Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
187. Why Did the Scientific Revolution Not Take Place in the Islamic World? - 5
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
Al Gazzali’s dialectic on philosophy had a global impact both on the Islamic as well as Western civilizations. Although Al Gazzali’s thrust was against the arguments of the philosophers rather than philosophy itself, his encyclopedic works had a chilling effect on the pursuit of philosophy in the Islamic world. In essence, it eliminated reason from the realm of natural phenomenon.
The Riposte of Ibn Rushd
As interest in philosophy waned, the Spaniard Ibn Rushd (d 1198) took up the defense of philosophy. Considered a giant among philosophers, Ibn Rushd wrote extensive commentaries on the works of Aristotle. He took issue with Al Gazzali’s position that there was no cause and effect in nature. In his Tahaffut at Tahaffut (Repudiation of the Repudiation) he argued that reason was a valid tool for understanding both nature and revelation. Whereas Al Gazzali had questioned the validity of cause and effect in nature, arguing that phenomenon happen only by the will of God, Ibn Rushd argued that natural phenomenon followed laws ordained by God. Thus the sway of Divine Will over all affairs is preserved both through the natural laws and their outcomes. However, the Islamic world chose the mysticism of Al Gazzali over the rationalism of Ibn Rushd. Reason was marginalized, whereas mysticism thrived.
As Spain fell to the Christian Conquistadores (1086-1248), Latin translations of the works of Ibn Rushd and other Muslim philosophers became available in Europe and were a driving force for the rise of the scholastic tradition in Christendom. Universities sprang up all over Europe. Those at Bologna (1088), Paris (1150), Oxford (1096), Cambridge (1209). Rome (1303), Florence (1321), Prague (1348), Vienna (1365), Venice (1470), and Valencia (1499) are well known. European scholasticism, having arrived at the same point in philosophy that Muslim philosophy had arrived at three hundred years earlier resolved the apparent tensions between philosophy and religion in a fundamentally different way. One of the principal figures in this tradition was Thomas Aquinas. Whereas Muslim philosophers had struggled to maintain the omnipotence of God in nature and human affairs by speculating on the nature of time and advancing the idea of “the necessary” and “the contingent”, the European philosophers separated nature and theology into separate compartments. Nature, they concluded, was within the domain of reason; matters of theology were beyond its reach. And thus the separation into sacred and secular.
The Interaction of Faith with Reason in Europe and the Islamic World, a Contrast in Outcomes
To recap, here is a summary of the galactic battles between faith and reason in Islam and Christianity: The first to attempt a reconciliation of faith and reason were the Mu’tazalites. They overextended their reach by applying reason to the divine realm without a sufficient grasp of the limits of reason. To preserve the transcendence of God they speculated that the Word of God was “created”. In other words, they tried to contain the Word of God in the confines of reason and were summarily rejected by Islamic orthodoxy. The Asharites advanced an “atomistic” theory of time. This view did gain wide traction and became a part of Islamic thought. The Muslim scientists used a different approach by suggesting that the domain of the Divine was “necessary” whereas that of nature was “contingent”. This view was too esoteric for main street Islam to absorb. Al Gazzali stood on the shoulders of the Asharites and the scientists but in his attempt to repudiate the philosophers, he went too far and banished reason from nature. Ibn Rushd tried to contain the damage done by Al Gazzali but the Islamic world chose Al Gazzali over Ibn Rushd. The Latin West accommodated reason with faith but they paid a heavy price for this accommodation; they banished reason from faith and made the natural sciences secular.
The Simultaneous Mongol Invasions and the Crusades
The Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century (1219-1257) devastated much of the eastern Islamic world. The great cities of Samarkand, Bokhara, Merv, Nishapur, Ghazna, Esfahan, Tabriz and Baghdad were destroyed. A vast swath of territories extending from the Amu Darya (in Central Asia) to the hills of Jerusalem was decimated. The nomadic Mongols had no use for agriculture. Dams were leveled and canals filled in. Libraries were burned. Men of learning were slaughtered. In short, the curtain fell on the classic Islamic civilization that had nurtured science and philosophy for five hundred years.
While the Mongols ravaged the eastern provinces of the Islamic world, the Crusades were active in the West. When the Caliphate of Cordoba disintegrated in 1031 and al Andalus broke up into warring principalities, it was a signal for the Christian powers to enter the fray. Toledo, the ancient Visigoth capital, fell in 1086 and Lisbon in Portugal in 1147. After the disastrous defeat of Muslim armies at the battle of Las Novas de Tolosa (1212), the Conquistadores rapidly overran most of Spain. Córdoba, the seat of the Spanish Caliphate fell in 1236, followed by Seville in 1248. Only the Southern tip of Spain around Granada and the hills of Pujara held out until 1492.
Thus, within a span of a generation between 1219 and 1258, more than half of the Islamic world was either destroyed or occupied. The areas ravaged by the Mongols included what is today Uzbekistan Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Pakistan up to the river Indus, Iran, Iraq, Eastern Anatolia and Syria. In the West, the province of Spain was lost. The major centers of Islamic learning were either destroyed or came under the control of their adversaries.
The simultaneous loss of the prosperous cities of Persia and Spain was a blow from which the Islamic civilization never recovered. With the rulers gone, the pursuit of philosophy and science, which depended heavily on patronage from the top, suffered a mortal blow. It was the end of the Golden Age of science in Islam.
The Islam that emerged after the Mongol-Crusader onslaughts was a spiritual Islam, less empirical and exoteric and more esoteric and spiritual. These destruction tested the metal of Islamic civilization. In its darkest hour, the inner spirituality of Islam rose up to the challenge. Islam renewed itself through tasawwuf and was successful in converting the Mongols. Astronomy, architecture and artisanship won the patronage of the new rulers and continued to flourish. However, the natural sciences were neglected. The emphasis of Islamic civilization shifted decidedly towards the sciences of the soul. Whereas the archetype of the Golden Age were philosophers and scientists like al Razi and Ibn Sina, the archetypes of the Sufi age were Shaikh Abdel Qader Jeelani of Baghdad, Shaikh Shadhuli of Cairo, Ibn al Arabi of Spain, Mevlana Rumi of Anatolia and Shah Naqshband of Samarqand. It was this Sufic Islam, syncretic in its tendencies, open and inclusive towards other faiths that spread to the India-Pakistan subcontinent, Indonesia, Malaysia, sub Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe.
Out of the political turmoil of the Mongol-Tartar invasions, there emerged three strong land empires in Asia - the Ottomans who straddled the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, the Safavids of Persia and the Moguls of India. All three of these empires patronized art, architecture, astronomy and artisanship but neglected the natural sciences. The Ottomans, for instance were strong in metallurgy and cannon manufacture. However, the design and manufacture of guns and engines of war was more driven by superb artisanship than a basic understanding of the physics of armaments. This trend continued for four centuries. For instance, the Mysore rockets that were used during the Anglo-Mysore wars (1770-1799) had twice the range of anything used in Europe at the time. However, there is no indication that the master artisans who produced them had a deep understanding of Newton’s laws of physics well known to European scientists of the era.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
