Muhammad the Educator
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Iustitute of Islamic Culture Publication
•.   ' . f ; /."   1 ._, -.J,

MUHAMMAD T-HE ,EDUCATOR

by
ROBERT L. GULICK, JR.
Seminar Study Submitted in Partial Satisfaction
of the Departmental Requirements for the Degree
of Master of Arts in Education in the University
of California, Berkeley, May, 1941

THE
INSTITUTE OF ISLAMIC CULTURE
CLUB ROAD,                                LAHORE

i
COPYRIGHT

First edition       ...    1953

CONTENTS
PAGE

Chapter 1.   INTRODUCTION                                1
Chapter 2.   TI-IE SETTING                              14
Chapter 3.   CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION TO
WORLD CULTURE                              46

PRINTED IN PAKISTAN

by Mirza Mohammad Sadiq at the
Ripon Printing Press. Bull Road. Lahore

and published by
Dr. Khalifa Abdul Hakim. Director
for the Institute of Islamic Culture
Club Road. Lahore
Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

IT MuQ.ammad
is the purpose of this investigation to trace the life of
from the standpoint of influence on world
The Problem.           culture. What was the power which
enabled MuQ.ammad to unite the warring tribes of Arabia, a task of such
magnitude as to pre-
.elude the emperors of Rome, Constantinople, and Persia from
undertaking it? Did the handsome camel-driver possess a
conquering personality which impelled his neighbours to
forsake their pleasures and follow him? Was the message
he gave a compilation of Christian, Jewish. and Hanifite
teachings which he had heard while leading caravans and
at the fairs near Mecca? Was he a master-demagogue or
politician? These are some of the questions which must
be considered as fundamental to our consideration of
MuQ.ammad as an educator.
The course is uncharted and the destination unpredictable. The primary topic
is the inquiry into the methods
which MuQ.ammad used to attain success where other wellmeaning and more
influential persons had failed. An
Arabic scholar told me that Mul,lammad had no method.
It is possible, however, that the best of methods is that
which is not apparent and which. therefore, does not
distract the attention of the learner from the subject.
Those who insist on the exclusive importance of
envirQnment would demand an exhaustive treatment of the
---I

cultural and natural landscape in the I;Iijiiz during the time
preceding the appearance of Mul,lammad. Although it is
patently true that many thousands of other Arabs were
subjected to the same or similar influences hut there was
only one MUQammad, it is quite legitimate to devote some
2              MUI;IAMMAD THE EDUCATOR
INTRODUCTION                        3
attention to the historical and geographical background.
Nicholson alleges that no other religion has historical
Brief space will be accorded to the pre-Islamic development
attestations comparable to Isliim but that nowhere else do
of commerce, literature, and religious ideas.
we find pious men more given to falsehood than in Islamic
The rise of Isliim to the control of a theocratic empire
tradition. 1 In view of the fact that much of the informamore vast than that
of Rome presents another fascinating
aspect of the influence of the life and preaching of             tion is
contradictory, it will frequently be necessary in this
Mul;1ammad. Muir and others have made exh:mstive                 study to
apply the recognized criteria of histdrical investistudies of the origin,
achievement of great power, and           gation and research to determine the
reliability and authdecline of the Caliphate. The question of Muslim dominion 
      enticity of the data, the shifting of internal and external
is so involved and of such doubtful bearing on the core of       evidence in
the assignment of dates and the ascription of
the problem that it must remain in the fringe of attention.     acts plaCing a
premium on resourcefulness and judgment.
The desire not to become entangled in a maze of theo-            In addition
to the rather general phases of the problem
logical notions dictates only passing mention of doctrinal       sketched
above, there are such specific tasks as tracing the
points and a circumspect handling of the Sl'ihtea-Sunnte         authenticity
of some of the aphorisms on learning attributed
controversy. Some assert that' the student must align            to Mul;1ammad
and commonly memorised by Muslim schoolhimself with one side or the other.
Many scholars, even          children. The following sayings are typical:
some of Sunnite persuasion, defend 'Ali. The literature is                The
ink of the scholar is more precious than the
replete with attacks on the Abbasids but these allegations                  
blood of the martyr.
are usually undocumented. Labelling the Sunnites orthodox                 Seek
ye learning from the cradle to the grave.
and the Shi'ites unorthodox, even though the former are in                To
seek learning is the duty of every' Muslim man
the majority, can scarcely be regarded as in the interest of                
and woman.
objectivity.                                                              A
seat of learning is a garden of heaven.
Aside from the life of Mul;1ammad, the most interesting               Angels
bend down their wings to a seeker after
topic related to the educational aspects of Islam is the                    
knowledge.
MqsIim contribution to culture in its manifold manifesta-                 The
day on which I have learned nothing is no part
tiqns : economic theory and practice, music, literature,                    
of my life.
archjtecture, sculpture, mathematics, chemistry, physiology          These and
other proverbs are commonly quoted by
and medicine. The gifts to world civilization of the follow-     reputable
writers, but, almost' invariably without a shred of:
ers of Mugammad have been thoroughly set forth by such            evidence to
support their ascription to Mul)ammad. It
competent scholars as Sarton, Meyerhof, Sir Thomas                should be
possible to trace the chain of evidence (isndd) of.
Arnold, Khuda Bakhsh, and Baron Carra de Vaux. Only               some of
these beautiful utterances. It would be highly
a specialist would care to survey definitively how each field     significant
if it were established that such statements were
of knowledge has been enriched but it is believed that it         actually
made by Mul;1ammad at a time when Christians
would be worthwhile to summarize the most important con-          were
praising ignorance as the mother of faith.
tributions. It is proposed to render accessible the gist of
the facts a,nd to indicate where additional data may be found.
I   R. A. Nkholson. Literary History of the Arabs, p. 22.
4                MUI:;1AMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                     
                NTRQPUCTION                              5

The title of this study, Mu1;lammad the Educator                          
that character which hfl,s eqabled it to tran~ce:pd all
assumes that Mu1;lammad is entitled                     previous pP,<ises of
evolut~on. For although there
Importance of                                                                 
is not a single aspect of human growth in which the
Problem.               to a place in the ranks of those who
have influenced the educational and                     decisive inflllepce of
Islamic culture is not traceable
cultural progress of the human race. Is Mu1;lammad usually                    
nowhere is it so clear and momentous as in the
so regarded and is the assumption justifiable? Does reli-                     
genesis of that power which constitutes the paragious feeling becloud the
vision of investigators? It is                        mount distinctive force
of the moderQ world and
doubtless true that Mu1;lammad is seldom regarded as an                       
the supreme source of its victory-natural science
educator and this fact largely accounts for the unwillingness                 
 lind the scientific spirit .... What we call science
of reputable scholars in the English-speaking world to deign                  
arose in Europe as a result of a new spirit of
to write his biography from a pedagogical standpoint. It                      
 inquiry, of new methods of investigatioI1, of the
method of experiment, observatiori, measurement,
seems at first glance incredible that an unlettered man
should be hailed as an educational leader. Mu1;lammad                         
 of the development of mathematics in a form unsaid that the Qur'an was his
only miracle. it being the                         known to the Greeks, That
spirit and those
revelation of an untutored mind and the first book in                         
 methods were introduced into the European world
Arabic. That an educator could be illiterate might be the                     
 by the Arabs.                       •
corollary of this miracle. The writer believes that only                  
Stanwood Cobb, founder o~ the Progressive Education
l
the most provincial concept of education would gainsay the             
A§s,ociation. states ill similar vein :
legitimacy of placing MUQammad among the great educators                      
     h~arp, impinging culturally upon adjacent Chrisof all time for, from the
pragmatic standpoint, he who                           tian cOl!ntries, was
t!:J,e virtual creator of the Renaiselevates human behaviour is a prince among
educators. In                         sance in Europe.          .
line with the usual tendency to ignore the greatest Arab is               
That i\llportapt contributions to world intellectual
the absence of articles on either MUQammad or Islam iIi                
progress were made by the Arabs is not open to qllestion,.
Monroe's Cyclopedia of Eaucation. 1                                     But'
were these developments the result of thein£luence of
There is no intention to imply that the importance of               MUQammad?
Were the propagators of the Muslim creed
lukewarm and unbelieving apostles? Briffault contends
Islamic culture in the development of contemporary civilization has been
wholly ignored. On the contrary. some                   that at the time of
its origin and througho!.!t its heyday
scholars give full credit and recognition to the fruit of the           these
leaders of thought were utterly indifferen t to religion. 2
seed sown by Mu\1ammad. Briffault traces the scientific                 It
appears incredible that anyone acquainted with the
method and spirit of inquiry to the Arabs in these words2 :            
struggles, hardships, and sacrifices which characterized t1)e
It is highly probable that but for the Arabs modern            lives of the
companions of MUQammad could draw 114.ch a
European civilization would never have assumed                    conclusion.
It may well be, of course, that Bri£fq~lt's

1 Stanwood Cobb. "Islam's Contributio!1 to ,the Wo~ld C~lture."
1 Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education, 1, does contain an article on

Arabic Education; a tree is recognized but a forest is overlooked,      World
Order 6 : 20~ (9/40).
• Robert Briffault" The Making of Humanity, pp. 190-91.                 •
Briffault, op. cit., p. 186.
INTRODUCTION                         7
6                    MU~AMMADTHEEDUCATOR

evidence of a corroborative nature l :
materialistic outlook led him to ignore the element of red                  
While the Germans had nothing with which to
ligious faith and devotion so clearlY discernible in the lives           
oppose the Christianity of the Empire, the Arabs
of 'Ali Abu Bakr Hamza, and numerous other outstanding                    were
exalted by a new faith. It was this, and this
men ~ho Were ~iliing and eager to endure persecution, to                 
alone, that prevented their assimilation. For in other
have friends turn against them, and to abandon their                    .
respects they were not more prejudiced than the
possessions in order to proclaim allegiance to the One God              .
Germans against the civilization of those whom
("Ahadun ! Ahadun ! "). Even so, some writers feel that it                they
had conquered. On the contrary, they assimiis as ridiculous to claim for Islam
the work of Ibn Sina as it            lated themselves to this civilization
with astounding
would be to point to the discoveries of Galileo as bestowals             
rapidity; they learnt science from the Greeks and
of the Catholic Church. Without attempting to settle the                  art
from the Greeks and the Persians.
issue in that particular application and context, it is un-          The
Germans had no influence on Romanic civilization
deniable that MUQammad did introduce the order and               but were
Romanized as soon as they entered Roman
stability which stimulated the development of Islamic            territory. On
the other hand, the Romans became Arabized
culture, a veritable revolution of unparalleled tempo and        as soon as
they were subjugated by Islam. In ninthchallenging virility. Concrete examples
to verify these          century Spain the Christians no longer knew Latin and
the
points will be cited as ,the study proceeds.                    texts of the
Councils were translated into Arabic.~ The
Henri Pirenne, the late Belgian historian, pointed out       Arabs apparently
had a motivation of an intensity and
that, generally speaking, the Roman Empire had had prac-          profundity
unknown to pagan peoples.
tically no dealings with the Arabian peninsula before the            Writing
over a century ago, the Reverend George Bush
Muhammadan epoch. l The Arab conquest was without                 had this to
say about Islam and its influences:
precedent, the swiftness of its victory comparable to that                  
No revolution .in history, if we except that
which marked the beginnings of the Mongol ,Empires of                     
effected by the religion of the Gospel, has intro-
Attila, Jenghis Khan, and Tamerlane. To quote from                        
duced greater changes into the state of tqe civilized
M. Pirerme 2 :                                                            
world, than that which has grown out «f the rise.
But these Empires were as ephemeral ,as the con-                 progress, and
permanence of Mohammedanism.
quest of Islam was lasting .... The lightning-like           The Arabs
customarily refer to the period prior to the
rapidity of its diffusion was a veritable miracle a~.     advent of Muhammad
as the rlahiliyya or "time of ignorcompared with the slow progress of
Christianity.         ance." Muslim authorities may go a bit too far in their
The point as to whether the vast dominion of. the            proneness to
designate that period a "dark age," but the
contrast between it and the epoch subsequent to the coming
followers of Muhammad and the Islamic world culture w~re
directly attributable to religious faith has been partl~         of Mu1;Iammad
is most striking. Without becoming overtly
answered in the affirmative. Pirenne provides additional
1 Henri Pi renne, Mohammed (md Charlemagne, p. 150.
2 Ibid., p. 152.
1 Henri Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, p.147.                • Reverend
George Bush, The Life of Mohammed, p. 17.
3   Ibid., p. 149.
8                 MUI;IAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                     
                 INTRODUCTION                      9

involved In controversy, it can be concluded that the                 of
connotations and significations. Then, too, the verses
genesis of the greater Arabic culture was centered on                of the
Qur'an are a poetic prose in which sound and rhythm
Mul]ammad's miracle, the Qur'an. Moore presents the idea.            are vital
factors. The late Marmaduke Pickthall in the
tersely and convincinglyl :                                         
introduction to his attempt at translation rhapsodizes in
A people whose religion is revealed to them in a          this word-picture of
the Qur'an: "that inimitable symphony
book must make provision for the study and inter-           the very sounds of
which move men to tears and ecstasy."
pretation of that book.                                    Translation may be
a bold effort, but that it is not a too
The most important and authentic of these sources is            forbidding one
is attested by the number who have essayed
the Qur'an itself, probably the most        it. A curious part of the record
is the fact that the early
Primary sources for     studied book in the world. It was           renderings
into English were made by enemies of Islam.
a biography of
Muhammad.               the first book written down and             The first
one worthy of consideration was published in 1734
copied in Arabic. Parts were in             by George Sale who regarded
MUQammad as an impostor.
writing during the lifetime of Mu1).ammad and all of the              This
translation is surprisingly accurate although Yusuf 'Ali,
'verses had been memorized by ear-witnesses. A few                    a recent
translator. charges that Sale's work was based on
months after the death of Mul;1ammad a collected edition             the Latin
version of Father Lewis Maracci, a confessor to
was made 'by Zayd-at the command of-Caliph Abu Bakr~                ,Pope
Innocent XI. Maracci's translation was produced in
who 'i'gathered it together, from date-leaves, and tablets :of      1698 for
the al1~ged purpose of giving the worst pos.sible
white stone and ;from the breasts 'of men:2 In his travels         
·impression of Islam to the literate Europeans; it was
a warrior ~amed Hodzeifa noticed that the copies of the              dedicated
to the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I and was
Qur'an exhibited variations of text and he warned Caliph             preceded
by,a refutation upon which, according to Yusuf
"Uthman to "stop the people before they should differ               "Ali, Sale
basedihis,notes and "Preliminary Discourse." It
regarding their Scripture, as did the Jews and Christians.',·g     ds true
that Sale regarded the Maracci translation as
Some tiine after -33 AH.,·Utbman ordered Zayd and three              very
exact and the only one "which represents the sense of
others of the Qm:aysh to make a new and careful recension. _         the
originaL" But Sale considered Maracci's "refutations"
This became the established text and copies were sent to           ·as of
little or no use and sometimes impertinent. He con-
Basra, Kufa, and Damascus, and one wasretained·at·Madina.          ,tinues1
:
The text has remained unaltered to this day. The Treaty                       
 The work, however, with all its faults, is very
of Versailles required Germany to surrender one of these                    
valuable, and'I should be guilty of ingratitude. did
'Uthman Qur'ans. 4                                                          I
not acknowledge myself much obliged thereto ...
Translation of the Qur'iin into any other :language from:          The Rodwell
translation of 1861 was less literal than
the original Arabic results in loss of effectiveness. A single    'Sale's but
more poetic and the Suras were arranged in
Arabic word may be a shorthand way of expressing a wealth         .rough
chronological order. In 1876, Palmer produced a
sort of American revised version which Yusuf 'Ali, with
some justification, condemns as "careless and slipshod."
1 Earnest Carrol Moore,   The Story. of Instrllction. p. 279.
Among the more recent translations consulted in connec-
2 Sir William Muir, The Life of Mahomet, p. 555.
a Ibid., p. 556.
'Moore, op. cit., p. 256.                                           1 George
Sale, The Koran, pp.   x-xi.
10              MUI;IAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                       
                INTRODUCTION                    11

don with this stu,iy are those of Pickthall (1930), Bell             the
tenth-century revision by Wazir al-Magbribi. The
(1937), and Yusuf 'Ali (1937-38). When passages from                 next in
line of authority is the Kitdb al-Maghdzi of althe Qur'an are quoted herein
and the translation is not              Waqidi CAbdu'Uah MUQammad ibn 'Umar
al-WaqidO.
Another important book is the Kitdb at-Tabaqdt al-Kabir,
designated, that of Sale is employed.
written by al-Waqidi's secretary, Ibn Sa'd (Abu 'Abdu'llah
The next most important source of biographical data is
the hadith literature. A hadit.h. is an act or saying attributed     MUQammad
b. Sa'd b. Mani uz-Zuhri), who died in 844
to MuQammad. A man who said and did things in public                 A.D.
Two-thirds of the account of the life of Muhammad
for over three-score years would naturally inspire a vast            by Abu
la'far MUQammad b. Jarir at- Taba:ri is dra~n from
body of traditions. The most respected collection of                 Ibn Ishaq
and it is interesting and revealing to compare
hadiths was that assembled by AI·Bukhari in 879 AD. ; from           this
version with the recension of Ibn Hi~.ham. We are
an accumulation of some 600,000, he selected 7,398 traditions.       also
indebted to Tabari for one of the outstanding tafsirs
Bukhari's great work is available in French as well as in            or
commentaries, the Book of Religion and Empire (published
Arabic. Also highly esteemed is the collection of Muslim,            in
English). The later biography of Abu'l-Fida (Isma'il b.
a contemporary of Bukhari. The genuineness of traditions            'Ali b.
MUQammad Abu'l.Fidii), who lived from 1273 to'
rests largely on the number and character of the witnesses           1331
A.D., was a compilation of earlier sources and is
in agreement. Traditions, like condiments, are best used            regarded
as an inferior authority,l
in moderation to supplement and add flavour to what is                   The
foending of Quranic exegesis has been ascribed·to
more substantial. Guillaume gives an excellent, even if             
'Abdu'JIiih b. 'Abbas, cousin of the Prophet. The gist of
somewhat hypocritical. discussion of the leading recorders          the
researches on interpretation is to be found in the
of hadiths and provides an insight into the complexity of           
encyclopedic commentary of Tabari (died 922 A.D,) and
~racing isndds.                                                      the
tafsir of Baydawi (died 1286 A.D.) are highly prized in
The principal authority for the life of MUQammad is the          the Islamic
world. The ltqdn, a general survey of Quranic
Sira of Ibn Ishaq (Abu 'Abdu'llah            sciences, was compiled by Suyuti
(died 1505 A.D.).
Secondary authorities.
MUQammad Ibn Ishaq), native of                   Among the leading biographies
of MUQammad written
Madina. He received his education in his home town,                  in the
twentieth century are those of Emile Dermenghem,
later tra velling to Egypt, 'Iraq, and finally to Baghdad at         Tor
Andrae, and Sirdar Ikbal' Ali Shah: these are availthe invitation of Caliph
aI-Mansur. Thus the Szra was                able in America. The late D. S.
Margolioth, most widely
written under Abbasid patronage, which may account for              read of
the biographers, was an ordained clergyman; his
its hostile treatment of the Umayyads and its eulogy of the          contempt
for MUQammad is often subtle and concealed, a
Hashimites from whom the Abbasids claimed descent. Un-             
characteristic which renders his writings perhaps less trustfortunately, none
of Ibn Ishaq's works is extant in its original   worthy than those of a candid
opponent. Father Lammens,
form but this oldest biography of MUQammad has been                a man of
great erudition, applies impossible criteria for
preserved in a recension by Ibn Hisham (Abu Muhammad               judging
hadith.s, important biographical sources; he avers,
'Abu'l-Malik Ibn Hisham b. AiYllb al-Himyari ai-Basri),            for
instance, that when traditions agree with the Qur'an,
who died around 833 A.D.. or about 65 years after the              they copy
the Qur'iin and are not authentic. Ordinarily,
death of Ibn Isbaq. Ibn Hisham's work is entitled Kitdb
Sirat Rasuldldh. The present form of the work dates from              1 De
Lacy O'Leary,   Arabia Before Muhammad, p. 214.
12             MUI:IAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                        
               INTRODUCTION

the agreement of sources is held to constitute substantia..      regard the
differences of wealth, nation, and race as of
tion, but it may be that the Jesuit scholar is concerned         minor
importance, whose vision of democracy excels that
more with trans-substantiation than with substantiation.         of the
ancient Greeks.! Townsend presents this rare
Prejudice is not confined to the Christian presentation.         picture of
Islam 2 :
Some Muslim writers are not without sin; rare is he who                    The
slave who embraces Islam is free; not simply
adheres to bare facts without exegetical ornamentation;                  a
freed man, but a free citizen .... competent de
Dinet <lild MllQ.ammad 'Ali go so far as to attribute miracles           facto
as well as de jure to all and every office in the
to Muhammad.                                                            
state.
Th~se who have no religious predilections, frequently            He goes on to
say that "Under Mahommed .... there
tackle the subj~ct and often with less success than the          sprang up ex
necessitate rei a form of democratic equality
religionists whether judged from an academic or an artistic      more absolute
than any the world has elsewhere. 9
standpoint. Dibble in his flippant book asserts that he has      Mul;tammad
was a more thorough educator than the modern
found the secret which explains the power of MUQammad:           reformers
whose libertarian teachings during the inter-war
~pilepsy. But Dibble cites no instance of a proved epilep-       period in
Europe could not measure up to the task of
tic building an empire and he seems unaware of the               preventing
tyranny and war.
opinion of competent medical men that the trances of
Muhammad could not have been epileptic because occur-
~en~es or ideas experienced during fits of epilepsy are not
remembered afterwards.
At the outset, it must be conceded that absplute
objectivity is impossible. The body of material is so vast
that selection is essential and selection involves subjective
judgment. Even so, the tu quoque argument used by both
Christians and Muslims can be eliminated, thus advancing
that much toward unvarnished reality. The goal is to
present Mu1;J.ammad as a moulder of human affairs an~"
if possible, to discover his eminently successful Q1~thods.
Treatment of the subject by one who approaches it trom
the view-point of educational interest, sh()l}ld be of value
at least to teachers. In this brief paper, only a beginning
.         . ,      .

can be made. Insha'lliih, this humble effort may stimulate
others to undertake more ambitious research projects. As
Apu'l-Fidii has written "knowledge of a part is better than
ignorapce of the whole." The writer believes that it is.
~ort!:lwhile to shed even ol,'le candlepower of light OA
the Islamic' attitude towards human brotherhood, the               1   Owen
Rutter, Triumphant Pilgrimage, p. 230.
attitude of several hundred million human beings who               t Meredith
Townsend, Mahommed. p. 34.
I   Ibid., p. 50.
THE SETTING                              15

