The Abbasid Dynasty: The Most Beautiful Chapter in Islamic History

How I came to find out about the Islamic Golden Age

If you go around the world you will find times and places where nations have excelled in one
subject or another. There’s a birth of this period of superiority, then there’s a peak and then in
most cases it drops off. What we all know intuitively, whether or not we have thought about it
explicitly, is that you can work out what was achieved in these periods by looking at the
names of discoveries. That's because if you were there first and you did it best, you got to
name things. (Slide 2) So, for example, if you look at the heavier elements of the periodic
table, we can see Berkelium, Californium. That’s because, after WW2, the United States
excelled in particle physics and they discovered these elements, so they named them. If you
look at the constellations of the night sky, we’ve got Andromeda, Aries, Perseus. That’s
because in Ancient Greece they made an effort to excel in astronomy. So just by looking at
the names of things, you can get a sense of where they were founded.

Now I don’t know why this happened, but I ended up looking at a list of star names. And when
I was doing this, I was struck by just how many of the names were Arabic. (Slide 3,4,5) It
turns out, of all the stars that have names, ⅔ of them have Arabic names. That’s remarkable,
and I thought to myself, how did this happen. At what point in time did the Arab world lead the
way in astronomy? So I did a bit of research and found out that the names originated from the
Islamic Golden Age. During this time, the Arab world led the way in astronomy. So I’d worked
out the answer to my question. I could have stopped there, but I decided to do a bit more
digging, and when I did, I realised that these visible developments made in astronomy only
represented the tip of the iceberg. The Islamic Golden Age, i soon realised, was one of the
most fruitful periods of academic excellence in the history of the world. The nature of this
period of excellence, as well as its downfall, will be the focus of my talk today.

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The Nature of the Islamic Golden Age

(Slide 6) The Islamic Golden Age is traditionally dated from the 8th Century to the 13th
Century, when much of the Islamic world was ruled by caliphates. The Abbasid caliphate is
the one that we’re concerned with, and this dynasty descended from the Prophet
Muhammad’s youngest uncle. Under their rule, intellectual and cultural progress was great.
But it wasn’t just astronomy that developed, it was also medicine, mathematics, philosophy,

Medicine
(Slide 7) In medicine, great leaps forward were made. Muhammad ibn al-Razi (854-932)
stands out in particular. He was an alchemist, a philosopher, and primarily a physician. He
was the first to formally come up with the idea of a control group when doing scientific
research, and he did this when he was trying to determine whether blood-letting would help
cure meningitis. He was the first to determine the difference between smallpox and measles.
On a professional level, Razi introduced many practical, progressive, medical and
psychological ideas. He wrote the following on medical ethics, which really was rather
progressive for the time.
"The doctor's aim is to do good, even to our enemies… and my profession forbids us to do
harm to our kindred, as it is instituted for the benefit and welfare of the human race”.

Ibn al-Nafis (1213-1288) at the age of 29 was the first person to describe the pulmonary
circulation of the blood. This is normally attributed to William Harvey in 1628. But it was
discovered by Ibn al-Nafis. He overruled 1,000 years of Galenic beliefs on the circulation of
the blood, which stated that blood passed between the right and left ventricles of the heart
through holes in the septum. He also stated that there must be small communications, or
pores, between the pulmonary arteryand pulmonary vein, a prediction that preceded the
discovery of the pulmonary capillaries of Marcello Malpighi by 400 years.

(Slide 8) Avicenna (which is the latinised form of the name Ibn Sina (980-1037)) also
contributed to philosophy and medicine. He wrote a philosphical and scientific encyclopedia -
THe Book of Healing - which became a standard medical text and was distributed in medical
universities and was still in use until 1650.
(10mins)
Philosophy
Ibn Sina made progress in philosophy as well. He wrote about a number of thought
experiments, the most famous of which is known as the floating man. The thought
experiment told its readers to imagine themselves created all at once while suspended in the
air, isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their own
bodies. He argued that, in this scenario, one would still have self-consciousness. Because it
is conceivable that a person, suspended in air while cut off from sense experience, would still
be capable of determining his own existence. Now that thought experiment is very similar to
what Descartes did when he said ‘I think therefore I am’, but Descartes was writing 600 years
later. Descartes is by many considered to be the father of modern western philosophy. That
he may be, but his seminal discovery was already being discussed way before he came
along.

