ISLAM

On the Origins of the Modern Western University:

A Settled Question?

Guys, in the pages that follow--which you must consider as an extention of my class lectures (now you know what that means, right?)--I use the exploration of the origins of the modern university to introduce you to the fact of the importance of the rise of Islam in the genesis of modern Europe. To put it bluntly: if Islam had not emerged on to the stage of world history, we would most likely be living in a different type of world in which it is far from certain that the West would be as dominant as it is today. The origins of modern Europe is intimately linked with the origins of Islam. Reminder: you must read the endnotes too! Hey, some of the most interesting stuff is in the endnotes! Also note that although I have citations to references, I have not included the references here. (You really want the list of references? Then come and see me.)

The existence of Islamic higher education institutions in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere in the Islamic empire as early as the eighth century (even though in its most developed incarnation, the madrasah, it does not make its appearance until the arrival of the Ayyubids [a dynasty of Islamic rulers]), raises the intriguing matter of the pedigree of the modern Western university of today. Now,there is the assertion, for instance, by Ashby (1966) that the modern university is an entirely Western creation for it is the West that first invented the university as we know it today. A similar sentiment is expressed by Verger (1992:35) when he states: "No one today would dispute the fact that universities, in the sense in which the term is generally understood, were a creation of the Middle Ages, appearing for the first time between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries." He continues: "It is no doubt true that other civilizations, prior to, or wholly alien to, the medieval West, such as the Roman Empire, Byzantium, Islam, or China, were familiar with forms of higher education which a number of historians, for the sake of convenience, have sometimes described as universities." However, he asserts that these institutions were not really universities, they were a different kind of institutional animal; ergo, they have no link with Western universities. He then concludes: "Until there is definite proof to the contrary, these latter must be regarded as the sole source of the model which gradually spread through the whole of Europe and then to the whole world." Makdisi (1981:292) is even more adamant: "Islam never developed the university; it simply borrowed it from Europe in the nineteenth century along with many other borrowings, at a time when Western culture was far superior to that of the east." Presented this way, it would seem that the matter needs no further discussion. Yet, historical truth is rarely simple truth (paradoxical though this may appear to the non-historian); especially the further one goes back in history. The truth, then, is that historical truth is usually much more complex;as it will be evident, once more, in a moment. But this is moving the discussion a little far ahead of itself; there are one or two relevant matters of context, Guys, that must be dispensed with right away—albeit briefly. First, a short exegesis into the emergence of the Islamic empire is in order, and then there is the very important clarificatory matter of nomenclature: 'Muslim' in place of 'Arab.' (Guys, dont get confused here. I will continue the discussion about the origins of the modern university shortly.)

It is not clear why the three monotheistic religions that together hold sway over vast portions of the globe today, all originated in the sands of the Middle Eastern desert. Any how, the last to emerge among them, and hence the youngest, is Islam. From a theological point of view, this position in the chronological hierarchy was not a good omen; for much in the same way that Judaism, centuries earlier, had come to see the newly emergent religion of Christianity as an upstart and a usurper, so too did both of them together now regard Islam thusly. Islam's recognition of the other two as its forebears appeared to have merely intensified their animosity (see Lewis, 1993, for more on the theological and chronological differences and their consequences for relations between the three religions). Consequently, the nascent religion felt vulnerable; and all the more so given the nature of its birth: in the womb of armed conflict as its immediate enemies, the pagan Arabs in the city of Mecca (where Islam was first proclaimed by its Messenger, Prophet Muhammed), attempted to vanquish it. It is perhaps not surprising then, that Islam—which means to submit to the will of God [Al-lah]—would begin a march of conquest soon after it had managed to become the dominant religion in Saudi Arabia (by 632 AD) to subdue its enemies: the Christian Byzantines to their West and the polytheistic Persians to their East. Unbeknownst to them, and to any one else for that matter, it would be a march that would eventually culminate in the creation of an empire that in geographic magnitude would be excelled by only one other empire in the entire history of humankind: that of the British more than a thousand years later.

Consider the nature of this feat, as that great doyen of African history, Basil Davidson (1995:126-127), reminds us: on July 16, 622 AD, Islam is effectively born with the arrival in Medina from Mecca of four exhausted and penniless fugitives, Prophet Muhammed and his three companions; yet within only a mere 22 years of this highly inauspicious beginning, by 644, the Muslims had taken over Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt and conquered Alexandria; by 670 they were ruling most of North Africa; by 711 they were in Spain, 2 years later they had arrived in Portugal and a year later again, in 714 they were in France, to be eventually stopped in their Westward expansion, it would be appear, some years on, in 733, by Charles Martel at the battle of Poitiers (sometimes also referred to as the Battle of Tours) near the Loire river. It ought to be pointed out here that western historians have tended to exaggerate the significance of this battle. As Mastnak (2002:99-100) observes in his extensively researched book,that, in reality, it was just one battle among many fought between the Muslims and the Franks in southern France around the middle of the eighth century; plus, he argues, it was just one of a series that various Frankish princes, the Carolingians, undertook against others (such as the Saxons, as well as other Christian princes), for the sake of “booty, power and territory.” In the east, by 651, the Muslims had absorbed the Persian empire that had lasted more than a thousand years, and in time they would go into India and beyond.[1]

A second matter that must be dealt with is the use of the term 'Arab' by western historians whenever they refer to Muslims. This is erroneous for two reasons: First, then (as today) not all Arabs were Muslims and equally certainly, not all Muslims were Arabs. In fact, from the very beginning of the founding of Islam, for example, there were African converts to Islam residing in Saudi Arabia. (See, for example, Talib [1988]for a fascinating account of the African Diaspora in Asia.) Second, given the inclusive nature of Islam, the Islamic military forces had many other nationalities among them besides Arabs, but many of whom were Muslims too. (It should be remembered that the Arab population simply did not have the numbers to create the huge armies that arose in the course of the Islamic conquests.) From a strictly theological point of view Islam does not recognize the concept of the chosen race; in fact, such socially divisive markers as racism, nationalism, etc. (contrary to modern Islamic practice) are forbidden. However, it does recognize the supremacy of Muslims over others, but even here there is a qualifier: it recognizes Christianity and Judaism as legitimate religions.

It is also necessary to note that the presence of Arabic names in historical literature does not in of itself guarantee that the person in question is an Arab Muslim; it is quite possible that the person is a Muslim of some other ethnicity. The reason is that for a considerable period of time not only was Arabic the lingua franca of such activities as learning and commerce in the Islamic empire,but then as today, for all Muslims throughout the world, Arabic is their liturgical language and this also often implies taking on Muslim (and hence Arabic) names. Therefore, the Islamic empire and civilization was not exclusively an Arabic empire and civilization, it was an Islamic empire and civilization in which all manner of nationalities and cultures had a hand, at indeterminable and varying degrees, in its evolution. Consider, for example, this fact: over the centuries—from antiquity through the Islamic period—millions of Africans would go to Asia (as slaves, as soldiers, etc.) and yet the absence of a distinct group of people today in Asia who can be categorized as part of the African Diaspora—akin to the situation in the Americas—is testament to the fact that in time they were genetically and culturally absorbed by the Asian societies. Now to be sure: in the early phases of the evolution of the Islamic empire, Arab Muslims were dominant; but note: domination does not translate into exclusivity. Ultimately, one can confidently assert that the Islamic civilization was and is an Afro-Asian civilization—which boasted a web-like network of centers of learning as geographically dispersed as Al-Qayrawan (Tunisia), Baghdad (Iraq), Cairo (Egypt), Cordoba (Muslim Spain), Damascus (Syria), Jundishapur (Iran), Palermo (Muslim Sicily), Timbuktu (Mali), and Toledo (Muslim Spain)—and in which, furthermore, the the Asian component ranges from Arabic to Persian to Indian to Chinese contributions and influences. In other words: The matter does not stop here; this point takes one further: the presence of Arabic names in relation to the Islamic civilization can also indicate simply the Arabization of the person's name even though the person may not have been a Muslim at all! This fact is of considerable relevance whenever the issue of Islamic secular scholarship is considered. Secular knowledge and learning in the Islamic civilization (referred to by the Muslims as the 'foreign sciences' to distinguish it from the Islamic 'religious sciences') had many diverse contemporary contributors;including scholars who were from other faiths: Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, etc. Consequently, when one talks about the Islamic contribution to knowledge and learning, one does not necessarily mean it is the contribution of Muslim scholars alone, but rather that it is the output of scholars who included non-Muslims, but who worked under the aegis of the Islamic civilization in its centers of learning and whose lingua franca was primarily Arabic. (See Nakosteen, 1964, for more information on this point.)[2]

