Charting the Muslim Influence on Europe

Charting the Muslim Influence on Europe Muslim rulers took it as an act of piety to construct mosques, hospitals, schools, and universities. Consequently, in every major Muslim city there are numerous examples of each. Perhaps the greatest era of advancement in education took place during the Abbasid caliphate (750–1258). As a multiethnic society, the Abbasid rulers enjoyed wide access to the ideas and discoveries of many previous civilizations. This in turn led to the widespread availability of 


manuscripts for use by both scholars and students. The expansion of  knowledge in Muslim civilization can be divided into three phases. The first phase was inheritance. Ancient writings from the Greeks and others were collected and translated into Arabic. The availability of paper made duplication of these manuscripts possible, so universities as far away as Spain or Timbuktu could have their own copies on hand. Ibn Khaldun, the famous fourteenth-century Muslim historian, described part of this process as follows 

“When the Byzantine emperors conquered Syria, the scientific works of the Greeks were still in existence. Then God brought Islam, and the Muslims won their remarkable victories, conquering the Byzantines as well as all other nations. At first, the Muslims were simple, and did not cultivate learning, but as time went on, and the Muslim dynasty flourished, the Muslims developed an urban culture that surpassed that of any other nation. They began to wish to study the various branches of philosophy, of whose existence they knew through their contact with bishops and priests among their Christian subjects.” “The Caliph, al-Mansur, therefore sent an embassy to the Byzantine emperor, asking him to send translations of books on mathematics. The emperor sent him Euclid’s Elements and some works on physics.

Muslim scholars studied these books, and their desire to obtain others was whetted. When al-Ma’mun, who had some scientific knowledge, assumed the caliphate, he wished to do something to further the progress of science. For that purpose, he sent out ambassadors and translators to the Byzantine empire, in order to search out works on Greek science and have them translated into Arabic. As a result of these efforts, a great deal of material was gathered and preserved.” (Ibn Khaldun, Al Muqaddimah) The most famous institution for the collection and translation of ancient books was this think tank was staffed by Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists and was given the task of making all the knowledge of the world available in the Arabic language. The works of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and Ptolemy were preserved for future generations through the medium of the Arabic language. (These were later translated from Arabic into Latin for Europe’s consumption.)  In the second phase, Muslim scholars and scientists synthesized the diverse areas of knowledge into organized bodies of thought whose premises could be tested and proved or disproved. Muslims developed the scientific method of formulating a hypothesis and testing it to see whether it is correct. Visiting European students marveled over this process, which was unknown in dogma-plagued Europe. Adelard of  Bath, a prominent Christian scholar of the Middle Ages, wrote: “Indeed, I have learned from my Arab masters to follow reason as a guide.”

This figure shows a twelfth-century model of the solar system from Baghdad. (Courtesy of Aramco) In the last stage, Muslims began adding to this store of knowledge with new discoveries of their own from the ninth century onward. The list of sciences either refined or invented by Muslims is dizzying: algebra, chemistry, astronomy, medicine, cartography, botany, and navigation, to list just a few. (The term Greco-Arab science was coined to label this synthesis of learning styles.) Given the religious impetus to learn to read and write, Muslim populations were generally literate enough to provide a steady stream of students, both male and female, to the great lecture halls of Islamic universities. By way of contrast, during this same period in Europe few could read beyond a scattering of priests and nobles.

The major conduit for Muslim learning into Europe was through the great colleges of Muslim Spain. Christians flocked to Cordoba, Toledo, Seville, and Granada to study subjects that were unknown in the rest of Europe. One contemporary Christian priest lamented, “All our young men are vying with each other to learn Arabic.” This is no small statement. As much as English today is the international language of science, art, and technology, if you can imagine it, Arabic was that language from the ninth to the fifteenth century. New words such as astrolabe, algorithm, soda, syrup, and zenith were adopted into European languages, and Christians read the voluminous writings of Muslim scholars with enthusiasm. Daniel of Morley, an Englishman of the twelfth century, expressed his reasons for attending an Islamic college in these words:

“My passion for knowledge chased me from England. I stayed for a while in Paris. There I saw only savages …. Their ignorance forced them (i.e., the scholars) to remain silent …. As soon as they opened their mouths I heard only the babbling of babes …. Since at present the instruction of the Arabs … is made available to all in Toledo, I hastened there to attend the lectures of the most learned philosophers in the world. As my friends summoned me back and invited me to return from Spain, I went to England with a precious collection

of books.” (Jacques LeGoff, Intellectuals in the Middle Ages)