At the beginning of the ~eventh century Central
Arabia was not even externally organized as a State.
This makes it all the more remarkable that precisely
Chapte:r 2                                    that portion of Arabia which was
wholly uninfluenced by the neighbouring civilizations should be
THE SETTING                                   , the issuing-point of the great
Islamic movement.
Reverend Zwemer would make it appear that Muhammad
K     NOWLEDGE of the histoJical and. geqgraphic<l.l background of the Arabs
contributes in an essential way
borrowed the elements of Islam from "Heathenism;' (comprising all religions
rejected by Christian missionaries, e.g.,
Foreword.                tq an understanding 0.£ the infllHmce
of Ml!1]amI;l1ad.  The. m..e.thods and     ~he teachings of Zardusht and
Buddha as well as Arabian
techniques of Mu1]ammad must be con,sidered, not £l1om the:        
idol~tr!), Judaism, and Christianityl. The facile charge of
contelI),po:rary American standpoint, hl!t in, the light Qf the:    plagIarIsm
may more readily be preferred than substantiated
e:x;igencie.s of time and place. Writers of history often fed      
particularly when directed against an unlettered man. It i~
constrained to asc:ribe, every. important idea oian 0utstand-       recalled
that some have claimed that the teachings of Jesus
ing man to his contact with the natural and social land-            are So
strikingly similar to those of Gautama Buddha as to
scape. It is not difficult to argue the dominant significance       make
credible the notion that the forty' days reportedly
of environment but beyond a certain point the theorising           ~pent by
~hrist in the wilderness must have been passed
tends to get out of hand and clash with facts.                     In a
BuddhIst temple.      Actually, the Faith of Islam contains
Dr. O'Leary draws this conclusion on the development          nun:erous
administrative provisions and laws concerning
of Islaml :                                                        fastIng,
marriage, providing for orphans, prohibition of the
The result of the ancient penetration of Arabia       llse of wine, abolition
of gambling and infanticide and so
and the intercourse of the Arabs with their neigh-       on, which are not to
be found in any of the creeds m~ntioned
bours was that the religion of Islam, so far from        by Zwemer. It is
undeniably true that many of the
taking its rise amongst secluded desert tribes, was      doctrines concerning
belief in God, immortality, the brothera natural stage of development in the
religious life     hoo~ ~f ~an, .a~d the law of love are either implicit or
of West Asia ....                                        exphclt In reh'gIOns
preceding Islam. The .fact, however
Now it is important to be aware of the ferment in             that an
individual reiterates a thought previously expressed
religious thinking induced by the Jews and Nestorian              by another
elsewhere should not lead a scholar to the con-
Christians but some of the critics of Mu1]ammad go to the         clusion that
a causal relationship necessarily exists. The
extreme of assuming that the ideas of Isliim were offered         writer in
meditating on the subject of the effect of music
to a people waiting and anxious to receive them. Such a           on character
reached the conclusion that goo"d music wiil not
theory is refuted by the known facts of the persecutions of       make bad
people good nor will bad music make good
Mu1]ammad and his followers. Hell provides an antidote            persons bad.
That same day, he opened a book by Alfor O'Leary's analysis of Islam as an
evolutionary pheno-         Ghazzali, none of whose writings he had previously
read,
~~n9na ;,                                                          and chanced
upon a passage in which the revered man of
1 Samuel M. Zwemer, Arabia:   The Cradle of Islam, p. 17tl.
1O'Leary, op. cit., foreword;
2 Joseph Hell, The Arab Civilization, p. 9.
MUHAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                                         
                   THE SETTING                              17
16                        •
h          1 of the spiritual man              natives negotiate them barefoot
with impunity.
God held that music exalts t e ;~~re was no borrowing of                      
               The south-west corner of Arabia is the location of
but degrades the se~sua1 man.                        that AI_Ghazz ali had
Yaman which is similar to the Hijaz in that it is composed
ideas notwithstand1Og the Ifact centuries earlier than the                    
           of two main ranges which encompass a series of plains.
expresse d sImI  ' '1 ar thoughts e even' f hether the 1'd eas.
,         'd the questlOn o w .                                     The tihama
or coastal belt has an enervating c1Jmate with
writer. Leavmg aSI e                      God or whether they were indI-      
           extremes of temperature. The outer ridge, a bit off the
of Mul;1ammad came from                         ' t h t Muhammad alone
' th fact remams                a.                     .        coast. has a
favorable climate and is suited to the cultiva-
A
genous to ra la, e    b                    'L         the spiritual dynamism
r   to   ml.use                                        tion of coffee. Ancient
cities of Yaman include San'a,
possesse d t h e powe                           "
h   '       crete realIzatlOn.                                     Nijran, and
Adin.
requisite for t elr can , h t pertain to these aspects
.          ,                ne to thIs c ap er                                
    d         To the east of Yarnan lies Hadrarnaut, probably the
TOpICS germa .                            ligion geography, art, an
of Arabian life: lIterature, re '11 b' noted in discussing                    
          Hazar-Naveth of Genesis 10 : 26 and First Chronicles 1 : 2U,
'cS political features WI                  e                               
Hazar-Naveth was the third of the sons of Joktan of the
econo mI '
family of Shem (2210 B.C.). Joktan settled in the Yaman
family and tribe,                     ,          ists of desert. There are
A large part of Arabia co~s                           f desert. The nefud     
   which at one time was within the boundaries of Hadramaut,
three mam types 0              d       d 'I d I'n     a center for trade with
India and Africa.' The main valley
.  d tosse san pi e
Naturallandscape.                is an area a f wm -                   d      
 11 .   of Hadramaut is very fertile and water is accessible, The
.        The dahana is a har , grave Y
dune and ridge formatlOn~'h                      d The surface is very dry    
        plateau, averaging four or five thousand feet in elevation, is
,
plain, In spots co
vered WIt san .
b bt ined by sinking we s.
11 The      dry. Farther east, extending to the Persian Gulf, is
and barren but water may e a ga ted lava or scoriaceouS                       
        Oman.
f harp corru a                             .       '1         Generally
speaking. it may be stated that Arabia is an
harra is an area a s .                      ,.r: d extends about 140 mi es
t northern neJu                                        t1   arid. forbidding
land. an isolated region having a maximum
rock. Th e grea                    d bout 180 miles from east to wes .
from north to south an a 'k                            ta" and smaller desert 
       length of 1.500 miles, a breadth of 1,300 miles, and a total
d      'ld tamaI1S, yer ,                               '        area of over
12.00.000' square mile~, a third of which is
The soft san yle s                        S tl of the nefud in a convex
flora during some seasons.                   au ~ to the west is the Hijaz    
       stony desert. Much of the remainder has but scanty rain-
.
crescent     '1
IS  t le Jebel, Sham
'      mar
Q'blihan of the IslamiC     'l   d an d
war          fall and is unsuited to agriculture, supplying only thorny
or "barrier," contalnIng the 1 d route running between                        
      plants appropriate in quality for undiscriminating camels
the location of the ancient tra, e                         Aqaball      A
dahana     and goats. Even these acrid herbs are so scarce as to
.               f am San a to                   .                  prevent the
animals from camping long in one place, There
the mountaIn ranges r                       h p ian Gulf and another
'd h coast of t e ers                                   1     •     are
hardly any rivers but mostly transitory awda. "rushing
extends inSI e t e l ed south-central reglOn,
ti ely unexp or                                    torrents in the brief rainy
season, parching beds of hot
occupies the campara v                                .    3"    The slopes of
'I'    "bode of emptIness.                                  stones for the
remainder of the year 2 ."
the Ruba-I-Kha I or a                                   d    'th harra. The
.        d         t ins are covere WI                                   The
Hijaz contained fertile, irril!ated land which made
the high 101an moun ah                         d dahana are very destrucrocks
common to bot: :::~i:~ traveller reports that the                          
settl~d urban life possible.   The leading cities included
tive of shoes but a                                                           
   Mecca, Yathrib (later Madina), and Taif. Taif, east of

1 O'Leary,     op. cit., p. 6.
• Ibid.• p, 8,                                                            
        1 Robert Young,  Analytical Concordance to the Bible, p. 458.
a I bid:. p. 6.
2 W.   S. Davis, A Short History of the Near East, p, 102.
18                     MU~AMMADTHEEDUCATOR                                    
            THE SETTING                     19

Mecca in the mountains, was a resort popular, especially In     " this
unattractive picture1 :
summer, among the wealthy inhabitants of Mecca. It                          
It happened on just such a day of rain that the
remains today in relation to Mecca pretty much what                      
godly Ibn Zubair. determined not to abandon his
Darband is to Tihran. Mecca itself was hardly a favored                  
daily tawaf (the seven processional rounds of the
spot in which to dwell. AI Haiqatan, the Negro poet,                     
Ka'ba), made them, they say. by swimming ...... By a
wrote 1 :                                                                
distressing paradox, when the rains and torrents
If Mecca could stir up longings you would see                   everywhere
else in the peninsula brought blessings,
Himyarite princes hurrying there at the head of                   covering the
soil with greenery, washing the salty
their warriors. Winter and summer are alike                       sheathes
from the plants, freeing the land from want
intolerable there.     Nowhere in Mecca do the                    for months
to come, at Mecca the water only
springs gush forth as at Jowatha. Not a blade of                  caused
devastations. It destroyed the houses,
grass to rest the eye ... no hunting ...Instead, only             killed the
animals, carrying with it the unburied
merchants, the most contemptible of all professions.             carrion, and
spreading temporary epidemics which
Mecca was especially intolerable in summer. The heat"                 added to
the endemic ophthalmia ...... Hygienic conof the flagstones surrounding the Ka
'ba was too intense for             ditions were odious.
even the thick-skinned Arabs who sprinkled them with                 The
original Arabs were probably a darker people than
water for the ritual procession. No tree of any size was                      
         those of today. It is believed that a
The Arabs.
there to cast some shade. It was sufficient punishment for                    
         proto-negroid belt ex.tended" from
a criminal if he were stretched naked on the ground.             Africa to
Malaya, giving rise to the Hamitic people of
Mecca also suffered from lack of water, the famous wells         Africa, the
Dravidians of India, and to the intermediate
of Zamzam being irregular and often bitter.. Dermenghem          dark-skinned
inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula2 • It is
quotes the descriptive phrases of the geographer. AI             supposed that
virile caucasoid invaders overcame the dark-
Maqdisi: "Suffocating heat, deathly winds, clouds of             skinned
Arabs, absorbing most of them and driving others
flies 2 .·' It is not surprising that those who lived there      to the
Rub'al-Khali. probably during the late PleIstocene
were anxious to escape td Taif in the Thaqifite Mountains,       period when
the land that now constitutes the American
where grapes flourished and the only place in Arabia in          States was
covered with ice. At that time, Arabia may'
which water froze in winter and where there were even            have been
enjoying a Pluvial Period; at any rate, experts
frosty nights in summer 8 •                                     "believe
that Arabia was better adapted at that time for
Winter in Mecca was also disagreeable. The furnace           supporting human
life than it has been within the historical
was succeeded by the bog. The Ka'ba felt the impact of           period.
Thomas presents interesting evidence of former
the floods which swept from the hills down the ravines to        conditions 8
:
deposit a sea of mud, rubbish, and filth at its door. The                  
Considerable dried-up river systems I came upon
people had to remove the debris in carts and climb up to                 in
the southern borderlands, and the fauna I
the door of the temple on a ladder. Dermenghem paints
! E~ile Dermenghem. The Life of Mahomet. pp. 23-24.
1 Emile Oermenghem,   The Life of Mahomet. p. 22.              • Bertram
Thomas, The Arabs, p. 355.
, Ibid.
• Ibid .• p. 356.
, Ibid.• p. 22.
20              MUI:lAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                       
                       THE SETTING                        21
collected in the Qara Mountains-fauna that have                    Egypt, and
many other places. At the fall of this
African rather than Arabian affinities bear witness                race the
Samood rose in power.
to a common climate with a wet tropical Africa at                    Then came
the rise of the Banu Qahtan, whose
some remote time, and to a land-bridge, that made                  homeland
was Yaman. In their day they too
the Red Sea an inland lake, and which later sub-                   attained to
great power and ascendancy. The Aus
merged to form the shallow straits of Bab al                       and Khazraj
were the off-shoots of this tribe. All
Mandab. As the ice of the Northern Hemisphere                      these races
are known as the' Ariba, or pure Arabs.
receded, and the rain-belt moved north behind it,                  Last of all
came Ishmael whose progeny goes by the
Arabia was bereft of its rains, its climate changed,
name of the Musta' riba, or naturalized Arabs. In
it became drier with the passing of the ages until                  obedience
to Divine. behest he was left by his father,
to-day it is one of the hottest and most rainless parts            Abraham,
along with his mother Hajira (Note: the
of the earth's surface.                                            Hebrew is
transliterated Hagar and the Greek
The ancient Arab appears to have been a long-headed
Agar), at the place where stands the Ka'ba.
man and the Jew a roundhead. Three distinct Arab types
are discernible today: the dark, Hamitic man of the South;              Arabia
was famed among the ancients as the land of
the roundheaded Armenoid, whose evolutionary home is                          
            frankincense and myrrh. Even more
Economic life.
probably Asia Minor; the narrow-skulled Mediterranean                         
            important was its location along the
type found in the North and perhaps the most common                 sea-route
to India, in an era when the stretch of water was
type among Lhe ancient Arabs living in our era1•                    a medium
through which the merchandise of the East com-
Arab historians have distinguished primarily between            monly passed 1
• Frankincense was used in Egypt on all
the Qahtan, the Y?manites or South Arabs, and the' Adnan           sacred and
solemn occasions (and their number was legion),
or North Arabs 2• The Arabic traditions bear out the idea           in the
mummification of princes, and funeral rites. The
of divers ethnic origins. After referring to the "people            Israelites
burned it before the Tabernacle of the Lord 2 •
of Noah" and what befell them, the Qur'an mentions "Ad             The main
groves were probably in the southern mountain
and Themoud, and the men of Rasa" (believed by the write I{         valleys of
Arabia. The main trade route probably ,vent
to refer to those who lived along the Aras River).                 from Saba
to Aqaba by way of Mecca, Yathrib, and Taima,
The most ancient Arab races which can be traced are            this last a
great distributing center and the cross-roads of
said to be the 'Ad, Samood (Themoud), Tasm, and Jadis,             routes
going to Egypt, BabYlonia, and Judea. Ships carried
the group collectively known as the Baida. Muhammad                 goods up
the Red SEa, the volume being determined by
'Ali relates their story3:                                         political
and security conditions along the land caravan
The destruction of the tribe of Noah was followed       routes s.
by the rise of the' Ad whose settlements spread far          It has been noted
that Mecca was situated on an
and wide beyond the limits of Arabia. Historical         important trade
route. The dominant people of Mecca
evid ence bears out their domination over Arabia,        were the Quraysh, the
tribe to which Mul;ummad belonged.

I Bertram Thomas, The Arabs, pp. 358, 359.                        1 O'Leary,
op. cit., p. 59.
• O'Leary, op. cit., p. 15.                                        I Thomas,
op. cit., p. 18.
I Muhammad 'Ali, Muhammad the Prophet, PP' 16, 17.                 • Pringle
Kennedy, Arabian Society at the Time of Muhammad, p. 24.
22.                    MUI;IAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                
               THE SETTING                       23

Professor Hell claims that the pre-eminence of Mecca was         'hostile and
malignant environment. For this reason strong
secured not by its market-place, sanctuary, or fairs-other       ties of
kinship were a necessary part of the struggle for
towns had these, too. He denies that its geographical            existence
which centered round water and pasturage. Other
position was favorable, for it lay in a barren basin. It was     objects of
economic desire were vantage points for robbing
rather, according to Hell, the intellectual superiority of       caravans.
Professor Hell concisely analyzes the situation! :
the Quraysh which gave Mecca its exal'ted position as a
reli.l!ious and economic center. They were public-spirited                 
These struggles destroyed the sense of national
and prosperous. According to First Kings 10 : 15, Solomon                
unity, and developed an incurable particularism·
each tribe deeming itself self-sufficient, and regardin~
received gold from the kings of Arabia. There is some
reason for regarding them as the first, or among the earliest,            the
rest as its legitimate victims for murder, robbery
international traders.      The Book of Ezekiel, 27: 21-2,                and
plunder. , . If the struggle for existence split
the Bedouins up into fragments and made them
mentions the dealings of the merchants of Arabia and Sheba
hostile to each other, the common fight ag~inst
(Saba) with Tyre. Thus the Arabs were long experienced
stubborn and malignant Nature drew them closer
in commercial dealings and the QuraysA were among the
together; and the result was the one duty which the
most craftḥ of traders. The Romans paid dearly for the
old Bedouins acknowledged and which they carried
treasures of Arabia.        The earlv seventh-century wars                to a
fault-hospitality,
between the Greeks and the Per~ians aided the Meccan,
trade l .                                                            An
important classification of the Arabs is t.he one
In addition. to incense, perfumes, and gums, the Arabs                        
   according to permanency of habita-
Mores an d G overnment..                .
brought dates from Hijaz, taking in exchange grain, oil,                      
        tlOn. The nomadIC desert-dweiler at
raisins, and textiles. The Quray~ had two main c.aravans         the end of
the sixth century of the Christian era knew no
7in the summer to Yaman and in the winter to Syria.              law according
to the Western concept of the word. Tribal
The~e were large-scale operations by two or three hundred        opinion, with
its taboos, was of supreme importance as a
meni. In the plutocratic republic of Mecca, tbe".specula-       regulator of
behavior. The worst punishment was expulsion
tors gambled on the arrival and departure of i ~~ra~ans and      from the
tribe and the fear of becoming an outcast acted
made money from arb~trage. Like some modern American            potently to
restrain deviation from accepted standards. A
business men they knew the secret of selling fictitious com-    wandering
outcast is seldom accepted by another tribe.
modities and of making money without capital. The debtors       Some of these
pariahs went to Mecca where they lived in
charged that Quraysh meant "shark." "Ah," jeered. the           an "apache"
quarter. Even the settled group, the residents
Bedouin poet, Abu't-Tamahan, "If my camel could hear            of the town,
had no body of law and few written rules,
the tricks of trade, what a lot she could gain in Mecca by      although the
merchants very likely had unwritten or "gentleexchanging green grass for dried
grass 3 ,"                     men's" agreements to preserve some sort of
order and
Personal freedom was regarded as an inviolable right by    security in
business dealings 2 •   The inhabitants of the
the Bedouin but the individual was unable to withstand a        desert were
far more numerous than the town-dwellers.

1 Bermenghem, op. cit.
I Hell, op. cit., p. 10.
I     Ibid., p. 26.                                            • Kennedy,
op. cit., p. 40.
• Ibid., p. 25.   '
24                  MU~AMMADTHEEDUCATOR                                       
                    THE SETTING                  25

The former stopped wherever they could find grass and                     or
the tribe to the nation. Each was independent,
water.   Their favorite occupation was war or raiding,                   
owing no allegiance to any central authority.
mainly of the surpriEe sortl .                                       Sir
William Muir, Christian biographer of Muhammad,
The city folk lived under more favorable conditions.. As     'agrees in
substancel .
business men, they found a certain amount of honesty the                    
The first peculiarity, then, which attracts attention
best policy.      Patriarchal rather than community law                   is
the subdivision of the Arabs into innumerable
flourished and there was virtually no co-operative activity.              
bodies, governed by the same code of honour and
The man of the city had on the average a greater intellectual             
morals, speaking for the most part the same
endowment than his country cousin. There was greater                     
language, but each independent of the others',
freedom of thought and activity in the town, but even there              
restless and often at war amongst themselves; and
tribal excommunication was truly to be feared.                            
even where united by blood or by interest, ever
Eminent among the virtues of the Arab were daring,                    ready on
some insignificant cause to separate and
virility, hospitality, generosity, and love of freedom. Even             
abandon themselves to an implacable hostility.
these virtues, however, were carried to excess and became        , The
prophecy concerning Ishmael was equally applicable
manifest as barbarity, prodigality, brutality, and an anti-      .to his
nomadic, pagan descendants: (Genesis 16 : 12) "And
social attitude inimical to unity. Side by side with hospi-       he will be a
wild man; his hand will be against every man,
tality was the common practice of robbing wayfarers and           and every
man's hand against him." Instances of collective
plundering weaker tribes. Trifling disputes brought on           Jiving were
rare and without significance. Instances of
blood-feuds and conflagrations which consumed the atten-         predation and
violence were prevalent and characteristic.
tion and wasted the resources of the participants. Peace          One of the
few tenets of the nomadic code of honor was
and order, the sine qua non for the development of social         the
rejection of the principle of extradition. The right of
qualities and the advancement of civilization, were unknown'.     asylum was
sacred and was rigidly adhered to regardless of
MuQ.ammad 'All underlines this point ll •                        .the crime
of the refugee or the price put on his head ll ,
For centuries, Arabia was left pretty much alone. The
Then there was no central government to enforce
rest of the world knew little about the country and regarded
law and order. The whole country was rent into
attempts at subjugation as of dubious profit. Muir gives a
innumerable petty states, each clan forming a
plausible explanation3 :
separate independent political unit. The few pro-
The freedom of Arabia from foreign conquest was
vincial governments that existed here and there
were too weak to enforce justice. To wrench one's
owing not so much          to
the difficulties of its parched
and pathless wilds, as· to the endless array of isolated
right from another, one had to depend upon one's
clans, and the absence of any head or chief power
strength of arm. Each tribe had a chief of its own
which might be made the object of subjugation.
who would lead them in battle against a hostile
The problem had yet to be solved, by what force
tribe, to vindicate their rights. But there was no
these tribes could be subdued, or drawn to one
law whatsoever, binding the individual to the tribe
1 Muir,  op. cit., p. vi.
1 Kennedy, op. cit., p. 21.                                     I  Thomas, op.
cit., p. 15.
I   Muhammad 'Ali, OPt cit., p. 25.                              I Muir, op.
cit., p. vi.
26                  MUI:IAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                   
               THE SETTING                  27

common centre ......                                   Himyarites but the
latter managed to form a Jewish Sabrean
The Romans had a bitter experience in 26 B.C. when         kingdom. It in turn
was conquered by Christian Abyssinia
they sent a force of 130 ships and over 11,000 troops with     in 525, but in
575 the Persians were victorious and appointed
Aelius Gallius, Eparch of Egypt, in command. They disem-       governors over
Yam an.
barked at Keuke Kome and for fifty days were led through            The
Minrean kingdom embraced the South Arabian Jau£.
treacherous desert, the men suffering from scurvy of the
Its chief cities were Karnau, Ma'in, and Yathil. Inscriptions
gums and legs. After six months, during which battles were
in the Minrean language have been uncovered in al- 'Ula in
won but no treasure gained, the Romans retreated. Thomas       North Arabia,
suggesting the possibility of colonies or at
claims that "They never invaded Arabia again, and this         least
establishing the existence of cultural intercourse.·
expedition is the isolated example of a European invasion
The Minreans either precE'ded or were contemporary with
through the centuriesl ." This is not strictly accurate for    the Sab~ans.
The Sabreans make no mention of the
in 105 A.D., Trojan sent his general. Cornelius Palma, who
Minreans but their inscriptions are not concerned with
subdued the Nabathean kingdom of North Arabia 2•
history.
Our knowledge of the history of the pagan Arabs is               Pre-Islamic
culture attained its highest development in
based largely on legends, although numerous Sabrean             the kingdoms
of Hira and Ghassan l • Toward the beginning
inscrip~ions dating as far back as 800 B.C. survive. The        of the third
century after Christ. ten residents of 1;aman,
Queen of Sheba (Saba) is said (First Kings, 10) to have         Tihama, and
Nejd migrated to the fertile country separating
visited Solomon around 950 B.C .. but the inscriptions bear     the Euphrates
from the Arabian desert. They were
no mention of this event. These legends have been trans-        collectively
known as the Tanukh, many of whom enjoyed
mitted as poems, proverbs, and orations. One of the most        a nomadic life
although the good quality of the soil provided
valuable sources is the Kitabu'l-Aghani, the book of songs       an inducement
for settled agricultural endeavor. This
by Abu'l-Faraj of Isfahan (967 A.D.).                            intrusion
resulted in the creation of the Kingdom of Hira.
We know more about the Sabrean kingdom than we do            Other groups
included the Ibdd, Christian Arabs living in
about the other realms of ancient Arabia. The Makarib            houses in the
town of Hira, and the ahlaf. fugitives, outcasts,
period in Saba extended from the ninth to the sixth century      and penurious
emigrants. The Lakhmid Dynasty arose
B.C.    The rulers were priest-kings whose capital was           toward the
end of the third century, its first ruler being 'Amr
located at Sirwah. The second period is that of the kings         b. 'Adib.
Nasr b. Rabi'a b. Lakhm. Numan I, whose reign
of Saba who held sway from 550 B.C. until 115 B.C. Their         Qccurred in
the first quarter of the fifth century, is renowned
capital was at Ma'rib and their rule appears to have coinci-     as the
bllilder of a famous castle, the Kbawarnaq, near
ded with the golden age of Yaman. These kings were                Hira 2 •
The last Lakhmite king, Numan Ill, reigned from
succeeded in 115 B.C. by the Himyarites who embraced              580 to 602,
during the youth of Mul;1ammad ; he was brought
Judaism. The Himyarites were in constant.strife first with        up by a
Christian family and was probably the only member
Hadramaut and Katabanu and later with Christian Abyssinia.        of the
dynasty who was actually converted to Christianity.
In the fourth century A.D., the Abyssinians overthrew the         In 602,
Chosroes II, Shah of Iran, appointed an Arab of the

1 Thomas,   op. cit., p. 28.                                    I   Nicholson,
op. cit., p. 37.
2   Zwemer, op. cit. p. 160.                                    2   Ibid., p.
40.
THE SETTING                   29
28                   MUI;lAMMAD THE EDUCATOR
Ordimrily the Saracens had seemed hopelessly
tribe of Tai as governor of Hira.                              :1'
divided into petty bands which the governors or
Toward the start of the sixth century A.D., the Jafnids.               
satraps of the frontier provinces had usually looked
ruled over the tribe of Ghassan in the extreme northwest of                 
upon as robbers rather than as possible invaders.
Arabia. about where Transjordan now lies. Members of                       
Many desert sheiks with their followers had indeed
this tribe lived in Yathrib in Mul;1ammad's lifetime. The                  
enlisted as mercenaries in the Roman service, and
first prince ot Jafnid was Harith ibn Jabala, known in                      
fOblght valorously, but that all Arabia could suddenly
Arabian chronicles as "Harith the Lame." Harith was a                       
fuse itself into a single military state. and in the
Christian of the Monophysite Churchl . In 528, he sent a                    
name ot an upstart fanaticism precipitate itself upon
hundred men against the 100,000 men of the army of                          
the lands of established civilization was about the
Mundhir b. Ma'al-sama, ostensibly to make peace. They,                      
last thing which the lords of Constantinople and
surrounded Mundhir's tent and slew him and his companions.                   
Ctesiphon dreaded. Heraclius and Chosrose II
The hundred "champions" were clad in shrouds of white                        
continued the wars which were exhausting their
linen and coats-of-mail by Halima, daughter of Harith2 •                    
 empires, while in the southern deserts there was
Harith was succeeded by his son, Mundhir b. Harith, who'                      
arising the cloud no bigger than a man's hand.
defeated the new King of Hira on Ascension Day, 570 (the                      
When the tempest suddenly broke-East Roman and
year of Muhammad's birth). About 581, unable to pursue                        
Persian could reproach thems eh'es for many things,
his advantage, he was captured and forced into exile in                       
but not assuredly for failing to realize that the
Sicily. This marked the virtual end of the dynasty and                        
impossible had happened in Arabia.
anarchy prevailed until the Persian conquest of Palestine                 One
of the most controversial aspects of life during the
in 614.                                                              
Jahiliyya. or "~ge of ignorance," the period preceding
Around 490 A.D., a new power had arisen in Arabia,               Muhammad, is
that relating to the position of woman. The
the tribe of Kinda under the family of Aqil ul Murar, who             Mu~lim
writers stress her servitude while their Christian
came from the South, probably with the blessings of the              
adversaries picture her as the embodiment of freedom.
rulers of Yaman. The chiefs of Kinda accompanied Abraha'              Zwemer,
whose prejudice exceeds his scholarship, hystericat the time of his invasion
of the Hijaz. The Kinda ruled             ally charges that "Muhammad improved
on the barbaric
over Bahrayn as well as Yemama and possibly gained power              method
(of infanticide) and discovered a way by which not
over the Lakhmids of Hira. The moving ~pirit in the                   some but
all females could be buried alive without being
conquest, extending over the greater part of central and             
murdered, namely, the veiP." It is apparently true that the
northern Arabia, was Hujr, an ancestor of the poet, Imru'uI           veil was
unknown in Arabia before the coming of Isliim but
Qays.                                                                 this
does not necessarily prove the theory that Mul;1ammad
The history of Arabia before Islam is replete with murder         introduced
it. It must not be taken for granted that
and plunder. In general, sixth-century Arabia was in a                Muhammad
taught that women should conceal their faces.
state of political chaos. Davis does not exaggerate in his                The
Arabic word for veil, hijcib. is often used synonymdescription of the state of
affairs B :                                ously for clothing and betokens
modesty rather than slavery.
The loveliest delin~ation of woman to be found in the
1 Nicholson, op. cit., p. 51.
2 Ibid.• p. 50.                                                       I  
Zwemer, op. cit.• p. 161.
• Davis, op.  cit., p. 106.
THE SETTING                    31
30                  MUI;IAMMAD THE EDUCATOR
the succour rendered everywhere to women in
poetry of heathen Arabia, and the only instance in which                 
adversity-all these were essentially Arabian ideas,
woman's moral beauty is hailed in pagan Arabic verse, is                   as
was the very name chivalry, the connection of
the lamiyah. A portion of its descriptlon of Umayma                       
honourable conduct with the horse-rider, the man
follows l :                                                                of
noble blood, the cavalier.
She charmed me, veiling bashfully her face,                 When Fatima,
daughter of Khurshub, was taken prisoner
Keeping with quiet looks an even pace;                  and heard that her
captor intended to have her herd camels,
Some lost thing seems to seek her downcast eyes:        she committed suicide
by throwing herself headlong from
Aside she bends not-softly she replies.                 her camel in
preferenc~ to dishonoring her sons. 1 It was
Women wore veils long before Muhammad was born;             .also regarded as
a disgrace for a woman to marry below her
many centuries earlier, it was a common practice among            station.
Said Ibn Zuhayr to the Namir, "If you cannot
the Assyrians 2• Marzieh Khanum Gail reports the common
find an equal match, the best marriage for them is the
Persian view that the patrician Iranians, in ancient times,
grave 2•"
had their wives veiled. The Bible associates the use of
Thomas depicts the darker side3 :
the veil with a sense of shame or of unworthiness. Moses
Men were of course polygamous, where they
veiled his face from God (Exodus 34: 33). Genesis s8
could afford it there being no limit set to the number
contributes these interesting verses:
of wives one man could have. He had dominion
And she (Tamar) put her widow's garments off
over these wives and could divorce them at will,
from her and covered her with a veil, and wrapped
and if a man died his brother inherited his widows
herself, ;nd sat in an open place, which is by the
as though they were chattels.. , Contraception
way to Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was
must have been as repugnat then as now, yet the
grown, and she was nct given unto him to wife
Arab traditions insist that female infanticide was
(Genesis 38 : 14).                                                 commonly
practised-a sidelight on Arabia's habitual
When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an
hunger.
harlot; because she had covered her face (38 : 15).
Not economic reasons alone but also a perverted seme
Some women attained great prominence in pagan times;
of honor caused men to put away their daughters: they
There was the noble Zenobia, widow of Odenathus and
feared that their daughters might be made prisoners of war.
self-styled "Queen of the East," who was finally led captive
The Qur'an mentions this feeling of dread' :
before Aurelian's chariot through the streets of Rome in                      
And when any of them is told the news of the
274 A.D. s Nicholson believes that women were not treated                   
birth of a female, his face becometh black, and he is
as slaves and chattels but were accorded some measure of                   
deeply affiicted ; he hideth himself from the people,
equality and he approvingly quotes the statement4 :                         
because of the ill tidings which have been told him;
Knight-errantry, the riding forth on horseback in               considering
within himself whether he shall keep it
search of adventures, the rescue of captive maidens,

