The Impact of Islamic Rationalism on Modern Society

European scholars and scientists studied and digested scientific and philosophical works built on the foundation that was set by Islamic civilization that preceded it, and the pioneers of European modernity borrowed from, and reproduced Muslim works before they began to add to the body of knowledge they inherited from the past. Yet any student of modern European history can hardly discern the impact of Islamic civilization on Europe. It is not an exaggeration to say that modern civilization is cut off from its roots, and that retrieving the foundation of modernity is essential for future development.

Why should we delve into history to build a better future, you may ask? Why cannot we just build on the present moment? Well, my answer to this question is simple: understanding how we got here is essential for building the future, in the same manner that we cannot write a new chapter of a book if we forget what transpired in the earlier chapters.

The fact of the matter is that western historians have not only failed to account for the Impact of Islamic learning and culture on the modern learning but have even insisted that Islamic rationalism has made no significant contribution beyond the transmission of Greek knowledge. To illustrate this point, let us consider the following passage in a major textbook written by four illustrious American historians that explains what they call “the intellectual synthesis” that led to the rise of modern learning in Europe:

In the twelfth century the study of Greek learning with its ‘Muslim additions’ was undertaken by western scholars who flocked to Spain and Sicily and there translated Muslim editions of ancient writings. As a result of these translations a host of new ideas, particularly in science and philosophy, were introduced to western scholars.[1]

Although the above passage mentions the role of Muslim learning in the rise of modern Europe, it reduces it to an appendix of the Greek learning, calling it “additions.” This depiction is not only misleading, but it overlooks the tremendous contributions of Islamic sciences to modern Europe, and it is indeed scandalous. I would like in?this brief talk?to make the argument that the role of Islamic rationalism was primary, and that of the Greek was secondary, in the development of European learning, and provide few examples to illustrate my claims.

Andalusia and Sicily as Zones of Contact

I do not intend in this brief talk to provide a full-fledge account of the impact of Islamic learning in general, and Islamic rationalism in particular, on the modern West, but only to make the argument and provide few examples to problematize western narrative about the origin of modern science and scholarship. It all started in the European-Muslim frontiers, or rather the zones of contact between the Arabic civilization and Europe. Spain and Southern Italy formed the western frontiers of Europe with the Arabic civilization, in the same manner the Near East formed the eastern frontiers. These frontiers constituted zones of contract between medieval Europe and the rest of the world, which was then integrated through Islamic culture and civilization. These frontiers did not take the shape of borderlines but that of shared areas where Christian and Jewish towns and villages interacted with their Muslim counterparts. The Christian-Muslim frontiers in the Iberian Peninsula (711–1492) and southern Italy (830–1382) provided the milieu for centuries-long experimentation with religious pluralism.

The pluralist society continued for a while even after political power changed hands between Muslims and Christians. The Norman monarchs Roger II and later Fredrick II, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire continue to allow Muslim population to live side by side with the Christian for almost half a century, but they eventually scumbled to the increased pressure from the Pope and abandoned the multi-religious openness, first introduced by Arab dynasties who ruled Spain and Sicily for centuries. The Muslim presence in Sicily and Malta continued till the late thirteenth century, and many Muslim scientists and scholars were employed by Roger II, Fredrick II, and Charles I during that period. Fredrick II, who was crowned by Pope Innocent III as the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, came under increased pressure by Pope Gregory IX who accused him of neglecting churches, while constructing Muslim buildings, in Lucera.

Modern science was developed in the Islamic Civilization

Europe was introduced to the works of Islamic rationalism through the Gerard of Cremona (1114–1187) of northern Italy, who spent 50 years in Toledo, during the Caliphate of Cordoba, and returned late in his life to his birthplace with over 60 translations, including the Book of Astronomy by Ibn al-Haytham (965–1040).

The Caliphate of Cordoba of southern Spain was the mecca of young Christian scholars throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that Alvaro, the Bishop of Cordoba under the Muslim rule, declared that:?“[a]ll the young Christians who distinguished themselves by their talent, know the language and literature of the Arabs, read and study passionately the Arab books, gather at great expense great libraries of these, and everywhere proclaim with a loud voice how admirable is that literature.”

European scientific and scholarly traditions were fully grounded in Islamic learning. Many of those who became a household name in the history of European science began their careers by learning and translating Arabic works. Leonardo Fibonacci, a young merchant of Pisa, better known for his annunciation of the natural numbers, otherwise known as the Fibonacci number, traveled to Algeria and Spain and issued a translation of Al-Khwarizmi’s great work on algebra.

