Session 9

Sharing cultures: the scholars

1. Islam and the ancient sciences

2. Arabic learning

3. A new learning

4. Jewish reception

5. Schools in Islam
1. Islam and the ancient sciences
Islam and the ancient sciences

expansion of Islam: myriad of non-Muslims under Muslim rule

(large populations of Christians, Zoroastrians, pagans, and
Jews)

– much more learned populations (heirs of ancient civilizations)

– Muslims interested in achievements of ancient Persians, Hindus

and, very specially, Greeks
Islam and the ancient sciences

they became interested in

– philosophy: Plato and Aristotle

– medicine: Galen, Hippocrates, Dioscorides

– astronomy: Ptolemy

– mathematics: Euclid, Pitagoras, Archimedes

Islam and the ancient sciences

to make accessible sciences: ambitious translation program

initiated, 9th century

– translations

Greek, Syriac, Indian and Pahlevi sources into Arabic

– translators

non-Arabs and non-Muslims

Christian scholars (Nestorians):
Christian schools and
monasteries in Near East
and Central Asia

Hunayn ibn Ishaq, Baghdad,

9th century

more than hundred medical

texts of Galenic corpus
2. Arabic learning
Arabic learning

by the 10th century, consequences of translation program

– intellectual treasures of the ancient civilizations accessible

– inspired original Arabic scientific and philosophical works

 Bukhara (Persia)
Tous (Persia)
Ghazni (Afghanistan)

Cordoba (Al-Andalus)
Seville (Al-Andalus)
Granada (Al-Andalus)

Baghdad (Irak)
Aleppo (Syria)
Isfahan (Persia)
Arabic learning

a period of intellectual splendor

intellectual achievements of Islam the most advanced

Muslim scientist assiduously studied the Greek sciences. They became

skilled in the various branches. The progress they made in the study of
those sciences could not have been better. They contradicted the First
Teacher (Aristotle) on many points. They considered him the decisive
authority as to whether an opinion should be rejected or accepted,
because he possessed the greatest fame. They wrote systematic works
on the subject. They surpassed their predecessors in the intellectual
sciences (Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah)
the astronomers and astrologers

– al-Khwarizmi, Persia, died 850

– Albumasur, Persia, died 885

– al-Battani, Turkey, died circa 923

– al-Biruni, Persia, died 1048

– Alzarchel, al-Andalus, died 1087

a page from a book on

mathematics by al-Khwarizmi
the astronomers and
astrologers

– Indians

• Surya Siddhanta, written

circa 400

• Aryabhata, died 550

• Varahamihira, died 587

illustration by Al­Biruni of lunar eclipses from Kitab al­
tafhim
• Brahmagupta, died 668

– Greeks

• Ptolemy

Almagest, written circa

150
Ptolemy's Cosmos

– celestial realm is spherical, and

moves as sphere
– earth is a sphere
– earth is at center of cosmos
– earth does not move

the order of planetary spheres

1. Moon
2. Mercury
3. Venus
4. Sun
5. Mars
6. Jupiter
7. Saturn
8. sphere of fixed stars
Arabic learning

planets and fixed stars

– planets and fixed stars are beings: non-corruptible, perfect

– superior to beings on Earth: corruptible

following Aristotle: inferior things are subject to superior ones

Arabic learning

Astrologers taught that

– planets and fixed stars (planetary conjunctions) control every

aspect of life

– planets and fixed stars (planetary conjunctions) control sexuality

• sexual complexion

• sexual functioning (sexual behavior)

Arabic learning

astrologers taught

– to find out if a woman is a virgin or if she is corrupted

– to find out someone’s sexual proclivities: if you have sex with a

person of your gender, if you have excessive sexual appetite, if
you are impotent, if you are sterile, if you have strange habits

– to find out if wife is loyal to spouse, if she has a lover

– to determine the character of a future husband, particularly, his

sexual behavior

– to determine paternity
astrology tells us

– what you are

– what you do

whether people next door

will have sex on a
certain night
periods of conception and fetal development
3. A new learning
a new learning

the sciences with which people concern themselves in cities, and

which they acquire and pass on through instruction, are of two
kinds: one that is natural to man and to which he is guided by
his own ability to think, and a traditional kind he learns from
those who invented it

– the philosophical or intellectual sciences (human reason)

Arabic falsafa (faylasuf), Greek philosophia

– the traditional sciences (divine revelation)

a new learning

the intellectual sciences are natural to man, inasmuch as he is a thinking

being. They are not restricted to any particular religious group. They
are studied by the people of all religious groups who are equally
qualified to learn them and to do research in them. They have
existed and been known to the humans species since civilization had
its beginning in the world … they comprise four different sciences

– the science of logic

– the science of physics (medicine)

– the science of metaphysics

– the science of mathematics (geometry, arithmetic, music, astronomy)

a new learning

the point, using reason as path to truth

– understanding men

– understanding world

– understanding God

reason and faith, religion and science

a new learning

the philosophers

– al-Kindi, Irak, died circa 873

– al-Farabi, Transoxania, died 950

– Avicenna (ibn Sina), Persia, died 1037

– Averroes (ibn Rushd), al-Andalus, died 1192

a new learning

the philosophers

– the school of Athens (Plato)

– the school of Alexandria (Aristotle)

Aristotelism
4. Jewish reception
Jewish reception

Arabic achievements, Jewish

reception

• Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides),

Cordoba, died 1204

Arabic Aristotelism (Guide for the

perplexed)

• Abraham ibn Ezra, the Wise,

Tudela, died 1167
Jewish reception

Abraham ibn Ezra, the Wise

– Luhot, astronomical tables

– Sefer ha-Ibbur, on calendar

– Keli ha-Nehoshet, on astrolabe

– Sheelot and Kadrut, translation of two works by Mashallah

– Sefer Hateamim (The Book of Reasons), overview of Arabic astrology

– Reshith Hochma (The Beginning of Wisdom), introduction to astrology

5. Schools in Islam
schools in Islam

schools in Islam

masjid (madrasah)

• were students were taught by masters

• often linked to mosque

schools in Islam

schools taught

– traditional sciences

– Arabic

the basis of all traditional sciences is the legal material of the Quran and
the Sunna, which is the law given us by God and his messenger, as
well as the sciences connected with that material, by means of which
we are enabled to utilize it. This, further, requires as auxiliary
sciences the sciences of the Arabic language. Arabic is the language of
Islam, and the Quran was revealed in it
 schools in Islam

these schools taught

not

philosophical
sciences

Materia Medica of Dioscurides, Syria, 1229. Two students and frontispiece.

Source: http://www.oberlin.edu/art/images/art109/art109.html
schools in Islam

philosophical sciences taught at home of scholars, in courts, in

hospitals (maristan)

philosophical sciences, an individual affair

• in cities, private masters

• in cities, students moving from master to master

schools in Islam

schools (oficial Islam, Islam of establishment)

– excluded ancient sciences

– rejected ancient sciences

rejected reason as path to truth

– accepted Islamic sciences

• accepted revelation as path to truth
• accepted mysticism as path to truth