The Turkic people, especially the Ottomans, left their imprint on the formation and maturation of Islamic civilization in its later period, particularly in art and architecture, where Ottoman styles interacted with the Byzantine and European Renaissance. The Muslim Turkish Emirates brought many features and innovations to Islamic architecture, creating a new type of minaret peculiar to the Muslim world and different from early Islamic rectangular minarets. This combination of a dome with monumental cubic space was an innovation. In their homeland in Central Asia, the Turks lived in dome-like tents that later influenced Turkish architecture and ornamental arts. During the Seljuk era, a consistent emphasis on the dome as the main architectural feature created the necessary visual unity to integrate a building with its surroundings. The artistic blend generated vitality and creativity that were uniquely Ottoman. Their language was Turkish but also enriched with sophisticated Persian and Arabic poetic narrative tradition and vocabularies.
The Ottoman Empire paid special attention to mosque building since the mosque continued to play an important role in the Ottoman state and society. The fall of the city of Constantinople in 1453 CE marked the start of a profound Byzantine influence on Ottoman art and architecture. The influence is credited to Sultan Mehmet II and Sulayman the Magnificent, as well as the pre-existence of numerous religious and secular buildings, including the Hagia Sophia Church, which the Ottomans inherited from the Byzantine Empire. After the conquest, the church was transformed into an imperial mosque and became a source of inspiration for Ottoman architects. Centrally planned domed sanctuaries appeared in Italy and the Ottoman Empire, attributed partly to the concurrent revival of a mutual Romano-Byzantine architectural heritage.
The Ottoman world power spanned three continents until the 19th century. They were pioneers in their emphasis on free world trade and contributed greatly to the growth of European capitalism. Ottoman cartographers and writers used the same sources as European Renaissance cartographers, such as the works of classical antiquity, in particular, Ptolemy’s Geography.[1]
Similar to the Abbasid Caliphate, the Ottoman civil state was cosmopolitan and a blend of many cultures. The millet system divided the empire into semi-autonomous communities based on religious affiliation. The Ottoman religious tolerance[2] and sensibility were reflected in architecture, mosque building, and colleges. Their unique ties to Islam were ever-present and their preference and patronage of the arts was widely influential.
The Ottomans also inherited a rich mixture of political traditions from disparate groups, as well as from Islam. The sultan, modeled on the just ruler concept found in Turco-Persian and Islamic history, had a primary function to protect his people from the excesses of government, such as taxation and corruption. As a result, the tolerance displayed by the Ottomans was welcome to immigrants such as the large Jewish population from Spain that settled in Istanbul.[3] This cultural fusion also caused the Ottomans to both influence and be influenced by the Renaissance in Europe, via intellectual and artistic exchange.
[1] Halil Inalcik and Cemal Kafadar, eds., Suleyman the Second and His Time (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993), p.348.
[2] Avigdor Levy, Jews, Turks, Ottomans: A Shared History, Fifteenth through the Twentieth Century (Syracuse University Press, 2003).
[3] Ibid.
Muslim Impact on the Renaissance
Europeans, who most wanted to destroy Islam and the Muslim world, benefited most from the achievements of Islamic civilization, especially in the areas of science and medicine. Further, the Mongols, who devastated the Muslim world and whose help the Crusaders sought to destroy Islam, went on to convert to Islam and extend Islamic civilization for several more centuries. They also were responsible for creating Mughal India, another Muslim state, which together with Ottoman Turkey, kept Islamic civilization alive until the coming of European colonizers.
Islamic society strongly influenced science, medicine, philosophy, and literature in Europe. Medical practice in Europe was largely based on Islamic medicine and using wisdom of Jewish and Muslim doctors.
Western medicine was for many centuries the continuation of Islamic medicine. There was a continuation in the West of learning from the Muslims, despite the verbal denial of deriving knowledge of medicine from the Muslim world. Islamic medicine did receive literary endorsement in the English-speaking world via Chaucer and Shakespeare.
