Then years ago i read "origin" by "Dan brown" where an interesting line caught my attention
“By the end of the eleventh century,” Edmond said, “the greatest intellectual exploration and discovery on earth was taking place in and around Baghdad. Then, almost overnight, that changed. A brilliant scholar named Hamid al-Ghazali—now considered one of the most influential Muslims in history—wrote a series of persuasive texts questioning the logic of Plato and Aristotle and declaring mathematics to be ‘the philosophy of the devil.’ This began a confluence of events that undermined scientific thinking. The study of theology was made compulsory, and eventually the entire Islamic scientific movement collapsed.”
Since reading this, i've been trying to understand 2 things. 1, is this just fiction on the part of author and in that case, isnt it slander, spreading false information about a scholar who many hold to high regards and 2, if this is true, then this fucking asshole is responsible for causing immeasurable harm to "science" as a human idea on the whole.
While i think just one person "might not" be responsible for single-handedly causing such a travesty on his own, there is no doubt "something" happened that caused this change. This author says it was this ghazali guy, maybe there were others also. I don't know but i surely would want to know
The factors were complex. There were economic and socio-political events that affected the stability and life in these societies. Several other reasons contributed to this downfall and it finally happened. To pin all the blame on a single scholar is disingenuous. Al Ghazzali's "Incoherence of the philosophers" was a warning against some of the techniques philosophers used especially in the context of interpreting the primary texts of Islam to come up with religious rulings. There were also philosophical arguments against scientific (read material) explanations precluding the hand of God in material affairs but this wasn't one killing blow against centuries of scientific scholarship.
Here are a few articles that discuss this from a traditional Muslim point of view if you're interested. https://mohamedghilan.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/an-illusion-o... https://traversingtradition.com/2020/11/19/science-history-a.... I had something that addressed it more directly but can't find it right now.
You cant just tell a population to reject a way of thinking but apparently someone did manage to do that
Imagine Germany in 1945 losing the war, only having one major library, and the allies burn it down, decimate the population to 10% of the prior count[1], and throw the books down to Rhine River "...in such quantities that the river ran black with the ink from the books"[2].
The Mongols just invaded, pillaged and killed in a mind-less fashion. Middle-east was unlucky cause it was just geographically near them. They also wreaked havoc on China, Korea and Russia. Japan was lucky that storm sank their ships (which were forcibly built by conquered Chinese)
I have not studied al-Ghazali but I think the good'ol war had the major role in this decline and the current state of the middle east.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_E...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom#Destruction_by...
A big part of the answer is the Sack of Baghdad in 1258 by the Mongol armies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)#Destru...
>Contemporary accounts state Mongol soldiers looted and then destroyed mosques, palaces, libraries, and hospitals. Priceless books from Baghdad's thirty-six public libraries were torn apart, the looters using their leather covers as sandals.[36] Grand buildings that had been the work of generations were burned to the ground. The House of Wisdom (the Grand Library of Baghdad), containing countless precious historical documents and books on subjects ranging from medicine to astronomy, was destroyed. Claims have been made that the Tigris ran red from the blood of the scientists and philosophers killed.[37][38] Tales of the destruction of books - tossed into the Tigris such that the water turned black from the ink - seem to originate from the 14th century.[39][40]
Baghdad at the time was the religious, political, and intellectual center of Islam. You could think of it as the combined New York, Washington DC, and Silicon Valley of the Islamic world. Think what would happen to American culture if all of a sudden, those 3 were suddenly destroyed. How would that shift the balance of culture? Something very similar happened to Islam in 1258, and I would say, we are probably still seeing the fallout of that to this day.
You know in india and pakistan, in present times, 2020 and coming 2021, there is "always" a fight between science people and religious people on the "appearance of crescent" on religious days. the science folk say the motion of moon is calculated and we can precisely know for next hundreds of years if on a particular day the crescent will be visible from a location but the religious folk refuse to accept.
what i am saying is what made these religious folk distrust and hate science ? did someone tell them don't promote science or it will eat their lunch? or something else?
As I commented elsewhere in the thread, there's a terrific recent history of all of this: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691165851/lo...
"MATHEMATICS. This embraces arithmetic, plane geometry and solid geometry. None of its results are connected with religious matters, either to deny or to affirm them. They are matters of demonstration which it is impossible to deny once they have been understood and apprehended."
"LOGIC. Nothing in logic is relevant to religion by way of denial or affirmation.",
"Just as it is not a condition of religion to reject medical science, so likewise the rejection of natural science is not one of its conditions, except with regard to particular points".
You can find the text at https://ghazali.org/books/md/gz101.htm, for me this was a very influential book.
There were many events that led to the “end of the Islamic Golden Age,” but a closer analysis reveals that nothing really ended, but simply was moved around.
Consider that the Ottomans were technologically superior to Europeans until about the 17th century, or that Al-Andalus was around until the 15th century.
But, overall, the single biggest event to impact the era was probably the Mongol sacking of Baghdad. That ended a lot of intellectual culture in rather violent fashion.