I   Nicholson, OPt cit., p. 90.
1 Nicholson. op. cit., p. 90.
~ Zwemer, op. cit, p. 162.
o Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. III, p. 107.
a Thomas, op. cit., pp. 16-17.
I Nicholson, Opt cit., p. 34.
• George Sale, The Koran. p. 147.
'Ibid. p, 88.
r
32             MU1;IAMMAD THE EDUCATOR
I.
: '1
THE SETTING               33
with disgrace, or whether he shall bury it in the                         
them as a profession. Captive women, kept as
dust.                                                                     
handmaids, were forced to make money for their
A father, poor in worldly goods, desires death for his                        
master in this mean manner. Married women were
daughter rather than the hard mercies of relatives in these                   
  allowed by their husbands to conjugate with others
pathos-filled verse~? :                                                       
  for the sake of offspring (a practice called istibza).
The Poor Man's Daughter                                    It also appears
that Arabian hospitality extended to the
But for Umayma's sake I ne'er had grieved to                  lending of wives
to guests, although the practice may have
want nor braved.             been confined to the older and uglier ones.
Muhammad 'Ali
Night's blackest horror to bring home the morsel              continues l :   
                                 .

that she craved.                        Moreover, woman was looked upon as
mere
Now my desire is length of days because I know                        
chattle. She was entitled to no share of the legacy
too well                     of her deceased husband, father or other
relations.
The orphan girl's hard lot, with kin unkind                            Nay,
she was herself inherited as part and parcel of
enforced to dwell.                     the property of the deceased ... He
(the heir) could
I dfead that some day poverty will overtake my                         marry
her himself, or give her in marriage to anybody
child~                   he chose. On the death of his father, a son would
And shame befall her when exposed to every                            ~ven
,marry his step-mother, she being a part of his
passion wild.                   mhentance. The practice of divorce among them
She wishes me to live, but I must wish her dead,                      was no
less barbarous. A thousand times could a
,
woe s me:                    man divorce his wife and take her back within a
Death is the noblest wooer a helpless maid can see.                  
prescribed period known as 'iddat.
r fear an uncle may be harsh, a brother be unkind,                Zwemer
claims that the right of divorce belonged to
When I would never speak a word that rankled                  Women as well as
to men and that women could choose th '
2        '                                  elr
in her mind.           own h us b ands. He CIte, the case of Khadijah, who
chose
MUQammad 'Ali portrays the stark reality of pagan                   
Mul;1ammad. But the traditions insist that Khadijah, a
conditions2 :                                                           woman
of about forty, stIll required her father's consent
Barring the love-songs in praise of the beloved,              to the match,
and that she felt constrained to resort to
which were the outcome of carnal lust, womq.n was               the stratagem
of getting b,er father intoxicated in order to
accorded no better treatment than the lower animals.           secure his
permissi,on! Under the personal marriage
Polyandry which is characteristic of a very primitive          contract called
mota a the woman remained at home and
stage of human society was also in vogue among                 0:v ned the
children. Under the nikah, the woman Was
them. Besides, there was no limit to the number of             eIther captured
or purchased. Neither type of arrangewives a man could take ...Over and above
plurality of          ment would indicate a high position for woman. Zwemer's
wives, he could have illicit intercourse with any              flimsy evidence
that captive women were not enslaved
number of sweethearts. Prostitution was rife among             consists of
poetry from Hatim 3 :
I Mu!;J.ammad 'Ali, op. cit.• p. 27.

I Nicholson, op. cit., pp. 91-92.                                        s
Zwemer, op. cit., p. 162.
• Muhammad 'Ali, op. cit., p. 26.                                        8  
Ibid.
34                 MUI;IAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                    
                       THE SETTING                  35

They did not give us Taites, their daughters in                           
Pass among them wine that gushes from the jar's
marriage;                                                                
mouth bitter-sweet,
But we wooed them against their will with our                             
Emptying goblet after goblt t but the source may no
swords.                                                                   man
drain
And with us captivity brought no abasement.                               
Never cease they from carousing save to cry, "Fill
They neither toiled making bread nor made the pot                           
up again."
boil;                                                             Strong drink
added to the rashness of a temperament
But we mingled them with our women, the noblest.                  that
required no such stimulation.
And they bare us fair sons, white of face.                           Gambling
was a common pastime and those who refused
Perhaps the captives were not abased at first, but what               to
indulge in it were looked upon as miserly. Men who
of the other women who had to do all the housework?                     
.complained that they could not afford daughters regarded
The spirit of revenge and hatred of enemies was an                    games of
chance and alcohol as necessities for self-respectimportant element in the
mentality of the pagan Arab.                     ing Arabs l •
The man who exhibited kindness towards his enemies was                      
The intellectual development of the pre-Islamic Arabs
regarded as a good-far-nothing coward. This spirit is                         
                 is shown most favorably in their
Cultural activity.
expressed by these verses from the H amasa 1 :                                
                 poetry. There was virtually no prose
Humble him who humbles thee, close tho' be your                  before the
days of Islam; the Qur'an is the oldest Arabic
kindredship:                                                   book2 • The
two principal dialects of Arabic in Arabia
are South Arabic, spoken in Yaman and including Sabrean
If thou canst not humble him, wait till he is in thy
Himyarite, Minrean, and the related dialects of Mahra and
grip.
Shihr; and Arabic proper, spoken throughout the reSt of
Friend him while thou must; strike hard when thou
Arabia 5• The oldest extant Arabic poems date from about
hast him. on the hip.
512 A.D. but it was nearly two centuries later before
Blood called for blood, and if vengeance could not be
writing came into' general use among the Arabs·. It was
wreaked on the murder~r. a member of his tribe might be
the rawi or "reciter", resembling the Greek Rhapsodist,
selected as the victim. In some cases blood-monev was
who was really responsible for the prepetuation of the
paid in the form of, say, a hundred camels. It was believed
qasidas.
that until revenge was realized. the dead man's spirit would
The poet (sha'ir) was reputedly one endowed with
hover over his tomb in the shape of an owl crying" I squni"
. supernatural knowledg€, a sort of soothsayer. He was
("Give me to drink").
regarded as indispensable in battles of first rank. ''The
In the days before Islam wine flowed like rain in the               menaces
which he hurled against the foe were believed to
streets of Yathrib. Many of the poets sang of wine. The                 be
inevitably fataP." The oldest form of poetry in Arabia
most celebrated of these poems was written by A'sha. a                  was a
sort of rhymed prose or rhyme without metre,
portion of it being expressed in translatiOn as foIlows 2 :
Propped at ease I greet them gaily, them with                       1
Nicholson, op. cit., p. 125.
myrtle-boughs I greet,                                           s Mu~ammad
'Ali, op. cit., p. 29.
I Nicholson, op. cit.. p. xxii.
j            • Ibid., p. xxi.
I
1 Nicholson, op.   cit., p. 93.                                         I
Ibid., p. 73.
, Ibid., p. 94.
36                  MUI;iAMMAD THE EDUCATOR
THE SETTING                 37
known as the Saj, from which developed the Rajaz, an
irregular iambic metre having four or six feet in the line,         
Mu1;tammad 'Ali observes that all the poetical composiall the lines rhyming
with each other. Rajaz means "a            tions of the Jah"iliyya have come
down through oral traditremor in the hindquarters of the camel," which
suggests         tions with the exception of the M u' allaqat which were
the theory that the Arabian metres derived from the hudi         written down
and suspended in the Ka'ba. He also quesor camel-driver's song, the metre
varying with the shifting      tions whether poetry must be considered a
hallmark of
gait of the cameJ.l                                             
enlightenmentl :
The only finished type of poetry in existence during the                As
regards the fact that the Arabs had developed
literary flowering of the pagan period, sixth century AD.,               the
art of poetry, suffice it to say that mere poetry,
Was the qasida or ode, a poem with an artistic purpose                   as
such, affords no sure criterion of a people's stage
(although not always a lofty one)2. The mass of the                      of
civilization. Interest in poetry is observed in
Arabs spoke a Semitic dialect which had not previously                   
almost every society, however crude and primitive ...
attained literary status. The most correct form of the                   The
people at this stage have very few objects of
speech of northern and central Arabia, from which modern                
interest, which multiplp only with the growth of
- Arabic is derived, was flourishing among the nomads                     
civilization, and hence their sole devotion to the
rather than in Yathrib or Mecca'. Neither scriptures                     only
available form of fine art-poetry. But even
nor liturgy existed in Arabic. The Christian ecclesiastical              Arab
poetry is devoid of the breadth of vision and
language was a form of Aramaic, Syriac£. But from most                   
loftiness of thought which come only with culture.
humble origins (i.e,. humble in the eyes of men), Arabic            It is
difficult to establish a negative conclusion' but it
became one of the great languages of the world, a mar-           appears safe
to say that the ancient Arabs. during the many
centuries preceding the appearance of Muhammad did not
vellously designed medium of expression equally adaptable
80 far as we know, contribute anything ~£ significance t;
for expressing the terminology of modern science or for
the body of scientific knowledge or to scientific method.
transmitting the ideas of the intellectual giants of the
To be sure, they were intrigued by the stars but their
ancient Greece 5 •
interest was more akin to that of the fortune-teller than to
What did the pagan Arabic literature express? Most
that of the astronomer. It is possible that there was a
of the surviving remnants deal with war, feats of prowess,
meagre offering if). the field of music.
and fair women. Kennedy's epitome is just 6 :
The Pre-Islamic poetry shows nothing sweeter             Southern Arabia
evidently made abundant use of the
to the Arab of the desert than the stealthy tracking    excellent building
materials at its disposal-granite,
porphyry, and marble. The ruins of numerous castles of
of the prey, the attack at early dawn and the
vast proportions witness a high stage of architectural
carrying away of the l'poil whether cattle, crops, or
captives,                                               progress. Hell
mentions some of these structures 2 :
The twenty-story high castle of Ghomdam in
1 Nicholson, op. cit., p. 74.                                       San'a; the
temple of Marih, whose walls, ellipse-
• Ibid., p. 76.                                                     like,
encircled a natural elevation and reached a
• Thomas, op. cit., p. 33.                                          height
of 9! metres; again the immense dam of
• O'Leary, op. cit., p. 137.
5 Thomas. op. cit., p. 34.
1 Mulpmmad       'Ali, op. cit. p. 2l.
• Kennedy, op. cit., p. 15.
• Hell, op. cit., p. 7.
. ........
._------_._--~_ ~            ~-.;;~_._~-"'-   ......... ~--'--~---  
---_._---_..._ - -

38                  MU~AMMADTHEEDUCATOR
THE SETTING

Marib-the remains of whIch are stilI visible.                                 
         waD no education worthy of the name end he particularizesl:
It is to be noted, however, that these buildings were                         
                         In times of drought, they would fasten dry
located in a region where the influence of Judaism was                        
                          blades of grass and underwood to a cow's tail and
strong, the SabCBan kingdom. Hell inclines to accept the                      
                         set fire thereto and drive the animal to the
mounreport of the Arab geographer, Hamadani, concerning the                   
                             tains. They thought the flame of fire resembled a
ornamentations of the facades of the temples and castles.!                    
                         flash of lig.htnin g and would, by reason of
similarity,
You see figures of all kinds sketched on them:                                
               attract raInfall ... Those who believed in a life after
wild and ravening animals ... eagles with flapping                            
                 death would tie a camel at a tomb and starve it to
wings and vultures pouncing on hares ..• herds of                           
                    death, thinking the deceased would mount on its
gazelles hurrying to their death-trap, dogs with                              
                  back on the day of resurrection ... They believed in
drooping. ears, partly leashed and partly loose, and                          
                 soothsayers and fortune-tellers, and had implicit
a man, with a whip, amidst horses.                                            
                  faith in· whatever they told them. In short, these
an~ a hundred and one other superstitions were
But this artistic endeavor was alleged to exist in South-                     
                     ~elleved by the Arabs of the pre-Islamic days of
ern Arabia. not in the Hijaz. The Ka 'ba and town-hall of                     
                         Ignorance.
Mecca did not show evidence of architectural skill                            
                     ~efore leaving the subject of culture, it should be exor
experience with or judgment of materials. When                                
            plamed that. ~a~y. scholars believe that when MuI;ammad
Mutlammad cleansed the Ka'ba of the three hundred and                         
                used the term Jahlltyya he aIluded to ignorance of the Faith
sixty idols, he was probably not destroying highly perfected                  
                of God as taught by His Messengers and did not mean t
sculpture, for it is recorded that the image of the pigeon,                   
                imply that his ancestors were ignorant of what the "world~'
for example, was made of palm rind, a material not suitable                   
                accounted knowledge.
for the expression of ideas in the realm of the free fine                     
                     The chief religions in Arabia, other than pagan idolarts
3•                                                                          
                . . .         .       worship were the JewI'sh ,.Ch'      .
ReltgIOus c o n c e p t I O n s . '                      nstlan,
I t must be said for the Hijaz, however, that'its commer-                     
                                     Sabrean, and Hanifite. The. old gods
cial importance after the fall of Himyarite rule in Southern                  
               and goddesses were no.minalIy worshipped by the majority
Arabia made it a gathering place of persons interested in                     
               of the Arabs but the mfluence of the deities had waned
purveying wares, enjoyment, or ideas. The Quraysh may                         
               and Judaism and Christianity had considerably leavened
de~erve the credit for making Mecca the center, b1,1t apart                   
             . the heathen lump.
from th,!t question the fact remains that the great annual                    
                     The Ka'ba in Mecca waS certainly a very ancient house
market held in the neighbourhood of the Ka'ba was a                           
               the Muslims dating it as far back as 2500 B. C. <: In tb;
culminating point in Arab life, literary and intellectual as'                 
              .early centuries of its existence, it may well have been
well as cQmmerdal and religious 3 •.                                        
                 dedicated to the worship of one God, but it is obvious that
Supersti,~ion_ was rife among the Arabs and the literate                      
             in the age when Mul;1ammad appeared the one God received
were few in number.; Mul;1ammad 'Ali declares that there                      
               scant attention in comparison with that given the hundreds

1 MuJ;1ammad 'Ali, Op. cit., p.30.
1 Hell, op. cit., p. 8.
• Ibid., p. 14.                                                             
                • Ibid., p. 15. The Ka'ba is associated with Abraham who
lived in
3 1 bid., p. 12.
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries B.C.
--_.-... --_. "-
_.~.-_._"._",,~

-~-
..._.
---".-

40             MUI:fAMMAD THE EDUCATOR
THE SETTING              41
of minor deities. Muhammad 'Ali's characterization is                 Bahrayn,
and other islands of the Persian Gulf. To this
hardly overdrawn! :       .
J,   day, they are scattered followers of John the Baptist com-
No doubt the Arabs professed faith in the unity
Pflsing a secretive. ingrown community that refuses to
of God, but it was too shallow. TheIr practical
accept Jesus as the one foretold by John. In southern
life belied their lip-profession. They were given
Arabia there must have been some Sabceans, followers of
to idolatry, thinking that Almighty God had entrustan ancient creed whose
tenets are most elusive and a people
ed the discharge of the various functions of the
difficult to trace.
universe to different gods, goddesses and idols.
They would therefore turn to these, in~oking their                 Christians
and Jews fought among themselves not just
blessings in all sorts of undertaking ... They would           verbally but
with the sword. Dhu Nuwas, a fanatical
fall down prostrate before any good-lookin~ piece              adherent of
Judaism. marched against the Chris tians of
of stone they might come across. Should they                   Najran in 523
A.D. and is said to have burned 2,000 of
fail to find out a piece of stone, they would worship          them in a cave1
• In retaliation. the Negus of Abyssinia
a sand-hill, after having milked their she-camel               sent an army
70,000 strong, under the command of Aryat,
thereon ... Going out on a journey they would carry            to invade Yaman
and destroy the remains of the Himyarite
. four stones with them, three to make a hearth, and             Empire. Dhu
Nuwas spurred his horse and plunged into
the fourth to serve for an object of worship ... Over          the waves of
the sea2• The Negus ordered his representand above the three hundred and
sixty idols set                ative to kill a third of the male population,
to abduct a
up in the Ka'ba, every tribe had an idol of its own.           third of the
women and carry them as captives into Ethiopia,
Nay, one was kept in each and every household.                 and to lay
waste a third of Yaman. These deeds made
Idol-worship had, in short, become.a second nature             the Negus'
chief very unpopular and he was slain by a
with them which influenced their everyday life in              lieutenant,
Abtaha. The Negus thereupon swore that he
all its details.                                               would set foot
upon the soil of Yamari and cut off Abraha's
hair. Abraha made it easy for the Negus to keep his oath
Zwemer asserts that the old natiorial idolatry had
degenerated, that the better classes at Yathrib and Mecca             by
cutting off his own hair and sending it to the king with
had ceased to believe in anything at all, that gross fetishism        a bag of
Yamaniteearth3• Around 570 A.D., the year of
was the creed of many, and that "the time of ignora~ce was           
Mul;1ammad's birth, Abraha advanced on an elephant and
a time of chaos 2."                                                   with a
well-organized army against Mecca, but he met
The center of pagan Arabia was naturally Mecca whose              with
misfortune; the army was pre·sumably decimated by
Ka'ba was the national pantheon. The Zoroastrians, few               
smallpox. According to an Islamic tradition, mysterious
in number, were concentrated in eastern Arabia near the               birds
swarmed over the invaders and hurled stones at them 4 •
The idolators apparently made no serious attempt to turn
country of their prophet, Persia. The Jews settled in
back the invaders, leaving it to God to defend His house.
Yaman, Khaybar, Yathrib, and Taima. Christians were
active in the highlands of Yaman, Najran, Ghassan, Hira.
1 Dermenphem. OPt cit.• p. 20.

1 MuJ.1ammad 'Ali, OPt cit., pp. 22-23.
I Nicholson, op. cit .. p. 27.
• Zwemer. op. cit., p. 168.                                          •
Dermenghem, OPt cit., p. 21.
, Ibid.
,·,.-.T'<

THE SETTING                                43
42                  MUI;lAMMAD THE EDUCATOR

Zwemer is doubtless right in concurring with Wellhausen              ed,
ritualized, mllterialized 1: ' Davis dismisses the Christhat "Neither the fear
of Allah nor their reverence for the     .1   tianity of pre-Islamic Arabia
with these words 2 :
gods had much influence. The chief practical conseq4ence                      
 .As for the Christians they frequently belonged to
of the great feasts was the observance of a truce in the holy               
sects which had delivered themselves over to outmonths; and this in time had
become mainly an affair of                      landish mysticism or sheer
superstition. Some quespure practical convenience1." Instead of inspirin~
self.,.                   tioned the deity of Christ; others practically
denied
sacrifice for the common good, religious convictions were                   
His human aspect and considered the Crucifixion a
demonstrated in the form. of tatoo marks or wasms on hands,                 
kind of stage-play designed to impose upon the evil-
~P:ms, a,nd gum!!.                                                           
minded Jews.
Judaism with its numerous purifications, minutire of                 
"Outlandish mysticism" ~omprehended also the practices
dtual, and regulation of food and drink strongly appealed to         of the
stylites and other ascetics.
a segment Qf. the Semitic Ara,bs. Jewish law was in effect              
Mu1)ammad 'Ali elaborates on the shortcomings of the
in Yllthrib during the lifetime of MuI;1ammad, although its          
Christians of those days 3 ;
POWer was declinjng 2 ,                                                       
  The Doctrine of Trinity had given rise to
Christianity was associated with the selling a~ld consUmP"                
numerous complications. Diverse schisms and sects
tion of wine. Christian doctrines were carried to the heart                   
vied with one another in the exercise of their brains
of the Arabian Peninsula by Ibiidi wine merchants 3 • The                   
  in the disentanglement of the riddle hoyt man
most l1umerous Christians were of the Essene type with      a                 
became God or how three make one or vice versa . ..
sprinkling of Nestorians and Monophysites. Although                           
The general evils of Christianity; drinking, gambling,
Christians e1sewherewe.re killing each other because of dif-                  
and adultery, were in full swing even in those days.
ferences of opinion 011 abstruse points of theology, the                      
Dozy quotes the Caliph 'Ali as speaking of the
Arabs probablY dId not have many violent disputes as to                       
Taghlib, a Christian tribe, in the following significant
flomoousicJ,n qnd Homaiousion 4 • The Abyssinian and Roman                  
  words: "All they have borrowed from that Church
erppin~s a,ccounted mainly for the influence of Christianity                  
is the practice of winebibbing." In sh~rt, Chrisin Arabia, and the defeat of
Abraha spelled the termination                    tianity which was the last
of the revealed religions
qf African aid for the Christians in that la,nd. Ke~nedy                      
of the world was practically defunct. It had lost all
speaks of the mar~ed change in the Christian attitude                        
driving force to bring about moral reform;ltion.
toward the wo.rld and they that dwell therein (iilam va
Muir's delineation of its sad state is hardly brighter l ;
alamiy~all). In the. early daYs, the Christians preife~red
Thus the star of Christianity was not in the
death to the worship of Cresar, bu~ the attainment of
temporal prwer brought subservience to the emperor. "No                     
ascendant: in some respects it was declining.
"The prospects of Arabia before the rise of Mahomet
longer was it the pure creed which had been taught some
three centuries before•. It had become largely despiritualiz-         were
as .unfavorable to religious reform as to political union

I Kennedy, op. cit., p. 10.
I Zwemer, op. cit•• p. 167.
• Davis, op. cit., p. 105.
• Thomas, op. cit., p. 36.
a MulJammad 'Ali, op. cit., p, 20.
• Nicholson, op. cit., p. 138.
, Kennedy, op. cit., p. 12.                                           •
Muir. op. cit., p. viii.
THE SETTING                    45
44                      MUI:iAMMAD THE EDUCATOR
Islam were perhaps the Hanifites, believers in one God but
or national regeneration 1 ." Muir presents this vigorous      reportedly
aligned with no particular sect. Mul,1a~mad'A~i
summaryz. :                                ,                   discusses the
strength and weakness of the Hamfite POSI-
Causes are sometimes conjured up to account for      tion l •
results produced by an agent apparently inadequate                A vast
majority of them found no satisfaction in
to effect them. Mahomet arose, and forthwith the                 Christianity
nor in Judaism. Of these the note-
Arabs were aroused to a new and spiritual faith.                 worthy were
Zaid bin 'Amru.,bin-Nufail, 'Umar's
Hence the conclusion has been drawn that Arabia               uncle, and U
mayya, a renowend poet and the chief
was fermenting for the change, and prepared to                   of Taif.
These people had little zeal for promulgatadopt it. To us, calmly reviewing
the past, pre-                 ing their newly conceived idolatry, and openly
Islamite history belies the assumption. After five               avowed
Unitarianism as their faith, which they procenturies of Christian
evangelizations we can point              fessed to be the religion taught by
Abraham. Feeble
to but a sprinkling here and there of Christian con-             though the
movement was, it was undoubtedly
verts; the Bani Harith of Najran ; the Bani Hanifa               there. It
took no note of the social evils of Arabia.
of Yemama; some of the Bani Tay at Tayma ; and                   Mere worship
of the unity of God in place of idolhardly any more. Judaism, vastly more
powerful,                  worship was its end-all and be-all. But like its
had exhibited a spasmodic effort of proselytism; but             predecessors,
this internal movement also failed to
as an active and converting agent, the Jewish faith              penetrate
beyond the surface, leaving th", Arab
was no longer operative. In fine, viewed thus in a               society as
unaffected as· ever.
religious aspect, the surface of Arabia had been now        This failure to he
concerned with social problems may
and then gently rippled by the feeble efforts of
have saved the Hanifites from persecution.
Christianity; the sterner influences of Judaism had
been occasionally visible in a deeper and more
troubled current; but the tide of indigenous loyalty
and of Ishmaelite superstition, setting strongly from
every quarter towards the Kaaba, gave ample
evidence that the faith and worship of Mecca held
the Arab mind in a thraldom rigorous and undisputed.
It is impossible to reconcile the various opinions as to
the hold        of
idols on the Arab mind, but there is fairly
general ~greement that the outlook for enlightened religion
was very dark.
The religionists whose ideas were closest to those of

