The Muslim Influence on Europe and the West - Part 1 of 2 (Understanding Islam Series Session 6)
By Abdal Hakim Murad | 2026-01-13T23:11:55.585111+00:00 | Topic: Knowledge
The Muslim Influence on Europe and the West - Part 1 of 2
Understanding Islam Series: Session 6
Introduction
You may recall that in my second lecture I attempted to trace the always tense, often quite dismal story of the mutual comprehension or lack of it between the three great Abrahamic religions. I pointed out in particular the considerable overlap that exists in prophetic history and the disparities that exist, particularly concerning the last two of the great Abrahamic prophets, namely Jesus and Muhammad.
What I hope to do today is to trace other aspects of this long-standing historical interaction, not so much the religious side of things but other dimensions. The question of the transmission of science, technology, medicine, and philosophical ideas from the Islamic world to the world of the West, and as I go in my usual style I'll follow various red herrings which hopefully will elucidate some of the blank spots that have appeared in the various presentations so far.
The Impact of Islam on Medieval Europe
This is a complicated story, it's also a hugely important story. One could even call it the most important episode of cultural transmission in the world's intellectual history.
Trade as the Vehicle of Cultural Exchange
The first and historically also the most effective vehicle of such an osmosis was in fact the comparatively undistinguished, in some minds, vehicle of trade. We sometimes forget that Islam in the Middle Ages was a great commercial civilization, not just a great religious civilization whose preoccupations were very much focused on God, but also a very successful material culture as well.
Islam of course found this quite easy to achieve because it had its roots in a trading community. The Blessed Prophet was himself from Mecca, which was a great entrepot city which sent caravans of traders across the desert, rather in the way that say a city like Venice a thousand years later will be sending great arguses of galleons across the oceans. It was an entrepot city, very much as Venice was later to be, and we know that the Blessed Prophet himself had joined at least one caravan to Syria, and his precedent as an honest merchant in subsequent generations of Islam lent enormous prestige to the vocation of the trader, the businessman, the merchant.
Medieval Islam was not one of those civilizations which tended to regard the mercantile profession as a rather base and worldly vocation, it was regarded always with considerable esteem.
The Islamic Conquests and Unification
The second great dimension of this was of course the conquests themselves, which within a century of the Prophet's death had created this quite unprecedented unitive state which stretched from Provence in southern France, in the extreme west, all the way through to the borders of China in the east. And one consequence of this was that the great ancient iron curtain of the old world, namely that which had separated the Mediterranean cultures to the west from the eastern cultures, the Indian and the Persian, to the east, was suddenly no more. This great cultural divide had existed for at least a thousand years.
Alexander the Great had done the most to try and overcome it, but of course as we know his empire did not long outlive him. So this great new political fact which completely overturned all of the old certainties and all of the old intellectual and also of course economic patterns, was the basis for the foundation of this great mercantile civilization founded in the Middle East which since time immemorial had been by virtue of its geographic position the great nexus of trade.
The Golden Web of Trade Routes
This domination of the world economy by the cultures of Islam continued well into the 17th century. The obvious reason for its final unravelling was the European discoveries of routes around the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn and the creation first of all of the Portuguese maritime empires which brought to an end the effective domination of countries like Egypt which had handled previously the trade between Europe and India and also other civilizational factors.
But for this period of at least a thousand years there was Islam sitting astride the world's great trade routes, those routes that are sometimes known to economic historians as the golden web.
Major Trade Routes
And this golden web spread out from the Middle East. One of the trade routes in many ways the most lucrative allowed truly gigantic caravan trains including perhaps 50 or 60,000 people and as many animals to arrive on a regular basis from the great cities of China via Central Asia, cities like Samarkand and Bukhara to the Abbasid capital of Baghdad at that time, that is in the early Abbasid period, had a population perhaps of as many as 2 million.
From Baghdad the same goods would be transshipped on to various other destinations:
• Constantinople Route: One particularly important road linked Baghdad to Constantinople, the Byzantine capital, and then of course to Eastern Europe
• Yemen Route: To the south of Baghdad there was the also important trade route down to the Yemen, Yemen being the great source for spices and certain perfumes
• Persian Gulf Ports: There was also to the south of Baghdad the great trading ports of a place called Obulla which really no longer exists, and somewhat later this place was eclipsed by the growing importance of the city of Basra
Of course we have from that time the great maritime legends of Sinbad the Sailor which reflect the enormous cultural importance of this trade and of these two cities.
Maritime Trade Networks
Through Obulla and Basra, great sea routes linked the Islamic Empire to India, particularly the city of Surat in Gujarat in western India, and further afield to the Indies, that is to Sumatra and Java, where thriving Muslim communities soon grew up which provided over the peaceful Islamization of that part of the world.
Another important city was a place called Khulzum. Again it has largely vanished into the sands. The traditional Muslim name for the Red Sea was Bahr al-Khulzum, now they call it Bahr al-Ahmar, the Red Sea. And Khulzum was very close to the present-day city of Suez at the top of the Red Sea.
Engineering Achievements
The Muslims were particularly conscious of the importance of that isthmus, there were serious plans for the digging of what was later to be brought into reality as the Suez Canal and in following the instructions of the second caliph Omar, a canal was in fact dug but not to the north of Khulzum, but rather to the west connecting the city of Fustat, just to the south of present-day Cairo, with the city of Khulzum, right across the desert.
And the canal still exists, you can see it, and there's some ancient engineering works and buildings around it. And this of course acted as an enormous stimulus to world trade and cemented the importance of the Middle East in that pattern.
European Trade Relations
Finally, and probably of least significance, there was trade with Europe itself, and Europe was really something of a backwater on this great golden web, largely because Europe didn't have very much that the rest of the world wanted.
