Description: During the European Dark Ages, when science, art and literature seemed to flounder for several centuries, there actually was a lot of discover and insight going on – but in places like Iraq, Persia and Syria. The science of medicine, mathematics and astronomy flourished among scholars and would help catalyze the European Renaissance. But those contributions have been largely forgotten today
J.R. Intro: To understand why and what’s lost when we ignore the debt we owe to Islam? I’m joined by Glen Cooper, he’s an Adjunct Professor of History at Pitzer Collage and also a BYU alum. He has built a career on studying ancient Islamic science.
J.R: Welcome Professor Cooper it’s good to have you.
G.C: Thank you Julian.
J.R: Can you point to anything in our modern scientific or medical world, that we can look at and say, Islamic Scholars made that what it is today?
G.C: Well there is numerous examples of things that we use every day. For example, the numeral system, the Arabic numeral system that we use, which actually comes from India. But the decimal fractions that the Muslim mathematicians invented, in 15th C. Samarqand, which simplified astronomical calculations. And also Spherical Trigonometry, which they developed to help them investigate the heavens. But more pervasively, and this is often overlooked, is that the mediaeval Muslims shaped the way that we think about and do science to this day. Their greatest innovations were scientific institutions, they came up with the idea of private, endowed research institutions. They pioneered in colleges, hospitals and observatories.
A parade of surgeons, on the left side from Surnâme-i Vehb
The overview of the astronomical instruments and staff of the Istanbul Observatory with Taqi Al-Din Rasid at work from Shahinshahnāme manuscript
R: Prior to the Islamic world doing this, how would that kind of pursuit be done? Would it have been done more individually rather than in a professional setting?
G.C: Well there were things like the library of Alexandria and other places. But they were usually endowed by the ruler and were subjected to his whim, whereas these [Muslim scientific] endowments were protected by the religious institutions.
.R: Give me an example of one of these institutions that you have studied
G.C: Let me start with the hospitals. Hospitals as we understand them were originally invented by Christians as places of charity for the dying and this is what we see as hospice care today. But in the mediaeval Islamic world they took that idea and turned the hospitals into research institutions that were privately endowed by a pious benefactor. This was to improve medication towards the sick rather than just the dying.
J.R: So when we go to the hospital today to get better and not to die, that was an idea that the Islamic scientists came up with?
G.C: Yes. Plus the knowledge that accumulated in such places.
J.R: But did they advance medical treatment during this period? In the dark ages medicine was pretty rough compared with what we know today! What kind of contributions did the Islamic scholars make?
G.C: They improved medical treatment, they built upon the Greek physicians and improved all of their techniques and all of their theories. They made remarkable discoveries. For example, Ibn al-Nafis, a 13th century Syrian physician, discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood, which prefigured Harvey’s great discovery three centuries later. Ibn al-Haytham, in the 11th century, investigated the anatomy and physiology of vision.
J.R: Were they surgeons? Were they advancing the treatment? Or were they mostly advancing the basic knowledge and writing anatomical texts which other scientist could then build upon?
G.C: physicians usually did many things. They in many different things that we would separate today. But in the place of the hospital, were they worked, they had the opportunity to do a variety of investigations.
J.R: Were there political or cultural reasons why the Islamic world was experiencing this golden age of science when we had the dark ages going on in Europe?
G.C: Yes there is. The dynasty of the Caliphate that was established in Baghdad in 750 A.D. had political reasons in its rivalry with Byzantium to appropriate ancient Greek thought. Which was useful for things like astrology, mathematics and medicine. So all these Greek works were translated into Arabic and became a part of an imperial/political ideology of knowledge and advancing everything.
J.R: Advancing what exactly? Was it a part of this idea of world domination? Were they translating to claim all the wisdom of the Greeks?
G.C: Yes it was a part of asserting the legitimacy of the Islamic ruler as opposed to the Christian emperor. And to assert that Islam was the legitimate successor of all the ancient empires that had gone before, from whom they based their knowledge and their discoveries.
Harun al-Rashid receiving a delegation sent by Charlemagne at his court
.J.R: But how far did the Islamic world span at this particular moment in time?
G.C: From Spain, the Iberian Peninsula, all the way to India.
J.R: And this is truly the largest it had ever been? This was at its peak and the ruler had political reasons for wanting to be the world leader in science and thought right?
G.C: Yes. And with astrology, the ability to predict the future, or supposedly to predict the future, was important politically.
J.R: Was there any influence of Islam itself and the religious principles of Islam, that is evident in the scientific work that was done by these scholars?
G.C: Yes the Quran has many verses that encourage the seeking of knowledge, to understand God’s creation and to understand His existence. This was also seen as a religious responsibility.
J.R: So there wasn’t any concern about man usurping the power of Allah and usurping the Majesty of Allah in some way by trying to understand the heavens or understand in detail how the human body works?
G.C: For the most part, astrology got into trouble because it claims knowledge that only God is thought to have. But if you could set the claims of astrology aside, then you could have predictive astronomy which was useful for the calendar and useful for the Islamic religion regarding prayer times and other things which are related to the stars.
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