24 - 30 January 2002
Issue No.570
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 24 - 30 January 2002 Issue No.570 |
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Plain talk
We will continue ploughing through the volume Islamic and Arab Contribution to the European Renaissance. This week I will focus on the chapter by the late Ibrahim Bayoumi Madkour on Islamic philosophy.
Madkour occupied various posts including, until his death, president of the Academy of Arabic Language. But I remember him as my professor of philosophy at university. In his first lecture to us on metaphysics he said: "It is like a man looking in a dark room for a black hat that does not exist" -- a fairly succinct, if forbidding, explanation for newly enrolled students.
Madkour describes the main strands of Islamic philosophy as religious/spiritual, or else rationalist, eclectic and closely related to science. Of great interest are the contacts between Arab philosophy and European Christian thought. Eastern Christians came in contact with Muslims following the Arab conquests of Persia, Syria and Egypt. They enjoyed exemplary religious freedom and also shared Muslims' intellectual and cultural activities. Eastern Christians included physicians, chemists, mathematicians and astronomers, and made an extensive contribution to the translation of the Greek heritage into Arabic.
Scientific and philosophic research in Islam began unrestricted by race or religion; the Arabs copied from the Persians, the Muslims from Christians and vice versa. Some Christian thinkers were involved in direct dialogue and controversy with Muslims via personal contacts that lasted more than a century (1096-1204). Such contacts had political as well as military and social repercussions, weakening the authority of the Church and creating a new nucleus for European unity.
Closer and more profound contact between Western Christians and Muslims occurred in Andalusia and Sicily. Western Christians sent missions to Sicily to study mathematics, astronomy and medicine. Notables travelled to the two countries for medical treatment or to acquaint themselves with the arts and other aspects of Islamic civilisation. Andalusia was conquered by the Arabs early in the eighth century and ruled for almost seven centuries, while Sicily was conquered early in the ninth century and ruled for two and a half centuries.
Translations, too, played an important role in European/ Islamic dialogue. Between the eighth and tenth centuries the Arabs translated works from Persian, Indian, Syriac and Hebrew as well as Latin and Greek. Toledo, in Andalusia, and Palermo, in Sicily, were the largest translation centres.
Arabic books on mathematics, astronomy, medicine, chemistry, botany, zoology and astrologyâ including works by Jabir Ibn Hayyan, Al-Razi, Al-Khawarizmi and Ibn Al-Haytham -- were translated into Latin and Greek. Ya'qoub Ibn Ishaq Al- Kindi's four philosophical treatises -- The Intellect, Sleep and Visions, Five Essences and Demonstration -- were translated, as well as writings by Al-Farabi, and influential works by Avicenna, who, it can be argued, paved the way for Copernicus and Galileo.
The Islamic philosopher with the largest share of Latin translations, however, was Averroes, whose discussions of Aristotle ran to 38 separate volumes.
Madkour argues that Christian philosophy was influenced by Islamic trends beginning in the 12th century, an influence that continued until the Renaissance. It is the 13th century, though, that is generally regarded as the golden age of scholastic philosophy, when the influence of Islamic philosophy was at its height.
It was the time during which both Averroes and Avicenna had their greatest impact on patterns of Western thought, a period in which Arab philosophical concerns -- the eternity of the universe, the bases of metaphysics, the categories and the essence of the soul -- were introduced to the Latin world and adopted as the essential concerns of the philosopher.
This is indeed a great book, and its publication in both Arabic and English could not have been better timed, coinciding, as it does, with the forthcoming inauguration of the Alexandria Library.
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