Muslim knowledge entered the West through academic centers in Spain and Italy, and ideas permeated during the Crusades and via translated documents. The commentaries of Muslim scholars were pivotal, and the Muslims went further in basing their thinking on a very close connection between philosophy and medicine. Until the Renaissance and Reformation, Arabic was probably the most widely translated language in the world.
A major proportion of Islamic knowledge entered Europe through Muslim Spain, which for centuries was more like a country in the Muslim Middle East. Many non-Muslims adopted Muslim names, clothes, and customs, and used Arabic in public and private life. Muslim, Jewish, and Christian students, including Charlemagne, traveled to study at the Islamic universities in Spain.
In the 12th century CE, five hundred years after the emergence of Islam, translation of Arabic works into Latin began there, including popular literature but mostly in science and medicine. By the close of 13th century CE, Arabic science and philosophy had been transmitted to Europe. Still, Christian Europe was reluctant to recognize Islamic learning and tended to attribute content origins to the Greeks.
Literature was a major area of influence by Islamic civilization in the West. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Arabic literature was the main area of outside influence on the Christian world. Also, during its first thousand years, Islam was revealed to Europe almost exclusively through Arabic literature. Yet Western distortion of Islamic teaching began during the Crusades and afterward. Having failed during the Crusades, Christians tried to gain the Mongols as allies in order to destroy the Muslim world and eliminate Islam. Yet all civilizations, including the West, have benefited from the achievements of the Islamic civilization, and Islam exerted a large cultural impact on Christendom.
For these reasons, translations from Arabic to European languages, as well as the enormous learning that the West acquired from the Muslims were the important contributions to the Renaissance and the development of modern Western civilization.
Contributions of Muslim Women to Civilization
The Muslim women contributed to various fields of the classical civilization of Islam, such as in hadith transmission, jurisprudence (fiqh), literature, and education, as well as in the development of science, technology, and medicine.
From the early years of Islam, women had crucial roles in their society. They contributed substantially to the prominence of Islamic civilization. For example, Aisha bint Abu Bakr, wife of the Prophet Muhammad, had special skills in administration. She became a scholar in hadith, jurisprudence, an educator, and an orator.[1]
There are also many references which point to Muslim women who excelled in areas such as medicine, literature, and jurisprudence. For several years, Dr. Mohammed Akram Nadwi conducted a long term and large scale project to unearth the biographies of thousands of women who participated in the hadith tradition throughout Islamic history. In Al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam,[2] Dr. Nadwi summarized his 40-volume biographical dictionary (in Arabic) of the Muslim women who studied and taught hadith. Even in this short text, he demonstrates the central role women had in preserving the Prophet's teaching, which remains the master-guide to understanding the Quran as rules and norms for life. Within the bounds of modesty in dress and manners, women routinely attended and gave classes in the major mosques and madrasas, travelled intensively for ‘the knowledge', transmitted and critiqued hadith, issued fatwas, and so on. Some of the most renowned male scholars have depended on, and praised, the scholarship of their female teachers. The women scholars enjoyed considerable public authority in society, not as the exception, but as the norm. The huge body of information reviewed in Al-Muhaddithat is essential to understanding the role of women in Islamic society, their past achievement and future potential.
Throughout history and even as early as the time of Prophet Muhammad, there are examples of Muslim women making significant contributions to the improvement of the quality of the social and economic life of their societies. They actively participated in management, education, religious jurisprudence, medicine and health as they were motivated by their concern for the affairs of the people. With the arrival of Islam women were able to practice as physicians and treat both women and men particularly on the battlefields. However, the strict segregation between men and women meant that women had little or no contact with men outside their immediate family. So, the healthcare of Muslim women was mainly handled by other women, especially as it was socially improper for a man to attend a woman regarding matters of her health. The following are some examples of some of Muslim women who contributed to the advancement of medicine.
