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Science In Al-Andulus
by
Paul Lunde
[Islamic culture was pre-eminently a culture of the book.
In the ninth century, the library of the monastery of St. Gall was
the largest in Europe. It boasted 36 volumes. At the same time,
that of Cordoba contained 500,000. It took much more than paper to
create an intellectual and scientific culture like that of Islamic
Spain. Islam, with its tolerance and encouragement of both secular
and religious learning, created the necessary climate for the
exchange of ideas. It has been estimated that today there are
250,000 Arabic manuscripts in Western and Eastern libraries,
including private collections. Yet in the 10th century private
libraries existed which contained as many as 500,000 books.
Literally millions of books must have perished, and with them the
achievements of a great many scholars and scientists, whose books,
had they survived, might have changed the course of history. As it
is, even now, only a tiny proportion of existing Arabic scientific
texts have been studied, and it will take years to form a more
exact idea of the contributions of Muslim scientists to the
history of ideas.]
The medieval
Christians of Spain had legend that Roderick, the last King of the
Visigoths, was responsible for unleashing the Arab invasion of the
Iberian Peninsula because, in defiance of his plighted word, he
unlocked the gates of an enchanted palace he had sworn not to tamper
with.
As far as
the West was concerned, the Arab invasion did unlock an enchanted
palace. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, Vandals, Huns
and Visigoths had pillaged and burned their way through the Iberian
Peninsula, establishing ephemeral kingdoms which lasted only as long
as loot poured in, and were then destroyed in their turn. Then,
without warning, in the year 711, came the Arabs - to settle, fall
in love with the land and create the first civilization Europe had
known since the Roman legions had given up the unequal fight against
the barbarian hordes.
Spain first
prospered under the rule al the Umayyads, who established a dynasty
there after they had lost the caliphate in the east to the Abbasids.
At first, the culture of the Umayyad court at Cordoba was wholly
derivative. Fashions, both in literature and dress, were imitative
of those current in the Abbasids' newly founded capital of Baghdad.
Scholars from the more sophisticated lands to the east were always
assured of a warm reception at the court of Cordoba, where their
colleagues would listen avidly for news of what was being discussed
in the capital, what people were wearing, what songs were being
sung, and - above all - what books were being
read.
For Islamic
culture was pre-eminently a culture of the book. The introduction of
paper from China in 751 gave an impetus to learning and an
excitement for ideas which the world had never before known. Books
became more available than they had been even in Rome, and
incomparably cheaper than they were in the Latin West, where they
continued to be written on expensive parchment. In the 12th century,
a man sold 120 acres of land in order to buy a single Book of Hours.
In the ninth century, the library of the monastery of St. Gall was
the largest in Europe. It boasted 36 volumes. At the same time, that
of Cordoba contained 500,000. The cultural lag between East and West
in the Middle Ages can be attributed partly to the fact that the
Arabs had paper while the Latin West did
not.
It took much
more than paper to create an intellectual and scientific culture
like that of Islamic Spain, of course. Islam, with its tolerance and
encouragement of both secular and religious learning, created the
necessary climate for the exchange of ideas. The court of Cordoba,
like that of Baghdad, was open to Muslims Jews and Christians alike,
and one prominent bishop complained that young Christian men were
devoting themselves to the study of Arabic, rather than to Latin - a
reflection of the fact that Arabic, in a surprisingly short time,
had become the international language of science, as English has
today.
Islamic
culture in Spain began to flourish in earnest during the reign of
'Abd al-Rahman II of Cordoba - as Arabic spread increasingly among
his non-Muslim subjects especially in the cities and led to a great
flowering of intellectual activity of all
kinds.
In a courtly
society the tastes and predilections of the ruler set the tone for
society at large, and 'Abd al-Rahman II, passionately interested in
both the religious and the secular sciences was determined to show
the world that his court was in no way inferior to the court of the
Caliphs at Baghdad. To this end, therefore, he actively recruited
scholars by offering handsome inducements to overcome their initial
reluctance to live in what many from the lands in the East
considered the provinces. As a result, many scholars poets,
philosophers, historians and musicians migrated to al-Andalus and
established the basis of the intellectual tradition and educational
system which made Spain so outstanding for the next 400
years.
