The Glory and Decline of the Muslims from 450 to 656 AH (1058-1258 AD)

The Eastern Islamic World: 1058–1250 AD (450–648 AH)

Following the death of Tughril Beg (455 AH / 1063 AD), his nephew Alp Arslan, a young man of twenty-six, ascended the Seljuk throne. One witty Muslim historian described Alp Arslan as follows: He was a tall man whose mustaches were so long that he had to tie them when shooting arrows; his arrows never missed their mark. He wore a turban whose top reached less than two cubits above his mustaches. He was a powerful and just ruler who severely punished officials who oppressed the people or seized their property, and he gave generously to the poor. He spent part of his time studying history and listening to accounts of the past that illustrated the morals, methods of government, and administration of his predecessors.

Alp Arslan, who possessed a passionate interest in human virtues, was also a brave man, a meaning conveyed by his name which signifies “heroic lion-heart.” He conquered Herat, Armenia, Georgia, and Syria. Romanus IV, the Byzantine emperor of Greek origin, gathered an undisciplined army of one hundred thousand men from various nations and marched against Alp Arslan’s experienced troops, who numbered no more than fifteen thousand. The Seljuk sultan proposed a wise peace, but the emperor rejected it with contempt. Battle was joined near Manzikert (Malazgird) in Armenia (463 AH / 1071 AD). Romanus fought bravely alongside his cowardly soldiers but was defeated and captured. He was brought before the sultan. Alp Arslan asked him: “If fortune had favored your army, how would you have treated me?” Romanus replied: “I would have flogged you severely.” Yet the Seljuk sultan treated him kindly. When Romanus promised a large ransom for his release, Alp Arslan freed him, allowed him to return to his country, and presented him with valuable gifts. A year later Alp Arslan was killed.

The Reign of Malik Shah and Nizam al-Mulk

Malik Shah, son of Alp Arslan, was the greatest Seljuk sultan (465–485 AH / 1072–1092 AD). While his general Suleiman was busy conquering Asia Minor, the sultan himself fought in Transoxiana and added Bukhara and Kashgar to his domains. His able and devoted vizier, Nizam al-Mulk, restored the prosperity and splendor that the Barmakids had brought to Baghdad in the days of Harun al-Rashid. For thirty years Nizam al-Mulk organized the administrative, political, and economic institutions and brought them under his control. He promoted industry and commerce, repaired roads, bridges, and caravanserais, and made them safe. He was a generous patron of artists, poets, and scholars. In Baghdad he built magnificent structures and a great madrasa whose fame spread worldwide. In the Great Mosque of Isfahan he constructed the great domed iwan. It was apparently at his suggestion that Malik Shah invited Omar Khayyam and other astronomers to court to reform the Persian calendar. According to an old story, Nizam al-Mulk, Omar Khayyam, and Hasan Sabbah swore an oath in childhood that each would support the others if successful. This tale is probably as legendary as many other interesting stories, since Nizam al-Mulk was born in 408 AH (1017 AD), while Omar Khayyam and Hasan Sabbah died between 517 and 518 AH (1123–1124 AD), and there is no evidence that any of them lived unusually long lives.

At the age of seventy-five Nizam al-Mulk recorded his views on the principles of government in the Siyasatnama (Book of Government), one of the most important Persian works. He recommended that the king and the people adhere to religious principles, believing that a government not based on religion and lacking divine sanction for the exercise of power would not endure. At the same time he offered benevolent advice to his sovereign and acquainted him with the duties of rule. A ruler should not indulge excessively in wine and pleasure; he must investigate the corruption and oppression of officials and not leave them unpunished; and he should hold public audience twice a week so that anyone could bring complaints and grievances before him. Nizam al-Mulk was mild in matters of government but strict in religion. He regretted that the state employed Christians, Jews, and Shiites; he sharply criticized the Ismaili sect and believed it endangered the unity of the state. In 485 AH (1092 AD) one of the fanatical Ismailis approached him on the pretext of presenting a petition and stabbed him to death.

The Assassins and the Ismailis

The assassin belonged to one of the strangest sects in history. The origin of this sect dates to 483 AH (1090 AD) when one of the Ismaili leaders, Hasan Sabbah — about whom a dubious story of schoolfellowship with Nizam al-Mulk and Omar Khayyam is told — seized the fortress of Alamut (Eagle’s Nest) in northern Iran. From this impregnable fortress, which rises more than 3,000 meters above sea level, he launched a fierce campaign of assassination and intimidation against opponents of the sect and those who persecuted the Ismailis. In his book Nizam al-Mulk accused the Ismailis of being descendants of the Mazdakites of Sasanian Iran. In reality the Ismaili sect was a secret society with graded degrees through which followers progressed, headed by a grand master whom the Crusaders called “the Old Man of the Mountain.” At the lowest level were the fida’is who were required to carry out every order of their leaders blindly and without question. According to Marco Polo, who passed Alamut in 670 AH (1271 AD), the grand master had prepared a garden behind the castle containing everything Muslims believe exists in Paradise — women and girls from whom men could derive pleasure. Those whom he wished to recruit were given hashish and carried unconscious into the garden. When they awoke they were told they had been in Paradise and spent four or five days enjoying wine, women, and fine food. They were then given hashish again and removed from the garden. Upon waking and asking about Paradise they were told that if they served the Sheikh sincerely or gave their lives in his service, they would return to Paradise and remain there forever. The youths who accepted this were called hashashin (“hashish users”), and the European word assassin, meaning murderer, is a corruption of this term. Hasan Sabbah ruled Alamut for thirty-five years and made it a center of terror, instruction, and art. The sect survived long after his death, captured other strong fortresses, and fought the Crusaders. It is said that they killed Conrad, Marquis of Montferrat, at the instigation of Richard the Lionheart. In 654 AH (1256 AD) Hulagu Khan the Mongol captured Alamut and the other Assassin strongholds. Thereafter members of the group were hunted down and killed as enemies of the people. Nevertheless the Ismailis survived as a religious community and gradually became peaceful and respected. In India, Iran, Syria, and Africa there are many followers of the Ismaili sect who believe in the leadership of the Aga Khan and give him one-tenth of their income.