Now, to move on with the discussion from where I left off: The immediate problem regarding the pedigree of the modern Western university, turns on definitions. To begin with, the university is but just one form of a higher educational institution; there are other forms, most common of which is the college. Now, if the college and the university were to be considered as institutionally related then one can easily challenge the claim of Western originality. For, as Makdisi (1981) clearly shows, the West borrowed from the Muslims the concept of the college. The college in its early beginnings, as an eleemosynary institution, was already common in Islam (the madarasah). It is not surprising, therefore, that the earliest college in the West, was most probably modeled on the Islamic college. This was the College des Dix?Huit, founded in Paris in 1180 by John of London; who, not coincidentally, as Makdisi (1981) observes, had just returned from pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It is through that endeavor (which entailed journeying through Muslim lands) that he most likely came to learn of the idea of the college. (This model would later also be the basis of the founding of the earliest of the three Oxford colleges, Balliol, according to Makdisi [1981]). The question, however, is can one say that the two are related in that the one, the college, is the precursor of the other, the university? Makdisi suggests that this is not so. Unlike in the U.S., he states, in Europe the university emerged as an entirely separate higher educational institution with its own identity; that is, it did not begin its life as a college, but as a studium generale (a prototype European university that in its creation embodied the critical concept of incorporation). He is not alone on this point: Huff (1993), Pedersen (1997) and Verger (1992), for example, share this view.

However, the matter can not be left to rest here. To be sure, if one were to take the narrow definition of the university -- as a higher educational institution that is virtually independent of state and/or religious administrative control through the mechanism of incorporation (and the key words here are 'narrow' and 'incorporation')--then, yes, they are quite correct: the university in this limited sense is a Western invention. Islam did not and could not recognize incorporation as a basis for the organization of an institution of higher education (or any other institution for that matter)--and yet without it, the modern university could not have emerged.[3] Now, if, on the other hand, the issue of the origin of the modern Western university was looked at in broader terms then it becomes more complicated. Why? Because from a broader historical perspective, the modern university that was brought to Africa by the colonial powers is as much Western in origin as it is Islamic in origin. How? Nakosteen (1964:vii) explains it this way: "At a time when European monarchs were hiring tutors to teach them how to sign their names, Muslim educational institutions were preserving, modifying and improving upon the classical cultures in their progressive colleges and research centers under enlightened rulers. Then as the results of their cumulative and creative genius reached the Latin West through translations... they brought about that Western revival of learning which is our modern heritage." Making the same observation, James Burke (1995:36) reminds us that at the point in time when the first European universities at Bologna and Charters were being created, their future as academic centers of learning was far from certain. The reason? He explains: "The medieval mind was still weighed down by centuries of superstition, still fearful of new thought, still totally obedient to the Church and its Augustinian rejection of the investigation of nature. They lacked a system for investigation, a tool with which to ask questions and, above all, they lacked the knowledge once possessed by the Greeks, of which medieval Europe had heard, but which had been lost." But then, he further explains: “In one electrifying moment it was rediscovered. In 1085 the [Muslim] citadel of Toledo in Spain fell, and the victorious Christian troops found a literary treasure beyond anything they could have dreamed of." Over the two hundred years or so, through the mediation of Spanish Jews, European Christians and others, much of that learning would now be translated from Arabic, which for centuries had been the language of science, into Latin, Spanish, Hebrew and other languages, to be disseminated all across Europe. It should be further pointed out here that long periods of peaceful co-existence between Christians, Jews, Muslims and others in Spain, even after the fall of Toledo, was also highly instrumental in facilitating the work of translation and knowledge export into Western Europe. To a lesser extent, but important still, the fall of Muslim Sicily, beginning with the capture of Messina in 1061 by Count Roger (brother of Robert Guiscard), and ending with his complete takeover of the island from the Muslims in 1091, was yet another avenue by which Muslim learning entered, via translations, Western Europe (see Ahmed, 1975, for more). This export of Islamic and Islamic mediated Greek science to the Latin West would continue well into the thirteenth century (after all, Islam was not completely vanquished from the Iberian peninsula until the capture of the Muslim province of Granada, more than four hundred years after the fall of Toledo, in 1492).

Among the more prominent of the translators who worked in either Spain or Sicily (or even both) included: Abraham of Toledo, Adelard of Barth, Alfonso X the El Sabio, Constantine the African (Constantinus Africanus), Dominicus Gundissalinus, Eugenius of Palermo, Gerard of Cremona, Isaac ibn Sid, John of Seville, Leonardo Pisano, Michael Scott, Moses ibn Tibbon, Qalonymos ben Qalonymos, Robert of Chester, Stephanus Arnoldi, etc. (See Nakosteen,1964, for more names--including variants of these names--and details on when and what they translated.) To really drive the point home, however, it is necessary to provide here (even if, due to space constraints, only most cursorily) a few examples of the kinds of contributions that the Muslim scholars (and non-Muslim scholars too, but all working under the aegis of the Islamic civilization)--many of whom, it may be further noted, were polymaths in the truest sense of the word--made to the intellectual and scientific development of Europe on the eve of the Renaissance; and without which the development of the modern Western university would have been greatly compromised. This task (based on Nakosteen, 1964; Sarton, 1962 (1927-1948); Stanton, 1990, and others mentioned below) is accomplished by the following chronological listing of some of the most important names in the pantheon of Islamic scholars of the Middle Ages, together with a briefest delineation of their work, some of which would eventually make its way to the Latin West:

·Abu Musa Jabir ibn-Hayyan (ca. 721-815, known in the Latin West as Geber), an alchemist who advocated the importance of experiments in advancing scientific knowledge: "It must be taken as an absolutely rigorous principle that any proposition which is not supported by proofs is nothing more than an assertion which may be true or may be false." (Quoted in Artz, 1980:166.) His work would be foundational in the development of the field of chemistry, even if the raison d'etre of his scientific work (alchemy) was, from the vantage point of today, misguided.

·Musa al-Khwarazmi (d. ca. 863), his seminal contributions in mathematics helped to develop that field enormously. In fact, through his mathematical treatise, al-Jabr wa'l-Mugabalah, he not only gave the West the term 'algebra' (latinized shorthand of the title of his treatise), but far more significant than that, he was the conduit for the passage of arithmetic numerals from India to the West. For example, he would be responsible for the introduction to the Latin West of such key mathematical tools as the concept of 'zero' (an independent Hindu/Chinese invention in the 6th century AD), and the decimal system. His other contributions included sine and cotangent tables, astronomical tables, and the cartographic concepts of latitude and longitude. Even the term 'algorithm' comes from him, albeit unwittingly--it is the latinized version of his name. He also produced a revised version of Ptolemy's geography which he called The Face of the Earth.

·Abu Yosuf Ya'qub ibn Ishaq ibn al-Sabbah al-Kindi (d. ca. 870) a philosopher and mathematician, his contributions included works on Hindu numerals and geometry and physiological optics.

·Muhammed al-Razi (844-926, known as Rhazes in the Latin West), a physician whose work helped to further greatly the development of clinical medicine. His work on smallpox and measles would remain authoritative in the West for almost four hundred years; and his work on the diseases of childhood would earn him the accolade of 'Father of Pediatrics' in the West. It is no wonder that a large part of the medical curriculum at the Universities of Salerno and Paris comprised his work.