Another
result was that an infrastructure of libraries - both public and
private - mosques, hospitals and research institutions rapidly grew
up and famous scholars in the East, hearing of these amenities,
flocked to the West. They in turn attracted students of their own;
in the Islamic world it was not at all unusual for a student to
travel thousands of miles to study at the feet of a famous
professor.
One of the
earliest of these scholars was 'Abbas ibn Firnas who died in the
year A.D. 888 and who, had he lived in the Florence of the Medici,
would have been a "Renaissance Man." He came to Cordoba to teach
music, then a branch of mathematics theory but - not a man to limit
himself to single field of study - soon became interested in the
mechanics of flight. He constructed a pair of wings made out of
feathers in a wooden frame, and attempted to fly - anticipating
Leonardo da Vinci by some 600 years.
Luckily
'Abbas survived, and, undiscouraged, turned his mind to the
construction of a planetarium in which the planets actually revolved
- it would be extremely interesting to know the details of the
gearing mechanism. It also simulated such celestial phenomena as
thunder and lightning and was, of course, a wild success. Next
'Abbas turned to the mathematical problems involved in the
regularity of the facets of certain crystals and evolved a formula
for manufacturing artificial crystals.
It must be
remembered that a knowledge of the achievements of men like 'Abbas
has come to us purely by chance. It has been estimated that today
there are 250,000 Arabic manuscripts in Western and Eastern
libraries, including private collections. Yet in the 10th century
private libraries existed which contained as many as 500,000 books.
Literally millions of books must have perished, and with them the
achievements of a great many scholars and scientists, whose books,
had they survived, might have changed the course of history. [In
1500, more than a million books including unique works of Moorish
culture were burned in Granada as reported by Kamen.] As it is, even now, only a tiny proportion of
existing Arabic scientific texts have been studied, and it will take
years to form a more exact idea of the contributions of Muslim
scientists to the history of ideas.
One of the
fields most assiduously cultivated in Spain was natural science.
Although Andalusian scholars did not make contributions as
fundamental as those made by their colleagues in the East, those
that they did make had more effect on the later development of
science and technology for it was through Spain and the scholars of
al-Andalus that these ideas reached the
West.
No school of
translators comparable to the House of Wisdom of al-Ma'mun existed
in Spain, and Andalusian scholars seem not to have interested
themselves in the natural sciences until the translations of the
House of Wisdom reached them.
Interest in
mathematics, astronomy and medicine was always lively because of
their obvious utility - mathematics for commercial purposes,
computation of the rather complicated Islamic laws of inheritance,
and as a basis for measuring distances. Astronomy was useful for
determining the times of prayer and adjusting the calendar and the
study of medicine needed no apology. The introduction of the new
Aristotelian ideas however, even in Arab dress aroused a certain
amount of suspicion in the conservative West, and it was some time
before public opinion would accept that Aristotelian logic did not
conflict with the Revelation.
Part of the
suspicion with which certain of the ideas emanating from the
scholars of the Abbasid court were viewed was due to an inadequate
distinction between sciences and pseudo-sciences. This was a
distinction which the Muslims made at a much earlier date than
Western scholars who, even during the Renaissance, tended to
confound astronomy with astrology, chemistry with alchemy. Ibn Hazm,
a leading Andalusian scholar of the 11th century and staunchly
conservative, was very outspoken on this point. People who advocated
the efficacy of talismans, magic, alchemy, and astrology he calls
shameless liars. This rational approach did much to make Islam
preeminent in the natural sciences.