1   Muir, op. cit., p. vii.
i   Ibid.• pp, viii-ill:.                                      r MutJammad
'Ali, op. cit., pp. 33-34.
CONTRrBUTIONSOF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                        47

traduction of Arabic te~ts into the studies of the
West," says Renan, "divides the history of science
Chapter 3                                         and phIlosophy in the Middle
Ages into two perfectly distinct periods.. In the first the human mind
CONTRIBUTI0NSOF ISLA MId CIVILIZATION
has, to satisfy its curiosity, only the meagre frag-
TO WORLD CULTURE
ments of the Roman schools heaped together in the
cont~i~utions                                                          
compilations of Martianus Cappella, Bede, Isidore,
T. . HEand spIrItual progress
of Islamic peoples to the inteIlectual
of humanity have been so vast                        and certain technical
treatises whose wide circulation saved them from oblivion. In the second
Prelude.               and have been manifested in such
diverse fields that no one can pretend                      period ancient
science Comes back once more to the
to do more than indicate certain representative it~ms in our                  
    West, but this time more fully, in the Arabic comrich heritage.
Civilization as we kno w it today is not solely                    
!Ilentaries or the original works of Greek science for
the product of Christian influence but rather an imperfect                    
    which· the Romans had substituted compends"-
blending and synthesis of Greek, Hebrew, Christian and                        
     Hippocrates and Galen, the entire body of Aristotle's
Muslim bestowals.                                                             
     writings, the mathematics and astronomy of the
The common belief that the Christian monks of the                             
 Arabs. The full recovery of this ancient It;arning,
Middle Ages were the preservers and tra~smitters of                           
     supplemented by what the Arabs had gained from
Hellenic culture, that the monasteries alone kept the lamp                    
     the Orient and from their own observation, conof learning burning, is
based on incomplete and faulty                              stitutes the
scientific renaissance of the Middle
evidence. At the outset, it should be remembered that th~                     
     Ages.
Christian society of the period was inferior in level of                     
No living person cau know the extent of the cultural
knowledge to the Islamic world. Barnes rightly points out:               
progress of the Muslims for the reason that the bulk of the
"In many ways the most advanced .civilization of the                     
evidences of their educational attainments has been d~­
Middle Ages was not a Christian culture at all, but rather               
stroyed by Mongols, Christians and anti-intellectual Muslims.
the civilization of the peoples of the faith of Islam l ." Gibb          
People in the West commonly believe the old canard that
adds his support, declaring that the Muslim civilization in               the
Muslims destroyed the famous library at Alexandria. A
Spain represented the highest culture in Europe from the                 
certain amount of destruction had been done in streettenth to the thirteenth
centuries 9 • Haskins, in quoting                 fighting but the
systematic ruination of this celebrated
Renan and adding his own comment, summarizes a position                  
library of Serapis occurred in the year 389 A.D, (nearly two
common among investigators3 :              '                             
centuries before the birth of M uQammad) on the order of
The recovery of ancient science and philosophy in              Archbishop
Theophilus of Alexandria. Many of the
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries marks an epoch               wonderful
buildings and beautiful sculptures of the ancient
in the history of European intelligence, ''The in-                Greeks
sustained a similar fate at the hands of the Christians l • The Crusaders
"destroyed the splendid library of
1   H. E. Barnes, A History of Historical Writing, p. 93.              Tripoli
without compunction; they reduced to ashes many
• H. A. R. Gibb, Arabic Literature, p. 81.
• C. H. Haskins, Studies in the History of Medireval Science, p. 3.       1
Gustav Diercks. "Europe's Debt to Islam," Islamic Review, 16: 138

(May 1928).
. _ - - - - - - _.... _---_   ..   _ , - - - ..   __ ._--_._----

48              MUI;IAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                       
     CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                           49

of the glorious centers of Saracenic culture and artsl ."                  
found in seventh-century Arabia. As prophesied in the
Diercks makes the extreme charge that tbe "Christian                       
Christian scriptures, he did not speak of himself but he
religion, wherever it went, checked mental progress and                    
uttered that which he heard.
development and suppressed the already existing culture2."                    
 The Qur'an contains this beautiful short prayer fOL
He goes on to assert that the guiding principle kept in                    
intellectual advancemer.t: "And say, 0 Lord! Increase
mind by Gregory was: "Ignorance is the mother of piety."                    me
in knowledge" (Sura xx, v. 113). It alSo declares that
Acting on this precept Gre~ory "not only committed. to the                  he
who has been gifted with wisdom and philosophy of an
flames all the mathematical stories (stores) of Rome, but                  
ennobling kind has received very great good. The statement
also burned the precious Palatine Library which was founded                 in
the Qur'an concerning the incomplete state of knowledge
by the Emperor Augustus. He destroyed the greater part                     
-"You have received only a minute quantity of knowledge"
of the writings of Livy ; he forbade the study of the classics;            
(Sura xvii. v. 87)-could well have been pondered by the
he maimed and mutilated the remains of the ancient d ays8,"                
cocksure materialistic scientists of the nineteenth century.
Ferdinand and Isabella destroyed all the Muslim works
they could find in Spain. One of Anatole France's charac-                     
 Unfortunately, virtually all the sayings of Muhammad
relating to education are to be found only in the' hadiths
ters remarks: "The most tragic event in history is that of
and it is almost impossible to establish their authenticity. It
tbe battle of Poitiers, when the science, the art and the
should be borne in mind, however, that these aphorisms
civilization of Arabia fell before the barbarism of the
have been widely accepted as authentic and it cannot be
Franks4 ."
Mul)ammad at-Tusi (d. 1067 A.D.) composed a biblio-                    doubted
that they have exerted a wide and salutary
graphy of Shi'ite works, many of which have perished. the                 
influence. The words attributed to Mul;tammad must
greater part no doubt suppressed by the Sunnis. Even more                 
assuredly have stimulated and encouraged the great thinkers
illuminating is the great Fihrist which appeared around 987                of
the golden age of Islamic civilization.
,A.D., nearly three centuries before the destruction of                       
 The most celebrated collection of hadiths is probably
Baghdad. Scarcely one in a thousand of the books men-                     
that of al-Bukhari, accessible to the writer in French. As
tioned in the Fihrist is known to be in existence today.                  
freely translated from the French. Mul;tammad is reported
The initial command given the Prophet in his very, ,·first             to
have said: "The learned are the heirs of the prophets
revelation was "Read." Mul)a!mmad                   who have transmitted to
them knowledge as a legacy. He
Muhammad's attitude    protested that he did not know,How to               who
has chosen learning has taken a great portion and for
tow~rd learning.                                       .
read. His teaching for the individual               him who engages himself in
the way of acquiring ~nowledge
and for the society were not the result of reading; no one                God
will pave a path to the very gates of Paradise 1. to "It
has submitted a jot or tittle of evidence to show that a                  is
necessary for him who enjoys the good pleasure of God
single Sura of the Qur'an was based on any writings to be                 to
acquire knowledge of religion; knowledge is obtained
only through study 2." The Prophet gives this interesting
I Ameer 'Ali, The Spirit of Islam, p. 351,
bit of advice in the field of educational psychology:
• Diercks, op. cit., 16 : 218 (June 1928).                            
"Render the way easy and not difficult.    Announce agree-
• Ibid., 16 : 144 (May 1928).
& Anatole France, La Vie en Fleur, cited in Islamic Review, 22: 146.
1 El-Bokhari, Les Traditions   I slami qu'es,p. 39.
(May 1934).
• Ibid .• p. 40.
50                MUf:lAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                     
              CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                   51
l
able things and do not startle your auditor . " "There are                    
      Prophet, according to the Misbah ush-Shariyet.            Syed
only two persons that one is permitted to envy: the one                       
      Ameer 'Ali cites the following hadiths from the J amaa-ul.
to whom God has given riches and who has the courage to                       
      Akhbar and other comparatively trustworthy sources:
spend his means for the cause of truth; the one to whom                       
                He who leaves his home in search of knowledge,
God has given wisdom and who applies it for the benefit of                    
              walks in the path of God. He who travels in
mankind and shares it with his fellows 2." "Among those                       
             search of knowledge, to him God shows the way to
doubly-rewarded by God is the man who. possessing a female                    
             Paradise. One hour's meditation on the work of
slave, raises her and gives her a good educations."                           
             the Creator is better than seventy years of prayer.
Of great importance was this injunction of Mul,1ammad:                        
         To listen to the instructions of science and learning
"Let the poor and the rich be equal before you in the                         
             for one hour is more meritorious than attending the
acquisition of knowledge'."       It was this statement that                  
             funerals ot a thousand martyrs, more meritorious
led to the establishment of many scholarships at Cairo,                       
             than standing up in prayer for a thousand nights ...
Damascus, and elsewhere.                                                      
             To the student who goes forth in quest of knowl-
The Bihdru'l-Anwdr and other commonly accepted collec-                        
         edge, God will allot a high place in the mansions of
tions of traditions attributed the following passage to                       
             bliss; every step he takes is blessed, and every
Muhammad 5 :                                                                  
            lesson he receives has its reward ... The seeker of
.     Acquire knowledge, because he who acquires it in                        
        hnowledge will be greeted in Heaven with a welthe way of the Lord
performs an act of piety; who                                   come from the
angels ... To listen to the words of
speaks of it, praises the Lord; who seeks it, adores                          
    the learned, and to instil into the heart the lessons
God; who dispenses instruction in it, bestows alms;                           
    of science, is better than religious exercises .. better
and who imparts it to its fitting objects, performs                           
    than emancipating a hundred slaves ... Him who
an act of devotion to God. Knowledge enables its                              
    favours learning and the learned, God will favour in
possessor to distinguish what is forbidden from what                          
    the next world.,. He who honours the learned
is not; it lights the way to Heaven; it is our friend                         
    honours me.
in the desert, our society in solitude, our companion
Professor Stephen quotes these words from Mul;1ammad1:
when bereft of friends; it serves as an armour
He dieth not who takes to learning.
against our enemies. With knowledge, the servant
The worst of men is a bad learned man, and a good
of God rises to the heights of goodness and to a                              
    learned man is the best.
noble position, associates with sovereigns in this                           
The Islamic Review (5; 48, January 1917) also furnishes
WGrld, and attains to the perfection of happiness in                      
these quotations from MUQammad:
the next.                                                                     
      The desire of knowledge is a divine commandment
"Seek ye learning even unto China," enjoined the                              
        for every Muslim; and to instruct in knowledge
those who are unworthy of it is like putting pearls,
I  EI-Bokhari, Les Traditions Islamiques, p. 40.                              
      jewels, and gold on the necks of swine.
!  Ibid., p. 44.
• Ibid.. p. 51.
~ Khalil, Totah, The Contribution of the Arabs to Ii:ducation, p. 44.
I N. Stephen, "Muhammad and Learning," Islamic Review, 5: 44-7
Ii Amee'r 'Ali, op. cit., p. 331.
,i?   (January 1917).
52                     MUI?AMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                 
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                   53

Seek ye knowledge from the cradle to the grave.       ransom 0 4.000 dirhams
each. Mu1;tammad 'Ali con-
Exces~ive know ledge is better than ~xcessive        cludes!: "To forego a big
sum of 4,000 Dirhams ransom
praying ... It is better to teach knowledge one hour     money per head and
accept the teachir:Jg of reading and
in the night than to pray the whole night.               writing instead,
furnishes an ample testimony to the value
That person who shall die while he is studying       which learning had in the
eyes of the Prophet,"
knowledge in order to revive the knowledge of                Captious critics
of Islam delight in pointing out that a
religion, wil1 be only one degree inferior to the        good deal of what we
term Islamic learning was the product
of Jewish, Christian. and Zoroastrian minds. It can be
prophet.
persuasively argued. however. that it is to the credit of
One learned man is harder on the devil than a        I~lam that it provided an
atmosphere conducive to producthousand ignorant wor shippers.                 
       tIve efforts by such scholars; the facts indicate that absence
That person who shall pursue the path of knowl-       of, discrimination in
Islam encouraged free inquiry by
edge, God will direct him into the path of Paradise;    students of other
faiths.
and verily the superiority of a learned man over an          Westerners
associate force with the spread of Islam.
ignorant worshipper is like that of a full moon over     Their conception of
Jihad or "holy war" is distorted beyond
all the stars.                                           recognition. They
picture the Saracen with a Qur'an in
The knowledge from which no benefit is derived       one hand and the sword in
the other, This is a clear case
is like a treasure from which no charity is bestowed    of mistaken, identity.
The Christians, not the Muslims,
in the way of the Lord. Who are the learned? Those      were the ~~I~f
offe,nders in this respect. In Spain, during
who practise what they know.                            the InqUISItIOn, two
million Muslims were threatened with
death unless they accepted a particular brand of Chris-
These statements must not be construed as idle and
tianity. It may be stated categorically that the wars of
useless words. Their results have been very substantial.           Mu1;tammad
were purely defensive in nature. Had they
The strength of Islamic science was its devotion to practical      not been
waged, the Muslims would have perished-with
matters rather than to the vague notions of the Byzantine
:-rhat. dire re~ults for the future of civilization one can only
Greeks. The Companions of the Prophet followed his
ImagIne. DIercks renders this verdict 2 :
precepts by studying and participating in discussions when
That wars agilinst non-Muslims were religious and
they were advanced in agel.        After the followers of
for the sake of religion. and were undertaken by
Muhammad brilliantly defeated their persecutors at Badr,
Muslims for the oppression of other religions, is not
a n~mber of captives were taken. They were well-treated
only, generally speaking, ou~ ot the question, but
and given the best food; the poor went free without payalso even in special
cases it w01..Jld be very difficult
ment of ransom, but the rest were assessed "what the
traffic could bear." The remarkable feature of the settle-                  to
prove that material and political reasons were
ment, and one probably unparalleled in the ann'als of military             
not the r,ealcauses of those wargo
history, was that those who could read and :write were               The best
evidence indicates that some of the later wars
required to teach ten children each in lieu of paying a
I Mu~ammad 'Ali, op•.cit., p, 216.

• Diercks. op. cit•• 17: 91 (May 1929).
I   El-Bokhari, op. cit., Vol. III, p. 41.
54               MUI;IAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                 
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                 5S

were economic and political in their motivation but that                   
mage, as well as to those who visit these places the
the early ones, during the lifetime of the Prophet, were                   
Georgians, Abyssinians, Jacobites, Nestorians, and all
entirely a struggle for the right to live.                                 
those who acknowledge the Prophet Jesus. All
The Eastern Christians and Jews preferred Muslim to                      these
deserve consideration because they had here-
Roman rule. Wismar, who inclines to be parsimonious in                      
tofore been honoured with a document of the
his concessions to Islam, writes! :                                         
Prophet Muh,ammad, at the end whereof he affixed
When the Muslim army reached the valley of the                    his seal,
and in which he has emphatically ordered
Jordan and Abu 'Ubaidah pitched his tent at Fihl,                   us to be
beneficent and to grant them security... On
the Christians of the country informed the Arabs                    their
entry into the church of the Holy Sepulchre
that they preferred them to the Byzantines, although                and on
their entire pilgrimage no kind of tax shall
the latter were Christians. The people of Hims                      be exacted
from them.
closed tbe gates of their city against the army of           . It was not
uncommon for outstanding Christian scholars
Heraclius, declaring that they preferred Muslim           to count more of
their pupils from among the Muslims than
justice and government to Byzantine oppression.           from their
co-religionists l . Bartold, a distinguished scholar
The Jews of this city swore by the Torah to sacrifice     with no "axe to
grind," asserts that "the M ussulmans never
their lives in the attempt to keep the Emperor from       indulged in the
persecution of those who believed in another
gaining possession of it. Other cities acted similarly    religion as the
Christians did in Spain2." At the time of
and eloquently declared their abhorrence of Byzan-        the Crusades, if we
are to believe the testimony of a
tine misrule and their approval of Muslim supremacy.      Russian historian of
the Church, "the clergy and the masses
On the defeat of the imperial forces at Yarmuk the        desired the return
of the Muhammadan yoke rather than
cities opened their gates and received their victors      the continuation of
the power of the Latins 3 ".
with wild demonstrations of joy. Nor were they                 How were the
Christian men of learning in Spain treated
disappointed in their expectations of greater security    by the Muslims?
Ameer 'Ali has this to sayan the subunder Muslim rule. In the early days of
Islam Jews        ject" :
and such Christians as did not accept the imperial                     The
government of each academy was entrusted
theology were better off under the Muslim caliph                    to a
rector, who was chosen from among the most
than under the Christian Emperor.                                 
distinguished ·scholars. In the middle of the thir-
Particularly imtructive are the provisions of 'Umar's                   teenth
century of the Christian era this high office
treaty with Jerusalem 2 :                                                  in
the University of Granada was held by Siraj-
This treaty comprehends all Christian subjects,                  ud-Din Abu
Jaafar Gmar al-Hakami. No religious
priests, monks, and nuns. This treaty grants them                  distinction
was made in these appointments, and
security and protection wherever they may be .••                   learned
Jews and Christians were often appointed
A similar external protection shall be granted to                to the post
of rector. Real learning, in the estimatheir churches, houses, and 'to their
places of pilgri-
I V. V. Bartold, Mussulman Culture, p. 17.

• Ibid., p. 18.
I   A. L. Wismar. A Study in Tolerance.pp. 104-5.
• Ibid., p. 22.
I   Diercks, op. cit., 17 : 375 (October 1929),                 4 Ameer 'Ali,
A Short History of the Saracens, p.570!
at·
56               MU.E;IAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                     
       CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                     57

tion of the Arabs, "was of greater value than the                )
poetess and jurisconsult; Mariam of Seville, accomplished
religious opinion of the literate."                              r   in
poetry, literature, and rhetoric; Ammat ul-' Aziz, a
descendant of the Prophet. also enjoyed an excellent reputa-
Were women confined to the harem, or could they par-                      tion
for her eruditionl •
ticipate in educatio~al activities? Investigation discloses                   
   Few students would deny that the influence of the
that women were lecturers as well as students. Women of                       
                       Arabs in bringing about the Renaislearning were t~ be
found even in Mecca where Karima                          General Influence of
sance in Europe was considerable.
Islamic Civilization.
lectured to many pupils on hadith; Shaheda was another                        
                      Much translation will have to be done
celebrated teacher of traditional theological doctrine.                      
during the decades ahead before the pedagogues of the
Some of the most famed Spanish surgeons were women l •                      
 West will be willing to accord to the Muhammadan Revo-
Spanish women were. also noted for their ability along                       
lution as prominent a place in the history textbooks as that
literary lines "and the names of Nashun, Zainab. Hemada.                     
now granted, for example, to the French Revolution. In
Hafsah, al-Kalayyeh, SaGa, Maria shed an ineffaceable                        
the light of the vast amount of research remaining to be
lustre on the land of their birth 2 " . When the Spanish                     
done in order to uncover the intellectual treasures be-
Muslim women sallied forth from their apartments, it was                     
queathed by the Muslims, it behoves present-day writers to
not in sombre garb but in costly dresses bedecked with                       
avoid negative conclusions as to the volume at original conprecious stones and
redolent with perfume. The splendor                       tributions made by
the Arabs to contemporary civilization.
of their appearance in the mosques has been likened to "the                  
The other extreme, of engaging in flights of fancy on the
flowers of spring in a beautiful meadow 3." According to                     
achievements of the past, is also fraught with danger. One
'Abu'l-Karim, Mul;1ammad gave women the right to own                         
of our mortal failings is the practice of boasting about a
property thirteen centuries ago, a privilege that En.gla~d                   
civilization only when it is in its infancy or its senility.
did not confer until 1875 and which still does not eXist III                  
   One should be wary about accepting and publicizing
unrestricted form in France'. Al-Maqqari quotes a proud                      
strange and unverified claims, such as that of 'Abu'l-Karim
Spaniard: "Has your country produced such women. as                          
who solemnly vouched for the story that the Arabs and
our Walladah al-Marwaniyyah, who discusses poetry With                       
Moors of Spain traded with the American Continent 477
the vazier, Ibn Zaidun? And have you the match of                            
years before Columbusll • Siyyid Ehsan el-Bakry contri-
Zainab, the daughter of Ziad 6 ?" Girls attended school                      
butes this item: "Even aviation was attempted by the
with boys and even slave-girls are reported to have been                     
early Muslims; and Abu'l Kasim, the inventor of gla~s, did
well trained6• Other Muslim women scholars included                         
  actually succeed in flying, but unfortunately felI and was
al-Aaruzzieh, grammarian and rhetorician; Urn-ul-Hina.                      
kiIIed 8."
Some of the general reforms instituted by Mu1).ammad
I  S. H. Leeder. "The Debt of Civilization to the i\rabs," Islamic       were
the abolition of drunkenness, gambling, and infan-
Review 4 : 115 (March 1916).                                                
ticide. In Persia before Islam, religion sanctioned marriage
• i\meer •Ali, A Short History of the Saracens, p. 569.
• Ibid .. p. 571.                                            .
, 'Abu'I-Karim, "Hazrat Muhammad, the Greatest Social Refor-                 
I i\meer 'Ali. A Short History of the Saracens, p. 570.

mer," Islamic Review, 22; 146 (May 1934).                                     
    • .i\bu'l-Karim, lac. cit.
S Ehsan el-Bakry, "How the Qur'an Gave a New Impetus to Educa-
• Totah, op. cit., p. 82.
5 Ibid., pp. 80-1.
tion and Scientific Learning," Islamic Review 5 : 416 (October 1917).
..
------~._-------_.-~    ~--~-   ----   ~~---   ....   --- - ---

CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                 59
58                 MUl;iAMMAD THE EDUCATOR
Conditions under the Fatimids in Egypt were most
between father and daughter, son and mother, brother and
favourable for students l :
sister, but such practices have long ceased l •                             
         AI-Maqrisi states that a student received five
Schools played an important role in the spread and                            
loaves of good bread a day, a sum of money, and
advancement of culture in Islamic countries. The Latin                        
    light and heavy clothing. Adults were not left out of
origin of the word bachelor has not been finally and indis-                   
    the educational picture. Ibn Batutah is authority for
putably established. The word was used in the Chanson                         
    the assertion that at Damascus was a school called
de Roland and it has been suggested that it could have                        
    Madrasih Ibn 'Umar, founded for old and middlebeen derived from
bihaqq-al-riwava. "The right to teach
aged men who wished to study the Qur'an ; food
on the authority of another 2 ."
'Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet, and Ibn 'Abbas, cousin                       
and clothing were furnished to students and
of Mut1ammad, gave public lectures on poetry, grammar,                        
     teachers. Girls attended school with boys and
history, and mathematics. Presumably these adult educa-                       
    ladies taught men's classes in advanced literary
tion activities in the mosques carried greater prestige than                  
     subjects.
appearances before children. Ameer 'Ali writes that                           
The Dar ul- Hikmat, free scientific institute at Cairo,
Spain had a well-developed educational system 3 :                          
"anticipated Bacon's ideal with a fact z." Access to libraries
No town, however small, was without colleges                    was available
without cost. Ameer' Ali provides interesting
and schools, whilst each principal city possessed a                information
about the interest of Egyptian leaders in
separate university. Those of Cordova, Seville                     education 3
:
(Ishbilia), Malaga, Saragossa, Lisbon (Alishbuna),                           
The caliphs frequently held learned disputations,
Jaen, Salamanca, among others, 'occupied the most                          at
which professors of these academies appeared,
distinguished position.                                                   
divided according to their different faculties :
Ameer 'Ali continues his account 9f the Muslim uni-                           
 logicians, methematicians, jurists, and physicians,
versities in Spain' :                      ,                                  
     dressed in their Khalaa, or doctoral mantles.
It was customary in the Spanish Arabian uni-                         The gowns
of the English universities retain the origiversities to hold annual
com1Demorations and                       nal form of the Arab Klwlaa.
periodical meetings, to which the public were                          Here is
a note on school finance in Egypt :
invited. On these occasions poems were recited                               
Two hundred and fifty-seven thousand ducats,
and orations delivered by the most eminent persons                        
raised by a carefully regulated taxation, constituted
in the universities. Every college had the follow-                         the
annual revenue of the colleges, and was eming lines inscribed over its gates:
"The world is                          ployed for paying the salaries of the
professors ~nd
supported by four things only: the learning of                             
officials, and providing the requisites for teachmg,
the wise, and the justice of the great, the prayers                        and
other objects of public scientific instruction.
of the good, and the valour of the brave."
1 Totah. op. vit., p. 83.
1 Bartold, op. cit., p. 71.                                                 a
Ameer 'Ali, The Spirit of Islam, p. 342.
2 Sir Thomas W. Arnold, The Legacy of Islam, p.245.                        
• Ameer 'Ali. A Short History of the Sm'acens, p. 614.
3 Ameer 'Ali, A Short History of the Saracens, p. 577.
, Ibid., p. 615.
& Ibid., p. 570.                    .
--~--------------          -----_.~     -_._-_.-  
::·I-::-:---:-:--::-:-:----~--_·

