As the Muslim community grew, so did its acquisition of knowledge, and its efforts gained momentum during the finest century of the Abbasid Caliphate. During this time Muslims began writing books, primarily on the Quran and other religious subjects including biography of the Prophet. This period saw the greatest number of translations into Arabic of work from various nations, and from languages such as Greek and Persian. Arabic later became a language of instruction in Western universities, and Persian gained numerous Arabic words.
Institutions of learning and libraries such as those at Jundishapur furthered scholarship during the Muslim era, as did vast individual collections in homes. Caliph Al-Hakam II of Spain had 400,000 books in his library. Institutions of higher learning such as Al-Azhar University in Cairo had established academic traditions still in practice today, especially in the West.
Caliph Harun al-Rashid was the first caliph to become a world statesman. During his reign, Baghdad earned the distinction of being the heart of the Golden Age of Islam. Al-Rashid’s popularity around the world led to his casting as the legendary figure in The Arabian Nights. After studying under such teachers, al-Rashid’s son and successor al-Ma’mun excelled in law, literature, rhetoric, and the sciences. When al-Ma’mun became Caliph he founded the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, which attracted scholars from around the world and became the center of research, astronomy, and more translations from Greek, Syrian, Persian, and Sanskrit works. Greek works in their Arabized versions eventually reached Latin Europe, reawakening interest in Aristotle and Greek texts. At the time of translation, there was no West to speak of, nor the idea of a “classical Greece.”
Women excelled in acquiring knowledge in Quranic studies, law, theology, the arts, and medicine. Midwives were in demand although women studied other branches of medicine and also became surgeons and physicians. Many women achieved prestige in learning and other fields. Their positions included 17 administrators, 9 orators, 4 who built mosques and other public institutions, 42 theologians, 23 musicians, and 76 poets. The wives of the Caliphs competed with one another in poetry writing.
Imam al-Ghazali was an exemplar of learning and experience at this time and the greatest scholar of Islamic theology. Ibn Khaldun, the founder of sociology and a pioneer in the social sciences, was another major intellectual with distinguished status in history. Arnold Toynbee describes his Muqaddima (Prologue, a monumental work on universal history) as a philosophy of history that is the greatest work of its kind. Ibn Khaldun’s perspective is vast, from the Creation to the events of the previous years, including events from Biblical, Persian, Greek, and Roman times, as well as the history of the Arabs.
The use of Arabic in instruction at Western universities continued what had already been available to scholars from the West, particularly in the Muslim learning center of Cordoba. Western scholars were by then emerging on their own, moving away from Church-controlled learning institutions. The genius of Islamic civilization is demonstrated in how it utilized the learning it acquired from other cultures, created its own intellectual milieu, and made its own contributions to world knowledge. Intellectual activity was one constant throughout Islamic civilization.
A.M.A. Shustery, Outlines of Islamic Culture (Lahore, Pakistan: Sh. Muhammd Ashraf, 1976), p.325.
Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), vol.10, pp.64–86, vol.9, pp.175–182.
The Sciences
The Quran strongly emphasizes the beauty of nature and presence of God’s miracles in the physical world. In many places the Quran references nature and elements of science and connects these with God’s creation, even encouraging scientific research. The Quran draws attention to evidence from the natural world and emphasizes taqdir, or “measure”: the balancing of the extremes of quantity and quality while neglecting neither.
Early Muslim scholars had already concluded the earth was round, based on their interpretation of a description in the Quran. Europeans refused to accept this fact well into the Renaissance, insisting the earth was flat. In Muslim Spain, Muslim and Jewish astronomers rejected Ptolemy’s theories outright in favor of Aristotle’s works. Muslim astronomers corrected Ptolemy’s planetary model to conform to Muslim almanac tables, and acknowledged the existence of other planetary systems. Muslims also calculated circumferences using a pi well before they knew of Greek geometry.
During their conquests, Muslims preserved Byzantine and Persian scientific institutions. Jundishapur became a science center for the Muslim world and its scholars came to Damascus, the Umayyad capital. Islamic science dominated the world for centuries and flowered during the Abbasid period of rule. Scholars from India, the Byzantine empire, and Persia gathered in Baghdad to learn from Muslim scholars. All scholarly materials were written in a language new to the sciences. Everything was translated into Arabic before it was interpreted, which led to new terminologies and greater creativity.
Advances in astronomy greatly assisted travelers, who needed to know the positions of constellations and movements of stars to establish a route to follow and to calculate the time. The moon was also significant in the lives of Arabs, who demarcated 28 successive groups of stars known as “lunar stages.” The position of the moon against these stages revealed the season of the year. Muslim Spain taught the West that the earth is a sphere, and passed along other valuable work such as astronomical tables.
Muslim science of chemistry developed a century and a half after the advent of Islam. Muslims made significant advances in mathematics, as well, with Muhammad ibn Musa’s algorithm and development of algebra, geometric solutions, degree measurements, and trigonometric tables. The Islamic sciences developed owing to the civilization’s open-ness to the achievements of other civilizations, especially the sciences in Persia, India, and ancient Greece. The translation movement encouraged by Muslim rulers played a significant role, and the Islamic sciences went on to influence the Renaissance.