A few raw materials, a little bit of silver from the Balkans for instance, cinnabar came from places in Spain, cinnabar being the mineral from which mercury was traditionally extracted, and also raw materials, particularly fabrics, wool from England for instance, which found its way into the Middle East where it was in demand.
The Pirenne Thesis
You have to recall that by 800 at the latest the entire Mediterranean basin, not just its southern fringes, was dominated politically and economically by the Muslim presence. In fact there's a famous Belgian historian called Henri Pirenne, one of the great historical thinkers of the 20th century, who made his reputation 50 or 60 years ago now by publishing a book called Mohammed and Charlemagne.
Pirenne's idea was that Europe's self-awareness as an entity didn't exist under the Romans because Europe was simply part and parcel of a larger Mediterranean ecumenical space. But once the Arab conquests effectively amputated most of the provinces of the Roman Empire from the rest of Europe, then Europe started to turn in on itself and began to acquire a sense of its own identity. And Pirenne's thesis, as it's known, is actually generally accepted now by historians.
So this was one of the great formative influences of the Arab eruption on the history of Europe.
Muslim Settlements in Northern Mediterranean
I've mentioned that it wasn't just the southern Mediterranean and of course the eastern Mediterranean that was dominated by the Arabs, and of course by this time Spain was very firmly in Muslim hands as well, but there were also very significant Muslim settlements, colonies if you like, along the northern coast of the Mediterranean.
Fraxinatum
In particular we find, for instance, in southern France in a town nowadays, a small town called La Garde-Freinet, more usually known to historians as Fraxinatum. It's not far from present-day Nice. For the best part of 200 years there was a thriving Muslim city there, independent of the caliphate, but nonetheless very important. It was in fact the most important port of France in that period.
It only fell to the Franks in 973. Corsica and Sardinia were also in Muslim hands. In fact if you look at the national, well the regional symbol of Corsica, of course part of France, you'll see that it is a black head with a turban. They call it La Tête Mœure because so much of Corsica's medieval history is intimately tied up with its relationship with the Muslim world.
Italian Coastal Settlements
Also on the Italian coast you had in particular a number of small Muslim settlements, sometimes barely more than garrisons or fortresses along the coast. Amalfi was the best known of these and one reason for the fluorescence of Amalfi as the first of the great Italian Christian trading states was the fact that patterns of trade and local trading traditions had already been developed under the period of Muslim rule.
Sicily of course also becomes substantially a Muslim country until the time of the Norman invasion.
Arab Perceptions of Europe
And as I said the only break on this almost colonial expansion of the Muslim world towards the north was the fact that the Arabs generally were not terribly interested in Europe. They had this idea and indeed to a large extent the experience of Europe as a rather cold, unfriendly place, full of forests with no major settlements, no significant economic activity.
The fact that the great intellectual and spiritual life of Europe by this time becoming quite considerable was enclosed within monasteries didn't help and generally the medieval Arab stereotype was of Europe as a kind of dark continent, something quite barbarous and uninteresting.
European Demand for Islamic Goods
So the Arabs had a lot that Europeans, particularly in the emergent courts, the Ottonians, the Carolingians, wanted to import. They really wanted Arab spices, they wanted Finnish manufactured goods, particularly things like crystal goblets, gold, silver products, ivory in particular, fabrics and carpets.
And in fact if you look at European paintings really until the 17th century, usually you'll be able to spot in the background two or three things that clearly are not of European manufacture but come from the Islamic world. One way in which we have been able to piece together the history of Oriental carpets is by looking at paintings by people like Holbein who in their attention to detail would pick out in great detail the patterns on these carpets.
So luxury goods generally in medieval Europe were almost exclusively imported from Europe. And as I said Europe exported a few things in exchange, wool and so forth. Also slaves were a very important export from medieval Europe. The slave trade came to be dominated particularly by the Venetians, the Venetians were the great slave traders in that period.
Maritime Superiority
Now one reason why the Arabs found it so easy to dominate the Mediterranean was their superior knowledge of shipbuilding techniques. It's an interesting fact that not only did the early Muslims suddenly acquire the military prowess that enabled them to conquer the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Persia simultaneously, which you would think was some kind of military madness, the equivalent say of Upper Volta today simultaneously declaring war on the United States and Russia. In those terms it was quite comparable.
But they did that and they succeeded, they divided their forces, defeated both of these great empires. But something we less frequently recall is the fact that very rapidly the early Arab Muslims became a great maritime nation.
The First Muslim Fleet
Islamic Law
Now, the other thing that I wanted to talk about was the impact of Islamic law on European commercial practice. Islamic law was the most sophisticated system of law in Europe and it was very well known to European merchants.
Now, the basis of Islamic law is of course the Quran, but the Quran is not a law book. It's a book of moral guidance. It's a book of spiritual guidance. It's a book of ethical guidance. It's not a law book.
So, the Quran is supplemented by the Sunnah, the practice of the Prophet.
Now, the Sunnah is recorded in the Hadith, the traditions of the Prophet.
Now, the Hadith are not all of equal value. Some of them are considered to be more reliable than others.
So, the Quran and the Sunnah are supplemented by Ijma, the consensus of the learned.
And then finally, Qiyas, analogical reasoning.
So, these are the four sources of Islamic law.
Now, the Quran is the word of Allah.
"In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful."
Now, the Quran is supplemented by the Sunnah, the practice of the Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم).
Now, the Sunnah is recorded in the Hadith, the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم).
Now, the Hadith are not all of equal value. Some of them are considered to be more reliable than others.
So, the Quran and the Sunnah are supplemented by Ijma, the consensus of the learned.
