Much to your dismay, Arabs never destroyed things with religious fanaticism. They were mostly hands free and laid back with the fewest rules for non-ruling communities, especially in the early years of the expansion.
Instead what they did was build on top of existing stuff. The Arabs didn't invent aqua ducts. They got it from other civilizations. What Arabs did do was connect ideas from the Greeks, Romans, Indians, North Africa, and sub sahara Africa. And because they were laid back with the fewest rules, lot more innovation and mashing of ideas occurred during this period.
this was in contrast to the Roman Catholic Church which was more domineering and controlling to a fault.
Search youtube for "how Islam saved western civilization" for a rundown. The library in Spain was a collection of all the great European works until Europe awokened in the Renaissance which was built off of the works Arabs had continued.
Note: I'm not taking sides, but just trying to be factual.
This is very misleading. It was, in fact, Islam that was the cause of the 'golden age'. The Arabs existed for centuries with ~nil progress. If you notice, almost 99% of the inventors were Muslims, and based on their writings, dedicated ones.
The Arab Muslims also had an amazing science and tech culture which isn't well appreciated today. Many of the revolutions in Europe in the Middle Ages happened as direct outcomes of Arab Muslim tech. A few of my heros: Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Ismail al-Jazari.
I recall reading somewhere, the reason the Arab world turned away from science was when a particular Caliph came to power and gave the order to destroy any material that wasn't mentioned in the Quran.
Yes, of course. What a huge loss. Your source says "may", so it looks like the exact time the library was destroyed is up for debate. Even if the Muslims did destroy it, keep in mind that no civilization is perfect in hindsight. Racial segregation was still common less than a century ago in the US.
Have you heard of the library of Baghdad? The Mongols threw so many books into the Tigris (or Euphrates?) that it turned black. Arguably the greatest loss of knowledge ever.
> Muslim translators are the influencers behind renaissance, not the people who actually did it? Then why didn't it occur in the muslim world?
No idea. The Golden Age of Islam was due to a wide variety of factors including, good leadership, stability and strong economy, and the availability of nobles willing to support scientists in their learning.
Why the Renaissance took place in Europe and not in the Middle East, I don't know. One reason could be that Europe at the time was waking up from the Dark Ages, while the Islamic Empire was declining because leaders and citizens started to get a bit too comfortable with their achievements. I'm no historian though.
> I've heard this muslims preserved shill many times. Ok, they did. What did they invent? Not inventions by ancients or far-eastern people, but as a genuinely muslim invention. Kebab?
I'm on mobile, so I can't type much. Plus your tone isn't very respectful, so I'm not going to waste my time.
Look up Al Zahrawi. Some of the surgical instruments he invented are still in use to this day. You can find many more such examples through Google.
More importantly, scientific progress isn't measured solely through inventions. Inventions are built on knowledge, and knowledge is built on learning and research. Even if Muslim scholars never invented anything (they did), the amount of knowledge they acquired made the work of their successors much easier.
So then the question is why didn't it happen in the Arab world? The 12th century Arabic world certain had very smart inventors/engineers/builders. See, for example Ismail al-Jazari: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_al-Jazari
Muslims, not Arabs. Also you are mistaken about Arabs passing Persian knowledge. Initially invading Arabs were given to destroying books. It was Muslim Persians who did most of the translation, and subsequently elaboration of the ancient world’s thinking into the Muslim civilization and from there to Europe. And yes, they wrote in Arabic just like Isaac Newton wrote Principia in Latin. And most of us now write in English, but are we Anglos?
p.s. important to amend this here to note that certainly, Muslim civilization had many towering Arab (and non-Persian non-Arab) intellects as well. In my personal opinion, the correct terminology would be Muslim and Islamic (since it certainly was that) instead of Arab or Arabic. The latter apparently is favored by European “Orientalists” but it is both incorrect and further it is divisive.
Medieval Arabs had international banking, corporations and the most advanced science in the world. But after the Mongols took out Baghdad the Arabs turned away from science and adopted more radical interpretations of Islam. Hopefully something like that doesn't happen in the US, despite the efforts of the republicans.
I am however suggesting that the Arabs and Turks haven't actually reinvented the art of engineering which was known in the antique times as they obviously invaded the exact places where that art was already present and that there must be some of them that found that art interesting who are the ones who preserved it in the times of religious fanaticism and destruction.
The Arab world is literally where civilization--the first development of agriculture, of urban settlements, of writing, coherent state polities, etc.--was first invented in history (note that most of these developments happened independently in a few places). They've had those things for at least 1000 years before anything in Europe showed any signs of comparable developments.
Islam actually slows down scientific progress. The golden age is nothing more than Muslims taking credit for the swan song of conquered cultures. If anything, Islamic culture might be the second worst thing that happened to the middle east after the Mongol invasion. There are many hypotheses as to why Muslim-majority countries produce a disproportionately small share of world scientific output even today. The following paper was an interesting read: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/chaney/files/paper.pdf
>Most westerners don't realize that when Europeans were living in mud huts and emptying their chamber pots into the streets...