The title of the first nurse of Islam is credited to Rufayda Bint Saad Al Aslamiyya. But names of other women were recorded as nurses and practitioners of medicine in early Islam: Nusayba Bint Kaab Al-Mazeneya, one of the Muslim women who provided nursing services to warriors at the battle of Uhud (625 H), Umm Sinan Al-Islami (known also as Umm Imara), who became a Muslim and asked permission of the Prophet Muhammad to go out with the warriors to nurse the injured and provide water to the thirsty, Umm Matawe' Al-Aslamiyya, who volunteered to be a nurse in the army after the opening of Khaybar, Umm Waraqa Bint Hareth, who participated in gathering the Quran and providing her nursing services to the warriors at the battle of Badr.
There were many famous women who had a role in advancing science and who established charitable, educational and religious institutions. Some examples are Zubayda bint Ja'far al-Mansur who pioneered a most ambitious project of digging wells and building service stations all along the pilgrimage route from Baghdad to Mecca, Sutayta who was a mathematician and an expert witness in the courts, Dhayfa Khatun who excelled in management and statesmanship, Fatima al-Fehri who founded the Qarawiyin mosque in Fez, Morocco, which became the first university in the world. The making of astrolabes, a branch of applied science of great status, was practiced by one woman, Al-'Ijliyah bint al-'Ijli al-Asturlabi, who followed her father's profession in Aleppo and was employed at the court of Sayf al-Dawlah (333 H/944 CE-357/967), one of the powerful Hamdanid rulers in northern Syria who guarded the frontier with the Byzantine empire in the tenth century CE.
In the field of mathematics, names of female scholars featured in Islamic history such as Amat-Al-Wahid Sutaita Al-Mahamli from Baghdad and Labana of Cordoba, both from the 10th century.
In AI-Fihrist, Ibn al-Nadim names women with a varied range of skills. Two are grammarians — a much respected branch of knowledge, related to the use of the full range of excellence of the Arabic language. There was a woman scholar of Arab dialects, "whose origin was among the tribes", and another "acquainted with tribal legends and colloquialisms". A third wrote a book entitled "Rare forms and sources of verbal nouns". Aspiring poets, like Abu Nuwas, used to spend time with the desert tribes to perfect their knowledge of pure Arabic. In a different field, Arwa, "a woman known for her wise sayings", wrote a book about "sermons, morals and wisdom".
An Indian woman, Rasa, was the author of a book on the medical treatment of women, listed among Indian works on medicine available in Arabic. Maryah al-Qibtiyyah, an Egyptian woman of the first century CE, wrote on alchemy, and finds her place among books by savants of antiquity that were studied by the scholars of the Islamic world. One female authority on the traditions of the Prophet is noted: Fatima bint al-Mundhir, who lived in Medina and died about 145 H/763 CE. She was the wife of Hisham, son of ‘Urwah who gathered so many traditions from his aunt ‘A'ishah.
Muslim women have also played a major role in promoting civilization and science in the Islamic world. Some have built schools, mosques and hospitals. Zubayda bint Abu Ja'far, the wife of Harun ar-Rashid, was the wealthiest and most powerful woman in the world of her time. She was a noblewoman of great generosity and munificence. She the developed many buildings in different cities. She was known to have embarked upon a gigantic project to build service stations with water wells all along the Pilgrimage route from Baghdad to Mecca. The famous Zubaida water spring in the outskirts of Mecca still carries her name. She was also a patron of the arts and poetry
[1] Montgomery Watt, "A'isha Bint Abi Bakr", Encyclopedia of Islam, Brill, vol. 1, p. 307; Amira Sonbol, "Period 500-800, Women, Gender and Islamic Cultures (6th-9th Centuries)", in Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, General Editor: Suad Joseph, 6 vols. Leiden-Boston: E. J. Brill, 6 vols., 2003.
[2] Oxford: Interface Publications, 2007 (hardcover and paperback).
