Calculating the radius of the earth over a thousand years ago required a lot of imagination. It was Abu Reyhan Al-Biruni, the 10th century Islamic mathematical genius, who combined trigonometry and algebra to achieve this very numerical feat.

Biruni’s scholarly legacy has inspired scientists and mathematicians for several centuries, and his name continues to command respect even today.

Scholars like Biruni were born at a time when much of the world’s scientific and mathematical knowledge was translated into Arabic. By the time he came of age, he was also introduced to concepts developed by scholars from different civilisations and centuries. From the scientific literature of the Babylonians to those of the Romans, to ancient Indian texts on astrology, Biruni learnt from it all. Like other Muslim scholars from the Golden Age of Islam, he was also hungry for knowledge.

According to the Turkish Professor, Fuat Sezgin, intellectually sound debates occurred between the 27-year-old Biruni and 18-year-old Ibn Sina. The two great minds are known to have discussed ‘The propagation of light and its measurement’ in a great depth. Sezgin, who died in 2018, concluded that the quality of those debates is rare and probably does not exist even today.

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What Harun started, his son Mamun sought to complete. Mamun was a scholar in his own right, had studied medicine, Fiqh, logic and was a Hafiz e Qur’an. He sent delegations to Constantinople and the courts of Indian and Chinese princes asking them to send classical books and scholars. He encouraged the translators and gave them handsome rewards.

Perhaps the story of this period is best told by the great men of the era. The first philosopher of Islam, al Kindi , worked at this time in Iraq. The celebrated mathematician al Khwarizmi worked at the court of Mamun. Al Khwarizmi is best known for the recurring method of solving mathematical problems, which is used even today and is called algorithms. He studied for a while in Baghdad and is also reported to have traveled to India. Al Khwarizmi invented the word algebra (from the Arabic word j-b-r, meaning to force, beat or multiply), introduced the Indian numeral system to the Muslim world (from where it traveled to Europe and became the “Arabic” numeral system), institutionalized the use of the decimal in mathematics and invented the empirical method (knowledge based on measurement) in astronomy. He wrote several books on geography and astronomy and cooperated in the measurement of the distance of an arc across the globe. The world celebrates the name of Al Khwarizmi to this day by using “algorithms” in every discipline of science and engineering.

It was the intellectual explosion created at the time of Harun and Mamun that propelled science into the forefront of knowledge and made Islamic civilization the beacon of learning for five hundred years. The work done by the translation schools of Baghdad made possible the later works of the physician al Razi, historian al Masudi, the physician Abu Ali Sina , the physicist al Hazen, the historian al Baruni, the mathematician Omar Khayyam and the philosopher Ibn Rushd.

The age of Harun and Mamun was also an age of contradictions. Indeed, no other period in Islamic history illustrates with such clarity the schizophrenic attitude of Muslims towards their own history, as does the age of Harun and Mamun. On the one hand, Muslims take pride in its accomplishments. On the other, they reject the values on which those achievements were based. Muslims exude great pride in the scientists and philosophers of the era, especially in their dialectic with the West. But they reject the intellectual foundation on which these scientists and philosophers based their work.

Thus it was that the Muslim world came upon rational ideas, adopted them, experimented with them and finally threw them out. The historical lesson of the age of Harun and Mamun is that a fresh effort must be made to incorporate philosophy and science within the framework of Islamic civilization based on Tawhid.

Al-Kindi was the first Muslim philosopher. Philo­sophical studies in the second/eighth century were in the hands of Christian Syriacs, who were primarily physicians. They started, through encourage­ment by the Caliph, to translate Greek writings into Arabic. Being the first Arab Muslim to study science and philosophy, al-Kindi was rightly called “the Philosopher of the Arabs.”

Kindah was one of the great Arab tribes before Islam. His grandfather al-Ash`ath ibn Qais adopted Islam and was considered one of the Companions (Sahabah) of the Prophet. Al-Ash`ath went with some of the pioneer Muslims to al-Kufah, where he and his descend­ants lived.

Al-Kufah and al-Basrah, in the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries, were the two rivalling centres of Islamic culture. Al-Kufah was more inclined to rational studies; and in this intellectual atmosphere, al-Kindi passed his early boyhood. He learnt the Qur'an by heart, the Arabic grammar, literature, and elementary arithmetic, all of which formed the curriculum for all Muslim children. He also studied Fiqh and the new-born discipline called Kalam. But it seems that he was more interested in sciences and philo­sophy, to which he consecrated the rest of his life, especially after he went to Baghdad.

It seems that al-Kindi learnt Greek, but certainly he mastered the Syriac language from which he translated several works. He also revised some of the Arabic translations, such as al-Himsi's translation of Plotinus' Enneads, which passed to the Arabs as one of the writings of Aristotle. Al-Qifti, the biographer, says that “al-Kindi translated many philosophical books, clarified their difficulties, and summarized their deep theories.”