·Muhammed ibn Muhammed ibn Tarkhan ubn Uzalagh al-Farabi (c. 878-c. 950, known in the Latin West as Alpharabius), author of the The Enumeration of the Sciences, provided an integrated approach to the sciences and reiterated the distinction between divine knowledge and human knowledge.

·Abu Al-Husayn Ali Ibn Al-Husayn Al-Masudi (d. 957), historian and explorer who is sometimes referred to as the "Herodotus of the Arabs." His works included the 132 chapter The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems, an abridgement of a multidisciplinary multi-volume treatise on history and scientific geography of the worldAbd al-Rahman al-SufiIbn Yunus and Ulegh Beg), his contributions include a major treatise on observational astronomy titled The Book of Fixed Stars. (903-986), among the greatest Muslim astronomers (together with

·Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas Al-Zahrawi (930-1013, known to the Latin West as Albucasis), a famous physician and surgeon, he wrote a treatise on medicine and medical practice that ran into 30 volumes. The last of these volumes was extremely important because in it he covered all aspects of surgery including providing illustrations of surgical instruments. This work is thought to have been the first work on surgery ever written anywhere and it would in time become a standard text in medical schools in the Latin West. Interestingly, some of the surgical procedures that he described in his work are still carried out to this day in like manner.

·Abu Alimacr al-Hassan Ibn al-Haitham (ca. 965-1039, known in the West as Alhazen), through his works in optics, he became a major contributor to the development of the physical sciences in the Latin West. He was the first scientist to conclude that sight involved the transmission of light from the seen object to the eye, which acted as a lens. He also introduced the method of using the camera obscura for the purposes of studying solar eclipses. It would not be an exaggeration to say that his scientific work would remain unchallenged for nearly 600 years until the arrival of Johann Kepler.

·Abu 'Ali Al-Husain Ibn Abdallah Ibn Sina (980-1037, known in the Latin West as Avicenna), who was among the progenitors of Scholasticism in the West and whose intellectual influence would touch Western thinkers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Robert Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus and Duns Scotus, was a great philosopher and scientist with one of the most prolific pens of his day: among his many works, two that the West got to know well are The Book of Healing--which, according to Stanton (1990:85) stands as the 'longest encyclopedia of knowledge ever authored by a single person'--and The Canon on Medicine, which would remain the principal textbook par excellence on medicine in the West for many, many years.

This listing continues in the note below.[4] Now, of course, it must be conceded, that the contributions by the Muslims to the intellectual and scientific development of Europe was made unwittingly; yet even so, it must be emphatically stressed, it was of no less significance. Moreover, that is how history, after all, really unfolds in practice; it is not made in the way it is usually presented in history textbooks: namely, a continuous chain of teleological developments. To explain: those who study history, especially comparative history, are burdened by the constant and sobering reminder that no matter how intelligently purposeful human beings (the Europeans in this particular instance) may consider themselves; at the end of the day, major social transformations, such as the European Renaissance or the Scientific Revolution, for example, are as much a product of chance and circumstance, as directed human endeavors (in the shape of 'social movements'--broadly understood).

In other words: any teleological order that may appear to exist in any history of social transformations is in reality an expression of the fallacy of historical teleology. History (regardless of whether it is written or oral) is, ultimately, a selective chronicle of a series of conjunctures of fortuitously 'propitious' historical factors where the role of purposive human agency, is, more often than not, absent from the social transformation in question. Stephen K. Sanderson, in his book, Social Transformations: A General Theory of Historical Development (1995:13), makes this point with even greater clarity when he observes that "...individuals acting in their own interests create social structures and systems that are the sum total and product of these socially oriented individual actions." However, he points out, "[t]hese social structures and systems are frequently constituted in ways that individuals never intended, and thus individually purposive human action leads to many unintended consequences." In other words, he concludes, "[s]ocial evolution is driven by purposive or intended human actions, but it is to a large extent not itself a purposive or intended phenomenon." Looking from the perspective of the West, the veracity of this fact was embodied at a particular point in time, on the eve of the Renaissance, in the retreat of the Muslims from Europe, under the aegis of the Reconquista--symbolized by the fall of Toledo in that fateful summer of 1085. The Europeans who entered Toledo under the leadership of Alfonso VI of Castille-Leon, could never have envisioned, much less planned, the centrality of Muslim intellectual and scientific contributions to the development of Europe, for centuries to come, that their actions would precipitate.[5]

Guys, the truth of the matter really, then, is this: during the medieval era, the Europeans acquired from the scholars of the Islamic empire a number of essential elements that would be absolutely central to the foundation of the modern Western university: First, they acquired a huge corpus of knowledge that the Muslims had gathered together over the centuries in their various centers of learning (e.g. Baghdad, Cairo and Cordoba) through a dialectical combination of their own investigations, as well as by gathering knowledge from across geographic space (from Afghanistan, China, India, the Levant, Persia, etc.) and from across time: through translations of classical works of Greek, Alexandrian and other scholars. (See Nakosteen, 1964, for a lengthy presentation of the relevant key facts.) Lest there is a misunderstanding here: it must be stressed that it is not that the Muslims were mere transmitters of Hellenic knowledge (or any other people's knowledge); far from it: they, as the French philosopher Alain de Libera (1997) points out, also greatly elaborated on it by the addition of their own scholarly findings. "Yet it would be wrong to think that the Arabs [sic] confined themselves to a slavish appropriation of Greek results. In practical and in theoretical matters Islam faced problems that gave rise to the development of an independent philosophy and science," states Pedersen (1997:118) as he makes a similar observation (as do Benoit and Micheau, 1995, Huff, 1993, and Stanton, 1990, among others). What kinds of problems is Pedersen referring to here? Examples include: the problems of reconciling faith and scientific philosophy; the problems of ocean navigation (e.g. in the Indian ocean); the problem of determining the direction to Mecca (qibla) from the different parts of the Islamic empire for purposes of daily prayers; the problem of resolving the complex calculations mandated by Islamic inheritance laws; the problems of constructing large congregational mosques (jami al masjid); the problems of determining the accuracy of the lunar calendar for purposes of fulfilling religious mandates, such as fasting (ramadhan); the problems of planning new cities; and so on. Commenting on the significance of this fact, Stanton (1990) reminds us that even if the West would have eventually had access to the Greek classical texts maintained by the Byzantines in places like Constantinople, it would have missed out on this very important Islamic contribution of commentaries, additions, revisions, interpretations, etc. of the Greek classical texts.[6] A good example of the Muslim contribution to learning derived from Greek sources is Ibn Sina's Canon Medicinae, and from the perspective of medieval medical teaching, its importance, according to Pedersen (1997:125) "...can hardly be overrated, and to this day it is read with respect as the most superior work in this area that the past has ever produced."

Now, as Burke explains, this knowledge alone would have wrought an intellectual revolution by itself. However, the fact that it was accompanied by the Aristotelian concept of argument by syllogism that Muslim philosophers like Ibn Sina had incorporated into their scholarly work, which was now available to the Europeans for the first time, so to speak, that would prove to be an explosive "intellectual bombshell." In other words, they learned from the Muslims (and this is the second critical element) rationalism, combined with, in Burke's words "the secular, investigative approach typical of Arab natural science,” that is, the scientific experimental method (1995:42).[7]Pedersen (1997:116) makes the same point in his analysis of the factors that led to the development of the studium generale and from it the modern university: "To recreate Greek mathematics and science from the basic works was obviously out of the question, since even the knowledge of how to do research had passed into oblivion....That the study of the exact sciences did not end in a blind alley, was due to a completely different stream of culture now spilling out of [Islamic] civilization into the Latin world."