The study of
mathematics and astronomy went hand in hand. Al-Khwarizmi's famous
book entitled The Calculation of Integration and Equation reached
al-Andalus at an early date, and became the foundation of much later
speculation. In it, Al-Khwarizmi dealt with equations algebraic
multiplication and division, measurement of surfaces and other
questions. Al-Khwarizmi was the first to introduce the use of what
he called "Indian" and what we call "Arabic' numerals. The exact
method of the transmission of these numerals - and the place-value
idea which they embodied - is not known, but the symbols used to
represent the numbers had slightly different forms in Eastern and
Western Islam, and the forms of our numerals are derived from those
used in al-Andalus. The work of al-Khwarizmi, which now only
survives in a 12th century Latin translation made in Spain, together
with a translation of Euclid's Elements became the two foundations
of subsequent mathematical developments in
al-Andalus.
The first
original mathematician and astronomer of al-Andalus was the 10th
century's Maslama al-Majriti. He had been preceded by competent
scientists - men like Ibn Abi'Ubaida of Valencia, who in the ninth
century was a leading astronomer - but al-Majriti was in a class by
himself. He wrote a number of works on mathematics and astronomy,
studied and elaborated the Arabic translation of Ptolemy's Almagest
and enlarged and corrected the astronomical tables of al-Khwarizmi
himself. He compiled conversion tables in which the dates of the
Persian calendar were related to Hijra dates so that for the first
time the events of Persia's past could be dated with
precision.
Al-Zarqali,
known to the Latin West as Arzachel, was another leading
mathematician and astronomer who flourished in Cordoba in the 11th
century. He combined theoretical knowledge with technical skill, and
excelled at the construction of precision instruments for
astronomical use. He built a waterclock capable of determining the
hours of the day and night and indicating the days of the lunar
month. He contributed to the compilation of the famous Toledan
Tables a highly accurate compilation of astronomical data. His Book
of Tables written in the form of an almanac (almanac is an Arabic
word meaning climate, originally indicating the stations of the
moon) contains tables which allow one to find on what day the
Coptic, Roman, lunar and Persian months begin; others give the
position of the various planets at any given time; and still others
allow prediction of solar and lunar eclipses. He also compiled
valuable tables of latitude and longitude; many of his works were
translated, both into Spanish and into
Latin.
Still
another luminary was al-Bitruji (the Latin scholars of the middle
ages called him Alpetragius), who developed a new theory of stellar
movement and wrote the Book of Form in which it is
detailed.
The
influence of these astronomical works was immense. Today for
example, the very appelations of the constellations still bear the
names given them by Muslim astronomers - Acrab (from 'aqrab,
"scorpion"), Altair (from al-ta'ir, "the flyer"), Deneb (from dhanb,
"tail"), Pherkard (from farqad, "calf") - and words such as zenith,
nadir and azimuth, all still in use today, recall the works of the
Muslim scholars of al-Andalus.
But the
Muslim science par excellence was the study of medicine. Interest in
medicine goes back to the very earliest times. The Prophet [Muhammad
(pbuh)] himself stated that there was a remedy for every illness,
and was aware that some diseases were contagious.
The great
contribution of the Arabs was to put the study of medicine on a
scientific footing, and eliminate superstition and harmful
folk-practices. Medicine was considered a highly technical calling,
and one which required long study and
training.
Elaborate
codes were formulated to regulate the professional conduct of
doctors. It was not enough to have a mastery of one's subject in
order to practice medicine. Certain moral qualities were mandatory.
Ibn Hazm said that a doctor should be kind understanding, friendly,
good, able to endure insults and adverse criticism; he must keep his
hair short, and his finger nails as well; he must wear clean, white
clothes and behave with dignity.
Before
doctors could practice, they had to pass an examination, and if they
passed they had to take the Hippocratic oath which, if neglected,
could lead to dismissal.
Hospitals
were similarly organized. The large one built in Cordoba was
provided with running water and baths, had different sections for
the treatment of various diseases, each section of which was headed
by a specialist. Hospitals were required to be open 24 hours a day
to handle emergency cases and could not turn any patient
away.
Muslim
physicians made many important additions to the body of medical
knowledge which they inherited from the Greeks. Ibn al-Nafis for
example, discovered the lesser circulation of the blood hundreds of
years before Harvey and ideas of quarantine sprang from an empirical
notion of contagion.