Most of his numerous works (numbering about 270) are lost. Ibn al-Nadim and following him al-Qifti classified his writings, most of which are short treatises, into seventeen groups: (1) philosophical, (2) logical, (3) arithmetical, (4) globular, (5) musical, (6) astronomical, (7) geometrical, (8) spherical, (9), medical, (10) astrological, (11) dialectical, (12) psychological, (13) political, (14) causal (meteorological), (15) dimensional, (16) on first things, (17) on the species of some metals, chemicals, etc.
This account shows to what extent al-Kindi's knowledge was encyclopedic. Some of his scientific works were translated by Gerard of Cremona into Latin and influenced very much the thought of medieval Europe. Indeed, this conciliation remained for a long time the chief feature of this philosophy. Furthermore, al-Kindi, specializing in all the sciences known at his time - of which his writings give sufficient evidence - ­made philosophy a comprehensive study embracing all sciences.
Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd were first scientists and then philosophers. Philosophy is the knowledge of truth. Muslim philosophers, like the Greek, believed that truth is something over and above experience; that it lies immutable and eternal in a supernatural world. The definition of philosophy in al-Kindi's treatise on “First Philosophy” runs like this: “Philosophy is the knowledge of the reality of things within man's possibility, because the philosopher's end in his theoretical knowledge is to gain truth and in his practical knowledge to behave in accordance with truth.”
At the end of the treatise, God is qualified by the term “truth,” which is the objective of philo­sophy. “The True One (al-Wahid al-Haq) is, then, the First, the Creator, the Sustainer of all that He has created. ...”

It was the golden age of Islam. It was not the fabulous wealth of the empire or the fairy tales of the Arabian Nights that made it golden; it was the strength of its ideas and its contributions to human thought. As the empire had grown, it had come into contact with ideas from classical Greek, Indian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist and Hindu civilizations. The process of translation and understanding of global ideas was well underway since the time of al Mansur. But it received a quantum boost from Harun and Mamun.

Harun al Rashid was the son of al Mansur and was the fourth in the Abbasid dynasty. Ascending the throne as a young man of twenty-two in the year 786, he immediately faced internal revolts and external invasion. Regional revolts in Africa were crushed, tribal revolts from the Qais and Quzhaa in Egypt were contained and sectarian revolts from the Alavis were controlled. The Byzantines were held at bay and forced to pay tribute. For 23 years he ruled an empire that had welded together a broad arc of the earth extending from China, bordering India and Byzantium through the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean.

Harun established a School of translation Bait ul Hikmah (house of wisdom) and surrounded himself with men of learning. Commenting on the role of Harun in establishing the House of Wisdom, Bozkurt says: “It is known as Bayt al-Hikmah. The idea of building such a grand library came to fruition during Harun Rashid’s term. He started bringing books from across the world for translation. During his son Al Ma’mun’s term, the process went further.” Bayt al-Hikmah served as a bridge between ancient Greek and modern Western philosophy. It collected ancient Greek artefacts from Egyptian, Byzantine, Sassanid and Roman countries and prevented them from disappearing.

His administration was in the hands of viziers of exceptional capabilities, the Bermecides. His courtiers included great doctors, poets, musicians, logicians, mathematicians, writers, scientists, men of culture and scholars of Fiqh. Ibn Hayyan, who invented the science of chemistry, worked at the court of Harun. The scholars who were engaged in the work of translation included Muslims, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Hindus. From Greece came the works of Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Galen, Hippocratis, Archimedes, Euclid, Ptolemy, Demosthenes and Pythagoras. The Muslims learned from these sources and gave to the world algebra, chemistry, sociology and the concept of infinity.

What gave the Muslims the confidence to face other civilizations was their faith. With a confidence firmly rooted in revelation, the Muslims faced other civilizations, absorbing that which they found valid and transforming it in the image of their own belief. The Qur’an invites men and women to learn from nature, to reflect on the patterns therein, to mold and shape nature so that they may inculcate wisdom. ”We shall show them our Signs on the horizon and within their souls until it is manifest unto them that it is the Truth” (Qur’an, 41:53).

It is during this period that we see the emergence of the archetype of classical Islamic civilization, namely the Hakim (meaning, a person of wisdom). In Islam, a scientist is not a specialist who looks at nature from the outside, but a man of wisdom who looks at nature from within and integrates his knowledge into an essential whole. The quest of the Hakim is not just knowledge for the sake of knowledge but the realization of the essential Unity that pervades creation and the interrelationships that demonstrate the wisdom of God.

It is believed that the House of Wisdom was an intellectually vibrant place that was mainly driven by its cosmopolitanism, something that was "never seen before."

For the First time, Buckingham Palace receives an Islamic Figure

Charles III receives the Secretary General of the Muslim World League

London – MWL

In his first official hosting of an Islamic figure at Buckingham Palace after ascending the throne of Britain, His Majesty King Charles III received H.E. the Secretary General of The Muslim World League, Sheikh Dr. Muhammad bin Abdulkarim Issa.