The third critical element was an elaborate and intellectually sophisticated map of scientific knowledge. The Muslims provided the Europeans a body of knowledge that was already divided into a host of academic subjects in a way that was very unfamiliar to the medieval Europeans: "medicine, astrology, astronomy, pharmacology, psychology, physiology, zoology, biology, botany, mineralogy, optics, chemistry, physics, mathematics, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, music, meteorology, geography, mechanics, hydrostatics, navigation and history." (Burke, 1995:42) The significance of this map of knowledge is that the European university, as de Libera (1997) observes, became its institutional embodiment. As he states: "The Muslim learning that was translated and passed on to the West formed the basis and the scientific foundation of the university in its living reality ? the reality of its syllabus, the content of its teaching." In other words, the highly restrictive and shallow curriculum of Martianus Capella's Seven Liberal Arts (divided into the trivium and the quadrivium), which the Carthaginian had promulgated sometime in the middle of the 5th century AD to become, in time, the foundation of Latin education in the cathedral schools--the forerunners of the studium generale--would now be replaced by the much broader curriculum of ‘Islamic’ derived educationIt ought to be noted here that the curriculum of the medieval universities was primarily based on the teaching of science; and it was even more so, paradoxically, than it is in the modern universities of today! The fact that this was the case, however, it would be no exaggeration to state, was entirely due to Islam! As Grant (1994), for example, shows, the growth of the medieval European universities was a direct response to the Greco-Islamic science that arrived in Europe after the fall of Toledo (see also Grant, 1996; Nakosteen, 1964; and Stanton, 1990).

The fourth was the extrication of the individual from the grip of what de Libera describes as the "medieval world of social hierarchies, obligations and highly codified social roles," so as to permit the possibility of a civil society, without which no university was possible. A university could only come into being on the basis of a community of scholars who were individuals in their own right, intellectually unbeholden to no one but reason, but yet gathered together in pursuit of one ideal: "the scientific ideal, the ideal of shared knowledge, of a community of lives based on the communication of knowledge and on the joint discovery of the reality of things...." In other words, universities "...were laboratories in which the notion of the European individual was invented. The latter is always defined as someone who strikes a balance between culture, freedom and enterprise, someone who has the capacity to show initiative and innovate. As it happens, and contrary to a widely held view, this new type of person came into being at the heart of the medieval university world, prompted by the notion ? which is not Greek but [Muslim] ? that [scientific] work liberates." (de Libera, 1997.)

A fifth critical element was that the arrival of Islamic inspired scholarship, such as that of Averroes (Ibn Rushd), helped to extricate the curriculum from the theological oversight of the Church. In the struggle over the teaching of"Averroeism" in the academy, for example, the academy triumphed and the Church retreated behind the compromise that there would be two forms of knowledge: divine or revealed knowledge that could not be challenged, and temporal knowledge that could go its separate way. Henceforth, academic freedom in terms of what was taught and learned became an ever increasing reality, jealously guarded by the academy. The implications of this development cannot be overstated: it would unfetter the pursuit of scientific inquiry from the shackles of religious dogma and thereby help set in motion the Scientific Revolution to come (see also Benoit, 1995).

Yet, this is not all: in laying out these very specific avenues of Islamic contribution to the growth of the modern Western university, however, one risks being blinded to an even more fundamental Islamic contribution: its assistance in the development of the civilizational context that facilitated the emergence of the modern university in Europe in the first place: European modernity itself! To elaborate: the modern Western university emerged as a corporate institution at precisely the time (in the latter half of the twelfth century and in the first half of the thirteenth century)when Western Europe was about to undergo the Renaissance. But the critical question here is this: how had Europe managed to developmentally come this far? After all, when the Muslims made their appearance in Europe in the 8th century AD, Europe was in almost every way a Neolithic cultural, economic, intellectual, technological and demographic backwater.[8] The answer, in one word, is: Islam! The Islamic civilization--which one must be reminded is primarily an Afro-Asian civilization--helped to create the civilizational context in Europe that produced the studium generale and thence the modern university.[9]

The essential truth really is this: that while to many in the West today it will come as a major shock to learn that the birth of Modern Europe has a great deal to do with the birth of Islam; in fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that European modernity itself could, probably, not have come about without the agency of the Islamic Civilization. How so? Through the Muslim invasions of Spain in the 8th century and Italy in the 9th century, and later through the Crusades against the Muslims unleashed by Europe at turn of the 11th century (that would last, if one includes the final stages of the Spanish Reconquista--the fall of Granada in 1492--well into the 15th century), Europe would learn much from the Islamic Civilization that would prove absolutely decisive.[10] So much so, that it would help propel Europe toward the RenaissanceScientific Revolution (marking the beginning of Europe's journey to modernity) and, in time, indirectly, through the Andalusian Jewish Diaspora (who had done so well in Muslim Spain, but who with its fall would be forced to disperse by the Spanish Inquisition), the Enlightenment itself; and furthermore, even in the later stages of European transformations represented by the emergence of mercantile capitalism and the industrial revolution, Islam would have a hand to play, though perhaps less directly. Given, however, the animosity that Christianity has always displayed toward Islam, and which continues to the present, this immeasurable debt that Europe owes to the Islamic Civilization remains unacknowledged in the West of today??except among the learned few in the academic community.[11] and the

Now, evidentiary support for this claim about Islam’s critical role in Europe's journey to modernity during the period 8th through13th century—which, not coincidentally, is also the classical period of Islamic higher learning—is of course necessary here. However, because of space limitation, this task must regrettably be, perforce, cursory. The first and most important point is that without Islam Europe would not have become Europe, psychologically, culturally and geographically, but rather would have remained a fratricidally riven heterogeniety of perhaps little consequence for centuries to come. Islam created for Western Europe the feared and despised 'other' as the basis for its eventual genesis as the European center of gravity was forced to move, as a result of Muslim conquests, from the classical Mediterranean to Francia and the Rhineland. The process began with the 'Carolingian Renaissance' that had its roots in the defeat of the Muslims at the hands of the grandfather of Charlemagne, Charles Martel (already mentioned above) and ended in the inauguration of Europeanized Christendom in the wake of the Schism of 1054 under Pope Leo IX and the unleashing of the Crusades against the Muslims at the behest of Pope Urban II (the call went out on November 27, 1095 in Clermont, France)[12] In fact, one may go so far as to suggest that it is because of the arrival of Islam on to the stage of human history that the East/ West continuum became a dichotomy.[13]

Second, Islam enabled Europe to reacquaint itself with its Greek and Alexandrian classical roots--in terms of knowledge and learning. Since this has already been noted above, no more need be said here other than this: It is not that Europe had completely lost all the classical texts as a result of the depredations of the Germanic barbarians (4th to 5th centuries AD); the destructions of ancient places of learning by Christian zealots (such as Justinian I who, for example, in 6th century AD ordered the closure of the famous Academy of Athens founded by Plato in 4th century BC); and the vandalism of the Viking predators (9th to 11th century AD); a few of the texts had survived in the monasteries--but that is where the rub was. The monasteries, enthralled by Augustinian neoplatonist teachings (knowledge based on the material was of no consequence compared to that derived from the spiritual), to all intents and purposes, simply sat on these texts; moreover, the fact that the studium generale was not linked to the monastic schools in lineage also meant that whatever classical knowledge had been preserved by the monks was, for the most part, unavailable to the emerging academy.[14]

Third, Europe experienced a scientific and technological revolution that involved a critical Islamic role--without which it is doubtful that the Europeans would have experienced this revolution at all, in terms of magnitude and significance.

