Islamic Civilization Part 4

Challenging the Decline Narrative

So now that we've gone over this broad overview of Islamic civilization, the question that always comes up is that, well, if there's this bright and glorious past, then why do we find Muslims in decline today? And there are a few different ways to look at this. Number one is to simply challenge this narrative of decline. A lot of times, for example, the fall of Baghdad is mentioned, the breakup of the Khilafah is mentioned, and in reality, societies were always affected by war.

Yes, something like the Mongol invasions was very detrimental to a major city like Baghdad. I recently went to Uzbekistan and visited the city of Tirmidh, the home of Imam Tirmidhi, and I was very surprised to learn that there is an ancient river port on the Amu Darya, the Oxus River, which was ancient Tirmidh, and there was an ancient Buddhist monastery in the area. And of course, there's the village of Bugh, where Imam Tirmidhi was born and raised and eventually moved back to at the end of his life and died there.

But Tirmidh really ceased to be the river port that it was after the attack of the Mongols. It kind of moved a little bit inward, and modern Tirmidh is not in the exact same spot. My point being is that the decline narrative, as if there was a heyday and then a sudden decline which is directly attributed to one or two or three different reasons, generally doesn't hold true when we read history as a whole.

Common Reasons Given for Decline

What are some of those main reasons that are always brought up? Well, the Mongol invasions, obviously, as they were a scourge on most of the populations that experienced them, until of course what happened, the Mongols themselves became Muslims and they became the Ilkhanid Horde, the Golden Horde. They set up their main capital in Kiev, in the Ukraine, and then they spread Islam through the same areas that they had previously attacked. Another reason is general religious conservatism, as this was seen as a problem, religious conservatism stopping Muslims from material advancement.

But as we've seen today, that's really not a reason, as the same scientists and philosophers and physicians and jurists were also extremely pious and practicing people of their faith. Another reason is attributed to scholarly critiques of philosophy and science. A popular trope in Western conversations on the issue is Imam al-Ghazali critiquing philosophy, and some will say Imam al-Ghazali critiquing scientific discovery.

Or material science, when in reality, as you see here George Saliba in his book about Islam and science, he says, in particular, the decline of Islamic science, which was supposed to have been caused by the religious environment that was generated by al-Ghazali's attack on the philosophers, did not seem to take place in reality. So where are people getting these ideas from? This is a general caution that you need to take from some, not all, but some Western sources on the study of Muslim societies, and that is to take one issue that is prevalent and extrapolate out from it a number of conclusions that don't actually follow from the evidence.

The Misreading of Al-Ghazali

So for example, Imam al-Ghazali in his book al-Mustasfa, as well as in Ihya Ulum al-Din and in a third book, he mentions the issue of communal responsibility. So there's the idea of communal responsibility and individual responsibility, known as فرض عين (fard 'ayn) and فرض كفاية (fard kifaya). So he asks the question, are learning trades and sciences and other beneficial points issues of individual responsibility or of communal responsibility, meaning that should the Muslim community always have someone who is of a particular trade and or training in order to help that community? And this was misread, this question that he posed was misread as if to say, no, they should not, or this is not considered to be individual religious obligations. And yes, because the individual religious obligations are for every single Muslim are the basics of his faith or her faith that's needed to practice.

So to say to the 90-year-old grandmother who simply wants to pray five times a day and make chai for her grandchildren and read the Quran, no, you need to go and learn advanced science. This is a ridiculous assertion, right? So it was a misreading of some of the texts that Imam al-Ghazali had mentioned. But it's one that was popularized.

Somebody that popularized it was Neil deGrasse Tyson in a public lecture or a TED talk that he gave about the naming of the stars or something like that. But it does not have, this narrative came from 19th century European historians first and foremost, and then was promoted, but it is simply more complex than an issue of a singular reason or a rise and then a fall. The sciences continue to actively grow in many regions after the supposed decline of Muslims.

The Complexity of Civilization

So the idea for us here is let's examine a little bit of what really happened. And was there a decline of any sort? So Brentjes says in his historiography, he says, for a history writing that aspires to investigate the ancient sciences in Islamic societies within the frameworks of these societies, decline is an inappropriate category. It is conceptually unsuited since a single category does not suffice for capturing the complexity of an entire society.

So if we're talking about a society or a civilization that spans from the Atlantic Ocean in the West to the Pacific in the East and North and South, what they call the 10-20 window on latitude-longitude, then to characterize all of these areas the same or similarly, given the population growth and the differing context that they live in, is just simply not a just way to look at things. Medical, astronomical, mathematical advances kept going in 1215. Advanced math texts were continuing to be copied in Baghdad's leading madrasah.

The Ottoman Empire patronized the sciences and scientists well into the 17th century. And as we mentioned, the Ilkhanids, the Mongols who converted to Islam, they were patrons of the sciences, especially astronomy. In fact, one of the grandsons of Tamerlane, Ulugh Beg, he had a very advanced observatory in what is now modern-day Uzbekistan.

So the idea is that decline is too simple of a term for a complex and diverse civilization. Now what the Mongol invasions did was they did not end or create a fall of civilization but they did transform the Muslim world. So they came in and their slaughter of many peoples were swift and almost total.