Quran 21:30, 24:45, 25:53-54, 34:9, 41:11.
Quran 25:2, 54:49 and other verses.
Colin A. Ronan, Science: Its History and Development Among the World’s Cultures (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1982), p.203.
J. Casulleras and J. Samso (eds.), From Baghdad to Barcelona: Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences in Honour of Prof. Juan Vernet, 2 vols. (Barcelona:Barcelona University, 1996), vol. 1, p.479.
Akbar S. Ahmed, Discovering Islam: Making Sense of Muslim History and Society (London & New York: Routledge, 1988), pp.238–346.
George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, 3 vols. Vol.1, From Homer to Omar Khayyam (Baltimore, MD: Williams & Wilkins for the Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1927; repr. 1962), p.666.
Medicine
During the first years of Islam, China, India, Greece, and Persia excelled in medicine. Greek scholars settled at Jundishapur, Persia’s advanced learning center, which contributed physicians to the Arab and Persian worlds. Some of these physicians were contemporaries of the Prophet Muhammad, who also gave common sense advice regarding illnesses, healthy eating habits, and hygiene. As the study of medicine developed in the Muslim world, subsequent caliphates relied on physicians from Jundishapur for medical advice, such as court doctor Hunain ibn-Ishaq from the 9th century CE. Hunain translated Greek works into Arabic, wrote a hundred or so medical works that were influential in the Muslim world, and taught future influential physicians.
In the Abbasid era, all scholars gained some medical knowledge and many became polymaths. The atmosphere was conducive to learning and the scholars were highly esteemed. In the early 9th century CE Baghdad had 860 licensed physicians and many hospitals and schools. An important period in the history of Islamic medicine covered three great physicians, writers of major texts, and philosophers: al-Razi, al-Majusi, and Ibn Sina. Al-Razi’s work signaled the maturity of Arabian medicine, and his most significant contribution was to distinguish smallpox from measles. He produced over 200 books, half of them on medicine, including a 10-volume treatise on Greek medicine.
Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina (Avicenna) was the most highly recognized of Muslim physicians. Muslim medicine reached its pinnacle of achievement with his works and medical talents. Ibn Sina’s eminence in medical history rests on his masterpiece, al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine), known in the West as The Canon, in five volumes.
During the early centuries of Muslim Spain, scholars aspiring to become physicians traveled to Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, and Iran to acquire knowledge and experience at universities and hospitals. Later, Muslim Spain established its own universities with centers of medicine and philosophy, which facilitated the flow of Muslim expertise to the rest of Europe in the 12th century CE. He influenced the West in philosophy but also excelled as a judge, physician, and author of a comprehensive medical encyclopedia. Edward Browne writes that both Arab and non-Arab Muslims made the largest contribution to the body of scientific doctrine that they inherited from the Greeks regarding chemistry and medicine. As a result, Muslims considered chemistry and botany more useful in the preparation of medicines than as separate disciplines. Medical and pharmaceutical knowledge spread throughout the Muslim world owing to scholars traveling to the exceptional medical schools to learn from masters.
Muslims were noted for their hospitals and were the first to invent the kind of efficient hospital the world knows today. In addition to inventing the pharmacy, Islamic civilization produced pharmaceutical terminology and practices that transferred to European medicine, such as methods of medication preparation. Muslim medicine was influential and far-reaching, and the Islamic paradigm of knowledge of the medieval period was thorough and comprehensive in its focus.
Edward G. Browne, Arabian Medicine (Lahore, Pakistan: Hijra International Publishers, 1990), p.48.
Ahmed, Discovering Islam, p.221.
Arabic Literature
Literature and art have been two significant constants throughout Islamic civilization. Muslim creativity elevated them as human achievements, and included creations from Muslims in non-Muslim countries. The basis of Muslim literature was its language and how it was used. Each culture has distinctive forms, metaphors, symbols, and motifs, and this is especially true of Islamic culture. Muslim literature reflects a Muslim ethos and has distinctive features: knowledge of Quran and Islam, and pre-Islamic literary traditions such as poetry, oratory, tales, and tribal themes that often combined historical facts with legends and lives of prominent historical figures. The great historian Ibn Khaldun noted that Abu Al-Faraj’s Book of Songs “comprises all that [Arabs] had achieved in the past of excellence in every kind of poetry, history, music, et cetera.”
The protagonists in pre-Islamic stories and legends were kings as well as tribal heroes. Bedouin stories were told in verse, so singing poetry in praise of desert heroes became a tradition. Arabs highly regarded poetry and the most famous was Mu’allaqat (The Seven Odes). Many Arabs still memorize and recite the entire volume today. Later, as Islam influenced literature, the Quran did not prevent poets from pursuing their skills, even during the life of the Prophet. However, the first four Caliphs showed great interest in poetry, preferring works rooted in “noble values” and Islamic morality. The Umayyad era led to greater creativity among poets and fluid language, including the ghazal, a new form of love poem. Love poetry of pre-Islamic times was written again after the coming of Islam under the Umayyads in Mecca and Madina. Love poetry tended to be ambiguous rather than direct in theme.
