What Brought About the End of the Islamic Golden Age?

[LuisDantas]

Do you think Tyson is onto something? Why or why not?

I tend to doubt hypothesis that rely on a single person to make a decisive difference for huge amounts of people, and if anything I doubt it more than usual in such a situation.

Exceptionally clumsy and exceptionally insightful people arise all the time and are of little consequence in and of themselves. It is the zeistgeist that enables or compensates for them that makes a real difference.

Islaam as a whole places a lot of emphasis on the importance of obeying authority and conforming to the expectations of the greater community. While that is aimed towards divine authority as opposed to human, at the end of the day people need to deal with other people and therefore establish human authority figures even if they insist on perceiving them as god-enabled.

Islaam gained political influence in many places at various times, mainly because it is so adept at galvanizing popular support from its masses. And it lost much of that influence time and again, as perhaps best illustrated by the fall of the Ottoman Empire, mainly because it does not respect itself enough to acknowledge the importance of questioning and renewal in social environments.

Tyson is not necessarily wrong, but I think he is mistaken if he thinks that it was just a stroke of unfortunate bad luck that a particularly unenlightened figure such as al-Ghazali came to be listened to.

What, in your opinion, brought about the end of the Islamic Golden Age?

The refusal of the Islamic masses to choose reason over conforting yet ultimately fraudulent refuge in belief.

 

[Hop_David]

Neil DeGrasse Tyson - The Islamic Golden Age: Naming Rights - YouTube



One of Tyson's key point seems to be that the Islamic Golden Age came to an end largely due to the influence of one man, Iman Hamid al-Ghazali. According to Tyson, al-Ghazali saw some kinds of learning, such as mathematics, as being from Satan. As his ideas caught on, the Golden Age came to an end.

Do you think Tyson is onto something? Why or why not?

What, in your opinion, brought about the end of the Islamic Golden Age?

Tyson's video is riddled with false history.

Ghazali never wrote that math is the work of the devil. He actually praised the disciplines of math and science saying they were necessary for a prosperous society. I believe the Ashari school challenging ancient Greek philosophers paved the way for the scientific revolution. Copernicus would not have been possible had Ptolemy continued to be regarded as the last word.

Nor did Islamic innovation end in Ghazali's time. There were many mathematicians and scientists in the centuries following Ghazali. Abu al Hasan, the father of symbolic algebra, was born more than three centuries after Ghazali's death.

What caused the eventual decline? In my opinion sea routes rendered land trading routes obsolete. At that time the middle east cease to be a trading hub where diverse cultures met and exchanged ideas. There was also the Mongol invasion and a few other things going on.

Tyson argues that if not for Ghazali the once innovative Islamic population would surely have regained their creativity. And he points out the 1.4 billion Muslims alive today have earned only a handful of Nobel prizes in science. Well, the same is true of the 1.4 billion people living in India. As well the 1.4 billion people living in China. And these are populations that have enjoyed periods of innovation. In fact the zero and our base 10 numbering system comes from India, not the Arabs as Tyson falsely claims.

Also in that video Tyson gives an account of Bush's 9-11 speech. Bush's actual speech was a call for tolerance and inclusion. It was delivered from a mosque. It most certainly was not an "attempt to distinguish we from they."

Just about everything Tyson says in the video is wrong.

 

[Augustus]

Just about everything Tyson says in the video is wrong.

It's funny how these "Rationalists" like Tyson, Harris, Dawkins, etc. can't even be bothered to do the most elementary research of the topics they speak on regarding religion.

Especially as they are so condescending and contemptuous of those they perceive as being driven by emotions and prejudices rather than reason and critical thinking.

 

[Kooky]

I challenge the merit of the concept altogether. The idea of an Islamic Golden Age ranging from somewhere between 900-1300 was first brought up in the 19th century, at the height of a fashion and architectural trend in Western Europe called Orientalism, and in a period when the industrial powers of Europe were already engaging in far-reaching imperialist projects in North Africa, the Levant, the Persian Gulf area and South Asia.

I think the concept should be seen in light of the historical context in which it had arisen: A time period when, after a period of economic and social upheaval, European powers emerged as global military powers capable of politically dominating most other Empires around the world. In this light, European elites saw the historical powers of the Middle East and South Asia, which had historically dominated the region and even challenged European global supremacy at one point, as ones in cultural, economic, and moral decline; these cultures, the Europeans argued, had stopped being able to challenge European dominance because they had become lazy, degenerate, and morally corrupt.

