The Appropriation and Subsequent Naturalization of Greek Science in Medieval Islam: A Preliminary Statement

A summary of this paper was read at The XVIIIth International Congress of the History of Science, Berkeley, California, 8 August 1986, in a Symposium concerned with “Cross-cultural transmission of natural knowledge and its social implications”. The author is grateful for comments and suggestions from Heinrichs Wolfhart Issawi Charles Mendelsohn Everett Morris James Ragep Jamil Safouan Mostafa Sami-Ali , and, especially, Vernet Juan .

For an illustration of this point, see the author's “The Andalusian revolt against Ptolemaic astronomy: Averroes and al-Bitrūjī”, in Mendelsohn Everett (ed.), Transmission and tradition in the sciences: Essays in honor of I. Bernard Cohen (Cambridge, 1984), 133–53.

See, for example, the introductory chapter to his “On First Philosophy”, in Ivry Alfred I. , Al-Kindi's metaphysics (Albany, N.Y., 1974), 55–60.

See the first article to be published in the more recent research on this problem: Roberts Victor , “The solar and lunar theory of Ibn al-Shātir: A pre-Copernican Copernican model”, Isis, xlviii (1957), 428–32.

de Vaux Carra , “Les sphères célestes selon Nasîr-Eddîn Attûsî”, in Tannery Paul , Recherches sur l'histoire de l'astronomie ancienne (Paris, 1893), Appendice VI, pp. 337–61.

Duhem Pierre , To save the phenomena: An essay on the idea of physical theory from Plato to Galileo , trans. by Dolan Edmund and Maschler Chaninah (Chicago and London, 1969), 25–35; see esp. p. 26. Also: Idem, Le système du monde, ii (Paris, 1954), 117–79; esp. pp. 117–19, on “Le réalisme des arabes”.

Many of these articles are reprinted in Kennedy E. S. and Ghānim Imād , The life and work of Ibn al-Shātir (Aleppo, 1976). For additional literature see Sabra , “The Andalusian revolt …” (ref. 1), 146. n. 5.

Cf. Rosenthal Franz , The classical heritage in Islam (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1965), esp. pp. 1–14.

Surely it is not to be taken for granted that an intellectual tradition to which the Romans paid little attention, and which was almost extinguished during the long struggle between Christianity and Paganism, should undergo a spectacular revival in a semitic, hitherto ‘unscientific’ language and a religiously oriented civilization.

A notable exception is Paret Rudi , Der Islam und das griechische Bildungsgut (Tübingen, 1950). See also the relevant chapters in Goitein S. D. , Studies in Islamic history and institutions (Leiden, 1966).

Goldziher's still unsurpassed study, first published as no. 18 (1915) of Abhandlungen der königlisch Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Philosophisch-historische Klasse) (Berlin, 1916), is now available in English translation in Swartz Merlin (trans. and ed.), Studies on Islam (New York and Oxford, 1981), 185–215.

On Sīrāfī's views, see Margoliuth D. S. , “The discussion between Abū Bishr Mattā and Abū Sa^cīd al-Sīrāfī on the merits of logic and grammar”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, (1905), 79–129; Mahdi M. , “Language and logic in classical Islam”, in von Grunebaum G. E. (ed.), Logic in classical Islamic culture (Wiesbaden, 1970), 50–83. Some interpretative remarks are in Sabra A. I. , “Avicenna on the subject matter of logic”, The journal of philosophy, lxxvii (1980), 745–64.

See Makdisi's George most recent and most developed statement in The rise of colleges: Institutions of learning in Islam and in the West (Edinburgh, 1981). An earlier study by Makdisi is “Muslim institutions of learning in eleventh-century Baghdad”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, xxiv (1961), 1–56. See comments and criticisms in Tibawi A. L. , “Origin and character of al-madrasa”, ibid., xxv (1962), 225–38.

Makdisi discusses van Berchem's and Goldziher's views at some length in The rise of colleges, 296–304.

Mention should be made of an early study by a pioneering student of Islamic scientific institutions: Sayili Aydin , The institutions of science and learning in the Muslim world, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1941. Sayili's The observatory in Islam (Ankara, 1960; repr., New York, 1981) is still the only major monograph on a scientific institution in the broad context of Islamic culture.

The man in charge of regulating prayer times in a mosque.

Only a very few of al-Dīn's Kamāl mathematical works have survived. His more recently discovered writings (in Manisa, Turkey) deal with conic sections.

I have in mind the kind of research exemplified by Kennedy's E. S. A survey of Islamic astronomical tables (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, ns, xlvi, pt. 2 (1956)), and King's David “The astronomy of the Mamluks”, Isis, lxxiv (1983), 531–55.

Khaldūn Ibn , The Muqaddimah , trans. by Rosenthal Franz (3 vols, Princeton, 1967). See vol. iii, 246–58, esp. pp. 251–2.

Ihyā' ^culūm al-dīn, ed. by al-Halabī al-Bābī (Cairo, 1967), i, 13ff, esp. pp. 17, 22, 23, 31–32, 35–36, 45–48, 57–60.

I am not arguing the simplistic thesis that Ghazālī, or his influence, was ‘the cause’ of scientific decline. Nor would it be correct to claim that the two theories of knowledge outlined above were the only ones conceived in Islam, even within the restricted group of scientific scholars. Ibn al-Shātir, for example, subscribed to a view which was distinct from both theories. For a survey of a wide range of concepts of knowledge in Islam, see Rosenthal Franz , Knowledge triumphant: The concept of knowledge in medieval Islam (Leiden, 1970).

See King's article referred to above (ref. 17), 538.