Now, before proceeding any further a pause is necessary here in order to point out this irony: in a world that is so heavily dominated by science and technology, there is, to one's chagrin, so little interest (relatively speaking) in researching and writing about the history of science and technology among scientists--the people best qualified to undertake this work--mainly because of the feeling among them that it is work that belongs to humanists. Though going by Turner (1990:23), however, it would appear that the problem goes evendeeper: many working scientists regard the study of the history of science as “some kind of intellectual weakness, or as an occupation suitable for ageing members of the profession who have lost their flair and are being put out to grass, a phase of life for which one scientist coined the pejorative term ‘philopause.’” Yet, on the other hand, among the humanists, too, interest in the subject is tardy, primarily because of a lack of confidence--not unjustified since few have the necessary science background. The outcome of this inadvertent academic 'stalemate' is that adequate and thorough investigations of histories of science and technology remain to be written, most especially in circumstances where tracing the roots and origins of scientific and technological discoveries require simultaneous multi-cultural, trans-geographic foci (e.g. China, India, Persia, etc.)[15] After all, when it comes to Islamic science, for example, it must be recognized that it was the first truly international science that the world had ever witnessed, as Turner (1995) points out.

Nevertheless, there exists enough histories of science to give one at least a fair if not complete picture of the role of Islam in the genesis of Europe’s Scientific Revolution. This role--which it must be reiterated was not always exclusively Muslim in origin (a point already hinted at above), but was most certainly mediated by the Islamic civilization--took the form of the introduction to the Latin West of essential scientific concepts, methods and knowledge, a glimpse of which has already been provided at some length above. As Huff (1993:13) succinctly puts it: “…modern science is the product of intercivilizational encounters, including, but not limited to, the interaction between Arabs, Muslims and Christians, but also other ‘dialogues between the living and the dead’ involving Greeks, Arabs and Europeans.”[16] Consider this fact: if one were to insist on a clear marker for the beginning of the Scientific Revolution in Europe than the prime candidate has to be the emergence of heliocentricism (a la Copernicus) in the middle of the 16th century. Yet, everything, in terms of data, that the Copernican revolution was predicated on was acquired directly and indirectly from Islamic astronomers; they had already amassed this data centuries before.[17]

Of course, it is true that the Islamic scholars did not make the final leap--for a number of reasons, including misguided theology--it is the Europeans who instead did.[18] However, that does not detract from the fact that without the import of Greco-Arabic science into Western Europe that was facilitated by the systematic translations of Islamic scientific scholarship (an exercise that, recall, was itself an echo of another systematic translation effort—Greek scholarship into Arabic—organized some three hundred years earlier by the Muslims), the European Scientific Revolution may not have emerged at the time it did, if at all! One should be reminded here of the fact that it is in the area of science, perhaps more than in any other area of human endeavor, that the following rule holds true: the future is always a product of the present, just as the present is always a product of the past. To put it another way: all scientific progress rests on existing science which rests on past science.[19] As Dorn (1991), Grant (1984), Huff (1993), Turner (1995) and others have correctly pointed out: “The translations of Greco-Arabic science, with Aristotle’s natural books forming the core,” to quote Grant, “laid the foundation for the continuous development of science to the present…” This is because, to quote Grant again: “Without the translations, which furnished a well articulated body of theoretical science to Western Europe, the great scientists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes and Newton, would have had little to reflect upon and reject, little that could focus their attention on significant physical problems.” What is more, he notes: “The overthrow of one world system by another does not imply a lack of continuity.” (pp. 91-92.)

Fourth, through the agency of Islam, Europe was introduced to a range of technological artifacts and methods derived from within the Islamic empire, as well as from without (from such places as China and India), that would be the basis of European technological advancement in a number of key areas; examples would include: the abacus, the astrolabe, the compass, paper-making, the pointed vaulted arch, gun powder, silk-production, sugar cane production and sugar-making, the lateen sail (allowed a ship to sail into wind more efficiently than a regular square sail common on European ships). In other words, consider this: four of the most important technological advancements that would be foundational to the development of a modern Europe (navigation, warfare, communication and plantation agriculture) had their roots outside Europe, in the East! Reference here, is, of course, to the compass; gunpowder; paper-making and printing (that is, block printing and printing with movable type); and cane sugar production. All these technologies first originated in China and then slowly found their way to the West through the mediation of the Muslims.[20] Along the way, of course, the Muslims improved on them.

Fifth, Islam introduced Europe to international commerce on a scale it had never experiencedbefore. The twin factors of geographic breadth of the Islamic empire (which included regions with long traditions of commerce going back to antiquity, such as the Mediterranean Basin) and the acceptance of commerce as a legitimate occupational endeavor for Muslims—one that had been pursued by no less than Prophet Muhammed himself—had created a vast and truly global long-distance trade unmatched by any civilization hitherto. In fact, the reach of the Islamic dominated commercial network was such that it would embrace points as far apart as China and Italy on the east-west axis and Scandinavia and the deepest African hinterland on the north-south axis, with the result that the tonnage and variety of cargo carried by this network went far beyond that witnessed by even Greece and Rome in their heyday (Turner, 1995:117).

Recall that the wealth of the Italian city-states like Venice and Genoa (the latter being the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, it may be noted) in Medieval Europe rested to a considerable degree on trade in Eastern luxury commodities obtained through Muslim intermediaries in places such as Alexandria. Consider the list of commodities that Europe received from the East (including Africa) through the agency of the Islamic merchants: coffee, cotton, fruits and vegetables of the type that medieval Europe had never known (e.g. almonds, apricots, bananas, egg-plants, figs, lemons, oranges, peaches), gold, paper, porcelain, rice, silk, spices (these were especially important in long distance trade and they included cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, cumin, ginger, nutmeg, pepper, saffron and turmeric), sugar cane, and so on. (The last is of special historical significance, sadly, considering the ignominious role it would play in the genesis of the Atlantic slave trade.) What is more, with the exception of a few items such as gold, silk, and some spices like cinnamon and saffron, Medieval Europe had not even known of the existence of most of these products prior to the arrival of Islam!

In other words: the Islamic civilization, through its commercial network, introduced Europe, often for the first time, to a wide range of Eastern consumer products (the variety and quantity of which was further magnified via the agency of the Crusades) that whet the appetite of the Europeans for more—not surprisingly, they felt compelled to undertake their voyages of exploration, a la Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus. This quest for an alternative trade-route to the east—one that would have to be sea-borne—was, of course, also a function of the desire to bypass the very people who had introduced them to the Eastern commodities they so eagerly sought: the Muslim intermediaries, their hated enemies,who straddled the land-bridge between the East and the West and who at the same time held a monopoly over this ever increasingly important and obscenely profitable East/West trade.[21]

Yet, the European commercial debt to Islam goes even deeper! For, as Fernand Braudel (1982) reminds one in volume 2 of his three volume magnum opus (grandly but appropriately titled Civilization and Capitalism: 15^th-18^th Century), a number of critical elements of European long distance trade were of Islamic origin; such as the ‘bill of exchange,’ the commenda (a partnership of merchants), etc. In fact, the very practice of long distance trade itself was an Islamic borrowing, Braudel further points out (p. 559). Now, without long-distance trade, it is quite unlikely that Europe would have experienced the rise of mercantile capitalism (and thence industrial capitalism); for, while such trade may not be a sufficient condition for its development, it is a necessary condition. Of course, it is not that Europe had never engaged in long-distance trade before—consider the commercial activities of the Greeks and the Romans—but, like so many other things, it was reintroduced to them by the Islamic civilization, since the Europeans had, for all intents and purposes, ‘lost’ it over the centuries with their retrogressive descent into the post-Alaric world of the Germanic dominated European ‘Middle Ages’.[22] On the basis of these observations, Braudel, is compelled to remark: “To admit the existence of these borrowings means turning one’s back on traditional accounts of the history of the West as pioneering genius, spontaneous inventor, journeying alone along the road towards scientific and technical rationality. It means denying the claim of the medieval Italian city-states to have invented the instruments of modern commercial life. And it logically culminates in denying the Roman empire its role as the cradle of progress.” (p. 556)

