The advance of philosophy & science during the “Golden Age” of Islamic civilisation is an irrefutable event in the intellectual history of mankind. No historian could ever deny the contribution of mediaeval Muslims thinkers and scientists in intellectual achievements of the West. According to historian Bernard Lewis, “For many centuries the world of Islam was in the forefront of human civilization and achievement. Nothing in Europe could hold a candle to what was going on in the Islamic world until about Sixteenth Century AD. Islamic scientific achievement encompassed almost all branches of science through groundbreaking and original contributions in the fields of astronomy, medicine, chemistry, geography, physics, optics, and mathematics.”
Alkhwarizmi’s “Kitalbul Jabar” laid the foundation of modern algebra. Al-Razi was the first to identify fever as a defence mechanism. He was the first to discover Smallpox and Measles. Through his experiments with Classical practice of Bloodletting as medical treatment, he was the first who challenged the infallibility of an ancient giant physician, Gelan. Al-Biruni missed the correct measurement of circumference of Earth by just 200 miles. Copernicus used Al-Battani’s astronomical work including his astronomic tables. Avicenna discovered the Infectiousness of Tuberculosis. His “Canon of Medicine” remained an authoritative standard text in Europe till eighteenth century. Ibn-al-Nafis pioneered the study of circulation of blood. Philosophical work of Ibn Rushd (Averros) influenced later European thinkers such as Saint Thomas Aquinas. Al-Zahrawi invented more than 200 surgical instruments. Ibn Bajah’s theory that for every force there exists a reaction force predates Sir Isaac Newton’s Third law of motion by centuries. Ibn Al Haythems “Book of Optics” was groundbreaking compared to the earlier Aristotelian understanding of vision & transmission of light.
What caused scientific scholarship to flourish during “Golden Age”? A number of factors could be conjectured to have driven the Muslim scientific spirit. Political unification of Abbasid Caliphate with religion and language as defining characteristic of polity overriding hitherto tribal and ethnic identities offered a meeting point and exchange of intellectual ideas. Some of the inventions were motivated by need to solve practical problems, performance of religious rituals, implementation inheritance laws, construction and decoration of mosques, etc. Of course many Quranic verses and sayings of the Prophet exhorting believers to reflect on nature to look for Allah’s signs might have inspired many Muslim scientific thinkers to the spirit of enquiry. Muslims created a society that in the Middle Ages was the scientific center of the world. It was a “golden age” that would be precursor to modern scientific institutions, algebra, the names of the stars and even the notion of science as an empirical inquiry. It was the infusion of this knowledge into Western Europe that fuelled the Renaissance and Enlightenment, paving the way for modern scientific revolution.
Since Muslims rulers and thinkers during medieval Baghdad, Cario, Cordoba and Samarkand were closer to Islamic teachings in both time and space, one could safely assume that there are no congenital hostility and theological barriers around religion that would inhibit scientific scholarship in the Islamic world. In spite of these unparalleled achievements during Medieval Islamic era, modern science as we understand it today didn’t arise from Baghdad, Cairo, Córdoba or Samarkand.
A civilisation that peddled the light of learning to as far as Europe, today harbours a scientific spirit that is as dry as a desert. If science is a disinherited orphan, it is in the lands of Islam. The lack of this spirit manifests itself in the absence of scientific infrastructure and institutions in Muslims countries, negligible research output and share in scientific publications, and just three Nobel laureates in the field of science.
There is a combination of historical, political, theological and cultural factors which led to decline of science in Muslim world beginning from political fragmentation of Abbasid Caliphate which choked the benevolent patronage that science received from Abbasid caliphs. Rise of Ashrarism, an orthodox and anti-rationalist school of thought, winning the theological debate against Mutazilzilm, a rationalist school which had encouraged debate, enquiry and study and translation of Greek literature, was another retrogressive force against this scientific journey. Decline of science since around the 15th century can be partly attributed to the rise of the clerical class within the Muslim community, which froze science and withered its progress. It is as a result of conflict with theological interpretations of religion which led to the demolition of Taqi al-Din’s Constantinople observatory in Galata by the Ottoman ruler on the advice of his Chief Mufti. Dominance of Muslim clergy in public space has for the most part been reactionary to scientific enterprise, be it reluctance to adopt printing press, which remained banned in the Ottoman empire for more than three centuries, apathy to partake in the industrial revolution, or scepticism towards embracing western education. There are of course political and historical factors behind Muslim hostility towards the west. Anti-colonial reaction in the Muslim colonies evoked repugnance towards the ideas, language and methods of their colonial masters, engendering an averse attitude towards scientific education.
Muslims remained cut off from scientific education for the larger part of history because they conceived science to be a western construct. These misgivings from colonial experience still endure in Muslim societies as their indisposition to adopt anything of western origin.
The fact is that science arises under certain philosophical presumptions about nature of reality. Science assumes that nature operates in accordance with certain laws of cause and effect. It is a positivist and naturalist tradition that bases the veracity and authenticity of knowledge acquired through observation, experimentation using scientific method rather than intuition and revelation. There is nothing “western” about science. There is “science” since there is only one universe operating according fixed set of laws.
Muslim world is in dire need of coming out of the cages of regressive nostalgia for the past towards a progressive journey of scientific renaissance. There are oases of scientific spirit in the sweltering desert of belligerent conservatism. In fact, the Holy Quran contains verses which could not only inspire but also offer a theological basis for systematic explanation of natural phenomenon with natural laws.

The writer is a school teacher by profession. [email protected]

Shahid Qureshi