And then finally, Qiyas, analogical reasoning.
So, these are the four sources of Islamic law.
Now, the Quran is the word of Allah.
Now, the Quran is supplemented by the Sunnah, the practice of the Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم).
Now, the Sunnah is recorded in the Hadith, the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم).
Now, the Hadith are not all of equal value. Some of them are considered to be more reliable than others.
So, the Quran and the Sunnah are supplemented by Ijma, the consensus of the learned.
And then finally, Qiyas, analogical reasoning.
So, these are the four sources of Islamic law.
Now, the Quran is the word of Allah.
Islamic Commercial Law
Now, Islamic commercial law is very sophisticated. It's based on the principle of riba, which means interest.
Now, the Quran forbids riba.
"And Allah has permitted trade and has forbidden interest."
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids gambling.
"O you who have believed, indeed, intoxicants, gambling, [sacrificing on] stone altars [to other than Allah], and divining arrows are but defilement from the work of Satan, so avoid it that you may be successful."
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids speculation.
"And do not approach the property of an orphan, except in the way that is best, until he reaches maturity. And give full measure and weight in justice. We do not charge any soul except [with that within] its capacity. And when you speak, be just, even if [it concerns] a near relative. And the covenant of Allah fulfill. This has He instructed you that you may remember."
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids fraud.
"Woe to those who give less [than what is due], Who, when they take a measure from people, take in full, But if they give by measure or by weight to them, they cause loss. Do they not think that they will be resurrected For a great Day - The Day when people will stand before the Lord of the worlds?"
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids hoarding.
"And let not those who [greedily] withhold of what Allah has given them of His bounty ever think that it is better for them. Rather, it is worse for them. That which they withheld will be [like a chain] around their necks on the Day of Resurrection. And to Allah belongs the inheritance of the heavens and the earth. And Allah is Acquainted with what you do."
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids monopolies.
"No one hoards but the sinner."
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids bribery.
"And do not consume one another's wealth unjustly or send it [in bribery] to the rulers in order that you might consume a portion of the wealth of the people in sin, while you know [it is unlawful]."
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids corruption.
"And do not deprive people of their due and do not commit abuse on earth, spreading corruption."
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids exploitation.
"And do not consume one another's wealth unjustly."
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids oppression.
"Indeed, Allah does not do injustice, [even] as much as an atom's weight; while if there is a good deed, He multiplies it and gives from Himself a great reward."
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids injustice.
"Indeed, Allah orders justice and good conduct and giving to relatives and forbids immorality and bad conduct and oppression. He admonishes you that perhaps you will be reminded."
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids discrimination.
"O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted."
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids coercion.
"There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion. The right course has become clear from the wrong. So whoever disbelieves in Taghut and believes in Allah has grasped the most trustworthy handhold with no break in it. And Allah is Hearing and Knowing."
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids usury.
"O you who have believed, fear Allah and give up what remains [due to you] of interest, if you should be believers."
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids speculation.
"O you who have believed, do not consume one another's wealth unjustly but only [in lawful] business through mutual consent. And do not kill yourselves [or one another]. Indeed, Allah is to you ever Merciful."
Now, this is a very important principle of Islamic commercial law.
Now, the Quran also forbids fraud.
radiated out from medieval Provence were largely drawing on the very sophisticated folk musical traditions of Spain.
Cultural Exchange
It was easy for troubadours and minstrels to cross this iron curtain between Christendom and Islam to perform one day in a Christian court and then travel and perform in a Muslim court and they were a great instrument of cultural osmosis again.
In fact in English one of our most popular rural traditions is the famous Morris dancers. I don't know if you've been to England and seen these usually rather soppy but half-drunk figures dressed in white with bells around their arms and legs sort of jumping about hitting sticks and generally looking a little bit absurd. You have them, okay. Well you'll be fascinated to learn that Morris dancers are actually Moorish dancers.
That's the origin of the word and the traditions as you'd expect have been greatly transformed over the ages and through the process of migration from Spain to England but scholars accept that that's the origin of this type of dance.
Poetic Forms
Troubadours as well, the word is said to come from an Arabic root meaning delight, usually applied to delight inspired by musical performance and one of the things these troubadours did was to introduce new poetic forms into Europe through song.
Generally Roman poetry had a fairly simple system of rhythm and didn't bother with rhyme. For the first time in the 13th and 14th century in Europe we start to find the consistent use of rhyming in poetry. We also find types of strophic poetry hitherto unknown in Europe and it's thought, although obviously these things are oral traditions and can't be definitively documented, that they come from Muslim Spain.
Also prosodic forms in popular culture, something called the Vili Antico which is still quite widespread in Spanish rural society, is an almost exact carrying over into a romance language of an Arabic poetic form known as the Zajal which was actually developed by the Muslims of Spain, it wasn't something they brought with them. Arabic literature flourished and was most innovative in Muslim Spain.
The Introduction of Paper
Another key impact of medieval Islam on Europe was the introduction of paper. Paper of course was not an Arabic invention, in fact the early Arabic word for paper which is Karid is actually a Chinese word, it's not an Arabic word at all.
And the legend has it that the Abbasids took some Chinese prisoners because the Chinese were very secretive and always guarded the secrets of these inventions like silk, which for hundreds of years
everybody wanted to know how silk was made, and it was only in the Middle Ages that the knowledge spread outside China.
Similarly with paper, it's said that in the 8th century some Chinese soldiers and sages, mandarins presumably, were taken prisoner and they were only released on condition that they showed their captors how to make paper. So we find in the year 800, we have an accurate date for this, the first paper mill is established outside China and it happens in Baghdad.