Another
example is Ibn Juljul who was born in Cordoba in 943, became a
leading physician by the age of 24 (he began his studies of medicine
at the age of 14) and compiled a commentary on the De Materia Medica
of Dioscorides, and a special treatise on drugs found in al-Andalus.
In his Categories of Physicians, composed at the request of one of
the Umayyad princes, he also presents a history of the medical
profession from the time of Aesculapius to his own
day.
During the
10th century al-Andalus produced a large number of excellent
physicians. Several went to Baghdad, where they studied Greek
medical works under the famous translators Thabit Ibn Qurra and Thabit ibn Sinan. On
their return, they were lodged in the government complex at Madinat
[city of] al-Zahra. One of these men, Ahmad ibn Harran, was placed
in charge of a dispensary which provided free medical care and food
to poor patients.
Ibn Shuhaid,
also known as a popular doctor, wrote a fundamental work on the use
of drugs. He - like many of his contemporaries - recommended drugs
only if the patient did not respond to diet, and said that if they
must be used, simple drugs should be employed in all cases but the
most serious.
Al-Zahrawi
[known in the West as Albucasis], who died in 1013, was the most
famous surgeon of the Middle Ages He was court physician of al-Hakam
II, and his great work, the Tasrif was translated into Latin by
Gerard of Cremona and became a leading medical text in European
universities in the later middle ages. The section on surgery
contains a number of illustrations of surgical instruments of
elegant, functional design and great precision. It describes
lithotrites, amputations ophthalmic and dental surgery, the
treatment of wounds and fractures.
Ibn Zuhr,
known as Avenzoar who died in 1162, was born in Seville and earned a
great reputation throughout North Africa and Spain. He described
abscesses and mediastinal tumors for the first time, and made
original experiments in therapeutics. One of his works, the Taysir
was translated into Latin in 1280 and became a standard
work.
An outgrowth
of the interest in medicine was the study of botany. The most famous
Andalusian botanist was Ibn Baitar, who wrote a famous book called
Collection of Simple Drugs and Food. It is an alphabetically
arranged compendium of medicinal plants of all sorts, most of which
were native to Spain and North Africa, which he spent a lifetime
gathering. Where possible, he gives the Berber, Arabic, and
sometimes Romance names of the plant, so that for linguists his work
is of special interest. In each article, he gives information about
the preparation of the drug and its administration, purpose and
dosage.
The last of
the great Andalusian physicians was Ibn al-Khatib, who was also a
noted historian, poet and statesman. Among his other works, he wrote
an important work on the theory of contagion: "The fact of infection
becomes clear to the investigator who notices how he who establishes
contact with the afflicted gets the disease, whereas he who is not
in contact remains safe, and how transmitting is effected through
garments, vessels, and earrings."
Ibn
al-Khatib was the last representative of the Andalusian medical
tradition. Soon after his death, the energies of the Muslims of
al-Andalus were wholly absorbed in the long costly struggle against
the Christian reconquista.
Another
field that interested the scholars of al-Andalus was the study of
geography and many of the finest Muslim works it this field were
produced there. Economic and political considerations played some
part in the development of the study of geography, but it was above
all their all consuming curiosity about the world and its
inhabitants that motivated the scholars who devoted themselves to
the description of the earth and its inhabitants. The first steps
had been taken in the [Muslim] east, when "Books of Routes," as they
were called, were compiled for the use of the postmasters of the
early 'Abbasid Caliphs. Soon, reports on faraway lands, their
commercial products and major physical features were compiled for
the information of the Caliph and his ministers. Advances in
astronomy and mathematics made the plotting of this information on
maps feasible, and soon cartography had become an important
discipline in its own right.