To illustrate the degree of unacknowledged borrowing from Islamic scientific work, let us quickly look at the highly celebrated early scientific discovery concerning the movement of the earth around the sun made in Europe, which was credited to Copernicus (1473–1543). Recent documents retrieved from the translated work of Arabic sources reveal the total indebtedness of the Copernicus discovery on Muslim sources. Victor Roberts showed in 1957 that Copernicus lunar model was identical to that produced by Ibn al-Shater (d. 1375) over a century earlier. Then E.S. Kennedy found in 1966 another document with a detailed diagram that summarizes alternative models to Ptolemaic movements of the upper planets in relation to the earth, which were developed by the fourteenth-century Muslim astronomers, including Qutub al-Din al-Shirazi and Mu’ayyad al-Din al-Urdi. Similarly, George Saliba discussed in an article, published in 1987 in Revue de Synthèse, many recent findings, including a detailed paper written in fifteenth century by several Muslim astronomers at Maragha. Saliba illustrated in his paper that “Copernicus’s models are identical with those of the earlier Maragha astronomers.” For him “The question therefore is not whether, but when, where, and in what form he [i.e. Copernicus] learned of Maragha theory.”

The table below shows recent findings about the sources of Copernicus's discoveries

Modern scholarship and its Origin

The ability of Ghazali to reorient philosophy away from Greek metaphysics to a metaphysics that favors the monotheistic view of the cosmos had had a real impact on ending the schism between philosophy and Kalam, compelling Kalam scholars to adopt methods and terminology that were exclusively used earlier by Muslim philosophers, while at the same time anchoring philosophy in monotheistic values and principles advanced by Islamic rationalism. The impact was felt far away from Baghdad where Ghazali lived and taught, as his work was translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus of Toledo (d. 1190) as early as the turn of the 12th?century. Cundissalinus collaborated with an Arabized Christian (Mozarab) with the name Johannes Haspanus, who served as the dean of the cathedral of Toledo in the late twelfth century. The book, translated into Latin under the title Summa Theoricae Philosophiae [Summary of theoretical philosophy], and, according to Frank Griffel,

“became a principal source on the teachings of the Arabic philosophers in books by authors like Albert the Great (d. 1280) and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) that were essential to the development of the Latin philosophical tradition.”[2]

I already provided an example of the extent to which Aquinas borrowed from the work of Alfarabi in his Summa Theologica. The example and additional discussion on this matter are available in Ch. 6 of my book?Islam and the Trajectory of Globalization?(Open Access).[3]

The Greeks Possessed Natural Philosophy but not Science

The efforts to link modern science and scholarship to Greek philosophers are disingenuous to say the least. The Greek developed a natural philosophy but not science. They had no clue of what scientific method entails, and never used it to support their claims. The whole notion of using observation and experimentation to support scientific claims emerged withing Islamic civilization, and it is well known today that it belonged to Ibn Al-Haytham not Francis Bacon. Nor was Greek mathematics suitable for conducting advanced scientific reasoning, for Greek mathematical knowledge lacked the key mathematical instruments: the ability to use the zero and algebraic equations, both were developed by Muslim mathematicians and were integrated to the study of physics. Nor did the Greek have any significant knowledge of chemistry, as it became a science with its own experimentational approach as it flourished within the Arabic scientific revolution of the ninth century and became a separate branch of science through the work of the ninth-century chemist Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber). Paul Kraus, who wrote extensively on Ibn Hayyan’s contribution to the history of scientific ideas in Islam, has the following to say about the difference between Islamic and Greek work in the study of chemistry:

“The study of the Greek alchemists is not very encouraging. An even surface examination of the Greek texts shows that a very small part only was organized according to true experiments of laboratory: even the supposedly technical writings, in the state where we find them today, are unintelligible nonsense which refuses any interpretation…. It is different with Jabir’s alchemy. The relatively clear description of the processes and the alchemical apparatuses, the methodical classification of the substances, mark an experimental spirit which is extremely far away from the weird and odd esotericism of the Greek texts. The theory on which Jabir supports his operations is one of clearness and of an impressive unity.”

*More details on this topic can be found in Ch. 6 of my recent book?Islam and the Trajectory of Globalization.

Video: The Impact of Islamic Rationalism on Modern Society

[1]?T. Walter Wallbank, et. al. Civilization: Past and Present (Scott Foreman and Company, first edition 1978), p. 252.

[2]?Frank Griffel, “al-Ghazali,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Summer 2020 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/al-ghazali/ (accessed July 19, 2020).

[3]?A free digital copy of the book can be downloaded at: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/7f268e97-de24-4d53-ac3e-b8f11ff028fc/9781000483536.pdf