60                . MUl:fAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                   
                       cnNTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                  
         61

Tracing the use of Islamic symbols in free",masonry                           
                   account of the phenomena for the purpose of rising
would be an intriguing task but the element of secrecy                        
                       from the effect to the cause, accepting only what had
precludes open research. We do know that there was                            
                       been demonstrated by experience; such were the
attached to the Central Dar ul-Hikmat a Grand Lodge                           
                       principles taught by the (Muslim) masters.
whose Grand Prior convened weekly meetings. Ameer                             
                "In Siluki's lecture-hall at Nisapur there were 500 ink-
'Ali comments l :                                                             
            pots always ready for use l ." A thousand years ago, the
Makrizi's account of the different degrees of                                 
 AI-Azhar University was founded in Cairo. It is still the
initiation adopted in this lodge forms an invaluable                          
    chief Islamic institution of higher learning. The library of
record of free-maliOnry. In fact, the Lodge at                                
    al-'Aziz at Cairo contained at least 120,000 volumes while
Cairo became the model of all the Lodges created                              
    that of al-Hakam at Cordova was even larger. In Ba@dad,
afterwards in Christendom.                                                    
    princes and viziers vied with each other in establishing
At. Granada as well as at Cordova a great cultural                            
        libraries and madrisahs (colleges), A minor college foundupsurge took
place 2 :                                                                    
ed in Baghdad in 990 A.D, contained 10,400 books. No
The sovereigns of Granada rivalled the Caliphs                                
 one was permitted to use a book at a public lecture without
of Cordova in their patronage of learning and arts,                           
    the author's written comment; perhaps this regulation was
and in the construction of sumptuous public works;                            
    the prototype of modern copyright legislation~.
and under their liberal and enlightened government,                           
        Khuda Buksh relates the tragicomic tale about the
Granada became the home 'and birth-place of                                   
    Muslim addiction to books s :
eminent scholars, distinguished poets, accomplished                           
                Even in the first century of the Hegira we find
scholars, "men fit in every respect to serve as                               
             learned men scolded by their wives for possessing
models."                                                                      
             great numbers of books and one was actually killed
by the falI of a pile of folios which he had heaped
Ameer 'Ali cites the tribute of Abu'l Farai to the
around him while sitting on the floor. It was
Caliph al-Maml10 8: .
deemed a matter of pride to possess a large collec-
He was not ignorant .that they are the elect of
tion of books, and not merely savants but even
God, His best and most useful servants, whose
statesmen gloried in their collection. A Buwayiid
lives . are devoted to the improvement of their
Wazir never travelled without carrying with him
rational faculties ... , that the teachers of wisdom
,thirty camel-loads of books.
are the true luminaries and legislators at the world.
Ameer 'Ali describes the Islamic devotion to scientific                       
           The baths of Cordoba street lights, and various other
method    4
:                                                                           
comforts and conveniences installed by the Muslims, surely
Marching from the known to the unknown the                                    
provided excellent demonstration lessons for the ameliora-
School of Ba@dad rendered to itself an e'xact
1   S. Khuda Buksh. Contributions to the History of Islamic Civilization,
I Ameer 'Ali, A Short History of the Saracens, p. 569.                        
      V 01. II, p. 282.
I Ameer 'Ali, The Spirit of Islam, p.943.                                     
          a Khuda Buksb, "The Educational System of the Muslims in the
• Ibid.                                                                     
        Middle Ages", Islamic Culture, 3 : 455 (July 1927).
3 Ibid., 3 : 453 (July 1927).
• Ibid.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                   63
62               MUI;IAMMAD THE EDUCATOR
ingia as the central point of dissemination of the new
tion of European conditions!. Cordoba merits further
learning in Latin Europe! :
elaboration 2 :
I am convinced that the schools of Lorraine in
Cordova in the tenth century was the most                              the
last half of the tenth century were the seedcivilized city in Europe, the
wonder and admiration                       plot in which the seeds of Arabic
science first
of the world, a Vienna among the Balkan states.                         
germinated in Latin Europe, from which the knowl-
Travellers from the north heard with something                            edge
radiated to other parts of Germany-witness
like fear of the city which contained 70 libraries                       
Hermann Contractus in Reichenau-to France, and
and 900 public baths; yet whenever the rulers of                         
especially, owing to the preference of Knut the
Leon, Navarre or Barcelona needed such things                            
Great for Lotharingian church-men, into England.
as a surgeon, an architect, a dress-maker, or a
singing master, it was to Cordova that they applied.                 The fact
that Peter the Venerable sponsored a Latin
translation of the Qur'an, around 1150 A.D., is further
Rosenthal reinforces this opinions:                                 evidence
of Cluny's interest in Arabic learning. Today.
In Muslim days Cordova was the center of                      the name of the
French province is primarily associated
European civilization and one of the greatest seats             with Cluny
lace. "The most brilliant author of the time
of learning in the world. After the expulsion of                was al-Idrisi
who was entrusted by the Christian Norman
the Moors from Spain, however, Cordova sank to                  King Roger of
Sicily with the composition of a description
the level of a provincial town. . Yet her wonderful             of the known
world, indicating the acknowledged superimosque is a superb legacy of the days
when Cordova              ority of Muhammadan learning 2 ."
was the capital of the Arab empire in Spain.                        Adelard of
Bath, pioneer student of Arab science and
In 1238 A.D., the mosque was conv:erted into a cathe-               
philosophy in the twelfth century under Henry I and
dral. Great numbers of pillars were ~emoved and other                  
traveller to distant lands. has been called "the greatest
resthetic crimes were committed. To, undo some of the                   name·
in English science before Robert Grossetete and
damage, the civil authorities in Spain are undertaking                   Roger
Bacons." Others active in diffusing Arabic culture
partial restoration; for example, the bases of the pillars               in
Europe were Plato of Tivoli, Robert of Cliester.
are being uncovered.                                                    
Hermann of Carinthia, Rudolf of Bruges, and the great
Gerard of Cremona. Michael Scot, who served at the court
How the transmission of I slamic culture to Europe was
of Frederick II, translated the works of Ibn Sina, al-Bitruji,
brought about has not been precisely ~scertained, but we
and other Muslim thinkers.
do have certain clues. Haskins affirms that "the broad
An intriguing figure in the history of Europe and one
fact remains that the Arabs of Spain were the principal .
significant for his role in the dramatic spread of Muslim
source of the new learning for Western Europe'."
influence was Frederick the Great. He discoursed on
Thompson advances plausible reasons for'regarding Lotharphilosophical subjects
with Fakhru'd-Din, exchanged
I  Totah, op. cit.. p. 103.                                             1 J.
W. Thompson, "The Introduction of Arabic Science into the
2  Arnold, op. cit., p. 9.
Lorraine in the Tenth Century," Isis. 12: 191 (May 1929).
• E. Rosenthal, "Traces of Arabic Influence in Spain," Islamic         s
Arnold, op, cit., p. 89.
ClIltum, 11 : 336 (July 1937).
B Haskins, op, cit., p. 20.
• Haskins, op. cit.• p. 50
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                        65
64              MUI:iAMMAD THE EDUCATOR
"I know nothing," writes Von Kremer, "which brings
geometric and algebraic questions and problems with
Muslim contribution in home to us a picture of   the Muslim
al-Kamil, and associated with the most renowned Arab                geography.
            zeal for truth more       clearly and
astronomers. Muslim architecture interested him. notably                      
            emphatically than an account of the
the octagonal Mosque of 'Umar in Jerusalem, with its gree.n         travels of
the last great Arab geographer-Yaqut-i-Hamwi.
and gold cupola and artistic pulpit. He also collected              The Mon~ol
menace, which was to destroy the throne of
information on hunting: "When we were In the Oripnt                 the
Abbaslds and the old Bagdad, begins its steady forward
we observed that the Arabs themselves use a hood lD                
course,.but does not in the slightest degree interfere with
hawking, for the Arab kings sent us their most skilful fal-         t~e qUIet
work of our author in the libraries of M erv. In
I
coners with falcons of every kind ."                               hiS fl1!lht
he saves the greatest portion of his gathered
The following report shows his distaste for the claims         matenals, and
though hardly at leisure or in peace, he sets
of the Roman Church :                                              ~o work to
complete his task before he embarks on his last
He was discussing the Khalifate with Fakhru'd          ]~urney-never to
return." 1 Yaqllt (circa 1179-1229) b
Din. The Amir explained to the Emperor how                birth an ~natolian
Greek. was enslaved in youth. Educ'ate~
the Khalifat of the Abbasids could be traced back         as a ~ushm, he
b~came one of the most successful of the
in unbroken line to al Abbas, the uncle of the            Ara~lc scholars lD
the compilation, collection, and classI-
Prophet, and thus still remained in the family of         ficatIOn of data.
His Geographical Dictionary or Gazetteer is
the Founder. "That is excellent," said Frederick,         the greatest w:or~
of it.s kind in Arabic; no mere assortment
"far superior to the arrangement of those fools,         of dry facts, It IS
enrIched with anecdotes, descriptions of
the Christians. They choose as their spiritual head      natu~al .scenic
beauties. and so on. Of ma.ior importance
any fellow they will, without the smallest relation-     also IS hIS
Dictionary of Men of Letters.
ship to the Messiah, and they make him the                 . Another
fascinating figure in Islamic geographical
Messiah's representative. That Pope there has no         SCIence is al-Biruni
from whom we learn that by the
claim to such a position, whereas your Khali£ is         ~leventh ~entury
Muslim merchants had founded colonies
the descendant of Muhammad's uncle."                     10 t.he Indlan Ocean
near the Java Islands and had married
Frederick graduallY transferred 'some 16,000 Muslims          natIve . women. 
    It is possible that the Arabs knew
from various parts of his em pire to Lucera. which was trans-     AustralIa
and that Ibn Rushd's reference to a place in the
formed into a military fortress. Frederick apparently             land of the
Zenjis where "the day lasts only six holUs"
wanted them to remain Muslims so that he could tax them           re~ates to
South Australia. Al-Biruni also possessed informon the basis of their faith.
They seemed to appreciate his        atIOn about South Africa and Mozambique.
The Chinese
rule and even called him "sultan." "Thus there grew up           official map
for the year 1331 A.D. was composed
in the heart of the oldest Christian country near the frontier   either by or
in dependence upon Muslim geogl~aphers."~
of the papal patrimonium a genuine Muhammadan town               Muhammadan
geographers assigned greater value to civic
with all its characteristic mOliques and minarets visible afar
across the levels of Apulia ."                                      1   Khuda
Buksh, Contributions to the History of Islamlc Civilization,
Vol. II, p. 47.
2 Ahmet Zeki Validi, "Islam and the Science of Geography" Islamic
1 Robert Kantorowicz, Frederick the Second. p. 192.
Culture, 8 : 514 (October 1934).                             '
• Ibid., pp. 192-3.                     '
3 Ibid., p. 130.
66                    MUf:;iAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                
            CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                 67

and cultural life, description of manners, language and be-                   
            which only God's own Art can bring to pass ...
lief than did most Greek authors and their determination of                   
              To obtain information concerning places of the
longitude and latitude is characterized by greater exactness.                 
            Earth has now become incomparably easier and safer
The following illuminating disquisition on the more                           
        (than it was before), Now we find a crowd of
favored research conditions made possible by Islam is taken                   
            places, which in the (Ptolemaic) "Geography" are
from a manuscript of al-Biruni which was written on the                       
            indicated as lying to the east of other places, actually
completion of certain geographical investigations, September                  
            situated to the west of the others named, and vIce
1                                                                           
versa.
21,1025 :                                          .'
Most of the data of the Geography (of Ptolemy)                     This
quotation, by itself, disproves the belief common in
concerning the longitude and latitude of points on                 the West
that the Arabs accepted uncritically whatever
the Earth have really been adopted only on the                     came down
from the Greeks and were mere imitators.
ground of rumours which had corne from far-off                         Banold
acknowledges that "it is only became of the
districts.·. An:v how , the ground on which these data             Arab
geographers that modern scholars possess material by
rest is mere report; indeed thme lands were very                   which they
can judge how little the climatic and physicodifficult of access in the past
owing to the national              geographical conditions of Higher and
Central Asia have
divisions (at-tubayan al-milli), for national division             changed
during the last thousand years."l
is the greatest obstacle to travei in countries. We                    It is
claimed that Ibn Majid piloted Vasco da Gama
see, for example, some people who think-as do the                 from Africa
to the Indian coast.
Jews-to come nearer to God through treacherous                        Among
the best known in the West of the Arab geograattacks on folk of other
nationalities. Or they take              phers is Ibn BatUra (Abu 'Abdullah
Mu1).ammad, b. 1304
foreigners as slaves, as do the Romans, and that is               A.D., d.
1378 A.D.), whose descriptions of his travels in
the lesser evil, Or travellers, because they are                  Central Asia
are justly famed.
foreigners, are turned back, held in every kind of                   
AI-Mas'lldi (d. 956 A.D.) studied science and philosophy
suspicion and they are thus brought to a very                     and
travelled throughout the East by land and sea. Unfordangerous and unpleasant
plight.                                  tunately, only a single volume
remains of the thirty that
But now the circumstances are quite different.                 comprised his
encyclopedia of the history, geography,
Islam has already penetrated from the eastern coun-               philosophy,
and religious conceptions of the Muslims, their
tries of the Earth to the western; it spreads west-               neighbors,
arid precursors.       Some regard The Golden
ward to Spain (Andalus), eastward to the borderland              Meadows, an
abridgement ot what remains at his exhaustive
of China and to the middle of India, southward to                work, as
among the most delightful books in the Arabic
Abyssinia and the countries' of Zanj (i.e., South                language.
Africa, the Malay Archipelago and Java), northward                  
Al-Maqdisi was an excellent literary craftsman and
to the countries of the Turks ,and Slavs. Thus the               deserves some
credit for anticipating our modern interest in
different peoples (al-umam I al-mukht~lifah) are                 the
cultUi:'al landscapes of other countries-the different
brought together in mutual understandll1g (ulfat)"               mores,
customs, beliefs, likes, dislikes, interests, and state of
culture.
I   Ahmet Zeki Validi, "Islam and the Science of Geography," Islamic
Culture, 8: 417-18 (October 1934).                                            
 I   Bartold, op. cit., p. 59.
,
MUlj.AMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                   CONTRIBUTIONS OF
ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                         69

Indubitably, the Pilgrimage to Mecca'stimulated geogra-            Cloth known
as fustian took its name from its place of
phical research. It is true, of course, that pilgrimages were     
manufactury, Fustat, the first Muslim capital of Egypt.
made to the Ka'ba before the advent of MU~lammad but in            Taffeta is
the English equivalent of the Persian taftah. The
those times the pilgrims came only from nearby regions, not        descendants
of 'Attab in Baghdad were renowned for a
from distant lands. What had been a tribal shrine became           special
fabric which was imitated in twelfth-century Spain
a consecrated spot to many nations and peoples.                    where it
was known as attabi silk, France and Italy adopt-
The geographical studies of al-Battani and his colleagues      ing it as
tabis. Tabby cats naturally possess a brown and
kept alive the idea of the sphericity of the earth, a concept      yellow
attabi pattern. The Muslims took the cotton plant
nearly forgotten in the "Dark Ages" and one without which          to Europe.
The word damask is derived from Damascus,
the discovery of America would have been impossible. Ibn           gauze from
Gaza, and muslin from Mosul. Cotton manu-
Rushd mentioned the dome of Arin, wotld summit, an idea            facture was
first introduced into Europe by the Arabs,
found in the Imago Mundi of Cardinal Peter of Ailly.              
'Abdu'r-Ral;1man III having been responsible for the start
Columbus was familiar with the Imago Mundi and it may              of the
industry in Spain in 130 A.D. According to Draper,
have been from it that he reached the conclusion that the          "The Arabs
were also the authors of the printing of calicoes
earth was round; in any case, it probabl~ encouraged him to        by wooden
blocks, a great improvement on the old Indian
pursue the theory; after all, he could hardly be persecuted        operation
of painting by hand. "1
as a heretic for advocating a doctrine sanctioned by Cardinal          The
carpet, now a universal necessity, carne into Europe
Peter. "Thus Islamic geographical treory may claim a               as a luxury
reserved for connoisseurs who at first regarded
share in the discovery of the New World."l                         it more as
a treasure than as a thing of use. "In the six-
The coming of Islam stimulated the spirit of adventure         teenth century
Persian craftsmen carried carpet-weaving to
and enterprise. About the middle of          heights never attained before or
since, producing with
Commerce of Islamic
peoples.              the tent 1l-century 'M u h amma d an SlIPS
1.     miraculous skill designs unparalleled in beauty,"2
had reached the Chinese town of                  The Muslims took the
sugarcane to Granada; from
Khanfu (now Canton) and there is reason to believe that            there it
went first to Madeira and thence to the West
they knew of the existence of Japan and Korea. Ti~de with          Indies, the
present world sugar bowl. Paper, so indispens-
India and Ceylon was active and of considerable volume.            able to
contempprary literate civilization, carne to Europe
Muslim vessels reached Sufala, noted for its gold and situat-      from the
Arabs. Also from the Muslim east came sesame
ed opposite Madagascar on the east coast of Africa. When           and carob,
maize and rice. lemons ~nd melons, apricots. and
Vasco da Gama, after his circumnavigation of Africa in             shallots
(onions from Ascalon). Baldachins originated in
1498 had reached Malindi on the east coast of Africa, it          Baghdad; sa
mites, dimities, and diapers were imported from
was an Arab pilot, A~mad ibn Majid, who showed him the            Byzantium.
Central Asia and the Near East exported rugs,
way to India. According to Portuguese sources, this pilot         carpets, and
tapestries. The regular channels of commerpossessed a very good sea-map and
other maritime aids and         cial intercourse brought additional
contributions from the
instruments. Some of the Abbasid caliphs had the idee of          Muslim
world: lacqUErs; new colors, e.g., carmine, and
piercing the Isthmus of Suez. 2         .
1 John W. Draper, History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,
._-------------
V 01. II, p. 386.
1 Arnold, op. cit., p. 94.
2 Arnold, op. cit., pp. 137.38.
J Ibid., p, 96.
70                                                              CONTRIBUTIONS
OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                        71

,his own jugular vein. Muslim law rests on good faith and
equality before God. Muttammad said, "The white man is
not above the black nor the black aeove the yellow; all
men are equal before their Maker." Good faith is elevated
above personal fealty and becomes a universal ethical
conception. 1
Islam substituted the community of faith for the blood
tie, which was the political and social foundation of the
Arab tribe. "He who adopted Islam had to forget all
connexions, even his own kith and kin, unless they were his
companions in the faith."· Equality before the law is
,'fundamental to the system. De Santillana quotes this delightful hadith: "The
Muslims are a single hand, like a
compact wall whose bricks support each other."s
The Qur'an, fountain and source of all the good things
that later developed in Islam, created a new type of social
order and founded a new basis for political organization in
that it revealed a new material law that superseded the
laws and ordinances of the past.' Patriotism, a rational
love for one's country, transcended the narrower loyalty
and became identified with the worship of God.
Muttammad is credited with being the first judge to
distingui:sh between intentional, premeditated murder and
accidental homicide: "The intention of the accused was the
determining factor for him in all cases. "s The Muslim
jurist was required to decide a case only upon the record
before the court, after hearing both parties6 :
When'Ali was appointed judge in al-Yarnan, he
was instructed by the Prophet on the eve of his

1  Arnold, Opt cit., p. 305.
2  Ibid". p. 285.
3 Ibid.. p. 287.

C Bashir-ud.Din. "The Political Theory of Islam," Islamic Culttlre.
8 : 588 (October 1934).
• Muhammad Hamidullah, "Administration of Justice in Early
I Bartold, OPt cit., p. 114.
Islam," Islamic Culture, 11 : 107 (April 1937).
• E. G. BrownEl, Arabian Medicine. pp. 107-08.         • Ibid., 11 :
167-68.
72               MU~~AMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                       
  CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZAnO~                 73

departure : "·When the two parties sit before thee,                        .
in clear cases, since a revocation is always better
do not decide in favor of one of them unless and                            
than persistence in injustice. (g) In the absence of
until thou hast heard from' the one as thou hast                            
Jaw and precedent (Qur'an and Sunnah) on some
from the other. This will more likely suggest thee                          
question, deduction should be made with analogy to
right decision."                                  .                         
similar cases, and after due consideration of every-
Muhammad Hamidullah gives further credit to the                               
  thing such judgment be pronounced as be nearer to
Proph~t as a legal reformer1 :                                                
     right and dearer to God. (h) A claitrant must be
. The' Prophet laid down an important rule of law                         
~iven time to procure evidence. If he is thereafter
and courtplLOcedure : the burden of- proof lies· on                         
unable to prove his case, his claim may be dismisEed.
the claimant, and the defenda~t who declines to                           
:(i) The evidence of every Muslim is admissible
admit the claim must deny simply on oath.                                  
except of one who has received corporeal punish-
An important..change of practice instituted by the Qadi                       
.ment for immorality (Majlud fihadd) or is notorious
Shurayh, an appointee of the Calit'h 'Umar,· waS the decree                  
      for false evidence. Again, one "cannot give evidence
that witnesses should IiPpear separately; formerly. all the                   
     for one's own kin and relativ~s. (j) The judge
witnesses remained in the court-room and heard one                            
     must not behave in a haughty manner or evince
another's testimony. Shurayh performed" judicial duties                       
     displeasure oil the utterance of truth. God is
over a period of seventy-five years.                                          
 .' All-Knowing and All-Hearing and with. Him one
. The letter of instructions sent by the Caliph. 'Umar to                     
     must have clear accoUnts.
Abu Musa al-Ash'~lri upon the latter's appointment as judge                 
Islamic doctrine does not regard any man as being free
in Basrah has been summarized as follows 3 :                             .from
error or incapable of making a mistake.             As an
(a) Administration of justice is a (Divine) ordi-              example for his
followers, MuQ.ammad even entertained
nance and a. practice (of the Prophet) which ought                civil suits
a:gainst himself and in the cases known to us
to be followed. (b)· If a suit is filed before you, de-           always
decided in favor of the claimant.1
cide it aft(~r careful consideration and execute it,                  The
Caliph 'Uthman constructed a special building fbr
for even the most rightful judgment without execu-                the court of
justice (Dar al-Qada). 'Ubayd Allah b. altion is useless. (c) Both parties
should be treated              Hassan aI-'Aubari and 'Umar b. 'Amir were
appointed
equally 50 that the poor might not despair of your               j~intly .as
judges in Basrah: "They sat together as a Bench
justice and the tyrant might not .long for your                  and combined
in hearing and deciding "2             During his
pa~tiality. (d) The burden of proof lies upon the               farewell
pilgrimage a decade after the Hijrah,Mu1;Iammad
clai~ant, a.nd the defendant can deny the claim on              decreed that
life, property, and honor, the three elementary
oath. (e) The parties may compromise out of the                 rights of
every man, must be respected. s
court, but the conditions of their compromise                      De
Santiilana appraises our debt to Islamic Law 4 :
should not violate religious commands' or prohibitions. (f) Review of judgment
is not disallowed                     1 Hamidullah, op. cit.• 11 : 169.
1 Muhammad Hamidullah, "Administration       of Justice in Early       •
Ibid., 11 : 170.
I Ibid., 11: 171.
Islam." Islamic Culture, 11 : 168 (April 1937).
• Arnold, op. cit.• p. 310.
• Ibid.

I

';ill.
. ·.J"I·I
·74                    MUI;lAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                               
       CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                          75

Among our positive acquisitions from Arab law.               accounts of the
Muslim conquests into a detailed consecuthere are legal institutions such as
limited partner-           tive narrative entitled History of the Conquests
of- the Counship (qirad), and certain technicalities of commercial         
tries. His chief predecessor in this field was al~Waqidi
law.. But even omitting these, there is no doubt                (747-823
A.D.), the earliest chronicler of Saracenic conthat the high ethical standard
of certain parts of              f1icts; his chief book was a History of the
Wars of the
Arab law acted favorably on the development of                   Prophet.
AI-Dinawari (d. 895 A.D.) composed a standard
our modern concepts; and herein lies its enduring                History· of
Arabia and Persia. At approximately the
merit.                                                           same time,
al- Ya'qubi wrote a chronological summary of
Islam did not follow the European pattern of imposing                
universal history from the Shi'ite stand-point and the
serfdom. In Persia and Turkistan it brought in its train                 
earliest historical geography in Arabic literature. The best
the development of city life and the disintegration of the                work
on the Caliphate of Baghdad, in the estimation of
caste system and a more equitable apportionment of the                    some
scholars, was the History of Bagfl,ddd and its Caliphs
huge landed estates.1                                                     by
Ibn Abi Tahir (d. 902 A.D.).
Some of the ablest medieval historians were Muslims                      
At-Tabari (839-923 A.D.) had an unequalled store of
and the greatest of them, Ibn Khaldun,           theological, philological,
and historical learning. He was
Historiclll writing.
completely outdistanced all historians           a traveller and a man of vast
erudition who wrote, among
of the Middle Ages in his fundamental grasp of the princi-               
other things, The Annals of the Apostles and Kings. in
ples of human cultural development.            Barnes expresses          
which he gives events year by year up to 915 A.D. as
the view that, as a group compared ~ith their Christian                  
related by different authorities. Called the "Livy of the
contemporaries, the Muslims were characterized by inde-                  
Muslims," his style may have been inferior to Livy but his
. pendent judgment, relative impartiality, and a better grasp              
presentation was more accurate. A comparatively large
of chronological methods. On the whole, they dated their                  
portion of his work survives.
materials and events far more precisely than did the                         
Barnes declares that al-Mas'udi (d. 956 A.D.) "has been
Christian writers.a        Incentives for Muslim historical              
fairly appropriately designated 'the Herodotus of the
writing were the desire to establish the authenticity of                 
Arabs', for he possessed the same avid curiosity and zeal
hadiths, to determine who were the descendants of                         for
information as did 'the father of history'." 1 His
MuQammad. and to celebrate Muslim conquests and remem-                   
Meadows of Gold and other works were unusual in containber the heroes of
Islam.                                                  ing a wealth of
ethnographic material and a good deal of
The earliest of these historical efforts were biographies             cultural
and social history.
of the Prophet, the first of which we have knowledge being                   
The Khatib aI-Baghdadi (d. 1012 A.D.) showed a subtle
that of Ibn Ishaq (d. 768 A.D.) a sincere attempt to                      
critical technique in the judging of traditions and an exhauscollect the facts
about MUQammad and Islam which has                       tive biographical
knowledge. "Most admired in the Khatib
been partially preserved for our time in a recension by Ibn                was
his keenness in detecting genuineness or otherwise of
Hisham. AI-BalaQhuri (d. 892 A.D.) brought the early                        a
document by the anachronism of the subscription. "2
I Barnes, op. cit., p. 95.

