The Islamic Golden Age

53:12

14 Dec 2011

History of Science

George Saliba

John Renard

This is a clip from the PBS documentary by Robert Gardner, Islam:  Empire of Faith.  This section starts about 200 years after the death of the Prophet Muḥammad in 632 CE and continues to the beginning of the Ottomans in the 14th century.  The material is presented comparatively, with a focus on the parts of the Islamic world that were most engaged with Europe, such as the Levant, and discussing the state of European social norms during periods of events in central lands of the Islamic empire.  The documentary’s creators focused on material that the Christian and Islamic worlds had in common, or what Europe gained through contact with Islamic entities.

Topics discussed:  the role of Baghdad (now in Iraq), the House of Wisdom and the translation movement, the scientific method, medical innovations, germ theory of disease, development of hospitals, anatomical studies, optics and the physiology of the eye, Ibn al-Haytham, spread of paper-making, comparisons between Europe and the Islamic empire, Cordoba and Islamic Spain, spread of learning through Islamic Spain in the 9th and 10th centuries, architectural influences through Islamic Spain, Jerusalem, al-Hakim and destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (rebuilt by 1048), Pope Urban II’s campaign for the Crusades (1095), the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1099, the occupation of the Levant and the building of castles, souvenirs of the Levant, Islam’s spread in other parts of the world, innovation through trade, writing a check, crafts in Islamic empire (swords, textiles), the attack of Salāh ud-Dīn (Saladin) on the Crusaders and the reconquest of Jerusalem in 1187, changes in crusaders through interaction with Middle Eastern cultures, Thomas Aquinas and Averroes, the Mongol invasions from Central Asia in the 13th century, the fall of Baghdad in 1258,  Mongol conversion to Islam, the rise of the Ottoman Turks.

Speakers:  George Saliba (Columbia University), John Renard (St. Louis University), Sheila Blair (Boston College), Jonathan Bloom (Boston College), Ahmet Karamustafa (Washington University), Carole Hillenbrand (Edinburgh University), Walter B. Denny (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), Esin Atil (historian of Islamic art), Victoria Holbrook (Ohio State University)

Produced and directed by Robert Gardner.  For more on the original documentary, see PBS’s web site on the film.  The documentary was made in 2000.  The DVD was released in 2005.

Evaluation:

The material on Islam is within the bounds of what Muslims have historically understood as acceptable.

There is relatively little here on the natural sciences; most of what is discussed might be placed under the category of technology.  The statements about the acquisition of Hindu numbering systems during the House of Wisdom may be too early.

As with any work trying to cover 1200 years of history, the presentation is simplified, but also presented by historians of Islamic science, religion and art. The basic sweep of the historical presentation is accurate.