Front cover of How Islam Created
the Modern World by Mark Graham (2006). The picture depicts al-Razi stained on
a glass window in Princeton University Chapel.
Review of How Islam
Created the Modern World by Mark Graham. Beltsville, Maryland: Amana
Publications, 2006. Hardcover, 208 pages. ISBN-10: 1590080432 - ISBN-13:
978-1590080436.
For
several centuries, corresponding to the European Middle Ages, Baghdad was the
intellectual center of the world. It was there that a huge community of
translators and scholars appropriated in Arabic culture the knowledge of
ancient civilizations and combined it with the cultural traditions and imperatives
of the Islamic context to create a scientific, mathematical and philosophical
golden age.
This
golden age of Islam embraced all the products of human spirit practiced at that
time, including different scientific disciplines, medicine, symbolic and
artistic creation, social organization and material culture, including
productive branches of applied knowledge in industry, architecture and the
making of instruments.
These
accomplishments were so numerous and original that they realised an unprecedented
stage of civilization and occupied a high rank in human creation. Being unique
and at the front of inventivity, they gained the admiration of other peoples
who were aware of the existence of these treasures. Hence a dynamic process of
transmission was set up between the Muslim and the Latin worlds all over the
Mediterranean coasts.
This
transfer process was progressive and uninterrupted for several centuries,
mainly in the Andalus, but also in Sicily, Southern France and in the Middle
East during the Crusades.
At
the dawn of the Renaissance, Christian Europe was wearing Persian clothes,
singing Arab songs, reading Spanish Muslim philosophy and eating off Mamluk
Turkish brassware. This is the story of how Muslims taught Europe to live well
and think clearly. It is the story of how Islam created the Modern World.
It
is this story of civilization that Mark Graham describes in his book. Who would
have thought an Edgar-winning mystery novelist could explain to us in clear,
concise language that without Islam, western civilization as we know it might
not exist? Underlying that dramatic proposition is an important thesis: The
ongoing debate about a supposed "clash of civilizations" misses the
reality that Islam and the West developed from essentially the same roots and,
despite their rivalry, helped each other in profound ways along the path to
"civilization". In fact, the West and Islam can be viewed as merely
different faces of the same civilization. He explains how Arabic-speaking
Muslims not only preserved the scientific and philosophical knowledge of the
Greeks but also "made it their own", greatly extending and improving
on it. For example, the newly developed concepts of Andalusian philosopher Ibn
Rushd (Averroes) found their way into western universities, where they were
viewed as challenges to church orthodoxy and ushered in the beginnings of the
scientific method.
Muslim
thinkers, poets and scientists set the stage for the European Renaissance:
Graham points out specific borrowings in Dante's Divine Comedy from the
works of the great Andalusian writer Ibn ‘Arabi, and shows how these
intercultural transfers were likely mediated by Dante's mentor Brunetto Latini,
who had brought back learning from the libraries of Toledo, where, even after
the Christian reconquista Muslims and Christians continued to live
together and to work along the same paths as when the Muslims were the rulers
of the Iberian peninsula.
In
other places of his book, Graham shows more concrete ways in which the West is
indebted to Islam: A Mongol invasion of Europe was thwarted when Egypt's Mamluk
army defeated the Mongols at ‘Ain Jalut, Palestine, in 1260. Imagine how
different the West would be today if the Mongols had triumphed! As it turned
out, the West never again faced the threat of Mongol invasion after ‘Ain Jalut,
and the breather which thus provided Europe a chance to absorb what Graham
terms "the other great gift of Islam—knowledge".
Contents
Acknowledgements
9
Foreword
11
Introduction
15
Chapter
1: Islam becomes an empire 17
Chapter
2: The House of wisdom 37
Chapter
3: Hippocrates wears a turban 51
Chapter
4: The great work 63
Chapter
5: Beyond the Arabian nights 77
Chapter
6: Islam's secret weapon 97
Chapter
7: A medieval war on terror 117
Chapter
8: The first World war 139
Chapter
9: Raiders of the last library 157
Chapter
10: Children of Abraham, children of Aristotle 175
Appendix
1: What the Qur'an says 183
Appendix
2: Arabic words in English 185
Further
reading 189
