Posted on 01/11/2002 8:52:14 AM PST by ml/nj
Today in the WSJ, Karen Elliot House reviews a new book from Bernard Lewis entitled What Went Wrong. She begins this way:
How has it come to pass that a civilization that for centuries led the world in science, medicine, and the arts ...Does anyone know what contribution the Islamic world made to science besides giving us our number system (admittedly a biggie) and naming a bunch of stars (less big)? Algebra may have Arabic roots linguistically, but I cannot think of a single concept or theorem that we credit to the Arabs. The Greeks are all over geometry. The Arabs supposedly preserved this and passed it along, but did they contribute? I don't know. I'm asking.
Ditto for medicine. What did they do? (Stop the bleeding when they chopped off someones hand?)
And if House just said "Art," maybe, but Arts? The Islamic architecture should certainly be considered "leading," but is there any philosophy or literature that anyone pays attention to along the lines of Maimonades or Aquinas?
ML/NJ
"Written sources refer to "the number of clerics appointed to the service of the most holy Great Church of Constantinople. " The records list a total of 600 persons assigned to serve in Hagia Sophia: 80 priests, 150 deacons, 40 deaconesses, 60 subdeacons, 160 readers, 25 chanters, 75 doorkeepers. Another source reveals the extent of destruction and pillage which Constantinople suffered in the hands of the Catholic Crusaders after 1204 and the difficulties that the great church had to face from the 13th century onwards. Paspatis writes: "In 1396, during the patriarchy of Callistus II, a note was made in the second volume of patriarchal documents [Millosich-Muller] listing all the existing gold and silver sacred vessels, hieratic vestments, crosses, gospel-books and holy relics. The destitution of the celebrated church, looted by the Latin Crusaders became evident. I mention the most important objects, from which pillagers removed pearls and other ornaments of gold in later times.
"The church had: nine gospel-books, two of which remained in the church for the use of the priests, while the other seven much adorned the representations of embossed gold, were kept in the Skeuophylakion; five craters ...fourteen patens and chalices; six lavides [spoons]; six silver asterisks; four candelabra by the entrance; sixteen ripidia [fans]; eight crosses containing splinters of the True Cross and adorned with gold, silver and pearls; four aer [large veils]; twenty-six chalice veils and four patriarachal staffs; also a few icons, hieratic vestments and some relics of saints that had escaped the rapacious Crusaders...
"On Tuesday, May 29, 1453, Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror entered the vanquished city late in the afternoon and rode to Hagia Sophia. He was amazed at its beauty and decided to convert the Cathedral into his imperial mosque."
Let's retake Constantinople!!
I think for the most part you are correct. They were not people of the book. As usual in Islamic lands however there were some exceptions, including with the people of the book notion such as occurred under the Almohads or other Islamic rulers. Hence, amongst the notables some Zoroastrians were allowed to continue and their related families. Indeed, as noted below, the movement of Zoroastrians to India occurred in the middle of the 10th century and hence they had been living a schizoid existence for over three hundred years under Islamic rule. This is what you also saw in India, Hindus not being people of the book also lived a schizoid existence at times conversion or die and other times as, effectively, dhimmis.
Isn't it ironic that it was Western Christendom itself which precipiated the downfall of the Byzantine Empire? It is likely the case that if the 4rth Crusade had not happened Byzantium might have continued or indeed expanded for many more centuries. Unfortunately, the Byzantine Empire never fully recovered from that Crusade.
Persians and Turks are not completely like Arabs, I think because they are still influenced by their Zoroaster religion & culture and didn't succumb completely to Islam.
Didn't they have numbers before Mohammed lived and before Islam began? I thought numbers were around even before Christ.
I thought they were monotheists.
Actually the Versailles Peace Conference After WWI, in addition to creating a number of new countries, such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and restarting others, such as Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, and Armenia, also was considering the recreation of the Byzantine Empire in eastern Thrace, with Constantinople as its capital. Istanbul was often referred to, legally, as Constantinople until nearly WWII. They finally decided not to do this.
I think that before we restart the Crusades (see what you've got us thinking about Osama), we should start with the intent of the first two crusades, and bring peace to the Holy Land, in cooperation with the Israelis of course! One thing that may have not been posted to this thread is that the west would not exist, had the Byzantine Empire fallen to the Islamic Jihad of the first millenium. At that time, in the 7th and 8th centuries, the Jihadists would have been at the gates of Eastern Europe prior to the reign of Charlemagne.
That is how they are generally counted, but they are sometimes classed as a dualistic religion, because their devil, Ahriman, was nearly as powerful as their God, Ahura Mazda. It is thought that the powerful Chrisian Manichaean heresy was derived, from ideas of the Zoroastrians. The Manichaeans believed that the world was evil, and under the dominion of the devil, instead of being the providential gift of God, in which evil is freely chosen by men. Some of these ideas can be perceived in a few Christian religions even today.
I think that I would be fairly careful of saying this to an Iranian mullah!
Nabataea was a province of the Roman, and Byzantine Empires (for a time), showing the early and continous connection between the classical world and Arabia. The Nabataean capital Petra, in which Rock Walls were carved into classical buildings are famous for being featured in an Indiana Jones movie. The Arab barbarians, like the German barbarians had substantial contact with the classical world.
How different things would have been had the early Christian missionaries been as successful with the Arabs, as they were with the Germans. There is one theory, not widely held, that Mohammed himself had been a Christian lay monk, which would explain his knowledge of Christianity (and possibly also why the Muslim idea of God totally rejects the idea of a Trinity, and in that way resembles the ideas of the Monophysite Christians, who dominated that area of the Empire).
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