Al-Khwarizmi, who did so much to advance the science of
mathematics, was also one of the earliest scientific descriptive
geographers. Basing his work on information made available through
the Arabic translation of Ptolemy, al-Khwarizmi wrote a book called
The form of the Earth, which included maps of the heavens and of the
earth. In al-Andalus, this work was carried forward by Ibn Muhammad al-Razi - Rhazes - who
died in 936, and who wrote a basic geography of al-Andalus
for administrative purposes. Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Warraq, a
contemporary of al-Razi, wrote a similar work describing the
topography of North Africa. The wide ranging commercial relations of
al-Andalus allowed the collection, from returning merchants, of a
great deal of detailed information about regions as far north as the
Baltic. Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, for example, who traveled widely in
Europe and the Balkans in the late ninth century - he must have been
a brave man indeed - left itineraries of his
travels.
Two men who
wrote in the 11th century collected much of the information
assembled by their predecessors, and put it into convenient form.
One of them, al-Bakri is particularly interesting. Born in Saltes in
1014, al-Bakri was the son of the governor of the province of Huelva
and Saltes. Al-Bakri himself was an important minister at the court
in Seville, and undertook several diplomatic missions. An
accomplished scholar, as well as literateur he wrote works on
history, botany and geography as well as poetry and literary essays.
One of his two important geographical works is devoted to the
geography of the Arabian Peninsula with particular attention to the
elucidation of its place names. It is arranged alphabetically, and
lists the names of villages, towns, wadis, and monuments which he
culled from the hadith and histories. His other major work has not
survived in its entirety, but it was an encyclopedic treatment of
the entire world.
Al-Bakri
arranged his material by country - preceding each entry by a short
historical introduction - and describes the people, customs,
climate, geographical features and the major cities - with anecdotes
about them. He says of the inhabitants of Galicia, for example:
"they are treacherous, dirty, and bathe once or twice a year even
then with cold water; they never wash their clothes until they are
worn out because they claim that the dirt accumulated as the result
of their sweat softens their body."
Perhaps the
most famous geographer of the time was al-Idrisi, "the Strabo of the
Arabs." Born in 1100 and educated in Cordoba, al-Idrisi traveled
widely visiting Spain, North Africa, and Anatolia, until he
eventually settled in Sicily where he was employed by the Norman
King, Roger II, to write a systematic geography of the world, which
is still extant, and is usually known as The Book of
Roger.
In it,
al-Idrisi describes the world systematically following the Greek
division of it into seven "climes" each divided into 10 sections.
Each of the climes is mapped - and the maps are highly accurate for
the time in which they were compiled. He gives the distances between
major cities, describes the customs, people, products and climate of
the entire known world. He even records the voyage of a Moroccan
navigator who was blown off course in the Atlantic, sailed for 30
days, and returned to tell of a fertile land inhabited by naked
savages. America?
The
information contained in The Book of Roger was engraved on a silver
planisphere, which was one of the wonders of the
age.
Al-Andalus
also produced the authors of two of the most interesting travel
books ever written. Both exist in good English translation. The
first is by Ibn Jubair, secretary to the Governor of Granada who, in
1183, made the Hajj, and wrote a book about his journey called
simply Travels. The book is in the form of a diary and gives a
detailed account of the eastern Mediterranean world at the height of
the Crusades. It is written in clear elegant style, and is filled
with the perceptive intelligent comments of a tolerant - and often
witty - man.
The most
famous of all the Andalusian travelers was Ibn Battuta - the
greatest tourist of his age - and perhaps of any. He went to North
Africa, Syria, Makkah, Medina and Iraq. He went to Yemen, sailed
down the Nile, the Red Sea, Asia Minor, and the Black Sea. He went
to the Crimea and to Constantinople. He went to Afghanistan, India
and China. He died in Granada at the age of
73.
It is
impossible to do justice to all the scholars of al-Andalus who
devoted themselves to the study of history and linguistic sciences.
Both were the prime "social sciences" cultivated by the Arabs and
both were brought to a high level of art in al-Andalus. For example,
Ibn al-Khatib, whose theory of contagious diseases we have touched
on already was the author of the finest history of Granada that has
come down to us.