North Europeans were more advanced than you're giving them credit for. Different biomes open up different strategies and possibilities. You can't expect a city like Rome – marble and all – in ancient Scandinavia. But we found samples of skilled craftsmanship (nebra sky disk, waldalgesheimer fürstengrab) that go against the cartoon narrative you described.
> I doubt religion is solely responsible for the arab world's lack of scientific research. It's probably a mix of political instability, levels of poverty, lack of leadership by the elites and dependence on oil, gas and natural resources for wealth.
The article sites some hard reason here but then argues them away: the Mongols sacking of Baghdad and the Spanish reconquista. I wonder how Europe would look like today if somebody had sacked Italy during the renaissance. In my book Europe was just lucky that it was shielded from significant disruptions (relative to the rest of the world) during the high and late middle ages due to geography and partition into competing centers.
The Arab world, and Arabic history, is not homogenous. Some Muslim nations were very progressive, others were very backwards. Just like non-Muslim nations, really.
There was definitely a period when western Europe was very backwards whereas a lot of meaningful and important progress was made in Muslim countries. There have been Islamic empires that were relatively tolerant about differences, and certainly didn't destroy everything they deemed heretic.
We have a strong tendency to generalise: everything that's a bit distant from us has to be either one thing of the other thing. We're terrible at nuance, yet it's vital in order to understand history.
It is true that the muslims brought Indian numeric system to the west, and had a role in preserving some knowledge, but have you heard about the Library of Alexandria?
"The library may have finally been destroyed during the Muslim conquest of Egypt in (or after) AD 642." (wikipedia)
Muslim translators are the influencers behind renaissance, not the people who actually did it? Then why didn't it occur in the muslim world?
I've heard this muslims preserved shill many times. Ok, they did. What did they invent? Not inventions by ancients or far-eastern people, but as a genuinely muslim invention. Kebab? I'm truly interested!
The medieval Arab world was the inheritor of a Greco-roman culture that they initially ruled with a light hand as a aristocratic minority. As the Arab and eventually Turkish culture asserted itself and turned inward those remnant disappear. By the time modern fanaticism rose, that brief flourishing had been gone for at least 500 years.
The "core of the religion" obviously supported greater knowledge for roughly 500 years. That's a fairly long time. And yes, they were conquerors. But historically who wasn't in 800-1200 AD? Remember, one of the reasons the Islamic Golden Age ended was that Baghdad was conquered by the Mongols. (We've had a relatively stable world map since World War II... that's historically pretty rare.)
I do think that the last 750 years of the Arab world have been dominated by more stronger church-oriented viewpoints, which is unfortunate for the advance of ideas. But that does not imply extreme intolerance per se or radical violence. To be honest, I don't know anything historically as radical as Saudi Wahhabism or its terrorist spin-offs (well, nothing so "mainstream" at least). The Ottoman Empire and Mughal Empire, as far as I know, displayed some tolerance towards different religious sects (although they were never equals and tolerance varied wildly on the ruler), and the justice / law system in place seems roughly close to what the Christian world had before the Renaissance / Enlightenment days. The forced conversion stats you are quoting are, as the Wikipedia article says, controversial... and the times were different anyways.
Today, although the human rights of many Islamic countries are wretched, I certainly can think of several of non-Islamic countries with worse human rights problems, compared to Islamic countries such as Jordan, India, post-revolution Tunisia, or heck even a middle-of-the-road semi-violator like Indonesia. (See: Congo, North Korea, pre-reform Mynamar)
That's not to excuse the fact that a large portion of Islam nations suffer from wretched human rights. But, again I will ask you: if you really believe that Islam is fundamentally violent and this fact can't be changed, what's your solution to this? Personally, I believe that thought pattern is rather dangerous. This is what 1.6 billion people believe. Are you condemning all of them?
If the focus was more narrow, like Wahhabism, that's a different story: Wahhabism has touched a lot of radical Islamic terrorist groups, and Wahhabism is clearly a religious tool of the Saudi state. Now, many Western countries like the United States are allies with Saudi Arabia. If we were really concerned about Islamic terrorism, you'd think we'd be rather concerned about this relationship. (There's political reasons behind this relationship, of course...)
Instead what they did was build on top of existing stuff. The Arabs didn't invent aqua ducts. They got it from other civilizations. What Arabs did do was connect ideas from the Greeks, Romans, Indians, North Africa, and sub sahara Africa. And because they were laid back with the fewest rules, lot more innovation and mashing of ideas occurred during this period.
this was in contrast to the Roman Catholic Church which was more domineering and controlling to a fault.
Search youtube for "how Islam saved western civilization" for a rundown. The library in Spain was a collection of all the great European works until Europe awokened in the Renaissance which was built off of the works Arabs had continued.
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