Persians (with their sense of history and cul-

ture), from the Christian Syriacs (with their linguistic versatility),from the Harranians (with their Hellenic heritage), from the Indians

(with their ancient lore and mathematics), and above all from theGreeks (with their vast storehouse of ancient knowledge). All ideas

were infused to establish a superculture, under the aegis of five

Khalifas, those three mentioned above and also two others: Mutasim

(833-842 CE) and Wathiq (842-847 CE). The Persians, with theirimperial heritage, became the favourite of the Abbasids, as the for-

mer excelled not only in administration and finance, but also in allbranches of arts, literature, philosophy and science.


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The Khalifas created the environment for learning and intellec-tual excellence. Mansur provided the first spark through his great

translation project, which was carried forward by his second son

Rashid, with even greater enthusiasm. He established the KhaznatulHikmah (Treasure-house of Wisdom) in Baghdad, later called BaitulHikmah (the House of Wisdom), under the direction of competent

scholars. This House became an important centre where translationof scientific and philosophical works from important foreign sources

(Indian, Persian and especially Greek) was undertaken. Materialprosperity enabled the people to participate in cultural activities and

to conduct the search for knowledge. The elite joined in with theKhalifas, in funding the translation work, to demonstrate their cul-

ture and respectability.Sponsorships of scholars became the norm, debate and discourse

became the sign of status. It never happened before as if all theGreek city states, with their manifold scientific endeavours, had

squeezed into the single city of Baghdad. If there was ever a time inhuman history when seeking truth and knowledge was the most fash-

ionable thing to do, then that was it. Let us quote from Kindi (seechapter 10) to get the spirit of the time:

"We should not be timid in praising truth and in seeking it from

wherever it comes even if it be from distant races or peopledifferent from us."

Kindi, a protg of Khalifa Mamun, was a leading member of the

Mutazilite movement (see chapter 4) that became the advocate of ra-tional thought and pioneer of the intellectual and scientific develop-

ments under Islam. However, it was Mamun himself, patron of theMutazilites, who was the principal driving force. It was he who de-

veloped a keen interest in foreign cultures, sending delegations ofscholars to Asia Minor and Cyprus to bring back Greek books. He

even wrote to the Byzantine emperor for books of Greek learning,who after some hesitation complied. Mamun arranged measurement

of the diameter of the earth and sent out groups of scientists to inves-

tigate the geographic locations of various events described in the

Quran (such as ahl al-Qaf and Alexander the Great). He lavishly re-warded poets, philosophers, scientists, writers, and translators. The

general intellectual climate of this time was typified by the scholarlygatherings in the houses of the princes, high officials and wealthy


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patrons of learning. In these gatherings, the old scholars engaged inheated discussions on philosophical points, while the young scholars

developed their speciality in various branches of knowledge. Lin-

guists went on journeys in search of new tongues, geographers un-dertook expeditions to make new discoveries, librarians toured tofind and bring back new books of learning. Many rich families con-

tributed by supporting private endeavours and private libraries.Within two hundred years of the death of Prophet Muhammad,

book industries and libraries were established in every corner of theMuslim world. In the middle of the 13th century, there were 36 li-

braries (apart from al-Hikmah) in Baghdad alone. The placeabounded with authors, copiers, illuminators, librarians, collectors,

buyers and sellers of books. Readers, who could borrow books, camefrom all classes of the society and all religious affiliations. Some li-

braries were royal, some public, some private and some specialised.Books sold in one book-store alone had more than sixty thousand ti-

tles ranging over many subject categories, including: language andcalligraphy, Christian and Jewish scriptures, the Quran and commen-

taries, histories, government works, court accounts, pre-Islamic andIslamic poetry, Muslim schools of thoughts, biographies of the men

of learning, Greek and Islamic philosophy, mathematics, astronomy,medicine, literature, popular fictions, literature, travel (e.g. to India,

China and Indochina), magic and fables. Although compiled later,the fables ofThe Thousand and One Nights (also called The Arabian

Nights) depict that period.Many scholars themselves, such as Kindi, funded intellectual

works (of philosophers, scientists, translators, doctors and poets).Most of the translators of Greek books were Christians but most of

the philosophers were Muslims. Some doctors were Christians butmany more were Muslims. The search of knowledge under Islam

was conducted together by Muslims alongside Christians, Jews,Hindus and Zoroastrians. This was unparalleled in the history of any

other religion, and has only been equalled in the modern seculartime. If you were of a great family, you had to go for scholarship.