It is worth pointing out that this concept emerged before there was significant academic scholarship about Middle Eastern history that was not penned from the historical perspective of European explorers and Christian crusaders or missionaries. We should be highly suspicious about the supposed objectivity of these sources, and the conclusions the European elites drew from them - elites who already saw the Middle East as a decadent and degenerate culture.

The concept of the Islamic Golden Age should, therefore, be examined as an extention of that idea of Middle Eastern degeneration and corruption: It is a narrative where, at some point in the past, empires were vigorous, morally virtuous, and intellectually vibrant, and then started to become complacent, morally degenerate, and therefore intellectually stunted.

But even a casual look should make us take notice that such a thesis is really very hard to put in empirical terms! How do you measure these concepts, and how do you actually apply empirical methods to support them? Is this even a falsifiable thesis to begin with?

In short, I haven't seen enough evidence to buy into it. By the 18th and 19th century, the Middle East had certainly long entered a period of economic and military decline, and it is highly likely that modern issues have their roots in the problems of that period; but I just can't find it in me to support such a spurious, badly supported, orientalist and strongly biased thesis such as the supposed mental decline of every single Middle Easterner everywhere simply because some guy somewhere had some new ideas about their religion.

 

[Augustus]

The concept of the Islamic Golden Age should, therefore, be examined as an extention of that idea of Middle Eastern degeneration and corruption: It is a narrative where, at some point in the past, empires were vigorous, morally virtuous, and intellectually vibrant, and then started to become complacent, morally degenerate, and therefore intellectually stunted.

I'm not quite sure if you are questioning the idea of a Golden Age or questioning the narrative about the decline of the Golden Age. If the latter, I agree it was very much the era of triumphalist Whiggish History which is basically what became the Secular Enlightenment/Humanist view favoured by Tyson, Dawkins, et al but with Science and Reason™ replacing Protestantism in the 'Progressive Arc of History'.

If the former, while any concept of a "Golden Age" requires a high degree of subjectivity, to say the Abbasid Caliphate was a relatively stable and wealthy society that contained a good amount of patronage for scholarship is much more straightforward.

It also united parts of the Roman and Persian Empires which had strong scholarly traditions, and brought together their knowledge under a common language via the translation movement. The majority of scholarly output was from the successors of the educated communities that existed prior to the conquests. The result of this was a production of new knowledge which is well documented.

The Caliphate was also connected to many trading routes including China and India which further helped give access to new ideas.

One of these was the new technology of paper which reduced costs associated with production of texts (not a printing press level of boost, but a boost no the less).

Another was the Indian ("Arabic") numeral system which again is quite significant.

Stability, wealth, patronage, centres of scholarship, important new technology, interconnectedness with other advanced societies, influx of 'new' information.

These are certainly fertile grounds for scientific advancement.

 

[Kooky]

I'm not quite sure if you are questioning the idea of a Golden Age or questioning the narrative about the decline of the Golden Age. If the latter, I agree it was very much the era of triumphalist Whiggish History which is basically what became the Secular Enlightenment/Humanist view favoured by Tyson, Dawkins, et al but with Science and Reason™ replacing Protestantism in the 'Progressive Arc of History'.

I am questioning both narratives - or rather, I am questioning the rationalization behind those narratives, and I am further questioning their basis in verifiable facts. Both the notions of the Golden Age, and the notions of its decline seem to hinge of a small number of well-known scholarly figures, and I would be wary to hang an entire grand narrative on such scant pieces of evidence, especially when said narrative includes such iffy notions as "freedom of thought equals more science" which we know to be at best to be a half truth - if it holds up to the facts at all.

I concur that the Middle East saw long periods of economic prosperity and trade during that time period, which likely led to increased scholarly activity as well.

But technological innovations can be harder to track, especially when they come 'from the ground up' so to speak. I am honestly not familiar enough with the archeology of the region and period in question to agree with the periodization offered; for all we know, the innovations we associate with an Islamic Golden Age could not even be contemporaneous with one another, and it is only the massive time span (nearly 500 years!) that makes the period appear to be such a marvel of technological and scholarly advancement.

 

[justaguy313]

Religion of Islam was hijacked by Lucifer l.a. right after the death of Prophet Muhammad pbuhahf at the event of Saqifa

Saqifa - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org