Europe is very slow to catch on, the first paper mill in Europe doesn't appear until the 14th century. Nonetheless paper was exported from the Islamic world and we find medieval Latin manuscripts increasingly written on paper rather than things like vellum as they had been previously.
Muslim Contributions to Science
So all of these things are cultural areas in which medieval European life was profoundly influenced by what was going on across the Mediterranean, and more generally one could remark on things like just the general style of refined living, the way in which people use textiles, the way in which they ate, the order that food was served at banquets and so forth. All of these things were imported generally from the East.
That's more or less all I wanted to say about Muslim contributions to the economic and general cultural life of Europe. I'd like to spend a few minutes now talking about Muslim contributions to science.
The Muslim Mentality
To understand this we have to grasp something of the mentality of the early Muslims. One of the most extraordinary features of them was their flexibility. I've mentioned that not only did they conquer the world basically, but they were very happy to become a great maritime power, something that was not part of their culture in Mecca and Medina.
And another extraordinary feature of their mentality was their very lively intellectual curiosity and openness of many of them to learning from other cultures. And this was particularly prominent in the case of other cultures which had dimensions which didn't seem to be explicitly religious or to conflict with the Quranic worldview.
There are many examples of this but the most conspicuous and famous one is of course the openness they showed towards aspects of the Greek cultural legacy. Not just philosophy, the most famous case, but also science.
The Translation Movement
So already in the 8th century we find classical Greek works being translated into Arabic, usually through the medium of Syriac and very often the early period it was Syriac Christian translators who were being
commissioned by the Caliphs to do this. But this activity which I think should be regarded as one of the great deliberate attempts to be open to another civilization.
It's a very, almost a unique example of deliberate importation of ideas and attitudes from outside rather than their gradual percolation. This process really took off with an Abbasid Caliph called al-Ma'mun.
Bayt al-Hikmah (House of Wisdom)
Ma'mun was one of the great early Abbasid Caliphs. You may recall I mentioned his support for the Murtazilite theology. And his dates are the dates in which he reigned. Ma'mun, very fascinated by theological questions, also increasingly interested in the possibilities for Muslim theology of, is that legible, of learning from the Greeks.
Greek ideas had started to percolate particularly into Murtazilite thought, hence his interest. And he decides to do this officially by actually founding an academy for the, primarily for the translation of Greek and to a lesser extent Syriac works into Arabic so that these could be part of the general patrimony of Arab Islam.
And this academy he called Bayt al-Hikmah, which means the house of wisdom. And it had a gigantic library, we're told over 100,000 volumes. Remember this is at a time where the largest library in Europe, which was in Paris, perhaps contained just 400 books.
So he had this gigantic library, different languages, and he also employed full-time scholars to teach there and also to carry out these translations.
Key Translators
And the best known of these early translators was actually a Syriac Christian by the name of Hunayn ibn Ishaq. This is in Baghdad, yes. Center of the world. The Christians tended to lead the field in the Arab East at least for the first hundred years of this process because very often they were of Syriac background and hence could translate the Syriac books and it was easy for them to learn an Arabic as well, Syriac being a Semitic language.
And also the fact that Hunayn ibn Ishaq was a Christian enabled him to travel around the Byzantine Empire where he assiduously used the Caliph's funds to purchase manuscripts of ancient Greek texts.
Medical and Philosophical Translations
Back in Baghdad Hunayn ibn Ishaq got busy and translated first of all the medical works of Hippocrates and Galen. Galen was particularly important in the medieval Islamic world, far more important than he ever became in Europe. In fact there were three times as many Arabic translations of Galen than there are Latin translations.
He goes on to show more interest in philosophy and he translates the key texts of Plato. So the Arabs for the first time have access to Aristotle, sorry, have access to Plato's Republic, Plato's laws and the Timaeus. And he also goes on to translate at least the logical works of Aristotle, the Organon.
Islamic Mathematics and Astronomy
Now of this great literature two fields seem to be of most immediate importance to the Muslims as they saw this burgeoning corpus of knowledge in their midst. Medicine and astronomy.
Medicine as a perennially popular practical science, unlike many of the Greek sciences it actually had a career at the end of it, so plenty of people started to study medicine. And also astronomy and one of the great reasons why astronomy became such a respected and widely cultivated science in the medieval Islamic world was of course because of the astronomical problems involved in the Muslim religion itself.
First of all how you figure out the times of the prayers and more taxingly how you determine exactly the orientation of the city of Mecca. If you're in a remote and unfamiliar place how on earth do you do it? Well to do it properly you need to get into things like spherical trigonometry and all kinds of fairly advanced geometrical tasks.
Al-Khwarizmi
And so we find astronomy and particularly its associated mathematical disciplines very assiduously cultivated by the early Muslims and in fact the first Muslim books which make extensive use of the Hellenistic legacy are books on mathematics. Now the great pioneer of Muslim maths was the great genius Al-Khwarizmi, one of the many drawbacks of computer uses that your handwriting degenerates but if you can't read these things let me know.
Al-Khwarizmi, Khwarazm, where he came from is that area of Uzbekistan on the southern coast of the Aral Sea. He came to Baghdad and he seems to have died round about the middle of the 9th century, we don't have an exact date for it. He was one of the scholars working at this place called Bayt al-Hikmah and the caliph asked him to produce a revised and more accurate set of astronomical tables. Either two tables of Ptolemy had continued in use.
And also asked him to update Ptolemy's work on on geography. And he does this and does it very well and in due season these works are widely accepted in Europe as well.
The Origins of Algebra
But his most important legacy is the very radical advances he made in the field of algebra. In fact the very word algebra, as is so often the case with words with the letters AL at the beginning, comes after the great work he wrote called Al-Jabr, which means something rather vaguely like equivalence or compulsion or necessary relations, that kind of thing.