J Bartold. op. cit•• p. 59.
I Barnes. op. cit., p. 94.
..
,.         • Khuda Buksh. Contributions to the History of Islamic
Civilization •
vol. II, p. 193.

. I,
76             MU1;iAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                        
    CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILlZAnON                       77

Ibn al-Athir (1160-1234 A.D.), Arab by birth, ranks among                 
secured a post in the· secretariat of the Sultan Abu In6.n
the greatest Arab historians,. his principal work being the                but
soon fell into disfavor with the result that he was
Perfection of History, a twelve-volume universal history of      I
I         imprisoned; he was confined until the Sultan's death in
lEUim. He was one of the first Arabic-writing historians         I        
1358 A.D. An independent thinker and candid writer,
to have a philosophical grasp on cause and effect in the                   he
frequently had to leave .town because of official disunfoldment of
civilization.                       .                        pleasure. Such
situations tend to occur \l; hen scholars
Miska waih, who died toward the end of the tenth ceri~                 become
subservient to politicians. On one occasion, he
tury, displayed intelligence of a high order and exhibited a              
felt constrained to remark that a despotic government
first-hand knowledge of political and military affairs. His               
finds it necessary to enfeeble the people by a system of
Experie?tces of the Nations is noteworthy for its objectivity,            
education that instils servitude and dependence.
impartiality, and outspoken judgments. In more than one                       
Ibn Kbaldun stressed the influence of climate and the
quarter of the twentieth century world, despite proud                     
important bearing of the natural landscape in. molding
claims of intellectual progress and vaunted adherence to                  
civilization and in determining physical, mental, and moral
scientific method, such a candid analysis of contemporary                 
characteristics. He pointed out that persons living near
affairs :would be suppressed and the author jailed or put at:              the
equator are dark-skinned because of the intensity of
forced labor or exiled or killed.                                          the
sun's rays. He accounted for the cheerful, carefree,
The most celebrated of the biographical dictiQnaries is               
exuberant character of the Negroes on the basis of the
The Obituaries of Eminent Men by Ibn KhalHkan (1211-                      
high temperature of the country. He found the inhabitants
1282 A.D.). The writings of Mu\1ammad Ibn Batuta·have                      of
the temperate zones conspicuous for intellectual and
already been mentioned ; his travels were more extensive                  
physical endowments; the prophets and thinkers arose in
than those of other writers in his day and his accounts                   
these middle zones where d well the Arabs, Persians,
are invalu::lble for the light they shed on those times.                   
Romans, Greeks, Israelites, Indians. and Chinese.
AI-Maqrisi (1360-1424 A.D.) holds high place as a                          He
declared that "no rule or dynasty can be founded
compiler of historical works ; a learned and sagacious                     
without the support of the tribe and the communal spirit. l
chronicler, he gave an excellent account of old Cairo and                   He
. believed that empires, like individuals, have their own
a topographical description and history o.f Muslim Egypt.                 
life cycle in which they grow, mature, and then decay, few
We know of 561 works from the mind and hand of Jalalu'd-                  
possessing the flexibility to adapt to ~hanging environments.
Din as-Suyuti (1445-1505 A.D.) including the Itqan ~nd                    In
expounding this last idea, he was apparently a forethe History of the Caliphs.
Prominent historians of Muslim.                runner of Oswald Spengler. He
regarded urban life as the
Spain were Ibn Hayyan, Ibn u'l-'Abbas, Abu 'Ubaydu'llah                   
highest stage of civilization but also a,s the prelude to decay
al-Bakri, Ibn Bushkuwal, Ibn us-Said, Ash-Shakandi, and                    and
disintegration. With characteristic intelligence, he
Ibn u'l-Khatib.                                                          
stated that the foundation of empire "is naught but a
Ibn Khaldun 0332-1406 A.D.), native of Tunis, was                     complete
identification of the interests of the people with
the chief historian of his age and the inventor of a new                  
those of the sovereign. "2
science of history; apparently for the first time in histori-                 
 1 Khuda Buksh,' 'Ibn Khaldun and his History of Islamic Civilizacal
literature, he introduced a philosophic conception of
the stream 6f history. Early in his career, Ibn Khaldun
,/  ...   tion," Islamic Culture, 4 : 578 (October 1927).
I           I Ibid., p. 589.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                           79
78               MU1;iAMMAD THE EDUCATOR,                                    
I
Of history, Ibn Khaldun decided! :                                         .~ 
               of the interaction between the physical environ..;
It is a science by itself, for it sets a very d~finite                        
       ment and the group life of man... Anticipating Vico
object before it; namely, civilization·. and human                           
           and Turgot, he comprehended the unity and consociety. It deals
with. the different que~tions that                                     
tinuity of historical development... In marked conserve to interpret and
explain facts intimately                                          trast with
the static or eschatological conceptions
connected with the essence of· civilization. The                             
           of contemporary Christian historiography was his
sec~ions, in which I 'treat these subjects contain ~                          
          dynamic thesis that the process of historic growth
branch of science remarkable alike for its original-                          
          is subject to constant change, comparable to the
ity and utility. They are the fruits of protracted                            
        . life of the individual organism. He made clear
reflection 'and unwearying research.                                          
          the cooperation of psychic and environmental
Concerning the appropriate function of historical study,                      
                factors in the' evolution of ,civilization. There was
he adds 2 :                                                                   
                   a pre-Marxian flash in his observation that the
History should aim at shedding light on the social                            
        usages and institutions of peoples depend upon the
groupings of men; that. is to say, on society and                             
           way in which they provide for their subsistence.
the various stages through which it passes in the                             
     Flint adds this estimate1 : .                      .

natural course of events. It should shed light on                             
              The first writer t~ treat history as the proper
its passage from savagery to greater and yet greater                          
           object of a special science was Mohammad Ibn
.' refinement of manners and customs; on the realiza-                         
              Khaldun. Whether on this account he .is to he
tion of the common interests of family and tribe;                             
           regarded as the founder of the science of history
on the various ways in whIch one nation gains                                 
           is a question as to which there may well be
predominance over others, leading on to the estab-                            
           difference of opinion; but rio' candid reader of his
lishments of empires and dynasties and, finally, on                           
           Prolegomena can fail to admit that his claim to the
all changes, which in the . course of natural events                          
           honor is more valid than that of any other author
affect the character of society.                                              
           previous to Vieo.
Barnes evaluates Ibn Kbaldun's rank as a historians:                          
           AI.Biruni, whose contributions to the physical sciences
His importance lies in the unique feat, for the                             
are noted elsewhere in this study, is mentioned by Barnes
time, of having been able to rationalize the subject                          
 as a chronolo~istl :
The eminent Muslim encyclopedist, mathematician
of history and to reflect. upon its methods and
and astronomer, al-Biruni (973·1048), did the best
purposes. He was the Roger Bacon of medieval
work on Muslim historical chronology, trying to
historiography. He believed that history should                               
           clear it up and to systematize it through placing it
be a science and that it' should treat of wcial                               
           on an astronomical basis. Not until the time of
development, which he held to be an outgrowth
Scaliger . (1540-1609) was there as able a chronol-
1 Khuda Buksh, "Ibn Khaldun and His History. of Islamic Civiliza-             
                ogist in Christendom.
tion," Islamic Culture, 4 : 671 (October 1927).                               
               One of the civil servants of the Muslim empire deserves
• Khuda Buksh~ Contributions to the History 0/ Islamic Civilization,'
Vol. II, pp. 205-6.                               .                           
                   Robert Flint. The Philosophy of History in France, pp. 158
H.
• Barnes, op. cit., p. 96.
.    '.\,
I
I   Barnes, op. cit., p. 97.'  ..                 '
!
I
MUI:;tAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                   CONTRIBUTIONS OF
ISLAMIC CIVILIZAnON                           81

singling out for special commendation. Referen~e is made to                 
lers were sent away.
Ibn Khurdadhbih, postmaster at Samarra who, m 844 A.D.                  Ibn
Iubair's description to this day strikes a responsive
mpiled a list of post-roads, post-stations, and revenues due.   chord in the
hearts of world travellers who find existing
co Export duties were commonly levied i~ the el~venth              customs
formalities equally irksome.
d twelfth centuries. Import duties sometImes vaned ,on              One reason
for the Muslim pre-eminence in the artf: and
~~e basis of the country of origin of the merch~ndlse.                'l     h
    d h
Ph10S0P yan t eology.
sciences during the period immedid'                    .
Searches by customs officers in Oman were consIdered                          
               ately prece mg the European RenaIS-
,         b' t' able by travellers In the twelfth century,           sance was
the •comparative freedom of inquiry prevailing
very 0 Jec Ion                       ' , '                    h
Ibn Jubair registe~s the, followmg, ~omplamt about t e            under
Islamic rule. The poet Sa'ib was not obliged to
conduct of customs met at Alexandna :                             confront
inquisitors after writing these sentiments l : .
, Scarcely had we arrived when the Government                     : Free
thought 'and faith-the upshot's one: they
ffici~ls boarded the boat to take charge of every·                    wrangle
o'er a name;
~hing that was there. Every Muslim was produc~d                    
Interpretations differ, but the dream is still the
one after another: his name, his per~onal descrIp-                      same.
tion, the place he came from-all was noted down.              While the
bloody. Albigensian war raged in Europe
Everyone' was questioned as to the goods and the          (1012-22),
free-thinking Ma'arri wrote such lines as these
cash that he had with him...Ahmad Ibn Hasan               with impunity~ :
waS brought ashore for information regarding the                       
Nothing endures, everything is doomed to perish,
Maghrib and the goods on the boat. f.le was taken                    even
Islam itself. Moses taught and passed away.
to the authorities, then to the Qadhl, then to th,e                Christ
succeeded him. Then came Mohammed
customs officers, then to a band of the Sult~n s                   with his
five daily prayers. A new faith will
servants, and was interrogated about everythm~.                    come later,
supplanting, outshining this. Human-
They commanded the faithful to unpack theIr                        ,ity is
thus hounded to death between yesterday and
luggage, their provisions. Guards were quartered                   today.
on the bank to see that everything was actually              Contrary to
biblical doctrine~, Ma'arri also asserted
brought into the customs office. They then ques-         ,"Perishable is the
earth, Its end is not unlike its begintioned the passengers one after another,
Every-         ning. To laws of birth and death everything is subject. "3
one's luggage was brought in until the customs          Ma'arri did not
conceive of the course of events as obscene
office became choked full. This was followed .by        repetition nor did he
believe in the cliche, often spoken but
searches of things-big and small-and everythmg          without proof, that
history repeats itself, The following
was thrown pell-mell. They felt the pockets of          words reveal a
realistic attitude which surpasses in objecttravellers to see if there was any
thing ,there.        ivity the religious traditionalism of his time, and, one
may
When this was done they made them swear If they
had any thing else besides. In thi,s process and             1 Khuda Buksh,
Contributions to the History of Islamic Civilization,
owing to a pressing crowd, many thmgs were lost.       Vol. II, p. 59.
I Khuda Buksh, "Ibn Khaldun and his History of Islamic Civiliza-
After a degrading and humiliating scene the traveltion," Islamic Culture, 01 :
596.
I Ibid., p, 597.
1   Adam Mez, The Retlaissatlce of Islam, p. 119.
82               MUl:lAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                      
      CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                    83

believe, the cynical materialism of the nineteenth century· :                
  We owe a debt of gratitude to the Muslims for preserv-
On and on flows the stream of time ever bringing                   ing,
translating and transmitting to Europe the works of the
something new ..·                                               Greek
philosophers. As previously pointed out, the charge
The past never returns ; the course of events, old in              that the
Muslims destroyed the library at Alexandria is an
its texture, is ever new in its colouring and fashion.          absurd
fiction. What happened is explained by Meyerhof:
In the Holy Qur'an, God underlined the importance                       "It is
certain that the last remnants of the philosophical
of good and just deeds and discounted' the worth of theolo-                
school of Alexandria were not destroyed by the Arabs, but
gical disputations. "Why wrangle over that which you know                  
transferred, eighty years after the Arab conquest, to
not?" . says the holy Book. "Strive to ex~el in good                       
Antioch."l
deeds; when you return to God, He will inform you about                       
 Guillaume, a reputable and cautious scholar, testifies to
that in which you have disagreed." The text of Qur'an                      
Arab influence.-
explicitly renounces coercion in re ligiori : La ikrdha fl' d- Din.           
         It can hardly be doubted that Europeans took up
In the hadith literature, the Prophet is reported to have                     
      the study of Aristotle because their zeal for phil.
affirmed that "There are as many ways to God as there                         
      osophy had been quickened by contact with Arabian
are people on the earth." Not many orthodox Christians                        
      thought. Indeed, if the first effective influence was
would be liberal enough to subscribe to such a statem~nt.                     
      not Arabian, how are we to explain the fact that
MUl;1ammad gave the perfect answer to those destructive                       
      for generations Aristotle was confounded with the
critics who are ever ready to tear down the social order                      
      teaching ascribed to Averroes? (Ibn Rushd)
before having anything concrete and substantial to put in                     
In 1292 A.D., Roger Bacon wrote 8 :
its place: "Repel evil with that which is better" (Qur'an,                    
        The greater part of Aristotle's philosophy failed
Surah XXII!). The Christian Bible does not say that God                       
     to have any effect (in the West) either because
helps those who help themselves but Quran indicates                           
     manuscripts were hid.den away and extremely rare,
that leading individuals will not automatically form a golden                 
     or because the subject matter was difficult and
society when it says, "Allah changeth not the condition of                    
     distasteful, or beca use of the wars in the East, until
a folk until they (first) change that which is in their hearts"               
     after the time of Mahomet when Avicenna and
(Surah XIII). There is no modern mechanical gadget that,                      
     Averroes and the rest brought back Aristotle's
by pressing a button, will change the heart of man.                           
    philosophy into the light of comprehensive €xpmi-
The Qur'an mak,?s it abundantly clear that there is no                        
 tion.
substitute for the good life :                                               
AI·Farabi (d. 950 A.D.) was a commentator on Aristotle
And each one hath a goal toward which he                      and Plato. His
treatises on The Soul and The Faculties of
turneth; so vie with one another in good works...                 the Soul
were well known to the Latins. He passed on to
Allah loseth not the wages of the kindly (Surah XII).             his
successors the problem of the intellectus agens or active
Hast thou observed him who belieth religion? That                 intellect
and taught that the world had no beginning; he'
is he who repelleth the orphan and urgeth not the
1 M. Meyerhof, "On the Transmission of Greek and Indian Science
feeding of the needy (Surah CVIl).
to the Arabs." Islamic Culture. 11 : 21 (January 1937).
1 Khuda Buksh. to Ibn Khaldun and his History of Islamic Civiliza-        •
Arnold. op. cit., pp. 246-47.
tion," Islamic Culture, 4 : 597.                                              
 I Cited in ibid., pp. 259-60.
84                   MUJ:;iAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                              
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION             85

defined time as the movement holding things together.               in Muslim
countries. Az-Zamakhshari held to the Mu'ta-
Christians who'lived during the Islamic rebirth of culture     zilite heresy.
One of the most creditable metaphysical
often recognized Arabic intellectual superiority, while the         works in
Arabic literature in The Book of Religions and
Arabs displayed a legitimate and pardonable pride in these         
Philosophical Sects of Ash-Shahristani (1086-1153 AD.),
attainments, as shown in this summing up by Ibn Tumlus              Fakhr
u'd-Din ar-Rlizi (1149-1209 A.D.) was a philosopher
of Alcira (d. 1223 A.D.)l :                                         and
encyclopedist and one of the outstanding humanists of
In the sciences of Geometry, Arithmetic, Astro-        his time.
nomy, and Music the scholars of Islam have                    The eschatology
of Dante's Divine Comedy was probably
surpassed their ancient predecessors. Still, although     drawn from Muslim
sources. Asin Palacios points out that
it can'be said with great probability that men nowa-      "The infernal
regions, the astronomical heavens, the circles
days have access to fuller knowledge than the             of the mystic rose,
the choirs of angels around the focus of
, . ancients, it is only fair to remember that it is likely   divine light,
the three circles symbolizing the Trinity-all
that a good many of the works of the ancients have        are described by
Dante exactly as Ibn u'I-Arabi described
perished.                                                  them l ."       '

The foremost Jewish scholar of the Middle Ages was                  AHThazzali
(1059-1111 AD.) was the Socrates of the
Moses Maimonides (1135-1204 A.D.) whose searching                   Muslims.
He knew the language of the mystics but did
criticism of the Arabian Mutakallimun was freely used by            not
succumb to their delusions of divinity. The chief
St. Thomas Aquinas. Another Jewish leader of thought                work of
this great Persian was The ReviVification of the
was Avicebron (Ibn Gabirol, mid-eleventh century)' of               Religious
Sciences. Apparently materialistic doubts nearly
Malaga, whose influence on Spanish metaphysical studies is           caused
him to lose his reason but he found sanity, retreat,
claimed to have even exceeded that of Al-GhazzaH. A                 and
sanctuary in prayer and meditation; he bade farewell
Nestorian Christian meriting honorable mention was                 to his
previous studies and issued a condemnation of hereti-
Hunayn Ibn Ishaq al-Ibadi (809-873 A.D.) who translated            cal
doctrines under the title Disintegration of the Philos-
Greek medical and mathematical treatises into Arabic;              ophers,
Rescuer from Error! The books of AHThazz:iIi on
philosophical works which he translated in whole or in part        logic,
physics, and metaphysics became known to Europeans
included the Categories, Physics, and Magna Moralia of             through the
Latin translations made in the twelfth century
Aristotle, and the Republic Laws. and Timaeus of Plato.            in Toledo.
AI-{Thazz1ili's treatise on the place of reason as
Ibn Hazm of Cordoba (994-1064 AD.) was the chief               applied to
revelation and theological theories may have
literary figure of his century in Spain. We remember him            inspired
some of the reasoning of the Summa contra Gentiles
as the founder of a logical, systematic treatment of the           of Thomas
Aquinas. Both agree on the value of human
subject of comparative religion. His original and valuable         reason in
explaining or demonstrating the truth about divine
,work in this field is entitled The Book of Religions and            things ;
the ideas of contingency and necessity as demon-
Philosophical Sects.      Az-Zamakhshad (1075-1143 A.D.)           strating
the existence of God ; the unity of God implied in
belonged to the philological school of theology and his            His
perfection; the possibility of the beatific vision; the
Unveiler is still the most popular commentary on the 'Qur'an       divine
knowledge and the divine simplicity; God's speech a

1   Arnold, op. cit., p. 21.                                       1 Arnold,  
op. cit.• p. 227.
86                 MUl.:lAMMAD THE EDUCATOR
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION         87
verbum mentis; the names of God ; miracles a testimony to
his deeper vision enabled him to reconcile statethe truth of the Prophet's
utterances; the dogma of the'
ments which seemed irreconcilable to others, The
resurrection of the dead l • Unlike many of the Sufis, AI-
more narrow and evil interpretation of the theory
GbazzaH did not desert the house of Islam or' claim exempof twofold truth was
expressly refuted by ,him
tion from its laws. He'clearly distinguished as three separate
(Miguel Asin, 1904),
and distinct stations the positions of God, the Prophet, a~d
As ,Guillaume has shown, Ibn Rushd and Thomas
man.
Aquinas stand side by side as defenders of the harmocy of
Most renowned of Muslim translators in Europe was
faith and reason and the" Angelic Doctor" uses many of the
Averroes or Abu'l-WaHd MuQ.ammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn
arguments which the "Muslim, Doctor" had previously
MuQ.ammad, Ibn Rushd, born in Cordoba in 1126 A.D. The                        
  employed. Guillaume contributes this comparison 1 :
doctrines of Averroes and Averroism are quite different as                    
             The resemblances between Averroes and St.
may be inferred from the fact that the University of Paris                    
          Thomas are so numerous that they must be traceable
which condemned Averroistic studies required its alumni                       
          to something firmer than mere coincidence. A
a century later to take solemn oath to teach only those                       
         ,common desire to reconcile philosophy and theology
things which were consistent with Aristotle as expounded by                   
          is not of great significance, but when the plan is
Averroes 2•     His T ahafut al-tahafut was a reply to                      
            worked out on parallel lines it is only natural to
AI-GbazziiH's attack on rationalistic philosophy. Sarton                      
          conclude that Averroes has bequeathed something
interprets this chief philosophical work of Ibn Rushd as                      
          more than a commentary on Aristotle to Christian
"essentially a reaction against the mysticism and pragma-                     
          scholarship.    In both writers we find after the
tism of al-Gbazzali, a return to what one might' call Aristo·                
           philosophical proofs of dogma quotations from the
telian positivism, as much as this could be reconciled with                   
          Qur'an or Bible; both begin by setting out doubtful
Muslim theology'," The idea of twofold truth; that the                        
          or apparently contradictory testimonies. We find
simple devout souls must be taught different things in less                   
          the same proof of God's existence from movement,
complicated terminology than would appeal to sophisticated                    
          and the providential guidance of the world; the
philosophers, has been attributed to Ibn Rushd in a pejora-                   
          same argument for God's unity from the unity of the
tive way. Actually, he probably did not mean to imply                         
          world. In advancing the proposition that in order
that the revealed teachings should be changed in substance                    
          to acquire knowledge of God one must use the
but merely that their exposition s1;J.ould be adapted to the                  
          method of via remotionis, both temper it with the
comprehension ot the auditor. Sarton defends him 4 :                          
          via analogiae.
Ibn Rushd was not by any means less honest and                            
Thus we see that the first study in Europe of the Old
sincere, nor was he necessarily less pious, than the                     and
New Testaments in a critical and systematic way was
other schoolmen; but he was more intelligent. and                        the
work of a Muslim, Ibn Hazm of Cordoba, and that St.
Thomas Aquinas was strongly influenced by both
AI-Gbazzali and Ibn Rushd.
1 Arnold, OPt cit., p. 274.                                                   
 The Muslim schools of theology and law may very
• Ibid.. p. 276.                                                           
possibly have produced an effect on the Christian divinity
• George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, Vol. II, p. 357.
• Ibid., p. 358.                                                            
   ,I   Arnold,op. cit., p. 280.

i !1
88                MUl)AMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                   
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION              89
schools established centuries later. Apart from the question            It has
already been mentioned that the true and most
of the validity of such a hypothesis, it is instructive to                    
             great miracle of Mul;tammad, the
Literature.
take: note of some facts pertaining to the Mustansiriyah at                   
             unlettered educator, was his gift of
Baghdad. This institution had four separate law schools,            the
Qur'an, the first prose book of the Arabs. This work
one for each Sunni sect, each accommodating 75 students            
perpetuated the Meccan dialect as the literary language of
under the guidance of a professor who received a monthly            the Arabs
and ultimately. by reason of the universal
salary. The 300 students each received one gold dinar a             character
of Islam as a mercy for all mankind. the common
month and· daily rations of bread and meat. There                   tongue of
the world of culture. Gibb concluded! :
was a library where rare manuscripts could be consulted                       
 The influence of the Koran on the development of
and pens and paper were furnished the scholars who wished                  
Arabic literature has been incalculable. Though for
to copy the manuscripts. Lamps and olive oil were supplied                  
several decades at least there was no other prose
for lighting the college. Food, drink, and medicines were                   
work written in Arabic and it exercised little
appropriately kept in readiness. A clock in the hall marked                 
immediate influence on the poets, it was to the
the hours of the day and the times of prayer. The Mustan-                  
studies connected with the Koran that the majority
siriyah also had a bath house and a hospital with a resident                
of branches of Arabic literature owed their
physician who prescribed for the sick.                                      
origin.
It is impossible to pa~s final judgment on metaphysics,             It was the
Islamic literature of Spain that exercised the
let alone the Muslim contribution to the subject. One               most
profound influence on European literary developcan with discretion go along
with Guillaume who ventured           ments. Spanish genius played an
important role in the
the following cautiously prophetic utterance! :                    
development of strophic measures, but in return there was
When all the rich material in Europe's libraries        the interaction of the
refinements of technique imposed by
has been brought to light it may yet be seen that          Arabic la ws of
form and metre upon the strophe in its
the abiding influence of the Arabs on medieval             literary form (the
muwashshah). reproduced in the popular
civilization is much greater than has hitherto been        bilingual ballad
(the zajal) and thence creeping into purely
recognized.                                                romantic poetry·.
Gibb terms Ibn Zaydun of Cordoba
Guillaume voices the feeli~gs of many impartial investi·        (1003-1071
A.D.) the greatest of the Spanish poets of the
gators when he concludes· :                                         age,
both, in his early love-songs and in his later poetic
To do justice to the many ramifications of Muslim        epistles.    His
contemporary and fellow-townsman, Ibn
influence a history of medieval culture would have         Hazm (994.1064
A.D.) wrote a book about love expressing
to be written, and far-reaching controversies would        the spirit of
romanticism and unfolding an anatomy of love
be stirred. The streams of national culture flow           whose sentiments
were inadequately and imperfectly echoed
into the vast ocean of human thought; once they            a century later by
the troubadours. The Muslim contrireach the sea it is difficult, if not
impossible, to       bution to the form, the .subject-matter, and spirit of
separate the fresh from the salt.                          European poetry was
so considerable that it led Professor