Ibn
al-Khatib was born in 1313, near Granada, and followed the
traditional educational curriculum of his time - he studied grammar,
poetry, natural sciences, and Islamic law, as well, of course, as
the Koran [Qur'an]. His father an important official, was killed by
the Christians in 1340. The ruler of Granada invited his son to
occupy the post of secretary in the Department of Correspondence. He
soon became the confidant of the ruler and gained a position of
great power.
Despite his
busy political career, Ibn al-Khatib found time to write more than
50 books on travel, medicines, poetry, music, history, politics and
theology.
The
achievements of Ibn al-Khatib were rivaled only by those of his near
contemporary Ibn Khaldun, the first historian to seek to develop and
explicate the general laws which govern the rise and decline of
civilizations. His huge, seven volume history is entitled The Book
of Examples and Collections from Early and Later information
Concerning the Days of Arabs, Non-Arabs and Berbers. The first
volume, entitled Introduction [Muqaddimah] gives a profound and
detailed analysis of Islamic Society and indeed, of human society in
general, for he constantly refers to other cultures for comparative
purposes. He gives a sophisticated analysis of how human society
evolved from nomadism to urban centers and how and why these urban
centers decay and finally succumb to less developed
invaders.
Many of the
profoundly disturbing questions raised by Ibn Khaldun have still not
received the attention they should from all thinking men. Certainly
anyone interested in the problems of the rise and fall of
civilizations the decay of cities the complex relationship between
technologically advanced societies and traditional ones should read
Ibn Khaldun's Introduction to History.
Another
great area of Andalusian intellectual activity was philosophy but it
is impossible to do more than glance at this difficult and
specialized study. From the ninth century Andalusian scholars like
those in Baghdad, had to deal with the theological problems posed by
the introduction of Greek philosophy into a context of Islam. How
could reason be reconciled with Revelation? This was the central
question.
Ibn Hazm was
one of the first to deal with this problem. He supported certain
Aristotelian concepts with enthusiasm and rejected others. For
example, he wrote a large and detailed commentary on Aristotle's
Posterior Analects, that abstruse work on logic. Interestingly Ibn
Hazm appears to have had no trouble relating logic to Islam - in
fact, he gives illustrative examples of how it can be used in
solving legal problems drawn from the Shari'ah. Nothing illustrates
the ability of Islam to assimilate foreign ideas and acclimatize
them better than Ibn Hazm's words in the introduction to his work:
"Let it be known that he who reads this book of ours will find that
the usefulness of this kind of work is not limited to one single
discipline but includes the Koran, hadith, and legal decisions
concerning what is permissible and what is not, and what is
obligatory and what is lawful."
Ibn Hazm
considered logic a useful tool, and philosophy to be in harmony or
at least not in conflict, with Revelation. He has been described as
"One of the giants of the intellectual history of Islam," but it is
difficult to form a considered judgment of a man who wrote more than
400 books, most of which have perished or still remain in
manuscript.
Ibn Bajjah,
whom western scholastic theologians called Avempace, was another
great Andalusian philosopher. But it was Averroes - Ibn Rushd - who
earned the greatest reputation. He was an ardent Aristotelian, and
his works had a lasting effect, in their Latin translation, on the
development of European philosophy.
Islamic
technological innovations also played their part in the legacy of
al-Andalus to medieval Europe. Paper has been mentioned, but there
were others of great importance - the windmill, new techniques of
working metal, making ceramics, building, weaving and agriculture.
The people of al-Andalus had a passion for gardens, combining their
love of beauty with their interest in medicinal plants. Two
important treatises on agriculture - one of which was partially
translated into Romance in the Middle Ages were written in
al-Andalus. Ibn al-'Awwam, the author of one of these treatises,
lists 584 species of plants and gives precise instructions regarding
their cultivation and use. He writes for example, of how to graft
trees, make hybrids, stop blights and insect pests and how to make
floral essences and perfumes.
This area of
technological achievement has not yet been examined in detail, but
it had as profound an influence on medieval European material
culture as the Muslim commentators on Aristotle had on medieval
European intellectuals. For these were the arts of civilization, the
arts that make life a pleasure rather than a burden, and without
which philosophical speculation is an arid
exercise.