Conclusion

Clearly, then: on one hand, through the Islamic mediated introduction to Europe of such intellectual and material artifacts ranging from the mathematical concept of zero and Arabic numerals to paper and paper making, from cane?sugar and cane?sugar production (which, via the Americas, would in time be foundational to the accumulation of capital necessary for the launching of the industrial revolution) to silk production, from navigation instruments like the astrolabe to the pointed vaulted arch in architecture, from paper money to the abacus; and on the other, the geographic and cultural containment of Europe beginning in the 8^th century, Islam came to play a critical role in the genesis of European modernity. In other words, it was a role that was critical enough to permit Europe to emerge from the self-engendered, nearly six hundred year, somnambulist interregnum of the ‘Middle Ages’ (a period that, recall, historians of the past had often referred to as the ‘Dark Ages’—not entirely without reason.) The Islamic civilization was a scientific, technological and cultural bridge in terms of, both, time (between the ancient and the modern) and geography (between the East and the West). Moreover, it was not a passive bridge but an active one, without which it is highly unlikely that Europe could have crossed over from barbarism into modernity, as early as it did—if at all![23]

Now, to the extent, then, that Islam is an Afro-Asian civilization, both the Western civilization in general and one of its progeny in specific, the modern university, have a significant part of their roots within Africa and Asia. This is not to deny, of course, the immense significance of the Latin contribution too, to the development of the modern university (which is well attested to by Hull, 1993, among others).The critical point here, however, is this: to say that the modern university is an entirely Western invention is to assert only partial truth; not the whole truth. The whole truth is that the modern ‘Western’ university—like so many other things that Westerners have so stridently claimed as their very own creations--is the product of the Islamic mediated intersection ofthree major civilizations: the Greek, the Islamic and the Latin. (Yet, even this can not constitute the whole truth! Why? Because each of these civilizations, in turn, in their genesis, incorporated contributions from other civilizations as well: Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, East Indian, Chinese, etc.) Any view to the contrary, is simply an echo--albeit a recurrent one--of the narrow minded, super ethnocentric perspective of the early Western European Christians who in their tirades against Muslims, Jews and others often forgot that even the religion that they thought was their very own did not originate from within Europe, but came from the East. They refused then, as even their descendents of today refuse, to observe, for example, this simple fact: that Christ was not a European at all! But, then, when has universal historical memory ever been secure from being hijacked by those with the power to do so, for iniquitous ends?

However…, however…, not withstanding everything that has been said above, one is compelled to conclude with this point: in the final analysis, the fundamental question is really this: Does it really matter who created the first universities? (Or, for that matter: who were the first astronomers? The first mathematicians? The first scientists? And so on.) It matters only if one wishes to deny the commonality of all humanity in which every ethnic variation of human kind has made some contribution at some point (even if only at the most rudimentary level of inadvertent domestication of plant and/or animal life) to the totality of the modern human experience. For all its proclamation of the virtues of ‘civilization’ (to be understood here in its normative sense) this denial has been, sadly, as much a project of the West as its other, laudable, endeavors--for reasons that, of course, one does not have to be a rocket scientist to fathom: world domination under the aegis of various forms of imperialism (an endeavor that, even now in the twenty first century, most regrettably, has yet to see its demise).

Consequently, under these circumstances, the true historian is burdened by constant vigilance against this Western intellectual tradition of erasure of universal historical memory and thereby render irrelevant the contributions of others. Moreover, one must be cognizant of the fact that it is a tradition that relies on a number of techniques: the most direct of which is ‘scholarly silence’--where there is a complete (or almost complete) absence of any acknowledgement of a contribution. However, given the obvious transparency of this technique, it has increasingly been replaced by one that is more subtle (hence of greater intractability): achieving erasure not by a total lack of acknowledgement, but by the method of token acknowledgement where the object of the erasure is mentioned in passing and then promptly dismissed from further consideration—even in instances of ongoing relevance.

Endnotes

[1] What is even more remarkable is that in those lands where the Muslims achieved some degree of permanence, their invasions did not reproduce the large scale chaos and mindless destruction characteristic of the invasions of, say, the European barbarians of two centuries earlier: the Vandals, Goths, Visigoths, etc., or, say, the Mongols of the Golden Horde of five centuries later. Instead, as Davidson (1995: 126-127) points out: “In Africa, Spain and Asia these victories laid the groundwork for a civilization that could and did unite men of religion, learning and philosophy from the Mediterranean to Arabia, from the plains of the western Sudan to the hills of China, and bore a light of tolerance and social progress through centuries when Europe, impoverished, provincialized and almost illiterate, lay in distant battle and confusion.” And even after the widespread devastation that the Muslims suffered at the hands of the Mongol invaders in the 13th century—in the year 1238, in just a little over a month, to give one example, close to a million would be slaughtered in the city of Baghdad, and all major expressions of cultural achievement (schools, libraries, bookstores, observatories, etc.), would be burnt to the ground as the city was laid waste, thereby marking the end of the six hundred year classical period of Islam—they would rise up again in the following century to produce the Ottoman empire that would last into the twentieth century. It would be a process that would, in yet another one of those strange ironies of history, involve the conversion of the Mongols themselves to Islam and their enlistment into re-building the empire, which at its zenith would now stretch from Central Asia in the east to southeastern Europe in the West, incorporating countries as diverse as the Ukraine and Egypt; Syria and Greece; Israel and Hungary; Iraq and Bosnia; Saudi Arabia and Romania; and so on. Yet, despite this diversity, the empire would work for nearly another 600 years! held together by structures and institutions rooted in the religion of Islam. A key question that emerges here is this: given the magnitude, the speed and the longevity, how were the Muslims able to achieve so much? An interplay—repeat, interplay—of at least eight factors, albeit in various permutations and, it must be stressed, at various levels of adherence in practice, were probably critical in ensuring their success. The following is a quick rundown of them in no particular order on the basis of various sources (e.g. Ahmed, 1975;Butler, 1998 [1902], Courbage and Fargues, 1997;Hillenbrand, 1999; Stanton, 1990; and Watt, 1965):

One, was the deep military discipline of the Islamic forces which was an outcome of a combination of two factors: the belief that they were engaged in holy wars (jihad) and a powerful zeal to go the extra mile—characteristic of converts to a new religion. Two, was the weakness of the conquered in terms of disarray within the governing regimes on one hand, and on the other, the resentment of the populace against the regimes that ruled them because of oppression (it was not unusual for the Muslims to be welcomed as liberators or to be simply indifferent to their arrival—instead of putting up resistance). Three, was the philosophy of tolerance following conquest—for example, by virtue of a covenant (the dhimma) promulgated by the Islamic State, the conquered received protection; in return they were only required to pay a tax (the jizya), they were not required to convert, neither were they enslaved, and nor were their cultural and religious institutions destroyed—compare, for example, with the orderly arrival of the Muslims in Jerusalem in 638 AD with the mind-boggling carnage of the Crusaders when they stormed its walls on July 15, 1099. (Conquest, in other words, did not necessarily mean conversion, since conversion by force is prohibited by the Qur'an. This was in marked contrast, for example, to how the Christian states treated other religious groups—witness the Spanish Inquisition—in their realm [see Mastnak, 2002, for more on this].) Four, was the absolute unity of the temporal and the eternal in Islamic theology, which meant that the mechanics of statecraft—including taxation, economics and law—were among the elements of conquest that the Muslims brought with them, it did not have to be invented on an ad hoc basis (the surest door to anarchy and confusion). Five, was the concept of the global community (ummah) which preached the absolute unity of all Muslims regardless of their class status or race or ethnicity or nationality (one result of this view was that the subjugated could achieve parity with their rulers through conversion, while another was the universality of Islamic citizenship where all Muslims enjoyed virtually the same rights where ever they traveled in the empire). Six, was the ritualistic simplicity of worship (those who converted to Islam found that it was a very unpretentious and austere religion in terms of rituals and lifestyle, including the absence of a priestly class (which always has the potential to degenerate into a parasitically oppressive class—as had occurred in some of the societies that the Muslims came across). Seven, was the multicultural unity of the Islamic world—which found its religious expression in the hajj (the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which is mandatory on all Muslims at least once in their life-time if they can afford it)—an outcome of which was that Islam did not recognize nationalistic and ethnic boundaries: all cultures and all nations were welcome into the faith on an equal footing; in this sense it was a truly multicultural religion. Eight, was the urban commercial character of Islam (given that it was born in an urban commercial environment)—one outcome of this was that economic prosperity, derived from commerce and trade across the length and breadth of the empire, was an integral part of the package that the Muslims brought with them.