There was development in the writing of prose although oratory was still the primary means of expression in regions where literacy was just starting to spread. Old legends were written down although most early recorded works were historical. The most popular narratives were stories of the early wars of Islam. The outstanding prose work of the time was a biography-history of the Prophet Muhammad written by Ibn Ishaq and based on interviews with people who knew of the Prophet from information handed down from relatives or Companions. His method of a chain of authorities leading back to the time of the Prophet was also used for the compilation of hadith, also known as the Sunna, “the way of the Prophet,” which is, after the Quran, the most important religious guidance for Muslims.
Most prose, such as hero epics, was written during the 500 years-long Abbasid era and developed under a more sophisticated and cosmopolitan culture engendered by the Caliphate. This prose challenged poetry’s dominant status. A distinction should be made between the Arabic-Islamic literature of the Umayyad era and that of the Abbasid era. Abbasid rule, especially the first half, made a large difference to literature, philosophy, the sciences, and arts. Literary prose dominated, though poetry was still held in greater esteem, and was enhanced by more learning and wider contact with other cultures.
Of all works from this early literary period, the story collection A Thousand and One Nights was the most popular and famous. Many of the stories were translated from Persian, and combined with Bedouin stories and Arab folk songs, often to become teaching stories for Muslims. This process affected the organization of the tales and their deeper meanings.
Increasing interest in prose style led to a new form of composition called the maqamat, a dramatic genre with innuendos and double entendres. Ahmad al-Hamadhani’s Maqamat has been considered, since its inception a treasure of the Arabic language. During the Abbasid era, poetry was abundant, with broader content, techniques, and style than before.
The Arts
Two most beautiful monuments in Spain exemplify the arts of Islam: the Great Mosque of Cordoba and Alhambra in Granada. These buildings are open, bright, colorful, and magnificent, rich in arabesques and calligraphy and geometric designs. The Quran emphasizes beauty in many places. Muslims took the beauty that God provided for them and beautified their books of the Quran and their mosques, creating a uniquely Islamic visual design. In the Muslim world today one sees rich designs and decorations, and beautiful calligraphy, book illustrations, miniature painting, and illuminated manuscripts. The arabesque with geometric design is the most distinctive Islamic aesthetic form.
Muslims continued handiwork from the centuries before Islam, especially in carpets, which were now available to all with an increase in materials and production. Mosque interiors were soon covered in carpets and nomads used them in their travels as portable household goods. The prayer rug was the most widespread use of the carpet all over the Muslim world. At the start of the European Renaissance, carpets were among the most desired of products from the Muslim world. They were appreciated for their rich designs and were included in paintings from leading European artists.
In the area of ceramics and glass, Muslims reinvented the practice of tin glazing, which, when introduced in Europe, became a dominant technique of Western pottery. Muslims also added the use of metallic glaze to create luster and multi-colored pottery. Muslim luster techniques entered Europe through Spain and Italy. Italy bought glazed pottery, and ceramic plates to decorate its churches, from the Muslim world for three centuries. The Muslim world was likely the only civilization in the Middle Ages to produce glass and rock crystal works of high artistic quality. Glass was common in practical application and as decoration. Another technique, enameling, was used with or without gold.
The connoisseur, coming to Muslim art, takes the most delight in Islamic miniature painting at its finest, as demonstrated in the Persian, Mughal, and Turkish miniatures. Their detail is meticulously and exquisitely rendered. The miniature paintings also feature the other Islamic arts, such as buildings, calligraphy, gardens, carpets, and clothes. Much wealth went into their making, with brilliant colors and use of gold and precious stones.
Arabic calligraphy, like architecture, is an important art form in the Muslim world. Early copies of the Quran were written in a slanting script, and the Quranic script developed in Mecca and Madinah in the first Islamic century, initiating calligraphy as an art form. Various styles of script came to be used in various media and also decorated buildings. Allah has also been the focus of the most various styles and characters. The genius of the Muslim artists, especially those of the early years of Islamic history, who were its originators, is also strongly reflected in the development of geometric design seen in the arabesque. The mosque encompasses all of Islam’s other arts, especially calligraphy and the arabesque. Architecture is the art of Islam and deserves recognition accordingly. The Prophet’s mosque in Madinah was the prototype of all Islamic buildings of worship, fashioned with a dome and minaret.
Reynold A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1966), p.323.
Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West (New York, and Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp.120–121.
Salma Khadra Jayyusi (ed.), The Legacy of Muslim Spain (Leiden, The Netherlands; New York; Cologne: E.J. Brill, 1992), pp.387–396.
H.T. Norris “Fables and Legends,” in Julia Ashtiany, T. Johnstone, J. Latham, R. Serjeant, and G. Rex Smith (eds.), The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: ‘Abbasid Belles-Lettres (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1990), pp.137–138.
Reynold A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1966), pp.429–430.
Quran 7:31–32, 16:8, 16:13, 50:7.
Giovanni Curatola, The Simon and Schuster Book of Oriental Carpets, trans. Simon Pleasance (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), pp.28–30.
Ibid., p.28.