That was the social norm.

1.3 Mamun's Dreams

Khalifa Mamun was the greatest sponsor of knowledge-seekers.There are two versions of a dream in which he met Aristotle who in-


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spired him. Both are described below, as they are interesting storiesto read, the first from [Sab76/p181], and the second from

[Fak83/p55-76]:

Dream: Version 1

It is said that one day Khalifa Mamun, dreamed that a bald-headedman with a long beard, fair and ruddy complexion, broad forehead

and joined-up eyebrows was sitting on a couch. In awe and with atrembling voice the Commander of the Faithful (i.e. the Khalifa) in-

quired: Who are you? "I am Aristotle" was the reply. Mamun thenasked four questions:

1. What is good?

"That which is good by reason" was the reply.

2. What's next?"Whatever is good by the law".

3. What's next?

"That which is considered good by the people".

4. And next?"Nothing next".

Finally Aristotle advised Mamun to treat like gold whoever advised

him about gold and to hold onto the doctrine ofTauhid(strict unityof God in Islam). It was the consequence of this dream, so the story

goes, that Mamun decided to seek knowledge and for that purpose toaccelerate the translations of the books of the ancient philosophers

into Arabic.

Dream: Version 2

It is said that Khalifa Mamun spent a restless night, brooding over

his objective to establish an era of enlightenment in Islamic thinking

through the extension of the Baitul Hikmah (House of Wisdom), ini-tiated by his father Rashid. The extension was nearly finished, with a

library, a translation bureau and a school. As his project was about tobe completed, he had nagging doubts which kept him awake the


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whole night. The questions that kept him sleepless were: Was his ob-jective truly worthy in the eyes of God? Was it right to stimulate and

spread new ideas? Was it right to revive Greek philosophy the

wisdom of the ancients? Should he encourage reason and logic for adeeper understanding of God's universe and His truth in the revela-tions sent through the Prophet? But suppose reason and logic led

elsewhere away from God, what then? If man could not prove themysteries in the revelations, would it mean disapproval of God by

the intellect of man? What then? The troubled Khalifa finally dozedoff. He lapsed into a curious but relaxing dream, in which a smiling

long-bearded old man in Greek attire appeared. He recognised Aris-totle who gently touched his forehead with enlightenment: "There is

no conflict reason and religion are allies, not enemies", declaredthe revered sage. Then the sage disappeared. The Khalifa woke up

abruptly, relaxed and brimming with renewed confidence in his no-ble objective to serve God through knowledge, reason and logic.

For Khalifa Mamun to dream of Aristotle even in a story, he hadto know of Aristotle and of the Greek contributions to civilisation. It

is time we provided that background.

1.4 Ancient Greek Science

The origin of Greek science is usually traced back to Thales (c 624-565 BCE), born in the Ionian city of Miletus

2. Son of a Phoenician

mother, he was involved both in politics and business. His work latertook him to both Mesopotamia and Egypt, the two main sources of

Greek science in which Ionians played a major early role. He learntabout astronomy and eclipses from Mesopotamian temples, and by

sheer luck he correctly predicted the solar eclipse of 585 BCE in Mi-letus. This aroused a great interest in the whole of Greece, in the sys-

tematic observation of nature, with a view to deriving benefit fromit. Thales himself, a geometrician, generalised Egyptian calculations

on individual right-angled triangles that the square of the longestside in each case is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two

sides. The Egyptians knew it to be true for only specific numerical

2 Ionia in antiquity was the central Western coast of Asia Minor (present day Tur-key) and the adjacent islands (e.g. Samos), settled by the Greeks in around 1000

BCE. Miletus, also founded in around 1000 BCE, was an important costal city inIonia, but largely destroyed in 494 BCE by the Persians.


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examples. Thales was followed by a succession of Asiatic Greek sci-entists, mostly from Miletus. Among them was Thales' pupil Anaxi-

mander (611-547 BCE) who constructed the first maps, and intro-

duced the sun-dial, both based on ideas borrowed from Mesopotamiaand Egypt.