[2] The use of the phrase Islamic scholars or Arabic scholars in this book, therefore, should not imply that the scholars were necessarily Muslim scholars (or even ‘Arab’ scholars for that matter), though most were—that is, most were Muslim scholars, but here again they were not all necessarily Arabs; they could have been of any race or nationality.

[3]A word or two about the concept of incorporation: to begin with, Islam does not recognize, in general, the legality of the 'corporation'--"an abstraction endowed with legal rights and responsibilities"--because only a human being, not an organization, can have "juristic personality" (Makdisi, 1981:224). Moreover, within the Islamic world,the necessity for the incorporation of universities per se was absent. Why? Makdisi (1981) points out that because of the great difference in how citizenship was regarded between Medieval Europe and the Islamic world (in the latter, as already noted, all Muslims, whatever their nationality, origin, ethnicity, etc., had the same citizenship rights regardless of where they went in the Islamic world, whereas in the former,Europeans did not enjoy an equivalent privilege), there arose the need in Medieval Europe to protect 'foreign'students (students from out of town or out of region or out of country) in the inevitable 'town and gown' conflicts that emerged wherever universities were beginning to be established (Bologna, Paris, etc.). This protection took the form of incorporation--a legal concept rooted in Roman law which permitted groups of persons bound together by a common purpose (as in guilds) to behave as individual persons in law (such an entity, interestingly, was referred to as universitas). Through papal or royal decrees, universities acquired, over time, protections and privileges that established their independence in virtually all matters: governance, curricula, instruction, finance, etc., etc. (See Benoit, 1995; Huff, 1993, and Pedersen, 1997, for an extensive account of how the process transpired; the last also proposes one more compelling factor: power struggles between the emperor and the pope.)

[4] Continuation of the listing of Islamic scholars:

Abu Raihan al-Biruni (ca. 973-1051), a natural scientist whose work helped to lay the foundations of natural sciences in the Latin West. His work on astronomy would become the principal text for schools in the Latin West. In addition, he wrote extensively in almost every subfield of mathematics, astronomy, physics, etc. He also wrote a treatise on drugs titled The Book on Drugs in which he described numerous drugs and their effects as well as providing their names in several other languages besides Arabic.

Ibn al-Zarqali (ca. 1029-ca.1080, known in Latin West as Arzachel), an astronomer who was responsible, among his accomplishments, for the invention of an improved astrolabe (namedsaphaea Arzachelis), the editing of the planetary tables produced by astronomers such as Ibn Said working in Muslim Toledo that came to be called the Toledan Tables, and authorship of an introductory work on trigonometry.

Ibn Bajjah (ca. 1095-ca. 1138, known in the Latin West as Avempace). A philosopher, whose work on the theory of motion is among his many contributions.

Ash-Sharif al-Idrisi (1100-1165/66?), a geographer and advisor to the Norman king of Sicily, Roger II, was the author of one of the most important medieval texts on geography titled the The Pleasure Excursion of One Who Is Eager to Traverse the Regions of the World. He spent most of his later part of his life in the service of the Norman king who provided him with the resources necessary to undertake his scholarly pursuits, which included a number of texts that combined descriptive and astronomical geography.

Abu al-Walid Muhammed ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammed Ibn Rushd (1126-1198, known in the West as Averroes), considered to be among the most important commentators on Aristotlian philosophy of his time, would have a far reaching influence on Western thought; in fact, so much so that it would be symbolized by the intellectual crisis that it would precipitate between the Church and the academy as the former attempted to battle what it thought was the theologically corrupting influence of "Averroeism" (the belief that philosophy and religion were not only compatible but that philosophy was, in a sense, religion in its purest form). Significantly, he was a great advocate of syllogism, the Aristotlian method of logic.

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201-1274), an astronomer par excellence, he would greatly influence the work of such Western astronomers as Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler and Tyco Brahe by means of his accurate astronomical tables that he and his colleagues produced at a famous observatory he helped establish at Maraghah (in modern day Iran)--under the sponsorship of the Mongols no less!

For additional information on the scientific contributions of Islamic civilization to the European Renaissance, the reader is directed to look at, besides the sources just mentioned above, the following among others: Alioto (1987), Authier (1995), Benoit and Micheau (1995), Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1981); Grant (1974 and 1996), Huff (1993), Kennedy (1966), Lindberg (1978), Stock (1978), Turner (1975), Watt (1972) Note: in bludgeoning the reader with this list of sources, the objective is to leave no doubt in his/her mind as to the significance of Islamic science for the development of the knowledge base of European medieval universities specifically, and the emergence of European modernitygenerally.

[5]One more example: consider this mind-boggling “what ifs” of history: would the European civilization have evolved to be the dominant civilization it is today had the Mongols possessed a succession mechanism different from the one that required the founder of the Golden Horde empire, Batu (the grandson of Genghis Khan), to return home just as he was poised to invade Western Europe in December of 1241? (The succession issue was precipitated by the death of the reigning head of the entire Mongol empire, Khagan (Great Khan) Ogadai, son of Genghis Khan.) Recall that by that point, the fate awaiting Western Europe at the hands of the Mongols had already befallen the Russians, the Poles, the Hungarians, etc. which was: total and merciless slaughter and devastation, perhaps not even matched, in terms of ferocity, by that inflicted by Europe’s own barbarians of an earlier period: the Vikings! (The Muslims too would not be spared the Mongolian devastation beginning with the invasion of Northern Iran in 1218 at the hands of Genghis Khan.) In other words, the decision by Batu to return home, most likely, put Europe--and the world—on to a very different historical trajectory than the one that would have emerged had he not withdrawn from Europe. (See Chambers, 2001; Holland, 1999; and Spuler, 1972 for more on the Mongols. See also the rest of the work that contains Holland for more examples of ‘what ifs’ of history.)

[6]It should be remembered that the Byzantines did almost nothing with the Greek intellectual heritage they had come to possess; though they had the good sense to at least preserve it (see Gutas, 1998, for a fascinating account of the Byzantine role in the Muslim acquisition of Greek scientific knowledge).

[7]The suggestion by some, states Huff (1993:209) that “…the failure of Arabic science to yield modern science was due to a failure to develop and use the experimental method are confronted with the fact that the Arabic scientific tradition was richer in experimental techniques than any other, whether European or Asian.”

[8]Huff (1993:48) reminds us, for example, that during the seven hundred year period marked by the eighth to almost the beginning of the fifteenth century, “Arabic science was,” in his words, “probably the most advanced science in the world, greatly surpassing the West and China.” He continues: “In virtually every field of endeavor – in astronomy, alchemy, mathematics, medicine, optics and so forth – Arabic scientists (that is, Middle Eastern individuals primarily using the Arabic language but including Arabs, Iranians, Christians, Jews, and others) were in the forefront of scientific advance. The facts, theories, and scientific speculations contained in their treatises were the most advanced to be had anywhere in the world, including China.” Making a similar point, Grant (1996) states: “Contrary to prevailing opinion, the roots of modern science were planted in the ancient and medieval worlds long before the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Indeed, that revolution would have been inconceivable without the cumulative antecedent efforts of three great civilizations: Greek, Islamic, and Latin. With the scientific riches it derived by translation from Greco-Islamic sources in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Christian Latin civilization of Western Europe began the last leg of the intellectual journey that culminated in a scientific revolution that transformed the world.”