Just goes to show how Eurocentric my history education was; I never heard about this. Fascinating.
The people who spread this theory about the decline of the Islamic golden age likely also believe that the Iconoclasm was really about graven images or that the ascendancy of the West was due to the people with all the power accepting the arguments of bookish nerds during the enlightenment.
There were emperors of China who used Laozi to justify the burning of books. Do you think they were just being principled in their hyperliteralist reading?
* Much of the "Golden Age of Islam" is actually attributable to cultures which were originally not Islamic at all eg: Persia, The Levant, Mediterranean, Central Asia, Indian subcontinent. The decline started with the "Islamization" of these cultures by the Arabs who were far more "primitive". This is the worst of brawn over brain.
* The rise of "fundamental" Islam; most notably the Ash'ari within Sunni sect (al-Ghazali was just one of the most well known of this group) to the detriment of all the other "forward looking" sects in Islam.
* The Mongol invasion which wiped out a unified Islamic empire leading to more internecine strife within Islam.
* The Christian Crusades.
* The general ossification and fossilization of beliefs in Islamic cultures causing them to turn away from the "Modern Scientific Enlightenment" movement which started in Europe.
Note that similar decline of cultures have happened before due to similar (but not same) reasons; most notably with Ancient China and India though not to the same degree.
if that is the case you should read to Malek Bannabi[1]: The Conditions of Renaissance, Question of Ideas in Muslim World, The Ideological Struggle in Third World Countries ...
To me it has always seemed like this was simply a side effect of Islam taking deep root.
Before this the older, pre-Islamic culture was still there, but as time passed Islam, as evidenced by the conservative Islam we see today, took hold leading the Islamic territories away from math and science.
The flourishing of Islamic science took place not in Baghdad, but in Central Asia, and it was already in steep decline when al-Ghazali wrote his polemics. The reasons for both the rise and decline of the Central Asian enlightenment are fascinating and complex.
The tl;dr is that these cities (most now ruins) relied on very complicated irrigation systems that required a high degree of technical skill to maintain, and were also quite cosmopolitan places culturally, since they were never Arabized and lay on major trade routes, guaranteeing them exposure to ideas and scholarly texts from India (although interestingly, not so much from China).
Anyway, it's a great book and will put the rise and decline of this period in context for you.
For example is there a simple answer to why, say, HP isn't considered the most successful tech companies right now while it was at some point in time?
My guess is other groups of people learn from them and surpass them overtime. This can also be true even within a single company where one org used to be the most important one but over time another org brings in more money and becomes more important
The reality was much more complex.
If you’re interested, I’d suggest checking out Dr. George Saliba’s writings on this topic. A good start is “Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance”. For a shorter intro, check out this lecture [1].
> "including hundreds of scientists who laid down the foundations of modern science with their works, what happened 800 years ago that all that science just vanished?"
That science didn't "just vanish". If it did, how would it have "laid down the foundations of modern science"? Yes, definitely the "Siege of Baghdad" [1] had a major impact but lot (no claims about how much) of knowledge later influenced the western "awakening". [2]
The awesome thing is: non of this is new. Humanity always worked that way. For example wikipedia also have articles on the Greek and Indian influences to that "enlightenment" era in the islamic world. [3][4]
DISCLAIMER: I don't actually know much about the history in detail, I am sure there is much more that can be said, due to some past cursory knowledge I was just able to look things up.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) 2.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_world_contributions_... 3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_contributions_to_the_I... 4. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_influence_on_Islamic_...
Funnily enough: searching for 30secs on AskHistorians leads to an answer debunking the precise theory that you expound on your post! [0] TL;DR: The major cause of the end of the Islamic Golden Age was the catastrophic destruction of Bagdhad in 1258, and of surrounding Mesopotamia.
It's a bit irresponsible to propagate misconceptions like this, especially when the source is Dan f*cking Brown. :)
[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/97rd7e/
Irrespective of what you think of the theory, it will help us all if we could identify and prevent the people among us now who could cause such harm to humanity.
Otherwise, having studied the Ottomans extensively, I wouldn’t say they chose stability over anything else. Their slow downfall was due more to a gradual fossilization of their institutions. For example, the Janissaries went from a highly-trained elite force to essentially a social club that everyone wanted to join. The sultans themselves also gradually became less competent.
Also of note is that the Ottomans were initially on the cutting edge of military technology and even exported quite a lot of it to the Mughals, who then had an advantage over their opponents. So, they certainly weren’t “behind” technologically.
Pretty much the same pattern as any empire, really. Initial warrior class conquers land, their immediate descendants develop a refined culture, and it’s all downhill from there as following generations aim but fail to recapture the magic.
Sounds like an inevitable phase in the life cycle of empires.
The chaos of the mess of Europe forced innovation and exploration of ideas at the cost of immense amounts of wars instability.
Selim I banning the printing press and and destruction of Taqiuddin’s observatory under Murad III