These Ionians continued to visit foreign lands in order to bring

back, consolidate and generalise the knowledge gained, thereby con-tributing to the economy and business, and also to create what they

called the Religion of Science. Some of the later thinkers devotedthemselves entirely to philosophy, one of them was Heracleitus

(540-475 BCE), who gave us the statement: "everything is in a stateof flux".

The first scientist to fall foul of the orthodox was the IonianAnaxagoras (488-428 BCE), who moved to liberal Athens in 464

BCE and subsequently became known as the father of Athenian sci-ence. He gave scientific accounts of eclipses, meteors and rainbows.

He declared that the sun was a vast mass of incandescent metal, andthat moonlight was reflected sunlight. Although he successfully de-

fended himself against the charge of impiety, he felt it prudent tospend the rest of his life in his native Asia Minor. Another scientist

Aristarchus (c 310-230 BCE) of Samos (an Ionian Island) was thefirst person to propose the concept of heliocentric planetary system,

but he was persecuted for this impious view. In more recent times hewas given the title Copernicus of Antiquity.

Plato (427-347 BCE) differed much in his philosophical ap-proach from that of his great master and mentor Socrates (470-399

BCE). Aristotle (384-322 BCE), pupil of Plato, deviated from bothof his celebrated predecessors, taking much from Anaxagoras. Aris-

totle was a son of a court physician, and later became the tutor ofAlexander the Great. He was the Greek genius who excelled in every

branch of knowledge, including logic, ethics, politics, metaphysics,physics, biology, psychology, poetry and rhetoric. He wrote over

400 books on these topics. There are not enough pages in this bookto do justice to this extraordinary man. It seems he even thought of

the Calculus, beating both the bickering Leibniz and Newton by

some two thousand years! This Greek genius was honoured by the

early Abbasids, but was detested by the later Muslim orthodoxy asure sign of their intellectual bankruptcy.

Democritus (c 470-400 BCE) of Miletus was a contemporary ofSocrates and gave us the notion of the indivisible atom as the ulti-


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mate constituent of matter, a concept that was revived by John Dal-ton in the early 19th century, though not experimentally verified un-

til Lord Rutherford determined its physical structure in 1911. How-

ever, today we know it to be divisible into other subatomic particles.Hippocrates (460-377 BCE) of the Greek island of Cos (or Kos,

off the South Western coast of modern Turkey) came from a family

of physicians, who founded a school of medicine in which he trans-formed the then medical tradition into a scientific procedure, using

fact-based inductive techniques. He insisted that diseases must betreated not as a divine punishment, but as something that has earthly

causes to be cured by the physicians. This was a revolutionary newapproach, replacing the religious brews and chants by actual medi-

cine3. Galen of Pergamon (129-199 CE) developed a medical sys-

tem, called the Galenic system (see chapter 8) in which he applied

ideas from both Hippocrates and Aristotle.

1.5 The Plight of Science in Ancient Christendom

In this section, we shall describe briefly how the orthodoxy in theancient Christian empires forced their scientists and philosophers to

take refuge in the Middle East, and thus paved the way for the culti-vation of science under Islam.

In 330 CE emperor Constantine (285?-337CE) moved the capi-tal of the Roman Empire to Byzantium, later named Constantinople

(present day Istanbul). Following the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE,Christianity became more doctrinaire, and some 50 years later em-

peror Theodosius (347-95 CE) turned his empire into an orthodoxChristian state. From the third century onwards there were few

Christian scientists of real originality in the empire, except in someminority sects such as Monophysites and Nestorians. The Mono-

physites mainly believed in a single nature of Christ as the divineWord, while perhaps as over-reaction to the Monophysites, the Nes-

torians in the main believed not only the dual nature of Christ butalso viewed him as two persons: a true man and God, and therefore

Mary is the mother of a man, not the Mother of God (a complicated

concept). However, the final death knell for science and philosophy

3 However, the famous Hippocratic Oath taken by all modern medical students

(and also by the 9th century Arabic students see chapter 8) was not probablywritten by Hippocrates himself.


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was issued by emperor Justinian (527-65 CE) who first persecutedand then banished the Nestorians and pagan philosophers from Ath-

ens. The great Athenian Academy (a centre of learning) was closed.