And he was able to do this because he was one of the first to use modern-style decimal notation, i.e. the use of base 10 and the so-called Arabic numerals. It's a strange thing that although the Arabic numerals were called by the Arabs the Indian numerals, scholars don't have any definitive evidence to suggest that this represents direct influence from India. It remains hypothetical.
And this of course was a huge advance because the Romans had used the, in many ways, quite clumsy Roman numerals with the X's and V's and so forth, which as soon as you get into advanced mathematics become something of a nightmare. And the Byzantines, even more perversely, used base 16 hexadecimal system as the basis for their mathematical system, and of course also used in administration.
All of these did not just have abstract applications, but they also had very immediate implications for the way in which your bureaucracy operated, the way in which you kept accounts, the way in which you did business, and so forth.
Other Mathematicians
Another important Arab mathematician also associated with this Bayt al-Hikmah was a certain Jabir ibn Aflakh, known in the West as Geber, G-E-B-E-R, and he really is the great early pioneer of spherical trigonometry, which as you'll recall is this important discipline for figuring out the direction of Mecca, which has other advantages as well.
Also influential was somebody called Ibn al-Haytham, known because the Latins had understandable difficulty getting their mouth muscles around the Arabic syllables, known to the West as al-Hassan.
This was more or less inevitable because if you wanted to use these words in a Latin sentence you had to put suffixes and so forth on, so they tended to shorten and Latinize all of these names.
Ibn al-Haytham's Contributions
Now this Ibn al-Haytham character, he writes more than 50 books. At least more than 50 of them have survived. It's possible that he composed more, and the best known of these, again at the risk of overburdening you with these terms, really hugely influential work, was known as the Kitab al-Manazir, which you could translate legitimately as the book of optics.
The Latins called it Opticae Thesaurus, comprehensive book about optic matters. And he's very original in this book, and he goes more or less completely against the very revered authorities of Ptolemy and Euclid.
Revolutionary Optical Theory
The most radical thing he says in this book is that light rays do not move from the eye to the object, as everybody had hitherto assumed, but come from the object to the eye. And he demonstrated this in
Islamic Astronomy
Now, obviously, Ibn al-Haytham's discoveries were a very considerable application in the sphere of astronomy. The Arabs, again, making the most of their geographical position, had access to both the Greek and the Indian astronomical traditions. So they translated books not just from Greek but also from Sanskrit and also some books from Pahlavi, which was the pre-Islamic language of Iran. And they soon go on to make their own contributions.
So we find that the Arabic version of Ptolemy, amended and improved by a number of scholars, becomes known as the Almagest. And this immediately makes the journey over the frontier into Europe and becomes really the basis for astronomy right up to the time of Copernicus.
Astronomical Tables
Astronomers were also interested in what they called the Zij, that's Z-I-J, which are astronomical tables. And the best known of these was assembled by a man called al-Battani in about 900. And it's interesting that so accurate and satisfying were these tables that they were used in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich in England as late as 1749. So they have a career of about 800 years. They're not surpassed in that period.
Islamic Medicine
So that's astronomy. I want to talk a little bit more about medicine now. Because, if anything, the Arab contribution to medicine was even more fundamental than it had been to these other disciplines.
Pre-Islamic Medical Traditions
The Middle East, before the arrival of Islam, was already a major centre of medical practice and research through various teaching hospitals. And these tended to be staffed and operated by Nestorian Christians. The best known of them was at a city to the east of Baghdad, called Gondeshapur, which remained a significant centre for about 200 years into the Islamic period.
And, in fact, for the first 200 years of Islam, Nestorian physicians tend to be the best known. And a Nestorian Christian from Gondeshapur called Ibn Baqtishu, I'll write it up if you want, but it's not centrally important, he moves to Baghdad in about 800, hoping for caliphal patronage. And with cash from the caliph, he opens the capital's first medical academy.
The Bimaristan System
This is under the caliph Harun al-Rashid, probably the best known of them all. And this immediately establishes one of the most consistent cultural patterns and phenomena of classical Islam, namely the rich and the wealthy competing with each other, both to buy prestige in the eyes of the world and also to curry favour with God by endowing hospitals and teaching academies.
One of the most recurrent and characteristic features of a medieval Muslim city is the bimaristan, or the hospital. I mentioned, incidentally, already on Monday, the use of music therapy in some medieval Muslim hospitals and the treatment of medical disorders. But that was only part of a much wider system, which very often provided free treatment.
The Waqf System
And to understand how this was possible, not possible in some countries even today, of course, was a system known as the awqaf. Is this a familiar word? Waqf, awqaf, something that should be known. I'll give you the singular of it only. Perhaps slightly easier.
Waqf is roughly the equivalent, well the nearest thing to it in European law is the thing called mutmain, which means a charitable endowment in perpetuity, an inalienable endowment. And what this meant simply was that some wealthy pasha or amir would have a million dinars or so spare and he would sign a document in which this money was made over in perpetuity for the support of a particular establishment.
And generally the ruling of Islamic law was that the money itself had to be invested in a physical phenomenon so that land would become the endowment of a particular mosque or college or hospital or whatever, or shops. So you'll see sometimes in some Muslim cities that a mosque is actually built over a row of shops and that's because both were constructed by a particular patron and the shops are simply there to provide income for the maintenance and upkeep of the mosque.
So this institution, one of the most characteristic in medieval Islamic societies, it's been estimated that by the close of the Ottoman period around 40% of land in the city of Istanbul was actually held by these charitable foundations. An enormously important institution and one that did make possible free education for those who wanted it and also made possible these great hospitals.