Mathematics
In mathematics, there were tremendous discoveries. The sin law for example, which we all
know about, is sometimes thought to have been discovered by Regiomontanus, a German, in
mid to late 15th century. Instead, though, there are early signs of this mathematical proof in
Arabic work in the 10th century, and by the 11th century, Ibn Jayyani had generalised the law
in his book The book of unknown arcs of a sphere in the 11th century. So the sin law, which
we all know and love, was discovered in this fruitful period of Arabic intellectualism.

Muhammed ibn al-Khwarizmi made great contributions to mathmatics. He wrote a book called
The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing. The name of one of his
basic operations with equation was al-jabr, which led to the term algebra. His work on
arithmetic was responsible for introducing Arabic numerals, based on the Hindu-Arabic
numeral system developed in Indian mathematics, to the Western world. The term "algorithm"
is derived from the algorism, the technique of performing arithmetic with Hindu-Arabic
numerals developed by al-Khwārizmī.

Healthcare
Great progress was made in healthcare institutions. Hospitals in this era were the first to
require medical diplomas to license doctors. To avoid conflicts of interest, doctors were
banned from owning or sharing ownership in a pharmacy. All pharmacies were regularly
inspected by a government inspector, who checked to see that the medicines were mixed
properly, not diluted, and kept in clean jars. By the 10th century, laws were passed to keep
hospitals open 24 hours a day, and they were forbidden to turn away patients who were
unable to pay.

(15 mins)

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Overall

“Nothing in Europe”, notes Jamil Regep, a professor of the histroy of science at the universtiy of oklahoma, “could hold a candle to what was going on in the islamic world until about 1600”.

How was this period made possible?

Baghdad was located right at the centre of the known and populated world at the time. This
meant that scholars from all over the world were able to travel to Baghdad exchange thoughts
and ideas and to translate works. And that’s exactly what they did, and this significantly
contributed to the academic progress that was made at the time. Many classical works of
antiquity that might otherwise have been lost were translated from Greek, Persian, Indian,
Chinese, Eqgyptian and Phoenician civilisations into Arabic and Persion, meaning that
scholars in the Arabic world could study them. Freedom and equality were crucial here. This
era saw freedoms and liberties given to people no matter where they came from. They could
believe whatever they wanted to as long as they did not infringe on other people’s rights.
The progress that was made was able to be financed because, under the Abbasid rule, great
trading improvements were made. Muslim sailors reintroduced large, three-masted merchant
vessels, and extensive trade networks were set up both in the Mediterranean and the Indian
ocean. Their trade and diplomatic ties extended all the way to China and the Song dynasty.
The financial gains this provided allowed for the state to heavily patronized scholars. The
money spent on the Translation Movement for some translations is estimated to be equivalent
to about twice the annual research budget of the United Kingdom’s Medical Research
Council. The best scholars and notable translators, such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq, had salaries
that are estimated to be the equivalent of professional athletes today.

The contemporary understanding of Islamic faith also promoted intellectual drive. Various
parts of the Quran can be interpreted as promoting scientific inquiry. It was thought that an
understanding of nature was crucial to an understanding of God, so there was a sacred
aspect to Muslims’ pursuit of scientific knowledge.

The development of paper, which was adopted from Chinese scholars, was also crucial,
because it allowed information to spread quickly across regions. This meant that it was
possible to earn a living simply by writing and/or selling books. Paper was easier to
manufacture than parchment, less likely to crack than papyrus and could absorb ink, making it
difficult to erase and ideal for keeping records.

18 mins

So how, then, did this period come to an end?