On a parallel track in the successive centuries, following thedeath of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, many Greek kingdoms,great and small, had been established all over Persia, among them

was the kingdom of Bactria (in the present Iranian province ofKhuzistan) created by a Greek Governor Diodatus in the third cen-

tury BCE. However, in 226 CE, Persian emperor Ardashir drove theGreeks out of Persia and established the secular Sasanid dynasty

which lasted until it was defeated by the Muslims in the seventh cen-tury.

Jundishapur4

was a city near the ancient Greek capital of Susa inBactria. In 489 CE, anticipating troubles from the Roman Christian

orthodoxy, the Nestorians wisely transferred their scientific centrefrom Edessa (now Urfa in South East Turkey) to a place close to

Jundishapur, which was then part of Khuzistan under the secularPersian rule. When emperor Justinian closed their Athenian Acad-

emy and banished the Nestorians from Athens in 529 CE, the Nes-torians scholars left the Roman Christian Empire to avoid persecu-

tion. Some of them went to establish a centre of learning (Academy)in Jundishapur, then under the reign of the Sasanid ruler Anushirwan

(531-579 CE), where they continued the study of philosophy, sci-ence and medicine, alongside pagan philosophers. The area was

conquered by the Muslims in 636 CE, with its great Academy and itsmedical treatment centre intact. As we shall see later, this Academy

became the catalyst for the Golden Age of Islam (see also chapter 8on medicine)

In Jundishapur, the Nestorians continued to carry out importantworks in medicine, astronomy and mathematics, and they translated

their instructions into Syriac5

to assist the local recruits. There werealso the Monophysites, who were also persecuted by the orthodox

Christians; they were working in Syria on similar subjects and trans-lated important scientific and philosophical works into Syriac. A

third group that assisted the Muslims in such translations were the

4

Strictly Jundi-shapur, which means a beautiful garden, but it is also spelled asJundeshapur, or even Gondeshapur in some English texts.5 The Semitic language (based on the dialect of Aramaic) of ancient Edessa, where

the scholars at the great Christian centre of learning wrote their works in this lan-guage between the 3rd and 7th century CE.


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Sabians of Harran in Mesopotamia. Apart from these Greek sources,ideas have also been absorbed by the Arabic scholars from the Ira-

nian Pahlavi (the ancient language of Iran) and Indian Sanskrit litera-

ture, but they are less well-documented (see pages 75-76).By 644 CE, the Arabs had conquered Syria, Iraq, Iran and

Egypt, and thus inherited the Greek centres of learning in those

countries. The translations and scientific work continued in Syriaand Khuzistan during the Umayyad period (661-750 CE) with its

capital in Damascus, but mostly independently of the rulers. TheUmayyads were too busy with expanding the empire and crushing

internal revolts. The exception to this was Khalid bin Yazid (a son ofthe second Umayyad Khalifa), who was known as the wise man for

his knowledge of astronomy and chemistry. He is said to have gottranslated a number of Greek scientific works into Arabic for his

personal use. However the Golden Age started with the Abbasids.

References and Sources

[Fak83] M. Fakhry: "Philosophy and History", The Genius of

Arab Civilization, J. R. Hayes (Ed), Second edition MIT Press, 1983,pp55-76.

[Sab 76] A. I. Sabra: Ch 7 - The Scientific Enterprise, Islam inthe Arab World, ed. B. Lewis, published by Alfred A. Knopf, New

York, 1976, pp.181-200. Abdulhamid I Sabra is a great Egyptianscholar and an authority in Arabic science.

[Sart27] George Sarton: Introduction to the History of Science,

Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1927. He has three huge volumes

(I, II, III) on science from Homer to the 14th Century the size is

equivalent to some 5500 A4 pages. Most scientists (including Ara-bic, Chinese, Indian and Japanese) are individually listed and contri-

butions described. These are indeed the books that made Arabic con-tributions to science well-known.

[Sart53] George Sarton: A History of Science, published by theOxford University Press 1953 on ancient science, containing some

1000 A4 pages.


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[Sart59] George Sarton: A History of Science, Harvard Univer-sity Press, 1959. This book covers Greek Science in the last three

centuries BCE. The size is equivalent to some 1000 A4 pages.

[Tur97] Howard R. Turner: Science in Medieval Islam, Univer-sity of Texas Press, 1997, ISBN 029278 1490.

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