From Cordoba to Cambridge - the missing 800 years

When I trained as a Mathematics teacher back in 2002, at the University of Cambridge, I suggested to my tutor that Pythagoras' Theorem cannot be attributed to him, but rather it is plagiarised!

I argued this is so as its physical manifestation is evident in the pyramids of Egypt which predates Pythagoras by thousands of years. My tutor was rightfully stunned and could not disagree and suggested I should train to become a teacher of History and not a Mathematics teacher!

In recent times, some commentators have acknowledged the Muslim contribution to 'transmission' of knowledge from ancient Greek works of science and philosophy i.e. translation into Arabic which was subsequently retranslated into Latin and thus enabling the Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment to take off.

Whilst indeed many ancient Greek works were translated; to suggest this was the main achievement of the Muslim dominant era of nearly 800 years from the common era 7th century to the 15th century is an incomplete narrative. There are two misconceptions that need to be clarified:

More than translation: innovation and new discoveries

The role of these great scholars (many of whom are lesser known in the Western world – despite dozens having lived in Spain) was more than translating, but rather advancing and innovating from prior learning such as the Greeks, but also from other civilisations such as the adoption of Indian decimal numerals now commonly used and known as Indo-Arabic or Hindu-Arabic numerals.

Yet the major misconception is the disservice to the significant authentic role Muslim scholars (or academics as they would be known in the modern era) in original contributions and discoveries whose impact is significant to this day: Ibn Khaldun’s economic theory, 400 years before Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations’ is one such example. Neoclassical economists created a false narrative of the history of economics implying Adam Smith in the midst of the (European) Enlightenment as the founder of (modern) economics as argued by Oláh amongst others.

Beyond the Arab peninsula: many non-Arab Muslims led the way

The second misconception is the scholars (academics) of this era were exclusively Arab (or known by its derogatory terms as Saracens or Moors), which is not defined, but assumed to be from the region/tribe rather than by the language. This poses a difficulty in recognising the real impact of the Islamic civilisation which was well beyond the Arab peninsula. 

It is the same error which would imply that English refers to England when the legacy of the British Empire is global and far reaching to this day mainly via the English language, more than half a century after most of its dominions claimed independence. Furthermore, modern academic publications in English medium journals etc. are often by teams of academics, many of whom English is an additional language rather than a native language.

Indeed, Arabic was the lingua-franca for a significant proportion of the global population long after the fall of Granada in 1492CE. For leading academics, it was the necessary language to access natural sciences, philosophy, mathematics, economics and social sciences as taught in Oxford and Cambridge in Elizabethan England, as outlined so eloquently by Matar’s breakthrough work ‘Islam in Britain 1558-1685’.

Yet there needs to be a broader recognition of Muslim academics from beyond the ‘Arab world’ to fully appreciate the impact of the Islamic civilisation. For example, Bukhari and al-Khwarizmi from Khorasan (modern day Uzbekistan); Ibn Sina (Latinized as Avicenna) from Persia (modern day Iran); Ibn Rushd (Latinized as Averroes) from Al Andalus, (modern day Southern Spain) or the aforementioned Ibn Khaldun from Ifriqiya (modern day Tunisia),

The Library: Baghdad to the Bodleian

What would need to accompany any great collection of learned individuals would be institutions to house their research and writings i.e. a library and a place to teach their findings i.e. a university.

Let us reflect on the first institution that is a library. The ancient library of Alexandria is assumed to be 'Hellenised' and more so dramatized by Hollywood, risks putting a subconscious bias on implying this library was solely a Hellenistic achievement. Or to be more specific, to imply only manuscripts and works from the era of Alexander, his tutor Aristotle (who was taught by Plato who in turn was a student of Socrates) and Alexander’s general Ptolemy and the heirs were the only ones of sufficient worth to be housed here. 

Yet, given the bulk of the manuscripts were written in papyrus, whose plant is found along the length of the Nile and used by the court of Pharaoh several millennia before Aristotle, it is fair to assume scholarly content from this side of Africa at least were to be included in the library at Alexandria.