But this Golden Age came to an end by the end of the 13 th century. Europe’s scientific
scholars were fare more significant than Islamic ones at this stage. After the 14 th century, the
arab world saw very few innovations in the fields of study that it had previously dominated.
Quite importantly, also, as Bernaws Lewis writes, “the renaissance, the reformation and the
scientific revolution, the enlightenment, went unnoticed in the muslim world”. so it was not
simply that Muslim was no longer at the forefront of scientific and philosophical endeavour,
but it was also the case that they were not responsive to activity elsewhere. They were no
longer inclined to engage in fields of academia. Indeed, it would be possible to argue that they
had become resentful, violent and even hostile to discourse and innovation.

(Slide 9) It is traditionally said that the Islamic Golden Age came to an end as a result of the
Sack of Baghdad in 1258 by Mongol and allied troops. The seige began on January 29th
when the Mongol army constructed a palisade and a ditch around the city. Employing seige
engines and catapults, they tried to breach the city walls and, by Febuary 5th had seized a
significant portion of the defenses. On the 13th, the army entered the city and began a week
of massacre and destruction.
(Slide 10) THe Grand Library of Baghdad, also known as the House of Wisdom, which
contained countless rpecious historical documents and books was desroyed. Survivors have
said that the waters of the Tigris ran black with ink from the enormous quantities of book flung
into the river and red from the blood of the scientists and philosophers killed. Citizens
attempted to flee, but were intercepted by mongol solders who killed in abundance, sparing
neither women nor children. Martin Sicker writes that close to 90,000 people may have died.
Other estimates go much higher. The Persian historian Wassaf, who was writing at the time
claims the loss of life was several hundred thousand. Ian Frazier of the New Yorker says
estimaes of the death toll have been as high as a million.
The Mongols destroyed mosques, palaces, libraries and hosptials. Grand buildings were
burned to the ground. The dams on the Tiris and the Euphrates that the Abbasids had built up
over a period of five centuries were demolished, depressing agriculture and slowing
population and economic recovery.
Steven Dutch writes that “the Mongol destruction of Baghdad was a psychological blow from
which Islam never recovered… the intellectual flowering of Islam was snuffed out. Imagining
the Athens f Pericles and Aristotle obliterated by a nuclear weapon begins to suggest the
enormity of the blow. The Mongols filled in the irrigation canals and left Iraq too depopulated
to restore them”.
Some historians believe that the Mongol invasion desroyed much of the irrigation
infrastructure that had sustained the region for many millenia. Canals were cut and never
repaired. So many people either died or fled that neither the labour nor the organisation were
sufficient to maintain the canal system. In particular this was advanced by historian Svatopluk
Soucek.

22 mins

Alternative view…

This does not seem like an entirely satisfactory explanation though. What I have described to
you was an empire that was gripped with academic spirit and that believed that the Quran -
the word of God - and the Hadith - the word of the Prophet Muhammad - both desired
scientific inquiry into the nature of the world. So, while the invasion by the Mongols certainly
dealt a great blow to this endeavour, it seems plausible to suggest that a military invasion
alone could not have been enough to end the Golden Age. What is needed to satisfactorily
explain the fall of this era is evidence of an intellectual invasion. And there is certainly some
compelling evidence for that. Indeed, this intellectul invasion came before the Mongol
Invasion, such that by 1258, the Islamic world had already turned away from academia; the
decline in scholarship preceded the civilisation’s geo-political decline.

The intellectual decline can be traced back to the rise of anti-philosophical Ash’arism school
among Sunni Muslims, who comprised the vast majority of the muslim world.The Ash’ari
school was opposed to any original scholarship and scientific enquiry that did not directly aid
in religious regulation of private and public life. At the heart of Ash’ari metaphysics was the
idea of occasionalism, which was a doctrine that denies natural causality. It suggests that
causality as we might now understand it canno exist because God’s will is completely free.
This amounts to a denial of the coherence and comprehensibility of the natural world. Things
happen, therefore, because and only because God wills them to. (Slide 11) The extent of this
belief can be summed up by the philosopher Ibn Hazim who said “were it God’s will, we would
even have to practice the worship of idols.” It’s clear to see how conviction in such a belief
could dent the progress of scientific enquiry.