During the meeting, the two sides discussed the duties of the religious and intellectual leaders towards a number of issues related to their common human values and principles, particularly the issues closely connected with enhancing friendship and cooperation among nations through their cultural communication and in accordance with their religious and cultural commonalities as well as their effective and rich dialogues.

For his part, Dr. Al-Issa lauded King Charles’ fair stances towards a number of issues as well as his respect and appreciation for the Islamic civilization that has effectively interacted with other civilizations according to their common human ties.

When you think of European culture, one of the first things that may come to your mind is the renaissance. Many of the roots of European culture can be traced back to that glorious time of art, science, commerce and architecture. But did you know that long before the renaissance there was a place of humanistic beauty in Muslim Spain? Not only was it artistic, scientific and commercial, but it also exhibited incredible tolerance, imagination and poetry. Muslims, as the Spaniards call the Muslims, populated Spain for nearly 800 years. As you’ll see, it was their civilization that enlightened Europe and brought it out of the dark ages to usher in the renaissance. Muslims entered Europe from the South Led by Tariq bin Zeyad. Abd al-Rahman I, a survivor of a family of caliphs of the Muslim empire, reached Spain in the mid-700’s. He became the first Caliph of Al-Andalus, the Muslim part of Spain, which occupied most of the Iberian Peninsula. He also set up the Umayyad Dynasty that ruled Al-Andalus for over three-hundred years. (Grolier, History of Spain). Al Andalus means, “the land of the vandals,” from which comes the modern name Andalusia.
At first, the land resembled the rest of Europe in all its squalor. But within two-hundred years the Muslims had turned Al-Andalus into a bastion of culture, commerce and beauty.
“Irrigation systems imported from Syria and Muslimia turned the dry plains... into an agricultural cornucopia. Olives and wheat had always grown there. The Muslims added pomegranates, oranges, lemons, aubergines, artichokes, cumin, coriander, bananas, almonds, pams, henna, woad, madder, saffron, sugar-cane, cotton, rice, figs, grapes, peaches, apricots and rice.” (Burke, 1985, p. 37)
By the beginning of the ninth century, Muslim Spain was the gem of Europe with its capital city, Cordova. With the establishment of Abd al-Rahman III - “the great caliphate of Cordova” - came the golden age of Al-Andalus. Cordova, in southern Spain, was the intellectual center of Europe. At a time when London was a tiny mud-hut village that “could not boast of a single streetlamp” (Digest, 1973, p. 622), in Cordova…
“…there were half a million inhabitants, living in 113,000 houses. There were 700 mosques and 300 public baths spread throughout the city and its twenty-one suburbs. The streets were paved and lit.” (Burke, 1985, p. 38)
“The houses had marble balconies for summer and hot-air ducts under the mosaic floors for the winter. They were adorned with gardens with artificial fountains and orchards”. (Digest, 1973, p. 622) “Paper, a material still unknown to the west, was everywhere. There were bookshops and more than seventy libraries.” (Burke, 1985, p. 38). during these years major works of the architecture of al-Andalus were built and enlarged, such as the palatine city of Madinat al-Zahra as an example And the Cordoba Mosque, we will talk about it in the next article in shaa Allah.

𝐀𝐫𝐚𝐛 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐬 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐭𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐞!

"Ottoman rule as Islamic Caliphs was accepted among all the Arab intellectuals, ruling classes, scholars of Islam, and people as long as the Ottomans defended Dar al Islam (lands of Islam) from infidels and ruled by spirit of the pristine Sharia (Islamic Law).

There was little serious opposition to Ottoman rule in Arabia until the 19th century when the centuries old understanding between Ottoman state and the Arabs broke down due to Western invasions and nationalistic movements. "

Quote by: Professor Kenneth W Harl
(Phd Historian from Yale university USA )

#arab #arabic #muslim #ottoman #arabian
#Shariah #islamic #invasion #intellectual
#nationalism #osmanli #Turks #middleeast

𝗢𝘁𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗠𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘁 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 & 𝗧𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲!

"The Ottoman millet system until it was undermined in the 19th century, functioned extremely well. It gave a role to Christians and Jewish populations. They played very important role in the overall economy.

It lead to the articulation of Orthodox Christian worship. Anyone who goes up the Mount ethos or sees the monastery of Sumera outside of Trabzon today could see a continuing tradition of paintings and the rich whole art of the Orthodox Church which was allowed to flourish under the Ottoman government.

Jewish thinkers continued to write commanteries on the torah and there was a very very rich intellectual life of Judaism in the Ottoman state. But all of that was only possible because they had accepted their role within the Ottoman state.

And the Ottoman Sultan-Caliph as dispenser of Shariah, took very seriously his role that he should protect his non Muslims subjects and so for centuries an absolute impeccable Sunni Muslim ruler was able to rule over 5 million subjects who religiously were quite at odds with his own personal beliefs."

Quote source: The Ottoman Empire video lectures by Professor Kenneth W Harl (Phd Byzantine history from Yale university ) available on the Great Courses Plus.

#Ottoman #Millet #tolerance #statecraft
#caliph #shariah #Jews #Christianity