Historic Hospitals
It's interesting to remark that the world's oldest continually functioning eye hospital is the waqf of a Mamluk sultan in Cairo called Sultan Qalaun who was I think 13th century. And I've actually visited it and it's next to his mausoleum, next to his mosque and it's been functioning, treating eye diseases for the best part of 800 years.
But just to give you an idea of the scale of operations which were made possible by this system there was also in Cairo one, almost certainly the world's biggest hospital called Al Mansouri and this could accommodate we are told 8,000 patients.
Advanced Hospital Features
And it had many of the features of modern hospital. Male and female patients were separated and there were separate wards for separate disorders. Particular diseases would be confined to different wards which has obvious advantages. There would be a ward for surgical cases, a ward for mental diseases and so forth.
The hospital had resident surgeons and physicians, also had nurses of both sexes. It had a separate dispensary, administrative section, storerooms, library, a lecture room and a mosque. So that unfortunately one of the inevitable concomitants of medical care seems to be the creation of bureaucracies and medieval Islam was no exception. So one minor branch of medieval Arabic literature is a genre of books about hospital management.
Medical Literature
But this was just the institutional framework. Medical theory itself also made great steps forward and in due course it utterly revolutionised the teaching and understanding of medicine in Europe as well. A kind of medical canon was created which included some 70 classical authors. Mostly Muslims but also including some Christian and Jewish physicians.
And this canon was translated in due course into Latin either directly or through the medium of Hebrew. The Jews of course in the Middle Ages being also known for their work as physicians. There are two people who become particularly well known, two great towering figures.
Razi (Razes)
One of them is Razi. I'll venture not to write his name up because it should be easy. R-A-Z-I. R-A-Z-I in this part of the world. He had again a Latin name, whether he knew it or not. Razes, which they thought was easier to pronounce than Razi.
He wrote a lot of books including some less known ones which indicate again some of the timeless features of the medical field. He has a book for instance called Why Frightened Patients Forsake Even the Skilled Physicians. And he has another one which also exists in the manuscript libraries of which he called Why People Prefer Quacks and Charlatans to Skilled Physicians. A number of sort of reflective books. As I say some things don't change.
But most famously he writes this truly tremendous book called Al-Hawi, which becomes known in Europe as Continens, which more or less means Al-Hawi, that which is inclusive, comprehensive, manual and medicine.
Gigantic multi-volume work which includes everything he knew about the medicine, not just of the Arabs but also of the Indians and the Greeks and so forth. So he proceeds chapter by chapter and in each chapter he says what the Greeks have said about this disease, what the Indians have said about this disease, what the Persians have said, what the Syrians have said and so forth. And at the end of these conclusions he adds his own clinical observations based on his own practice as a doctor.
And then gives his own opinion. This book was abbreviated and achieved very wide currency also in Europe under the name of Liber Regius. This was the textbook that they used. Again becoming sub- literate here. They used it in their own hospital in Cambridge at Addenbrookes well into the 17th century.
Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
Razi's only serious rival as a physician was of course the possibly even more towering figure of Ibn Sina. He dies in 1037. Again he has a soubriquet in the west. The great Avicenna, a Sheikh Ra'is, the great supreme master of this and of course of other disciplines. He was also a significant philosopher.
And his main contribution to medicine was another gigantic book called Al-Qanun. Known in the west as the Canon, the Canon of Avicenna. Translated into Latin in the 12th century, completely dominates medical teaching in Europe until at least the late 16th century. There are even cases of it being used in the 18th century in some hospitals in France.
So popular is it that in the 16th century alone, 20 different editions of the book are printed in Italy, all in Latin. And there are also endless innumerable commentaries on this book.
Al-Zahrawi
Another great physician, this time from Spain, was a man called Al-Zahrawi. Zahrawi's claim to fame lies in his great innovative skills in designing new medical instruments. In fact if you go to the new museum of Arab civilization in Cordoba, they've actually recreated some of his instruments from the very detailed illustrations that he gives in his manual. So the Arabs also become great exponents of the science of surgery.
Other Sciences
Other sciences, alchemy of course, the very word alchemy is of obviously Arab origin. Alchemy in the medieval Islamic world, as in Europe, had two dimensions. First of all the mystical, speculative dimension, the metaphor transmuting base metal into gold, which was seen as being a symbol for the transformation of the soul into something pure and incorruptible. And also the practical aspect of alchemy.
One of the things that Arabs did was, and this was largely the achievement of Ibn Sina, was to more or less discredit the notion of the transmutation of elements. They said one element simply cannot become another element. These are fundamental building blocks of existence and you can't turn one into another.
Botany
We also find some of these people writing on botany. Perhaps the best known writer amongst the Arabs on botany was a certain Ibn al-Baytar. Another Spaniard, he's from Malaga, quite late, I think 13th century. His name is said to be the origin of the word veterinary. Because he writes about the treatment of animals.
The Cultural Transmission Process
Now all of these thinkers form part of what I have described as probably the greatest single process of cultural osmosis in history. A two-fold process. First of all the enthusiasm of the Arabs for the old sciences of the Greeks. Then they pick this thing up and they run with it for a while. And then the Europeans take it and a second process of transmutation begins.
Now of course from the Eastern or Islamic perspective that's not the primary function of this process. These things continue to be developed within the Islamic world. And sometimes there's an excessive emphasis in Western texts on this period. On the role of the Arabs as a kind of bridge, as a mediator. The works of Aristotle, Plato and so forth largely been lost in medieval Europe.
And the Arabs came along and they handed them over intact to the Latins. Of course if I tried to demonstrate the Arabs did a good deal more than that. They actually completely revolutionised most of these disciplines. And even after the Europeans had picked them up they continued to be cultivated in the Muslim world.