[9]In drawing attention to this fact in the present political climate--where it is once again fashionable for Westerners of almost every stripe (except for an exemplary small minority who will hew to the truth no matter what) to loudly and unabashedly proclaim themselves as bearers of a superior, self-made civilization in a style not seen since the heyday of 18^thth century Western Imperialism--it runs the serious risk of being dismissed out of hand. This, of course, is one of the consequences of the anti-Islamic sentiment--reminiscent of the period of the Crusades--that has once again enveloped the Western World in the wake of the terrorist attack that misguided Muslim zealots inflicted on the U.S. on September, 11 (2001) and which has acted to serve as yet one more ideological layer to preserve the seemingly unassailable, granite-like ignorance about the Islamic civilizationthat characterized the vast bulk of the European peasantry during the Crusades. It is an ignorance that remains widespread to this day among both the elites and the masses in the West (and to some degree the rest of the non-Islamic world as well) and which in turn has rendered the West blind to how much the so called ‘Western’ Civilization owes to Islam. and 19

[10]Even the very concept of the crusade as a ‘holy war,’ observes Watt (1965:172), is probably another one of Western Christendom’s borrowings from Islam (compare: the jihad of the Muslims).

[11]Consider, for example, the long line of Western science historians who have grappled with the issue of the origins of Europe’s Scientific Revolution and who feature in Cohen’s excellent overview of their work (Cohen, 1994) but yet almost none of them deign to even nod at the precursorial presence of Islamic science!

[12] Among the hallmarks of this new Europeanized Christianity with its racialized ‘us vs them’ approach was, of course, a religious intolerance of frightening proportions and a legacy that would include events ranging from the bloody massacre of the inhabitants of Jerusalem by the Crusaders to the Spanish Inquisition, and from the pogroms against the Jews (culminating in the Hitlerite Holocaust) to the current ‘crusade’ against Islam (as most in the Muslim world, going by news reports, surely view it) in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, the Philippines, etc. under the banner of the U.S. led fight against ‘terrorism.’

For more on Islam and the birth of Europe see Davies, 1996; and Roberts, 1997.On the Crusades, excellent sources include: Hillenbrand, 1999; Mastnek, 2002; Payne, 1984; Richard,1999 (1996); and the monumental six volume work edited by Setton, 1962-1989.

[13] Here is a thought-experiment: would the Ancient Greece (which, remember, was primarily based—in terms of intellectual accomplishments--in Ionia) thatpresent-day Westerners are so keen to call their own (without much protest from modern Greece--understandably, of course, given the context of the current international geopolitics) be so claimed today if Islam had not emerged to give rise to an unrelenting European jingoism? Would Greece not have remained what it really is: a Mediterranean, and therefore Eastern (but most certainly not Western)geographic and cultural entity? In fact, it should also be pointed out, that the Ancient Greeks themselves saw Ionia as part of Asia.

[14] This observation is also in order here: the traditional European view used to be, Crowthier (1967) reminds one, that it is with the fall of Constantinople to the Turkish Muslim army on the 29^th of May, in 1453, that Europe was reacquainted with its Greek intellectual heritage, which the Byzantines had preserved and which they now took with them to Europe as they fled the Muslims. This, however, is only partial truth, he notes, because Europe had already had access to much of the Greek knowledge through the Muslims. What the fleeing Byzantines brought with them that the Europeans did not yet have, was what the Muslims had had the least interest in: the arts and humanities of the Greeks (history, poetry, drama, etc). He further observes: “The Renaissance, in so far as it is regarded exclusively as a result of the fall of Constantinople, is of restricted interest for science. The cultural effects of the flight from Constantinople were at first narrowly literary, and on the whole may have been unfortunate.” (p. 118)

[15] One can only imagine the tremendous consequences for the historiography of science in general if there were scholars willing to subject the sciences of Islam and India, for example, to what one may generically refer to as “The Joseph Needham Treatment.” That is, a scholarly approach that is characterized by an awe-inspiring, multi-disciplinary and relentless life-time devotion to the historiographical study of science and technology—like the one undertaken by, needless to say, Joseph Needham with respect to Chinese science and technology and captured for posterity by his monumental multi-volume magnum opus titled Science and Civilization in China (which the Cambridge University Press began publishing in 1954 as each volume was written (and which continues to be written--though others have now taken over authorship of the volumes published in recent years)).

[16] Now, I can imagine here one of you raising a small hand, at the very back of the room, accompanied by the question, in a tiny voice: But, but…Sir what about the Romans? Ah…, the Romans! For reasons that need not detract one here, one is on sure ground—pending of course research a la Pierre Duhem (whose monumental research effort rescued medieval European science from the dustbin of history) that may unearth findings to the contrary--when one boldly states that the Roman contribution to the development of modern science was about as much as that of the Byzantines: nothing to write home about. It is one of those ironies of history, that for all its brilliantly outstanding architectural and technological accomplishments, the Roman Civilization was almost barren when it came to scientific achievements (Alioto, 1987). No, the torch of science—for the most part--bypassed the Romans as it was transferred by the forces of history from the Greeks to the Muslims.

[17] Benoit and Micheau (1995:203) draw attention to this interesting and telling tidbit of history: there exists an annotated edition of Ptolemy’s The Great Compilation (a work that came to be known by its Arabic derived name of Almagest in the Latin West); but the annotations are in the hand of none other than Nicolaus Copernicus himself; however, what is reallyfascinating is this: that the edition itself is a Latin translation of the Arabic translation of the Almagest! One, of course, will never know the magnitude of the influence of Islamic astronomy on Copernicus—for this was astronomy that did not just rest on the Greek and Alexandrian heritage alone, but was also based on the findings of astronomers from the East (India, Persia, etc.), as well as the observations of the Muslims themselves. (See Huff, 1993; and Turner, 1995.) While on the subject of astronomy, it should also be noted here that the computational basis of it, trigonometry, was an entirely Islamic invention. The Greeks did not appear to possess trigonometry. (See, for example, Kennedy, 1983.)

[18] See Huff (1993) for a brilliant analysis of the ‘sociological’ impediments (must be understood here broadly to include those derived from education, law, culture, theology, etc.), within the Islamic civilization, to the further development of science and scientific thought that could have, in time, led to the rise of modern science--that is, the science that eventually developed in the West from the 17^th century onward. (See also Cohen, 1994; and Huff and Schluchter, 1999.)

[19] One of the earliest proponents of this rule, which he termed ‘the law of continuity,’ is Pierre Duhem. Castigating those who appear to be unaware of this law, writing in 1906, he would state: “It is commonly thought that progress in science is made by a succession of sudden and unexpected discoveries and thus, so one believes, is the work of men of genius who have no precursors at all. It is a useful effort, and one worth insisting on, to mark the point where these ideas are erroneous, the point where the history of scientific development is subject to the law of continuity. Great discoveries are almost always the fruit of slow and complex preparation, which is pursued in the course of centuries.” (Emphasis added; translated from the French by Cohen, 1994:48, and published in his book.)

[20] There is some doubt as to how the compass arrived in the West from the East in that the Muslims may or may not have been involved.

[21] Alioto (1987:163) reminds one that even the chance ‘discovery’ of the Americas by Columbus has its root in the mathematics of an Islamic scholar—albeit involving erroneous mathematical calculations on the part of the tenth century astronomer, Alfraganus. On the basis of these calculations, Columbus came to conclude that the Orient lay only twenty-five hundred miles due west of the Canary Islands! For good or ill how wrong he turned out to be.

[22] The importance of the development of European long distance trade (and Islam’s role in it) can not be overemphasized. For, long-distance trade had the indirect outcome of accelerating a number of incipient transformations in Europe, that in time would be of great import, including: its urbanization, the emergence of mercantile capitalism, and the disintegration of European feudalism (the last precipitating, in turn, the massive European diasporic movement to the Americas (and elsewhere), with all the other attendant consequences, including the great Columbian Exchange).

[23] In discussing origins, one is not even taking into consideration here that whole other matter: the Afro-Asian roots --a la Bernal -- of the foundations of the pre-modern Western civilization: the Greek civilization itself, discussed above. Under these circumstances, it is perhaps even questionable to talk about a ‘Western’ civilization at all; so much of its inheritance is from outside Europe.