The Transformation After Baghdad

And when they attacked Baghdad, it was already 500 years old. It had already, you know, had started to see the pains of longevity. Now the fact that we still have Baghdad until today shows you that there ultimately was not an absolute fall. But the sack of Baghdad, where many books were thrown into the rivers, many people were killed, was an end of the Abbasid caliphate but not an end to Islamic civilization as a whole. And as we said, soon after this, the Mongols converted to Islam and they patronized the sciences. After having been, so Genghis Khan had his own religion, was an emperor in his own right.

His son, Hulagu, was a Christian, was a closeted Christian but he was a Christian. And he was in conversation with the kings of Europe. And one of the reasons for the sacking of Baghdad was to weaken the Muslims as they were being weakened in Al-Andalus in order to bring down the trade routes and the general strength of the Muslim ummah at that time.

So the destruction was real, but after this, there was a transformation of this energy into a new group of people who came to rule, built observatories, funded translations. They created new centers of learning. So you have Tabriz, Herat, Samarkand.

Samarkand entered Islam during the time of the companions. So, when Muawiyah was the Khalifa, he sent Qutaybah ibn Muslim to conquer. Qutaybah ibn Muslim took with him Qutham ibn Abbas, Abdullah ibn Abbas's youngest brother, the cousin of the Prophet ﷺ, who died in battle and is buried there in Uzbekistan.

So, Qutham is said to be the last person to be in the presence of the Prophet ﷺ because he was the last person to exit the grave as he and his brothers were the ones who buried the Prophet ﷺ. So Islam is very early in these areas. Samarkand went through a heyday, then it went through a decline, and then it went through another heyday again after the Ilkhanids and after Tamerlane. So while this was catastrophic for Baghdad, it did lead to transformation in other places in the Muslim world.

Multiple Centers of Islamic Civilization

So what did happen? Well, what happened was that multiple centers, instead of one central government, multiple centers cropped up. So you had the Ottoman Empire in the west, central in the west, you had the Safavids in the middle there, and then you had the Mongols in the east.

And so, in each of these areas, they developed their own centers, patronized scholarship, and through the 15th to the 16th centuries, there was continued architectural, artistic, and scientific achievements. There was no single center, but there were many flourishing regions. And the idea of there being a single ruler and a single center of Islamic influence was probably not true from the time of the last of the Umayyads and the beginning of the Abbasids.

So notice Arnold and his history, Thomas Arnold, he has a book that was written, I believe it was written in the 30s or the 40s, it's called The History of the Muslim World. And it's still today a very well-quoted book. He himself was a Jesuit priest who had traveled the Muslim world and studied Muslim history hands on.

He says, the successors of Tahudar were all heathen until in 1295, Ghazan, the seventh and the great of the Ilkhans, became a Muslim and made Islam the ruling religion of Persia. So, as we said, numerous centers that all patronized religious, scientific, and cultural achievements. So the real question is about the divergence that happened.

The Real Question: European Transformation

So a better question, instead of why did the Muslims decline, is not why did Muslims decline, but why was there a European transformation? Why did Europe surge ahead after 1500? Europe's rise is certainly unusual in world history and it was a key development that allowed it to surge ahead. And that was, anyone? Colonization certainly was part of it. Colonization actually, as some historians have recognized or have observed, that the colonization of the Americas was perhaps one of the things which allowed Muslim-majority lands a lifeline in that there was a population explosion in Europe after the Black Plague.

Black Plague killed over a third of Europe's population. Then you had people who came back from disease, stronger. There was more attempts to go and find trade and do business. Population explosion happened. Those people have to go somewhere. They're either going to go south or they're going to go east. But instead, because they didn't want to deal with that, they went west and they came to the Americas. But there is something else that happened after the 1500s and that is there were a lot of wars, yes, but not in the area of wars, I mean. It was the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution Changes Everything

The Industrial Revolution changed everything. So instead of like most societies that relied upon slavery and indentured servitude and general strata of social strata of people working menial jobs to high-paying bureaucratic jobs, you now had an automation of many jobs. And that simply created a volume of products and services and whatever else that was necessary.

So, you know, Guns, Germs and Steel, I think, is one of the books that's written about that, although some people have some issues with the book. But in general, there were machines now. There were factories. There was a capitalistic motivation to go out and make money. Now, one thing that is very apparent is that not only did Europe propel itself forward because of the Industrial Revolution, but European colonialism also extracted wealth from the rest of the world. It is a complete misnomer that somehow European colonialism was this blessing that, you know, blessed the world with the light of European enlightenment and renaissance.

The Reality of Colonialism

It was not the case whatsoever. You'll find many popular notions where people will say things like, look at every country that's been colonized, it's advanced. Look at every country that was not colonized, it's poor and destitute. Okay, the Congo was colonized. There was a holocaust in the Congo that was greater than any other holocaust in the world. There was more people killed in the Congo than any other place in the world, and yet it is still dealing with the fallout of that, and it did not advance.

Why? Not because of the aptitude of the people, because of the exploitation of the people that came there. The textile industries of India alone were decimated by the British. They were not supported. Sure, you built trains, but it doesn't matter if you decimated the entire industries that you're trying to bring back to your own shores. There's a lot more that can be said about that, but I think in reading history in fairness, yes, while there were certain things that did come out of, you know, positives that came out of the colonial era, there were certain things that did not come out of the colonial era.