The greates and most influential voice of the Ash’arite school, and the person to whom we
can attribute a significant amount of responsibility for its eventual popularity, was the
theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. He wrote a book called the Incoherence of Philosophers,
which he himself described as a refutation of the falsafa the philosophy of the Golden Age. In
this book, he outlined his concern that when people became favourably influenced by
philosophical arguemtns, they would come to trust philsophers on amttrs of religion, thus
making Muslims less pious. Reason, ebcause it teaches us to discvoer, wuestion and
innovae, was the enemy. He wrote that “nothing in nature can act spontaneously and apart
from God”. He defended logic only in so far as it could be used to ask theological questions.

Sunnis embraced al-ghazali,a nd opposition to philosphy gradually intensified, even to the

extent that independent enquiry became a tainted enterprise, sometimes to the point of
criminality. Perhaps an exaggeration to say as Steen Weignbrerg claimed in teh Times tht
after al ghazali “there was no more science worth menioning in Islamic coutnries”. In sunni
world, philosphy turned into mysticism.

The reason that this belief system was able to grow lies at the heart of the religion of Islam
itself, and its contrast with Christianity. And for reasons that I don’t know, and that are
complex and difficult to understand, the words of the Quran and the Hadith were taken far
more literally than the words of the Bible, for example. So when the Bible contradicts the
natural world, European theologians such as Anselm or Augustine, they argued that the Bible
should not be taken literally. Whereas in the Islamic world, it came to be held that the
scripture was literally true, and any contrary proposition was blasphemous.

Even more important than this, though, was Islam’s failure to separate religion from politics.
Christ was an outsider of the state, he ruled no one. In contrast, Muhammad was not only a
prophet but a chief magistrate and political leader as well. Deep in the roots of Islam,
therefore, was the belief that politics and religion were interdependent, and when Muslim
scholars tapped into these roots, they were able to create a culture, which failed to
institutionalise free and scientific enquiry. So in education, for example, there was a severe
lack of scientific curriculum in the schools.

28 mins

To conclude this talk, I think its important for me to try and put across to you how significant it
was that the Golden Age declined in the way that it did, because the alternate interpretation of
Islam that al-ghazali perpetuated has had enormous ramifications that can be felt even today.
Because Islam today has remained in the condition that al-ghazali left it in. Islam, as a culture,
is failing to produce anywhere near the quality of academic thought that it once did.

I don’’t want to overload you with statistics but here are some important ones. Muslim
countries have nine scientiss, engineers and technicians per thousand people, compared with
world average of 41. In these nations there are only 312 universities with scholars who have
published journal articles. Uganda, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, jordan and
Azerbaijan each only have one of these universities.

The UN Development Programme reported in 2002 that the US published 10481 scientific
papers that were frequently published in one year, while the entire arab world published only
four.

And I want to leave you with the following thought. Jewish culture today very closely
resembles what Islamic culture was like at the end of the 1 st Millennium. The tradition of Jews
in the 21st Century is one of education and scholarship and Judaism is now contributing
enthusiastically to present-day advances in science. This becomes evident by examining the
Nobel Prizes that have been awarded to Jews.

Nobel Prizes have been awarded to over 850 individuals, of whom at least 22%
(without Peace prize over 24%) were Jews, despite a Jewish population of only 14 million
(less than 0.2% of the world population). Remarkably, Jews have won a total of 41% of all the
Nobel Prizes in Economics.

In contrast, as of 2014, only eleven Nobel Prize winners have been Muslim, and
seven of those have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. According to a 2010 study, Islam
has 1.57 billion adherents, making up over 23% of the world population.

If al-Ghazālī’s Incoherence of Philosophers had not had the influence it did, contemporary
Muslim contribution to the field of science would be phenomenal. Muslim academics
emerging from Islamic countries would have 2000 times the impact that they have today,
enough to win them every Nobel Prize that has ever been won, and every future Nobel Prize
for the next 4,000 years, given the size of their population.