1 Arnold, op. cit., p. 282.                                        I Gibb, op.
cit., p. 26.

'Ibid., p. 281.                                                   , Arnold,
op. cit., p. 189.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                 91
90                   MUI;iAMMAD THE EDUCATOR
are of Persian origin: "check," for instance, is derived from
Mackail to exclaim: "As Europe owes its religion to                    
shahmat.
]udrea, so it owes its romance to Arabia.") The Arabian                    ,
Arabic words carried over into Spanish include funduq
Nights infused into literature the spirit of adventure, supply-   '1'  
(fonda, hotel) ; tahuna, mill (tahona, bakery) : ta'rif, notice.
. ing the clue that led to the writing of Robinson Crusoe,               
definition (tarifa, tariff); ar-ruz (arroz, rice); as-saqiya
which had an earlier. Arabic counterpart, and even to
Gulliver's Travels. a
I    (acequia. canal or dyke) ;' as-sutaiha (azotea, flat roof);
al.qubba, dome; (alcoba, bedroom) ; tarima (tarima, stand,
I
The elements of Muslim cosmogony and the legends of                 footstool)
; al-mukhadda (almohada, ' pillow); quba', outer
the ascent of. Muhammad have entered into the Divina                   
garment (gaban, overcoat);' al-banna' (albanil, builder);
Comedia and· Arabic philosophical ideas and the imagery                
ad-da'a'im, pillars, supports (andamio, , scaffolding); aland. eroticism of
Muslim mystics are clearly reflected in               malmzan (almacen,
warehouse) ; af-qatran (alquitran, tar) ;
Dante's works and are also discernible in the chief concep-            
al-kira' (alquiler, hire); 'awar (averia damage) ; al-diwan
tions of the other poets of the dolce stil.nuovo. 8                    
(aduana, customhouse, cf. French douane) ; taqa (taquilla,
Ib~Qutayba (d. 885 A.D.) wrote, in ten volumes, a                   ticket
office); al-qadi, judge (alcalde; mayor); al-wasi
literary thesaurus entitled The Fountains of Story. In the             
(albacea, executor) ; hatta (hasta, until) ; faniqa, a large sack
Book of Subjects of Knowledge and in his Book of Poetry and            
(fanega, H bushels); as-sukkar, Persian, shakar (azucar,
Poets, he challenges the presumed superiority and matchless-            sugar)
; sharab, drink (jarabe, syrup) ; Guadalajara is derived
ness of the ancient Arabic poetry of the jahiliyya: "I have             from
the Arabic wadi-l-hijara, the river of stones;
not preferred the ancient poet for his antiquity nor scorned           
Guadlquivir from wadi-l-kabir, the great river; Guadarrama,
the modern poet for his recency, but have. scanned both                 
wadi-l-ramla, the sandy river; Guadalupe, wadi-l-lubb, woIt
with an equitable eye and given each one his due.'                      river.
, Cervantes declared that the original of Don Quixote was                  As
Farmer aptly and poetically puts it~ music accomthe work of a Moor named "Sidi
Hamete ben Engeli" and
panied the Arab from the lullaby to
that the novel had originally been written in Arabic. This              The
Muslim Musical
Influence. '           the elegy, from the cradle to the grave.
ascription is quite possibly fictional but it attests the                     
                Interest in music is further demonprestige of the Arabs.      
                                           strated by the fact that the
Muslims carried the manufac-
Volumes have been written on the influence of Arabic                ture of
musical instruments to a fine art. The flowering of
on the languages of Spain and Portugal and even of the                  the
art of music did not occur until after the advent of
Anglo-Saxon countries. Dozy and others have compiled                   
MuQ.ammad.
lengthy glossaries; the words given here are merely repre-
, Al-Buzjani (d. 998 A.D.), one of the greatest of the
sentative of multitudes to be found elsewhere. The con-
Arab mathematicians, composed an important Compendium
tributions of Persian to other languages would doubtless
on the science of Rhythm. Al-F1irabi (Latinized, Alfarabius),
merit extensive research. Some of the terms used in the
a Turkish Muslim (died in the middle of the tenth century
game of chess, borrowed by Europe from the Muslim world,
A.D.) wrote the most significant oriental work on musical
1   Arnold, op. cit., p:191.                                        theory, On
Music. Farmer avers, "The introduction to al-
• Ibid.• p.201.                                                    
Farabi's Grand Book on Music is certainly, equal, if not
• Ibid.• p. 198.                                                   
superior, to anything that has come down to us from Greek
• Gibb, op. cit., p. 55.
92                    MUI:JAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                 
  CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION             93

sources,"l Instruments of the lute, pandore, harp, and                 Cordoba
and Cairo, the Alhambra, and the Taj Mahal come
woodwind families were described by al-Kindi (died around              to
mind. These marvellous edifices richly deserve the
874 A.D.), aI-FaraH, al-Khwarizmi (tenth century A.D.),                honors
that have been showered upon them; their influence
and the Ikhwan al-Safa' (tenth century A.D.), hu~dreds                 on
European architecture was overwhelming,
of years before European musicologists wrote about them.                  It
was the Faith of Islam which was the transmuting
Instead of merely accepting Greek tuning, the Muslims             factor in
welding together the diverse architectural styles
experimented with the neutral third of Zalzal (22/27) and             and
modes of buildjng into one style exemplifying the spirit
the Persian third (68/81). The Systematist School of Safi              of
unity in diversity. The first buildin~s erected by the
aI-Din (d. 1294 A.D.) produced what Sir Hube~t Parry                   Muslims
were mosques and palaces ; the important strucacclaimed as the "most perfect
scale ever devised." In the             tures of the following
centuries-mosques, governmental
opinion of Helmholtz, "their use of the major 7th of the              
buildings, observatories, and schools-bore a close relationship to Islam. The
buildings continued to show individual
scale as a leading note to the tonic marks a new concepdifferences and varying
characteristics but, whether in the
tion, which admitted of being used for the further develop-
East or in the West, the likenesses were more striking and
ment of the tonal degrees of the scale, even within the
apparent than the differences.
domain of purely homophonic music,"ll The major seventh
.The most original contribution of the Mosque at Cordoba
as the leading tone to the tonic has since been employed
to architectural advance was the system of vaulting based
by aU leading composers of the West.
on intersecting arches and visible intersecting ribs, a system
Morris dancers, i.e., Moorish dancers, are reminiscent of
which attacks the main problem of architecture-that of
Arab minstrels. As late as 1589, they painted their faces
covering space with a roof-in much the same way as the
to resemble the Moors. The word "troubadour" may quite
Gothic vaulting which developed two centuries later. 1
possibly have been derived from the Arabic tarrab, minstrel.              The
Great Mosque at Samarra has in the south wall of
The origin of the words "lute," "rebec," "guitar," and                the
sanctuary a row of small window-openings of cusped or
"naker" from the Arabic al-'ud, rabab, qitara, and naqqara,            
multifoil heads; if this feature did not originate in India,
respectively, is well established. 8 Prior to the Islamic               and
such an origin has not been proven, it must be credited
contact, European minstrels had only the cithara and harp              to the
Muslims. Even more important in this mosque is the
among stringed instruments. and the ear was the sale guide             method
used to support arcades-brick Piers, octagonal· on
in tuning, The Arabs brought to Europe their lutes,                    a
square base and each having four circular or octagonal
pandores, and guitars, with the places of the notes fixed on           marble
shafts joined with· metals dowels and having bellthe fingerboard by means of
frets (cf. Arabic farida, fard.)           shaped capitals. The impressive
external walls of the
At the mention of Islamic architecture, such structures,           Mosque of
Ibn Tulun in Cairo (started in 876 A.D.) are
Architecture.
as the exquisite mosques of I~fahan            crowned with ornamental
battlements which may be regardwith their intricate tile patterns, the        
ed as the prototype of Gothic pierced and crested
massive mosque of Seville, the Giralda, the mosques of                
parapets l • Cairo used light and dark stone alter-

1   Arnold, 01" CIt., p. 367.
I   Arnold. op. cit., p. 12.
• Ibid., p. 368.
~ Ibid., p. 166.
• IbId., p. 374,                                             i~
94                    MUI;lAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION              95

nately in horizontal courses. DJ;. John S. Badeau, President         inkling
of a further debt to the medieval Muslims. Muslim
of the American University at Cairo, once remarked to the            artisans,
known as Mudejare!;:, built the Alcazar in Seville
writer that the Mosque of Ibn Tullin, with its dignity and           and
excelled in woodwork, pottery and textiles, and were
simplicity, was the kind of place in which he could pray and         the
creators of the Spanish national style, perhaps the most
worship and sense a nearness to God. Pisa, Genoa, Siena,            
characteristIcally Spanish contribution to the art of Europe;
Firenze, and other Italian cities may have borrowed the!r            their
work is to be seen all over Spain. The glazing of wallsimilar architectural
practices such as using dark and light         tiles, an ancient art in Egypt,
persisted in obscurity until
stone alternatingly, from Cairo, a city with which they had          the Arab
invasion when, under Muslim influence, potters
close trading relations during the Middle Ages. It is known.          again
commenced experimenting with new technical procesthat the Crusaders, termed
marauders by the Muslims,                  ses and ornamental schemes. In
Venice, Muslim metal work
acquired ideas about fortification from the Saracens.                 inspired
native craftsmen so profoundly that a distinct
Authorities on the history of architecture ascribe the           
Venetian-Oriental school came into being; Muslim technique
invention of the pointed arclJ. to the Muslim architects of           and
designs were adapted to Italian Renaissance taste!.
Syria and Egypt. The agee arch almost certainly and the                  The
gold tooling and lettering now universal upon fine
"Tudor" arch possibly have a similar origin. . Probably the           leather
bindings find expression by means that were pertracery-patterning of surfaces
and conceivably even' the              fected by Muslim artisans. Toward the
end of the sixbar-tracery in windows are Islamic in derivation. The           
     teerith century. some books bound in the Occident featured
mashrabi""ah or lattice of woodwork used to conceal the               Oriental
end papers. The following passage epitomizes
women's apartments of a house or as the screen in a mosque,           Europe's
debt to Islam in the minor arts· :
were copied in English metal grilles.! Thompson states                        
  Ever since the beginnings of Islam,. Western piety,
that "The cathedrals of the Midi were situated upon routes                    
learning, commerce, and curiosity have found each
followed by thousands of pilgrims and borrowed alchitec~                     .
something to its taste in the products of Muslim
tural motifs from the mosques of the Peninsula."·                            
 skill; but in knowledge of their technical excellence
Reproduction of the human form was regarded as for':'                      and
their beauty master craftsmen such as Odericus
bidden to Muslims generally (the                       of Rome, who in 1286
wrought Islamic patterns upon
Minor arts.
Persians did not always subscribe to                   the inlaid marble
pavement of the Presbytery of
this doctrine), and this attitude held back progress in paint-                
Westminster Abbey, and William Morris, who wove
ing and sculpture. The Islamic world has not contributed                      
another into his velvet in 1884, together with a host
significantly to portrait-painting but the miniatures of Iran                 
of others before, since, and between them, have time
reveal mastery of form and color. It is in the minor arts                     
and again refreshed Western art from a fund which
that the Arab world made greater contributions.                               
has been to us rather an annuity than a legacy.
The name "arabesque" given to conventional bas-relief
patterns in England from Elizabethan days onwards gives an

I    Arnold, OPt cit. p. 178.                                        I 
Arnold, OPt cit.. 12: 193.
I   Thompson, op. cit., 12 : 193.                           It        •
Ibid., pp. 150-51.
,
96                  MUl:iAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                              
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                       97

The Arabic language lends itself very well to scientific       his province;
be composed 265 treatises on music. astrouse by rea'son of itl? flexibility
and    nomy, and medicine and, at least to his own satisfaction, har-
Mathematics and
Astronomy.             precision. It preserved and transmitted   monized the
philosophies of Plato and Aristotle AI-Far@ani
the scientific theories of the Greeks      wrote a compendium of astronomy
which was translated into
and during the early Middle Ages was the international           Latin by the
indefatigable Gerard of Cremona and by Johannes
language of research. Baron Carra de Vaux wrote1 :               Hispalensis.
At the time of the Renaissance. Regiomontanus
When at the Renaissance the spirit of man was         studied the Compendium,
and Melanchthon published an
once again filled with the zeal for knowledge and        edition based on that
study in 1537 at Nuremberg.
stimulated by the spark of genius, if it was able to.        The early leader
in mathematicF was al-Khwarizmi (the
set promptly. to work, to produce and to invent, it      word "algorism" or
"algorithm," signifying the Arabic
was because the Arabs had preserved and perfected        numerals one to nine
and zero was derived from his name)
various branches of know ledge, kept the spirit of re-   and it was from Latin
translations of his works on arithmetic
; search alive and eager and maintained it pliant and      algebra, and
astronomy that Europe received decimal nota~
ready for future discoveries.                            tion. With him
emerged the idea of the double sign: axlc
Mash'allah (d. 815 A.D.) wrote on astrology, on the            = bx ; he said
that in this case addition and subtraction
astrolabe, and on meteorology, and his book on pricel?, de        could be
equally well employed. The theory of equations
mercibus, is the oldest scientific work that we possess in        of the
second degree remained as al-Knwarizmi left It untIl
Arabic. The astrolabe, invented by the Greeks and improved        the
sixteenth century. In the eighteenth century, Leonardo
by Ptolemy the Alexandrian, was perfected by the Muslims          Fibonacci of
Pisa, a well-known algebraist. avowedly owed
and transmitted by them to Europe in the tenth century.           a great deal
to the Arabs whose methods he regarded as
Questa b. Luqa of Barlbek (flourished 835 A.D.) made              superior to
that of Pythagoras. The zero WdS known to the
during the reign of that generous patron of learning, al-         Arabs at
least 250 years before it came to the West. The
Mamun, renderings into Arabic of Aristotle and other             words
"algebra" and "cipher" (sifr, empty) survive as
philosophers and wrote copiously on mathematics, astro-          witnesses
otthe part played by the Arabs in the foundation
nomy, and so on.                                                 and diffusion
of the science of calculation.
AI-Mamun had a degree of the meridian measured in                 Tl!abit ibn
Qurra (born 826 A.D.), often considered the
the plain of Sinjar by a method that would have startled the      greatest
Arab geometrician, translated into Arabic seven of
Greeks: A number of observers setting out from the same           the eight
books of the conic sections of Apollonius and
point walked, some to the north, the others to the south,         thtis
preserved three that are now Jost in the original
until they had seen the pole star rise and sink one degree.       Greek.1 The
use of sines is not a Greek invention borrowed
They then measured the distance traversed and took the            by the
Arabs, but a real step taken by the Muslims toward
mean of the results; they unwisely failed to adhere to the        the science
of trigonometry. It was ibn Qurra, not aI-Battani,
mean but adopted the larger of the figures, 56 2/3 miles, a       who, of all
Muslim mathematicians, was the first to use sines. I
result slightly too large.
AI-Kindi (died in the middle of the ninth century AD.)             I Arnold.
op. cit., p. 387.
in Baconian fashion took the whole field of Greek science as           • A.
Adnan. "Review of Salih Zeki's Athar·i-Baqiya," Isis. 19: 508
1 Arnold. op. cit.• p. 370.
(September 1933).
98                 MUl;lAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                    
              CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION               99

In his treatise on the balance, al-Khazini highly developed                   
   tables of cotangents in parts of the gnomon based on the
the idea of equilibrium and of gravity and he dhcussed                        
         .        cos a 12
specific gravities. l                               .   .                     
   equatIon cot a     .     . The altitude of the sun is deter-
SIn a
AI-Battani made his astronomical observations from 877                      
mined, starting from the cotangent, by the formula sin
to 918 A.D. Calculations or observations like those relating                  
   (90 .)     cot a 60
to the first appearance of the new 'moon, to the inclination.                 
      -a ,),(121 +cot1 oc:)
of the ecliptic, to the length of tropic and sidereal year, to                
                   sinoc:tanoc      cosoc:l             ..
lunar anomalies, to eclipses, and to parallaxes show greater                  
   :The formulre v(l +tanoc:)' yI{12+tan2oc:) are explamed In
divergence from Indian· methods and are more refined,                        
      al-BattanL "ThIS brings us very far beyond the point reached
complicated, and accurate than those of al-Khwarizmi. He                      
     by the Greeks and really opens the era of modern science."l
substituted the sine for the chord in trigonometry, used                      
     In the works of Abu'l-Wafa' is also to be found the secant,
tangent imd cotangent, and was acquainted with two or                         
     the introduction of which is often erroneously attributed to
three fundamental relations in trigonometry. Bartold                          
     Copernicus. Thus during the tenth and eleventh centuries;
claimed that'the first knowledge of trigonometrical functions                 
     Islamic thinkers gave final form to these discoveries which
in. Europe was derived from al-BattanLI                 ,                     
     are at the very foundation of twentieth-century civilization.
. The introduction of tangents as a trigdnometrical line in                   
       AI-Kindi (d. 873 AD.), first of the great scholastics,
the formulas was accomplished by Abu'l-Wafa'. Regiomon-                       
     wrote on meteorology and optics. He also endeavoured to
tanns did not rediscover the tangents but found them in the                   
     discover the laws governing a falling body. AI-Farabi's
writings of al-Battani, Jabir ibn Aflah, or others. The                      !
     great work on music contains the germ of the idaa of
Hindu arithmetic was greatly developed by the Arabs. They                    1
     logarithms, the musical theory of the Arabs finding expresincluded in it
all the rules for the determination of unknown                       sion in
fractions. Carra de Vaux elucidates l :
quantities, for instance, the rule of double false position,
and the proportions and geometrical probletns giving
numerical values to lines, planes and solids. Abu'!-Wafa'
I                 It contains logarithms in posse because the addition
of the intervals, fourths, tones, semitones, quartertones, et cetera,
corresponds to the multiplication
translated the algebra of Diophantus and with him                             
            of the lengths of chords which define them and
trigonometry becomes more explicit and acquires the                           
            the subtraction of the intervals corresponds to
formula for the addition of the angles:                                       
            the division of these terms: the' notes on a
.        sin a cos b sin b cos a I .                      I                   
          stringed instrument are connected by a logarithmic
sm (a+b)              R.           . CopernIcus was apparent y
law.
unaware of this formula of Abu'!- Wafa'. Abu'l-Wafa' also                     
         Omar Khayyam CU mar b. Ibrahim al-Khayyami) wrote
studied the quadrature of the parabola and the volume of                      
    his poems and mathematical treatises in the late eleventh
the paraboloid.                                                               
   ,and early twelfth centuries A.D. (died 1123 A.D,). His
Habash, contemporary of al-Battani who died in 929                            
works are characterized by power of logic and penetratin~
.A.D., divided the gnomon into sixty palts. Hence we get                      
  . insight. Carra de Vaux acclaimed his Algebra in these

1 Arnold, op. cit., p. 388.                                                   
  1 Arnold. op. cit., p. 389.
• Bartold, op. cit., p. 50.                                                 
    • Ibid•• p. 391.
"

____   n             •••     _
100                MUI;iAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                               
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                101

words:' "His Algebra is a book of the first rank and one          of plane and
spherical trigonometry which, properly speakwhich represents a much more
advanced state of this science       ing, did not exist among the Greeks.
than that we see among the Greeks."1 The 'greater part                Ameer
'Ali pointed out that Muhammad contradicted
of the book is devoted to cubic equations. His fourth             the
Ptolemaic and Grecian concepti~ns of stars as gems
category of equations contains the three classes: x+bx            fixed in
crystalline domes; the Prophet referred to these
=cx+d; x+cx=bx+d; x+d=bx+cx. Sarton: hailed                       celestial
bodies as swimming in their orbits. The Bihdru'l-
Omar's calendar 2 :                                               Anwar quotes
Imam la'far-as Sadiq's statement to a heretic:
The eleventh century approached its end with an      "God has' so arranged'
about the stars, that they swim in
astounding achievement: the Tarikh Jalali of Oma'r     their orbits."
Mul,1ammad also referred to the sun moving
Khayyam (1079) which was probably more accurate        in a fixed place and to
the eleven planets, but the ecclesiastithan our Gregorian calendar. '         
               cal authorities interpreted away those remarks that did not
"When Alfonso of Castille wanted to construct an             conform to the
Ptolemaic astronomy. Ii: took the scientists
armillary sphere, which would be the finest and best that         a thousand
years to learn the truth of that which the
had ,yet been made, it was to the Arabs that he turned for        Prophet had
revealed.
information. "8                                                      
Mul,1ammad Ibn Shakir (died 873 A.D.) ascertained the
Nasir aI-Din edited the works of Greek and Muslim           obliquity of the
ecliptic, marked for the' first time the varia..
predecessors and wrote a treatise on the quadrilateral, a       tions of the
lunar altitudes, determined the procession of
first-rate book on spherical trigonometry. He dispensed         the equinoxes,
and observed the movements of the solar
with the use of Ptolemy's theorem of the quadrilateral          apogee (which
were unknown to the Greeks). According
with a "supplementary figure" which is simply the idea          to Ameer 'Ali,
"Abu'! Hassan invented the telescope, of
that sines of angles are proportional to those of the sides,    which he
speaks as 'a tube to the extremities of which were
sin a sin b sin c            .                               attached
diopters'," 1 Ameer' Ali quoted SediIlot on
. A . B         C· To thIS rule he add sa method of the       Abu'!-Wafa'2 :
sm sm, sm                         '
·     . b --C-.
tan c "T'      .                  Struck by the imperfection of the lunar
theory of
tangent b ase d on t h ere IatlOn   sm           rlgonometry,            
Ptolemy, he verified the ancient obsprvations, and
tan
plane and spherical, is now well established and finds in               
discovered, independently of the equation of the
this book its first methodically developed and deliberate               
centre and the eviction, a third inequality, which is
•
expresSIOn.  4                                                           no
other than the variation determined six centuries
The Arabs taught the use of ciphers and thus founded                later by
Tycho Brahe.
the arithmetic of everyday life. They made algebra an               Highly
important in the development of mathematical
exact science, developing it considerably, and laid the         geography was
the Jami' al-mabadi' wal-ghayat (1229 A.D,)
foundations of analytical geometry. They were the creators      of aI-Hasan
al-Marrakushi. Superior to any similar work of
its time and a genuine contribution to both astronomy and
geography, it includes the co-ordinates of 135 places, 34 of
1 Arnold, op. cit" 392.

