Posted on 01/11/2002 8:52:14 AM PST by ml/nj
I know that's the PC version. My question really is: what is the evidence?
Two of the great Jewish bible comentators were Maimonades (RAMBAM) and RASHI. Maimonades lived in the Islamic World and was chased all over it. Rashi lived more or less peacefully in France. You can read about them in the Britannica or similar sources. I know it's anecdotal evidence, but it is evidence that maybe some Jews fared better under the European Christians than others did during the "Golden Age" under the Muslims.
ML/NJ
What will I conclude?
Well, if I find some evidence it will increase my respect for them. If I do not, I may conclude that it is disinformation passed along intentionally or through ignorance. If it is disinformation then anyone who uses it is substantially discredited in all of their assertions the way I view things.
Okay?
ML/NJ
You believe incorrectly. Hypatia was a pagan philosopher and mathematician who was tortured to death by a Christian mob in 415 AD. Pretty tough to blame this one on Mohammed, since he wasn't born till a couple of centuries later.
This is truly one of the greatest inventions of all civilization.
Wrong! Al Gore invented the zero.
What contribution did the Normans and the Gauls make during the years after the fall of the Roman empire?
Admittedly, without the Scottish Enlightenment, we would all still be living in the sh!t of the monarchy, and Islam would still be a problem, but there did exist a golden age of Islam.
It's not clear that it ever will.
You believe incorrectly. Hypatia was a pagan philosopher and mathematician who was tortured to death by a Christian mob in 415 AD. Pretty tough to blame this one on Mohammed, since he wasn't born till a couple of centuries later.
This shows why I shouldn't try posting from work on my lunch break, using knowledge that I picked up 25 or 30 years ago... Things dim and get fuzzy over the years... I'd hate to try to calculate linear equations or a FFT!
Mark
The world has seen perhaps four or five great "center" civilizations, among them China. Two of these ancient, long-lived civilizations were Egypt and Mesopotamia-Assyria-Babylon-Persia (the name and capital changed, but it was essentially the same civilization reborn).
Islam has the distinction of having destroyed two of these great, long-enduring world civilizations. In the process, no doubt they learned a few things from captured libraries and slaves who were more civilized than their captors. But to all appearances the number of great, original Muslim thinkers is pretty small.
Bingo! As I understand it, the Greek and Latin classics were actually translated into those languages from Arabic.
That is true in Moorish Spain. However, to credit the Arabs with saving the Greek and Latin texts of Classical times completely ignores the existence of the Byzantine Empire during the West's Dark Ages.
The Byzantine Empire was the direct continuation of the Roman Empire in the East and survived until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.
IN 1439, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Byzantine Emperor, John VIII Paleologus, were guests of Florence and of Cosimo de Medici at the Echuminical Coucil of Florence. There was a great cultural exchange between Byzantine and Italian Renaissance scholars during this period that did more to diffuse Classical learning in the West than Arabs ever did.
Actually, it caught on widely. The free-standing fountain was an Arab invention, an early form of "air conditioning." The air blowing over and through the fountain spray was humidified and thus felt cooler on those around the fountain. What we think of as "Spanish architecture" is really Arabic. Mission-style architecture (common all over California) was derived from the Spanish and thus indirectly from the Arabic.
Pretty much the same argument could have been made of the Germanic barbarians who conquered Western Europe. They brought little original, at least in material things, to Western civilization. Instead, for most of a thousand years they attempted poor imitations of the Greek and Roman civilizations that preceded them.
In 1400, Western civilization had climbed back to a point roughly equal to the Islamic, Mogul, Chinese and Japanese civilizations. The interesting point is not that Islamic civilization stagnated at that point (as did the others), but rather that Western civ entered a 600 year period of amazing innovation and expansion which continues today.
The Moslems did do incredible work in creating a synthesis of Greek, Roman and Persian art, architecture and science and were significantly ahead of Western Europe from about 800-1400 CE.
Let's not get too cocky. Western civ can decline and fall as others have before it. Not because it's overthrown by outsiders, but from its own decadence.
Perhaps, but this did not occur to any significant amount till after 1400. By that time, a lot of Greek learning had made its way into Western Europe thru Spain and other Moslem conduits. I contend that this earlier Greek learning was far more influential in the history (even the formation) of Western civilization than some humanistic polishing acquired during the Renaissance.
Without the Greek modes of thought transmitted by the Moslems, it is unlikely there would have been a High Middle Ages or a Renaissance.
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