But what's clear is that it was Muslim thought that kick-started medieval European Christian thought in all of these disciplines. It was Muslim thought that brought Europe out of the Dark Ages. And provided the foundations, many of the details as I'll explain in due course of Catholic scholastic theology ultimately opening the way to the Renaissance.
European Appropriation of Islamic Learning
Now I've spoken of this process so far largely from the point of view of the, as it were, exporting nations. And what I'd like to do now is to, as it were, hop over the Mediterranean and see how this thing worked from European perspective.
Gerbert of Aurillac
But this process was really inaugurated in a serious way by somebody called Gerbert. Quite a brilliant mind. Gerbert of Aurillac in France and he later becomes Pope as Pope Sylvester II. Dying in 1003. And Gerbert is in a better position than most of his compatriots to know about Arab science because in his early 20s he had been wandering around Catalonia. Almost the medieval equivalent of a present day hitchhiker.
He just wandered around and stayed in monasteries or wherever. And Catalonia at that time was only very recently recaptured from the Muslims. There were still memories of Muslim cultural activities, many books were still around.
And there's even a colourful legend current amongst the medievals that Gerbert also travelled to Cordoba where he took a Muslim teacher in the Great Mosque. And the legend goes on to say that he seduced the daughter of this teacher and stole his books and ran back to Europe with them. And in that way scholastic theology and early medieval renaissance began.
There's no evidence to suggest however that he was ever in Cordoba. But certainly he was in Catalonia where he was exposed to aspects of the Muslim heritage. Gerbert, very brilliant although in the 10th century more or less a lone figure, was the leading astronomer and mathematician of his time in Europe. Largely because of what he had learnt from the Muslims. He also introduces the astrolabe into Europe.
Medieval Medical Development
As far as medicine goes, again another practical science that often traverses cultural barriers more rapidly than do some other things. Early medieval Europe was extremely retarded in medical matters. The only people who tried to make a difference were the Benedictines who very often would open little clinics attached to their monasteries. Particularly well known was the great Benedictine house at Monte Cassino.
The Benedictines also occupied themselves increasingly with translating, particularly this book which they were very fond of, the Liber Regius, which is the summary of Razi's larger work. But slowly as people recognise, albeit sometimes reluctantly, the extraordinary merit of the Arab sciences, a tradition of translation starts to grow and it becomes more culturally acceptable.
That one rejects the Muslim religion but nonetheless can consistently say that one is open to more secular aspects of Muslim thought. This kind of duality is very characteristic of the medieval mind.
The Toledo School of Translators
And for obvious reasons this translation process gains momentum, particularly in Spain. Spain was a great area of overlap, particularly once the Muslim tide starts to recede, leaving little Muslim communities or Islamised Jewish communities or Mozarabic Christian communities, speaking Arabic, having access to these texts, marooned as it were, at the high water mark.
And this gathers momentum following the conquest of Toledo in 1085. Immediately we find, as I mentioned last time, Peter the Venerable, who comes up with this Cluniac corpus, which is mainly interested in understanding Islam and constructing a polemic against it, less relevant for the purposes of this lecture.
But we find, more interestingly, visiting Toledo, somebody called Dominic Gundisalvi. He is an Archdeacon of Segovia, devout Christian but nonetheless very open to learning from the Saracens. And he teams up with a converted Jew called Ibn Dawud. Gundisalvi himself appears not to have known Arabic particularly well, but the common pattern for these European translations was for them to be done in pairs, with a Christian cleric polishing the Latin, and for the raw translation being done by a native speaker of the language.
There are four or five very well-known instances of such a partnership. So he teams up with this Ibn Dawud and starts to translate some of this rich Arabic legacy.
Other Key Translators
Another important figure in this process, probably the second most important, is a certain Gerard of Cremona, dies in 1187, who translates over a hundred books.
The mathematical heritage is generally translated into Latin by somebody called Plato of Tivoli, who's operating in Barcelona on the eastern coast of Spain, translates a lot of these key texts of geometry and astronomy.
Another key figure, this time from England, was the monk Adelard of Bath, and we don't know too much about where he picked up his Muslim learning, but it seems that he probably travelled not just in the Christianised bits of Spain, but in Muslim Spain proper. There's another legend that suggests that he went and studied in the great mosque of Cordoba.
And he's the one who translates Al-Khwarizmi, remember this towering figure of mathematics and of geometry. And when he returns to England he becomes involved in the group that set up the University of Oxford.
Michael Scott
Another Brit was Michael Scott, who dies in 1236. He, we know, spent time in Toledo, and generally the
medievals were very hostile towards him because he seems to have been a kind of almost free-spirited person. And their way of polemicising against that, his excessive sympathy for the Saracen learning, was to describe him as a sort of occultist, magician or a wizard. So Dante has a very long graphic explanation of how he'll be punished amongst other wizards and sorcerers in the Inferno.
Interesting thing about Michael Scott is that he's also interested in the Muslim remains in Sicily. He travels to the court of the great Frederick II, who's the king of Sicily. Very extravagant, again rather free-willing, open-minded monarch, known as Stupor Mundi, the wonder of the world, because of the extraordinary things he did.
Eventually excommunicated, and he basically surrounds himself in this court with Saracen traditions. He eats Saracen food, he learns Arabic, he has Arabic physicians and philosophers at his court, he develops an appreciation for Arabic poetry. And he even, particularly shocking to the medieval mind, takes a bath every day, which was one of the reasons officially cited for his excommunication.
