What, Exactly, are the Great Achievements of the Islamic World?

moi

[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

[truth_seeker]

Some quotes, to alleviate your continued ignorance likely based in racial bias: Egyptian cabinrtmakers and woodworkers developed a high degree of technical ability. The Egyptian craftsman thoroughly understood his material. Knowing that wood would warp, twist, split, and shrink, he treated his design and construction so as to render these defects as neglible as possible.

Is it just possible that these Egyptian craftsmen were in fact pre-Islamic? Regardless of the factual answer to that question, may I offer: Today we think of Muslims on their pillows and rugs. If they once invented modern woodworking methods, have they since regressed?

Certainly taken as a group, their present-day "behavior" is evidence of some form of regression. Ain't no evidence of them going forward, IMO!

[timestax]

bump

[irishtenor]

al-gore?

[VaBthang4]

No....that would be the zoroastrian world's achievment.

[VaBthang4]

"Thread over."

LOL...

[boltfromblue]

When people like Goldhammer blindly deny that Arabic people have contributed anything to the world, to be able to more easily hate them with impunity as it were, I really care not a whit (because it is totally irrelevant) whether they were believers in Islam. I doubt that he cares at all about antiphony or cathedrals either except as a means to align Christians to his views, but the very thought that Arabic people contributed to that architecture so disturbs him he denies that unassailable fact out of hand, for fear he will not be able to admire them at all. I do believe God gave us free choice as to our spiritual path, which does not mean it is right to cajole and coerce others to be against that right to have freedom of religion as our nation provides. The thread poster is looking for our information on what Arabic peoples contributed to the world to seek a better opinion through a greater perspective of their culture, and what does Goldhammer have to contribute to this quest? Nothing but denials based on no information but his ignorant Yea, sure! Laughable.

[timestax]

On 9-11 Islamics commandeered four jetliners full of INNOCENT people and murdered them, along with INNOCENT souls in and around buildings in N.Y. and Pentagon, premeditated murder. And they will do it again if we don't stop them! They seem to relish in murdering INNOCENT people!

[timestax]

islamics is the religion of the INNOCENT people killing. They are INNOCENT PEOPLE KILLERS!! They must be stopped!

[Doctor Stochastic]

Islamic (ok, really Persian) mathematicians solved the cubic equations before Leonardo of Pisa (aka Fibonacci) did. The calendar of Omar Khayyam is more accurate than any used before or since (it wasn't adopted then anyway.) He uses 31 leap years every 128 years; this is accurate enough that frictional forces will change the day-year ratio before intercalary days are necessary. The codification of mathematical techniques by Al-Kharizmi, Omar, and Al-Jabr was a big advance. European mathematicians learned (and improved upon) their foundation.

The Arabs extended Greek medicine and passed the results to Europe. (With one step backward, the Arabs used cauterization rather than poultices to stop bleeding.)

After the Mongols destroyed most of the infrastructure, the fundamentalists suggested that the Word of God was a better Source of Knowledge than experiment and analysis. Things have gone downhill since then.

[duckln]

The Egyptian craftsman thoroughly understood his material. Knowing that wood would warp, twist, split, and shrink, he treated his design and construction so as to render these defects as neglible as possible.

Hey, why not kiln dry the wood before using it, then pick out the best pieces, and eliminate most of the problems? I bet Joseph the carpenter knew as much in the year zero.

[x]

Very true and well put.

The relationship between Islamic and pre-Islamic, Arab and non-Arab civilizations in the Near East, is not dissimilar from that of Christian and pre-Christian or Germanic and Mediterranean civilizations in Europe.

One could also look at the last 400 years of Chinese or Indian history and be unimpressed, but this would be to miss their great achievements in premodern times.

During te s

Our civilization has had many great achievements, but we ourselves aren't in most cases responsible for them, and our generation or our children's could be the one that lets the whole heritage go smash. Remembering what came out of Babylon or Mesapotamia millenia ago, may help to keep our heads from swelling too much.

[x]

Ooops. I pushed the wrong button.

During the Cold War, "East minus West equals Zero" was a book which charged that all of the Soviet Union's technology had come from the West. One could see the point, but it's also true that at the same time, our missile and nuclear experts also tended to be from Europe. The problem with the thesis was that it tended to make people smug and self-satisfied and content to rest on their laurels and condescend to others. Familiarizing ourselves with Russia's great art and literature or with Chinese or Southeast Asian culture would have been better than assuming that we had all the answers to the world's problems and bumbling into Vietnam.

[The KG9 Kid]

The concept of 'Zero' as an integer.

That changed everything.

[Dec31,1999]

Well, whatever they did contribute, you'd better get good and used to it.

[danmar]

but try MCMLXXXXIX for 1999.

...try, MCMXCIX for 1999...:)

[danmar]

: Egyptian cabinrtmakers and woodworkers developed a high degree of technical ability. The Egyptian craftsman

...you are missing one thing, the true Egyptians are not muslims.They have had/have many different Gods and Godesses, no Allah just the Pharao and co.

[Styria]

I took a class on the history of Europe. It was a short, summer class, but the first week or so was about how European states and our concept of the state developed out of a combination of Germanic and Roman culture. Is there anything in the structure of the Roman Empire (as opposed to just culture) that is derived from Greece? Is there anything in the structure of Europe and its governments during or after the Middle Ages that are derived from Arab/Islamic or Greek culture?

With regards to Greek democracy, does Europe take more after that or the Germanic freeman? (Didn't both cultures have people provide for their own weapons - maybe they have a common source?)

A book I read part of about the Holy Roman Empire stated that the division between Ancient and Modern history is Charlemagne's being crowned as Emperor in Rome. It was written a hundred years ago, so I don't know if that was the common perception at the time and we've only been neglecting it. Do you know of any dividing events in Islamic history, or other parts of the world?

I'm just asking questions. =)