Whilst an emphasis is placed on the well-known legacy of the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt (whose territory ran along the whole of the Nile and not limited to the horizontal lines drawn by former colonialists to create modern Egypt and Sudan), what we cannot know for certain is the empires such as Kush/Cush and Nubia whose learning were handed down by its ancestors for centuries prior to and concurrently with Pharaohs of Egypt.

Yet the subsequent (final) destruction of the Alexandrian library in the Serapeum in 391CE rendered a loss of knowledge that we cannot genuinely comprehend to this day. However, in less than 400 years later, a new library would emerge in Baghdad, during the Abbasid Islamic era. Why is this library so important?

It is fair to say modern mathematics, the ‘DNA’ of technology and computing code of the digital online world we are all immersed in, could not have been possible without the Baghdad library known as Al Bayt al-Hikmah (the House of Wisdom) led by dozens of Muslim academics.

Indeed, along with collections in the many libraries of Cordoba in Islamic Spain, it could be argued that this library enabled not only a storage of higher learning, but a basis through which to distribute knowledge and learning to transmit across the world and influence other civilisations. 

One such pillar of European mathematical genius was that of Leonardo de Pisa - as we know him as Fibonacci. His famous ‘Liber Abbaci’ had actually “relied almost exclusively on the algorithms of 9th-Century mathematician Al-Khwarizmi” as argued by Bernhard in an article published by the BBC.

Despite Baghdad being sacked centuries later, this time by the Mongols in 1258CE, many of its works had already been in wider circulation in copies across the Islamic lands. The scholars, academics and polymaths of that era had the means to replicate from memory many of the works too – an incredible gift.

The University: A Madrassa to the Oxbridge college

Secondly, the accompanying institution for scholars to share and teach their knowledge would be the University.

If one has had the privilege to have visited the Ben Youssef Madrassa in Marrakesh as well as the historical colleges of Oxford or Cambridge; the purpose and design has some significant parallels one can draw from. The building was a home for scholars and their students. Even the quadrangle to allow an open discourse and interaction has many similarities. The robes and hats have significance too in terms of both matriculation and successful graduation.

Yet following timelines of history, the University of Al-Qarawiyyin and its many madrassas across North Africa and Southern Spain predate the oldest surviving European universities. The madrassa system of having a sitting scholar in attendance was something that has been replicated across the Muslim world for centuries. This concept of essentially a master and apprentice model of study was replicated across the European universities for centuries.

Note: The madrassa – which literally means a ‘place of study’ (unlike the smears by biased sensationalist elements of the media that associate it with something sinister and violent) and its model of housing a visiting or sitting scholar continues to this day in many parts of the less accessed areas of the Muslim world. 

The five oldest universities which are still functioning in Europe are Bologna, Oxford, Salamanca, Cambridge and Padua. The latter two have had a similar trodden path of disputes and disagreement amongst their scholars due to fear of their safety or for the pursuit of libertas scholastica (academic freedom) from Oxford and Bologna respectively. Salamanca, I suggest, would have benefited from some awareness if not direct interaction with their Muslim neighbours (or adversaries depending on the viewpoint), in Andalusia in witnessing the flourishing of learning across the madrassa and library ecosystem, where Christian, Jewish and Sabian scholarship also benefited from – an international student body a thousand years before the modern international academic campus.

The missing 800 years

In conclusion, what needs to be acknowledged, taught and referenced to all students present and future is the key factors in the establishment of the modern Western world of science and academia were not a neo-classical lie built on the myth of knowledge transfer from ancient Greek or Rome with a slight skirmish into Byzantine, which somehow skipped several centuries to leap into the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; but rather without the Muslim world's input from Baghdad and Persia in the East, Khorasan and Uzbekistan to the north, Cordoba and Granada in Europe to the West and Timbuktu to the South – the sciences and the fundamentals of modern society and global civilisation would not have emerged.

In current times of social unrest and societal reflection on previously held narratives, this provides a great opportunity for enhanced cultural literacy and correcting the false narrative of the very foundations of the Western World. It also dispels the myth of denigrating the very community who were deemed to be inferior, uncivilised, or even barbaric from ironically inferiority or envy from their own conditions in Medieval Europe; yet this same Muslim community whose pioneering scientific and economic understanding advanced the very notion of human civilisation.