• Sarton, op. cit" Vol. II. p. 28.
1 Ameer 'Ali, The Spirit of Islam, p. 345.
I Arnold, op. cit., p. 396.
'Ibid., pp. 346-47.
• ibid.. p. 397.
102                  MU.E;iAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                 
   CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION            103

them determined by personal observation. Sarton testi-                    He
erected the Madrisih at Bukhara on which was infied that "No medireval writer
has taken equal pains to                   scribed: STRIVING FOR KNOWLEDGE IS
THE DUTY
explain scientific methods and instruments." 1 '                          OF
EVERY MALE AND FEMALE MUSSULMAN', He
In the last half of the thirteenth century, 'Ali ibn 'Umar            built an
observatory for scientists from Persia and their
al-Katibi and Qutab ai-Din ai-Shirazi, Persian astronomers,              
pupils. Truly a scholar on the throne it was in his name
discussed the possibility of the rotation of the earth but                that
the astronomical tables and cataloiue of stars reprerejected the idea on the
mechanical ground the suhlunar                   senting, according to
Bartold, the last word in the astronomotiom; cannot be circular. Qutb aI-Din
formulated the                    my of the Middle Ages and the highest point
which astrofirst satisfactory theory of the rainbow. a AI-Biruni              
      nomical science had reached before the perfecting of the
(died 1048 A.D.) summarized in twelve books the astra':'                
telescope, were compiled and published"
nomical science of the Arabs under the title, The Canon          1           
It has been asserted that the glory of Muslim science
J
Dedicated to Mas·ud. Evidence that he was a precise and                 .
Physical and chemical  is in the field of optics. Meyerhof
exacting scholar is revealed in his study of comparative
chronology, The Surviving Monuments of Past Generations.
In India, he treated an alien civilization objectively.' He
lI       science.              concluded that "Here the mathematical abiIi,ty
of an Alhazen and a Kamal
aI-Din outshone that of Euclid and Ptolemy:'· Outstand-
II
translated the Patanjali, Yoga Sutra, and many other Indian      I',I     ing
among the scientists who developed the knowledge of
books into Arabic. When he compiled the Canon, it is             II      
optics was Abu 'Ali aI-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (965-1038

~
said that the Sultan Mas'ud rewarded him with an elephant-               
A.D.) of Basra. His main work, On Optics, survives only
load of silver but he returned it to the treasury, pleading               in
Latin translation. He discussed the propagation of
his ability to do without.                                        I      light
and colors, optical illusions, the law of reflection,
In astronomy, the Muslims made valuable observations
.j
spherical and parabolic mirrors, and refraction, and he
!      related the details of experiments for testing the angles of
and they preserved in translation a number of Greek works,
the originals of which have been lost, including: the three
books of the Conics of Apollonius, the Spherics of Menelaus,
i      incidence and reflection. He was perhaps the first physicist
to note the magnifying power of lenses. He examined
the Mechanics of Hero of Alexandria, the Pneumatics of                    the
refraction of light-rays through transparent media (air,
Philo of Byzantium, a short book on the balance attributed              
water.). "In detailing his experiments, with spherical
to Euclid, and a work on the clepsydra ascribed to                      
segments (glass vessels filled with water), he comes very
Archimedes. s                                                            near
to the theoretical discovery of magnifying lenses. "3
From the eleventh to the seventeenth century, Persian                Roger
Bacon and all other medieval European writers on
influence dominated Chinese astronomical studies. In four-               
optics, notably Witelo, base their optical works largely on
teenth-century Byzantium, Persian studies were translated                
Opticre Thesaurus, a work which influenced Leonardo da
into Greek. Ulugbek, grandson of Timur (Tamerlane),                       
Vinci and Johann Kepler. Ameer 'Ali says of aI-Hasan· ;
ruled wisely the Mongolian Empire from 1409 to 1449 A.D.                      
     He corrected the Greek misconception as to the

1 Bartold. op. cit., p.127.
1 Sarton, op. cit., p.   42.                                           I
Arnold, op. cit., p. 345.
I   Ibid., p. 22.                                                      !
Ibid., p. 334.
I   Arnold, op. cit., p. 376.                                          •
Ameer •Ali, The Spirit of Islam, p. 347.
104                MUljAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIc CIVILIZATION           105

nature of vision, and demonstrated for the first           At-Farabi wrote an
important work on the classification
time that the rays of light come from external          of the sciences.
Similar in nature was Muhammad alobjects to the eye, and do not issue forth
from the     Khwarizmi's Keys to the Sciences (976 AD.): The most
eye, and impinge on external things. He determined      renowned of the works
in this category was, of course,
the retina as the seat of vision, and proved that the   the Fihrist al-'UIum
(Index of the SC2ences) which appeared
impressions made upon it were conveyed along the'       around 987-988 AD.
from the pen of Ibn an-Nadim ; this
optic nerves to the brain. He explained the phe-        constitutes one of the
main sources of our knowledge of
nomenaof a single vision by the formation of visual,    the efforts of early
Islamic and Greek philosophers and
images on symmetrical portions of the two retinas.      scientists. The
History of Philosophers by Ibn al-Qifti
Ameer •Ali mentioned .the contents of the Balance of        (died in
Damascus, 1248 AD.) contains no less than 414
Wisdom1 :                                                       biographies of
Greek, Syrian. and Islamic physici~ns,
He describes minutely the connection between         astronomers and
philosophers, indicating the extent of the
the weight of the atmosphere and its density, and       Greek literature
possessed by the Arabs and giving much
how material objects vary in weight in a rare and       information about
Greek antiquity which has not survived
in a· dense 'atmosphere. He discusses the submer-       in dlssical sources.
1
gence of floating bodies, and the force with which         As Gibbon and
others have shown for many decades,
they rise to the surface when immersed in light or     the science of
chemistry owes a great debt to the industry
heavy media; he fully understands the principle of     of the Muslims who
invented and named the alembic (used
gravitation, and recognizes gravity as a force, He     for distillation),
analyzed vegetable, animal, and mineral
. knows correctly the rehltion between the velocities,   substances, tested
the affinities of alkalis and acids, and
spaces, and times of falling bodies, and has very      converted poisonous
minerals. into life-giving medicines.
distinct ideas of capillary attraction.                While these
constructive experiments were going for~ard,
Muslims were responsible for the main improvements in       many great Muslim
thinkers such as Ibn Khaldun, intellecthe art of warfare in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries,       tual giant of the fourteenth century. opposed
violently the
two treatises in Arabic on military science having been         ~'black magic"
type of alchemy.
written by the Syrian, ai-Hasan ar-Rammah.                          ]abir,
perhaps to be identified with Geber, was recog-
Kamal aI-Din (died around 1320 A.D.) improved on            nized as the
father of alchemy, but there were two Jabits
al-Hasan's experiments with the camera obscura. He also         living in
periods a couple of centuries apart. J abir at-Tusi
observed the path of the rays in the interior of a glass        died in 815
A.D. It appears that Jabir stated more lucidly
sphere in order to examine the refraction of sunlight in        and explicitly
the importance of experimental research than
raindrops, which led him to an explanation of primary and       any other
early chemist. No less an authority than Meyersecondary rainbows. According to
Sarton, "Some empirical
ho£ states that "His influence can be trllced throughout
knowledge of surface tension is revealed in the writings of
the whole historic course of European alchemy and
Bhaskara and al-Khazini,"l
chemistry,HlI He described, possibly introduced, improved

I Ameer 'Ali. The Spirit of Islam, p. 348,                    I   Arnold, OPt
cit.• p. 343.
• SaIton, OPt cit.• p. 28. .                                  I   Ibid.,
p. 327,
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                                         
                                   107
MUfJAMMAD THE EDUCATOR

methods of evaporation, filtration, sublimation, melting,                     
     it. I heated the apparatus day and night for 4 days,
distillation, and crystallization. He described the prepara-                  
     after which I opened it. I found that the mercury
(the original weight of which was t lb.) had been
tion of such chemical substances as cinnabar (sulphide of
completely converted into a red powder, soft to the
mercury) and arsenious oxide. Meyerhof elaborates on.
touch, the weight remaining as it was originaJIy.
Jabir's knowledge 1 :
This is an early and accurate observation of the oxida-
He knew how to prepare nearly pure vitriols,
tion of mercury-an experiment which, in the hands of
alums, alkalis, sal-ammoniac, and saltpetre, how
Lavoisier, led to epoch-making developments' in the
to produce so-called "liver" and "milk" of sulphur
eighteenth century.
by heating sulphur with alkali, and so on. He prepared fairly pure mercury
oxide and sublimate, as                    Berthelot was among the earliest
investigators in the
well as acetates of lead and other metals, sometimes             field of
Arabic chemistry and this perhaps accounts for
crystallized. He understood the preparation of                 . the high
standing often accorded his inquiries. Holmyard has
crude sulphuric and nitric acids as well as a mixture            shown,
however, that Berthelot is not a safe guide became
of them, aqua regia, and the solubility of gold and              he touches
onlv the fringes of the subject and his choice
silver in this acid.                                             of material
is inadequate. Berthelot knew chemistry well
From the writings of Jabir through Latin into modern                  but he
did not know Arabic; his translator, Monsieur
Houdas, knew Arabic but was uninformed in the science of
European languages have come such terms as realga~r.",
tutia, alkali, antimony, alembic, and aludel. His Book of tne . ~        
chemistry, with the result that numerous passages that he
translated simply do not make sense. Worst of all, Berthe-
Composition of Alchemy was translated into Latin by the
lot's pretensions to accuracy of translation are wholly
Englishman, Robert of Chester in 1144 A.D. The Book
unfounded.
of the Seventy was imperfectly and incompletely translated
into Latin by the noted Gerard of Cremona (died 1187                          
"The notable interest in the work of medireval
A.D.).                                                                   
Muhammadan chemists which has arisen is the last few
years probably has its origin in a fuller appreciation of the
The Rutbatu'l-Hakim, thought to have been written in
fact that the numerous puzzling problems presented by
the early eleventh century (probably not by al-MajritD,
European chemistry of the early Middle Ages cannot be
emphasizes practical experiment and presents the details of
solved until a thorough investigation has been made of the
an experiment performed by the author 2 :             ••
rise and development of chemistry in Islam, whence it was
I took quivering mercury, free from ImpUrIty,
and placed it in a glass vessel shaped like an egg.              imported to
Christendom during a long period beginning
in the first half of the twelfth century."1
This I put inside another vessel like a cooking-pot
Draper contrasts sharply and critically the respective
and set the whole apparatus over an extremely
gentle fire. The outer pot was then in such a                                 
             attitudes of Christianity and Islam
~~dicine
sCience.
and biological t
owar d biological science 2 :
degree of heat that I could not bear my hand upon
--_.---------- ---   .n   •• _ . _ • • . • • • • __   ..••
                  .•       _• • •

~

.

,

_

~
-~
_.~------------

I  E. J. Holmyard, "A Critical Examination of Berthelot's Work
1    Amold. op. cit., p. 328.
• E. J. Holmyard, "Muslim al-Majriti· and the Rutbau'l Hakim,"    upon
Arabic Chemistry," Isis. 6 : 479.
~ Draper, OPt cit., Vol. II, pp. 121-22.
Isis, 6: 302.

1/ 108                   MUl;,iAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                            
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION            109

Mohammedanism had aU along been the patron of          Greek medical
knowledge, adding thereto the Arabic co?-
physical science; paganizing Christianity not            tribution in his
monumental Canon of M~dicine (al-Qanun
only repudiated it, but exhibited towards it             fi't-Tibb), the
"culmination and masterpiece of Arab
sentiments of contemptuous disdain and hatred.           systematization."
This book was translated into Latin by
Hence physicians were viewed by the Church with          Gerard of Cremona in
the twelfth century and it was issued
dislike, and regarded as atheists by the people, who     fifteen times in
Latin and once in Hebrew during the last
held firmly to the lessons they had been taught that     thirty years of the
fifteenth century. From the time of its
cures must be wrought by relics of martyrs and           translation by Gerard
until the seventeenth century, it
bones of saints, by prayers and intercessions and        was the guide of
medical study in European universities,
that each region of the body was under some              continuing in use at
MontpeUier and Louvain until 1650.
spiritual charge-the first joint ,of the right thumb           Ibn Sina
recognized the importance of the emotions in
being in the Care of God the Father, the second          healing. When a
person had a mental or other di~ease
. under that of the Blessed Virgin, and so on of, other,   caused by
separation from a loved one, he would discover
parts. For each disease there was a saint.               tile name and address
of the loved one in this manner! :
It remained for the Muslims to teach the Christians                        The
device whereby this may be effected is that
cleanliness.                                                                
many names should be mentioned and repeated
Ar-Razi (Rhazes, died around 930 A.D.) was the greatest                  while
the finger is retained on the pulse, and when
of the medlreval doctors, and served for a time as physician-               it
becomes, very irregular and almost ceases, one
in-chief at the great hospital at Baghdad. He introduced                   
,should then repeat the process.
the use of minoratwes and is said to have invented the seton           
Similarly streets, houses, and families are mentioned.
and discovered the nerve of the larynx.! His scientific            "Then,"
concluded Ibn Sina, "if you can discover no cure
output amounted to more than 200 works, half of which               except to
unite the two in such wise as is sanctioned by
were medical. His treatise, On Smallpox and Measles                 religion
and law, you will do this.";
presented the first clear account of these diseases extant.             Among
the works of Ibn Sina is an important treatise on
This work was translated into Latin, English, and various          the
formation of mountains, stones, and minerals, a scientific
other languages and printed forty-odd times between 1498           document
bearing· significantly on the development of
and 1866 A.D. a                                                     knowledge
of geology and notable particularly for its discus-
Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809-877 A.D.) translated into Arabic          sion of the
infltienceof earthquake, wind, water, temperanearly the whole of Galen's
Missive. He was responsible             ture, sedimentation, desiccation, and
other causes of solidifor Galen's supreme position in the Orient during the   
           fication.
Middle Ages and, indirectly, also in the Occident.                       Abu
Rayh1in Mu1}.ammad al-Biruni (973-1048 A.D.)
,           One of the greatest scholars of the Islamic world was Abu       
determined almost exactly the specific weight of eighteen'
'Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina (980-1037 A.D.) known to the West
)         as Avicenna. He con~entrated and restated the leg'acy of
precious stones and metals, described many minerals from
the natural, commercial, and medical point of view, and

1 Ameer 'Ali, The Spirit of Islam, p.   355.                      1 Edward G.
Browne, Arabian ~\1edicine, p. 86.

I   Arnold, Opt cit., p. 323.                                     • Ibid.
·:1,;,:,,'
,I

iIi,
"

j:
110                  MUl;iAMMAD THE ED~CATOR                                 
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION              111

composed a pharmacology (saydala). Most of his mathema-              to .
inspection. Travelling hospitals were known in the
tical works remain unpublished. AI·Mas'udi (died in Cairo            eleventh
century.
around 957 AD.) in his delightful Meadows of Gold                        The
great hospital of aI-Mansur, founded at Damascus
described an earthquake, the waters of the Dead Sea, the             around
1284 A.D. by Qala'un aI-Malik aI-Mansur, had an
first windmills (possibly invented by Islamic peoples), and         endowment"
amounting to a million dirhams annually; it
he also set forth what has been termed the rudiments of a            was
opened to all sick persons, rich or poor, male or female.
theory of evolution. The treatises of the Christian oculist,         and had
separate wards for men and women. One ward
•Ali ibn ~'Isa of Baghdad, and of the Muslim' A mmar of Mosul        was set
apart tor fevers, another for ophthalmic cases, one
were the best textbooks on the eye-diseases until the first"'        for
surgical cases, and one for dysentery and kindred
half. of the eightheenth century when the renaissance of            
intestinal ailments.     There were in addition kitchens.
ophthalmology occurred in France.' The Moorish physician.           
lecture-rooms. a dispensary, and so on. 1
Ibn Kbatima (died 1349 AD.), wrote a book about the                     
Rashidu~d-D~n (b. 1247 AD.) described the achievements
plague that ravaged Almeria in Spain, 1348-49 A.D;, a                of Tabriz
vvith its 24 caravanserais, 1500 workshops, and
study far surpassing all the spate of plague tracts edited in        30,000
beautiful houses. There was a Scholars' Street on
Europe from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century.:                which
resided 400 divines, jurisconsults, and traditionists
'Abd aI-Latif (1160-1231 A.D.) contributed the Descrip-         with suitable
salaries and in the 'students' quarters were a
tion of Egypt, an original scientific work" on" flora, fauna,        thousand
scholars whose studies were subsidized and
and ancient monuments of Egypt. He also gave an account              directed
according to their aptitudes (guidancE.> in actual
of famines and earthquakes" in that land from 1200 to 1202            praCtice
somewhat comparable to the tutorial methods
A.D. and reported his osteological research in a cemetery           introduced
centuries later at Oxford and Cambridge
northwest of Cairo. Abandoning the arm-chair technique              
Uni\-ersities in England). Back of the hospital was the
cherished and practised by the Greeks, he established by              Street
of the Healers. Fifty physicians from various countries
observation that Galen was wrong in his description of the           were each
assigned ten students with definite hospital duties
lower jaw and the sa~rum.                                             (an
early application of the interneship and work-study
Draper, Baas, and many others have emphasized in no              ideas); the
hospital" had surgeons, oculists, and boneuncertain terms that while the
Christians were kneeling               setters-in addition to the
physicians-and each was placed
before images and ragged relics in the hope of being cured,           in
charge of five students. 2
the Muslims had licensed physicians and pharmacists :md                  
Meyerhof expressed the thought that the Crusades may
accredited hospitals. The practice of medicine was regulated          have
been instrumental in transmitting to Christian Europe
in the Muslim world from the tenth century onwards. At                some of
the Muslim doctrines ragarding the care of the
one time, Sinan Ibn-Thabit was Chairman of the Board of               sicks:
Examiners in Baghdad. Pharmacists were aiso regulated                         
  We may suppose that the foundation of hospitals
and ~he Arabs produced the first pharmacopeia and estab-                     
throughout Europe during the thirteenth century,
lished the first drug stores. Barber shops were also subject                 
hospitals which were no longer under clerical

I Browne, op. cit.• p. 102,
1 Arnold, op. cit.• p. 332.                                        I  Ibid..
p. 109.
,~
I Ibid.. pp. 340-41.                                                a Arnold.
op. cit.• p. 349.
I
II
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                        113

MU~AMMADTHEEDUCATOR                                           Ibn an-Naffs (d.
1288 A.DJ was the first in time and
rank of the precursors of William Harvey. Three centuries
supervision alone, was partly due to the Crusades.                before
Michael Servetus, he propounded this theory of
They may well have been imitations of such splen-                 pulmonary
circulation! :
didly installed Bimaristans as that of the contem-                           
The blood, after having been refined must rise in
porary Seljuq ruler Nur· aI-Din in Damascus, a~d                          
~he arterious vein to the lung in order'to expand in
that of the Mamluk sultan aI-Mansur Qalawun 10                            Its
volume and to he mixed with air so that its
Cairo.                                                                    
finest part may be clarified and may reach the
Valuable Information on the Classes of Physicians by,                        
venous artery in which it is transmitted to the left
Ibn Abi Usaybi'a a physician and oculist of Cairo (died                       
    cavity of the heart.             .
1270 A.DI), is a kind of medical "who's who" dealing with.                   
Meyerhof credited at face value the statement of Ibn
more than 600 physicians, taking information' partly from               
a~-Nafis that his conclusions were based solely on theoreworks now lost,
partly from an intimate knowledge of ma~y                 tlc~l
considerations. With due respect to Meyerhof, the
thousands of medical studies. The main surgical 'treatIse               
w.!lter feels that this is not evident and he inclines to the
of the Arabs was the Kitdbu'l-tasrif of Abu'l-Qasim al-                  vl.ew
that Ibn an-Nafis may have engaged in dissection
Zahrawi, translated into Latin by Gerard of ,Cremona, ·and              
WIthout ~anting the public t~ know about it. Dissection
into Hebrew about a century later by Shem-tob ben Isaac.                was
forbIdden by, the ecclesiastical authorities and it is
The Kitdbu'l-Maltki of al-Majusi (d. 982 A.D.) contains             doubtful
that an obscure physician would be so indiscreet
this passage1 :                          .       '                      a~d
foolhardy as to confess in his writings that he had
And you must know that during the diastole such            VIolated the law.
Ibn an-Naffs reached conclusions that
of the pulsating vessels (i.e. the arteries) as are near        cou~d .hardly
have been based on a priori reasoning.
the heart draw in air and sublimated blood from the            He 1Oslst~d
that there is no passage between the right and
heart by compulsion of vacuum, because during the              left ventrIcles
of the heart, visible or invisible. He dared
systole they are emptied of blood and air, but                 to. refute
during the diastole the blood and air return aU 6..11                'd that .
claim of Avicenna (Ibn SI'nJ:) i:l.,
th e unquestlone med~c~l authority of the time, that the heart has
them. Such of them as are near the skin draw aIr               three
venttlc_es. No other leaders of contemporary medical
from the outer atmosphere; while such as are                   thought, so far
as we know, advanced such views. It is
intermediate in position between the heart and the            more than
possible that such conceptions were arrived at
skin have the property of drawing from the non-               not by
fo:tuitous guess-work but by dissection. Perhaps
pulsating vessels (i,e. the veins) the finest and most        a, lesser hgh:,
for such Ibn an-Nafis was among the practi-
,subtle of the blood. This is because in the non-              tIOners of hIS
day, would be more inclined to depart from
pulsating vessels (i.e. the veins) are pores communi-         the way~ of the.
past and have temerity to engage in a type'
eating with the pulsating vessels (i.e. the arteries).        o~
experImentatIOn frowned upon by the divines than would
The proof of this is that when an artery is cut, all          hIS co~leagues
~ith their larger and more lucrative practices
the blood which is in the veins also is evacuated.           and WIth less
tIme for research. Of course, this is a matter
Browne concluded: "Here, as it seems to me, we clearly s
have a rudimentary conception of the capillary system.                     
• YIaxMeyerhof.      "Ibn    an-Nafis an d h'IS Th eory of the Lesser
C irculation," ISIS. 23 : 116 (June 1935).

• Browne Op" cit., p. 124.
• Ibid.
114           MU1;IAMMAD THE EDUCATOR
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION           115
of conjecture,
The Treasure Book, sometimes attributed to Thlibitlbn               botany of
that age, Collection of Simple Drugs, collected
Qurra. concludes with a contraceptive measure said to                   plants
and drugs on the Mediterranean littoral from Spain
have been advised by al-Harith b; Kalada, contemporary                  to
Syria, described more than 1,400 medicinal drugs. and
of Muhammad 1 •                                                        
compared them with the records of over 150 authors
The 'Pilgrimage to Mecca played a prominent part in                preceding
him.
fostering the progress of biological sciencel :                            
"By far the most important herbalistic tradition in
.         The Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. the duty of            almost
every respect was the Arabic or Muslim one. "1
.     every Muslim, favoured the spread of science, since           
AI-{Thafiqi of Cordoba traveled widely in Spain and Africa
it compelled students from India and Spain, from               to collect·
samples "and he described them with greater
Asia Minor and Africa, to pass through many lands             precision than
had ever been done before. "II The great
where they could visit mosques and acadeniies and             geographer,
al-Idrisi, described 360 samples preceded by an
have intercourse with prominent scholars.        ' ,          elaborate
botanical introduction. Ibn aI-Sud botanized in
It is reported, for instance,' that a physician at Cadiz           the country
around Damascus, carefully a bserving plants
installed in the parks of the governdr a garden where he                at
different stages of growth.
cultivated rare medicinal plants brought back from his                     
The most important agricultural w.ork of the time was
travels. Sarton praised the accounts and narratives of the             
written in Arabic by the Moor, Ibn al-'Awwam of Seville.
Muslim pilgrims s :                                                     toward
the end of the twelfth century, It dealt with 585
The Arabic narratives of Muslim pilgrims are               plants-explained
methods of cultivating many different
far superior to the Christian ones and their scien-          varieties of
fruit trees, and included numerous valuable
tific value is greater. For example, the Latin               observations
including the rudiments of phytopathology.
relations are truly childish as compared with the            Sarton declared
that "horticultural improvements constione wherein Ibn Jubair of Valencia
described his             tuted the finest legacies of Islam, and the gardens
of
first journey to the Near East, 1183-1185. We have           Spain proclaim to
this day one of the noblest virtues of
also for the same period an elaborate guide book by          her Muslim
conquerors,"8 Among other important addithe Persian 'Ali al-Harawi; then about
a century             tions to alimentary products, they introduced such
plants CJf
later, the itineraries of another Valencian,                  medicinal or
pharmaceutical value as rhubarb, tamarinds,
Muhammad al-'Abdari and of the Moroccan,                     cassia, senna,
and camphor. Among the plants and drugs
Muhammad Ibn Rushaid. These Muslim travelers                 unknown to the
Greeks were these that came through the
were many-sided men who took pains to obtain                 Persians : amber,
sugar-cane, gaJange root. and musk.
information of various kinds and to meet famous                  Scholars who
should know better sometimes make the
scholars.                                                    unfounded
assertion that the medical school at Salerno was
Ibn aI-Baytar, author of the greatest Arabic book on              wholly
uninfluenced by the Muslims. The fact is that the
man whose genius was in large measure responsible for the
1 Max Meyerhof, "The Book of Treasures. an Early Arabic Treatise  
establishment of the new European centre of learning at
on Medicine." Isis, 14 :·73 (May 1930).
II Arnold, op. cit.. p. 337.
I Sarton, op. cit•• p. 35.                                             I
Sarton, op. cit.• p. 51.

• Ibid.
• Ibid., p. 56.
'~--'---

~.L                                                                           
   "       "   r

116                 MUI;iAMMAD THE EDUCATOR                                   
                       CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION                  
    117

Salerno was the monk Constantine who spent 39 years of                        
 I            striking of all, in literature featuring such giants among men
his life on a scientific pilgrimage in the East, returning from
Ba@dad to Salerno. 1 The inhumane treatment of the                          f 
              of all time as Hafiz {the tongue of the invisible}, Sa'di. and
JaIal u'd-Din Rumi, took place after she had benefited from
insane in Europe requires no comment other than that the                      
              the noble teachings of His Holiness Mul;tammad, one of the
Middle Ages were a dark age for mental cases but few                          
              few thorough educators of the human race.
students realize that the Muslims founded a lunatic asylum                    
                  Meyerhof advanced this beautiful analogical description
in Cairo in 1304 A.D., at least a century earlier than any~                   
              of the general role of Islamic medicine and science1 :
similar European institution on record.!         '      "                     
                          Looking back we may say that Islamic medicine
, Islamic thinkers devoted attention to various theori~s of                   
                     and science reflected the light of the Hellenic sun,
evolution. An-Nazzam (first half of the ninth century                         
                       when its day had fled, and that they shone like a
A.D.) explained the theory of an unfoldment of hidden                         
                       moon, illuminating the darkest night of the European
creation; The essential point of this doctrine is that crea-                  
                       Middle Ages; that some bright stars lent their own
tion was' complete at the outset although only part of it.                    
                       light, and that moon and stars alike faded at the
appears at a time. According to Sarton, "This is ,truly a                     
                       dawn of a new day-the Renaissance. Since they
theory of evolution. and tht: word evolution was first                        
                       had their share in the direction and introduction of
used by Charles Bonnet about 1762 'with that very                             
                       that great movement, it may reasonably be claimed
acceptation:" A Persian work, twelfth century, entitled,                      
                       that they are with us yet.
Four Discourses, tells of attempts to identify "missing links" ;              
                 It is the duty of every man of learning to follow after
it describes coral as intermediate between mineral and                        
             truth wherever it may lead, to investigate with a mind
vegetable kingdoms; the vine which, seeks to avoid and'                       
             from which all prejudice is banished. Clinging to the best
escape from the fatal embrace of a kind of bindweed called                    
             that the past has bequeathed to us, we must continue the
'ashaqa as intermediate between the vegetable and animal                      
             march of intellectual progress toward ever-unfolding
horikingdoms; and the nasnds, a kind of ape or wild man, as                   
                 zons. Above all, our outlook must be world-embracing
intermediate between the animal and human kingdoms.'                          
             and we are duty-bound to apply our knowledge for the
A strong case can be made for the belief that wherever                        
        benefit of humanity.
Islam penetrated it left in its wake a more advanced, an                      
                 Mul,tammad was indeed an educator, the tree of direcenriched
civilization. There are Persians who maintain                                 
    tion to guide humanity toward greater freedom and happithat Islam ruined
their country. History does not support                                  
ness. This study concludes with a passage from the Qur'an :
this chauvinistic. prejudiced statement. Iran attained the                    
                        God is the LIGHT of the heavens and of the earth.
summit in the arts and sciences when the light of Islam                       
                       His light is like a niche in which is a lamp-the lamp
shone at its fullest intensity. Her greatest achievements                     
                       encased in glass-the glass, as it were, a glistening
in astronomy. architecture, weaving and painting, and, most                   
                      star. From a blessed tree is it lighted, the olive
neither of the East nor of the West, whose oil
I   S. H. Leeder, "The Debt of Civilization to' the Arabs," Islamic           
                would well-nigh shine out. even though fire touched
Review, 4 :,69 (February 1916).                                               
                      it not! It is light upon light!
• Ibid., 4 : 70.
I  Sarton, op. cit.. p. 61.                                                   
          I   Arnold, op. cit.• P. 354.
& Browne. op, cit., pp.118·19.                                               
               N,B.- This study was slightly revised by the author in 1949.
    — Muhammad the Educator (Used by permission of the curator)