Medieval Attitudes to Hygiene
One of the least comprehensible aspects of medieval history is the way in which, following the decline of the Roman Empire, that great Roman institution, the Thermae, all the public baths, immediately shut down. So when Byzantium enters the Christian faith, although obviously it had tremendous advantages, one drawback was that they immediately closed down the public baths.
But this tradition is maintained in the Muslim world even today, the famous Hammam, the Turkish bath and so forth. But for medieval monks, this was regarded as something really a bit outrageous. And even today, in Eastern Christian spirituality, you'll still find a few people who regard physical hygiene as, in some strange way, incompatible with Christian faith.
Christian Monarchs and Islamic Learning
Frederick II, as I've mentioned, while remaining, it seems, a Christian, was actually very sympathetic to his Muslim subjects. Many Sicilians at that time were still Muslim.
Another example of this, not to be forgotten, is the great Alfonso X of Spain, known as Alfonso el Sabio, Alfonso the Wise, dies in 1284, rules the still largely Muslim city of Cordoba.
And if you go to this museum, which I mentioned earlier, which is called something like the Museum of Medieval Cordoba, I can't remember its exact name. It's a very up-to-date, high-tech museum, and you go into one room, and it's completely dark except for four life-sized waxworks.
And one of them is Ibn Rushd, the Muslim philosopher and jurist of Cordoba. One of them is Ibn Arabi, the great Muslim mystic, also taught in Cordoba. One of them is Maimonides, another Cordoba. And the fourth is the great Christian king, Don Alfonso el Sabio.
And one of the unnerving things about this museum is that they actually talk to you. You turn to one of these waxworks, and immediately he starts talking to you. And you can choose what language he speaks in.
But Alfonso el Sabio is an important reminder that it was indeed possible for medieval Christians, including monarchs, to be open to this Arab heritage.
The Jewish Contribution
There's a third dimension to this apparently two-way process of transmission, which as yet I haven't really mentioned. And that is, of course, the third party to the great Abrahamic family of religions, the Jews.
Now in Muslim Spain, under Umayyad rule, there develops a quite unique symbiosis between Arabs and Jews. And the most obvious initial reason for this was the fact that it was the Jews who had invited the Arabs in in the first place. They had been persecuted by the Visigoths. They sent a message to the Umayyad governor in Morocco saying, please come and deliver us because we know that things are much better for Muslims, for Jews in North Africa than they are for us. And in 711, Muslims go in and take Spain very easily, with Jewish support.
Jewish-Muslim Cooperation
So they're quite close to each other. And we find that the greatest Muslim monarch of Spain, the great Abdurrahman III, had a Jewish physician, Hasdai bin Shaprut. Actually, one of the more significant figures, I'll just give you his patronymic.
A great scholar of the Haggadah, the doctrinal exegesis of the Hebrew Bible. Bin Shaprut becomes very close to Abdurrahman III and he's appointed the chief Umayyad diplomat. So he goes off representing Umayyad Spain to various European courts and also to the east.
Bin Shaprut also establishes, with careful support, Spain's first Talmudic colleges. And the importance of this is that Hebrew immediately becomes a major academic scholarly language. The great medieval flourishing of Hebrew is basically the achievement of medieval Moorish Spain.
Jewish Scholars
So we find Spain becoming the great centre for Jewish civilisation in the Middle Ages. Maimonides, the most obvious example, died in 1204. Also somebody called Avicebron, that's Ibn Jabirol, who dies in 1058. I'll just give you his Latin name.
Rather like Maimonides, Avicebron is interested in the Jewish law and is a rabbi. But like Maimonides also he writes extensively on philosophy, particularly interested in the Aristotelian legacy.
So we find that thanks to these people like Bin Shaprut and then Maimonides and Avicebron, an extraordinary fluorescence of Jewish intellectual life. And the significance of this for the purposes of our lecture is that many Arabic works were first translated into Hebrew. And because of the Jewish diaspora in Europe, these works percolated into Europe and were subsequently, either through Jews who remained loyal to their religion or those who became Christians, became part and parcel of the general cultural patrimony of Europe.
So this is a second and also quite important channel by which the Arabic learning reaches Christendom.
The Mathematical Revolution
I've talked a little bit about the early medieval period and the impact of Islamic civilization on it. In particular I mentioned this Gerbert of Aurillac, who was the great, really almost the only star in the 10th century firmament.
But it was really not until the 12th century that the Arabic sciences truly start to become appreciated in Europe. In the 12th century and more especially in the 13th, we find Europeans starting to adopt the Arabic numerals in place of the very unwieldy Roman equivalents. And the key figure here was somebody called Fibonacci.
Leonardo Fibonacci
Another agile mind and an interesting customer, Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa. He in 1202 publishes a book on mathematics called the Liber Abaci, that's A-B-A-C-I. And he's interesting because his father had been a great merchant and was in fact in charge of the Pisan trading colony in the Algerian port city of Bijaya.
And it's thought that Fibonacci senior's dealings with Muslim merchants there made him aware of the superiority of the Arabic over the Roman numerals in accounting, keeping inventory records and so forth. So the elder Fibonacci sends his son to study with the Imam of a mosque in Bijaya who is also acquainted with mathematics. And Fibonacci junior turns out to have a great flair for maths as very occasionally does happen amongst young people.
And he comes up with this book while he's still young and immediately it revolutionises mathematical studies in Europe. It's taking up very quickly. The most important innovation in it was the invention of the zero.
The Zero
The zero comes from the Arabic word Sifr, S-I-F-R, which means empty, nothingness. It's an Arab invention. As well as the word zero, our word cipher for more unclear reasons also comes from this Arabic word Sifr.
Conclusion
There's more to say on this particular theme but with your permission I'll pause there. We can have some coffee and then afterwards I'll try and conclude this story and then we can have some questions.