Decline of the Seljuks and the Mongol Invasion

Malik Shah died one month after Nizam al-Mulk. His sons fought over the throne. Division fell upon the Muslims and their resistance to the Crusaders weakened. Sultan Sanjar, during his long reign (511–552 AH / 1117–1157 AD), revived Seljuk glory in Baghdad and, through his encouragement, literature flourished. But after his death the Seljuk state fragmented into emirates ruled by minor dynasties and rival kings. In 521 AH (1127 AD) in Mosul, one of Malik Shah’s Kurdish slave officers named Imad al-Din Zengi founded the Atabeg dynasty, which waged fierce wars against the Crusaders and gained control of Mesopotamia. His son Nur al-Din Mahmud, during his rule (541–569 AH / 1146–1173 AD), conquered Syria, made Damascus his capital, governed with justice and wisdom, and took Egypt from the dying Fatimid dynasty.

The same factors of weakness that had made the Abbasid caliphs subject to the Buyids and Seljuks also weakened the Fatimids two centuries later. All real power lay with viziers and army commanders. The Fatimid caliphs held only the title of religious head; in the harem they indulged in pleasure with countless women and were intimate with eunuchs and slaves, and excessive indulgence in luxury had robbed them of manly qualities. Their viziers assumed the title of king and distributed offices and privileges as they pleased. In 560 AH (1164 AD) two generals quarreled over the vizierate; one of them, named Shawar, sought help from Nur al-Din against his rival. Nur al-Din sent a force under Asad al-Din Shirkuh to assist him. Shirkuh killed Shawar and assumed the vizierate himself. When Shirkuh died, his nephew, who later became known as al-Malik al-Nasir Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, took his place.

Salah al-Din Ayyubi and the Ayyubids

Salah al-Din Ayyubi was born in 532 AH (1138 AD) in Tikrit on the upper Tigris from a Kurdish — not Semitic — family. His father Ayyub first held the governorship of Baalbek under Imad al-Din Zengi and later became governor of Damascus under Nur al-Din Mahmud. Salah al-Din grew up in the courts of these two cities. He learned the arts of politics and war; at the same time he was a pious, devout, zealous man well-versed in religious sciences and lived with the simplicity of ascetics. Muslims counted him among the righteous of their great men. His best garments were of coarse wool; he drank only water; he was proverbial for moderation in sexual relations and none of his contemporaries equaled him in this respect. Salah al-Din had come to Egypt with Shirkuh, participated in the battles there, became famous for courage and wisdom, received the governorship of Alexandria, and in 563 AH (1167 AD) repelled the Frankish attack on the city. He was thirty when he became vizier; he worked hard to restore Sunni Islam in Egypt; and in 566 AH (1171 AD) he removed the name of the Shiite Fatimid caliph from the Friday sermon and instead mentioned the Abbasid caliph, who held only the nominal title of Islamic leadership. Al-Adid, the last Fatimid caliph, who was ill in his palace, remained unaware of this religious change because Salah al-Din insisted that this unimportant prisoner should die in peace without knowing. Shortly afterward the caliph died without naming a successor. Thus the Fatimid state ended without incident and Salah al-Din received the title of governor of Egypt, still obeying Nur al-Din. When Salah al-Din entered the caliphal palace in Cairo he found that of the twelve thousand people living there, apart from the male relatives of the caliph, all were women. There was so much jewelry, furniture, ivory, porcelain, crystal, and works of art that no palace of any grandee of the time could compare. Salah al-Din took nothing for himself and distributed the palace to his army commanders, remaining in the vizier’s apartments with his simple life, which is an unmatched blessing.

In 569 AH (1173 AD), when Nur al-Din died, provincial governors refused to swear allegiance to his eleven-year-old son, and Syria nearly fell into chaos again. Fearing that the Crusaders would seize Syria, Salah al-Din left Egypt with only 700 horsemen, quickly and successfully took control of the entire province, and upon returning to Egypt proclaimed himself king and founded the Ayyubid dynasty (571 AH / 1175 AD). Six years later he left Egypt, moved the capital to Damascus, and also gained mastery over Mesopotamia. In his rule there, as in Cairo, he was a righteous and devout man. He built mosques, hospitals, khanqahs, and madrasas for religious instruction. He encouraged architecture but did not promote secular sciences and, like Plato, held poetry in contempt. Whenever he learned of any wrong or oppression he quickly corrected and removed it; while founding many public institutions he reduced taxes and conducted government affairs with wisdom, prudence, and regard for the public interest. The Islamic world took pride in the justice and righteousness of his rule, and the Christian world also recognized him as a worthy infidel deserving respect.

We pass over the description of the local dynasties that divided the eastern Islamic world after Salah al-Din’s death (589 AH / 1193 AD); we only say that his sons lacked their father’s ability and the Ayyubid state ended in Syria after three generations (658 AH / 1260 AD), but in Egypt it continued to flourish until 648 AH (1250 AD) and reached its peak under the enlightened king al-Malik al-Kamil (615–636 AH / 1218–1238 AD), friend of Frederick II. In Asia Minor the Seljuks of Rum founded their sultanate (470–727 AH / 1077–1327 AD) and made Konya (Iconium) a center of splendid civilization and literature. They freed Asia Minor, which had been half-Hellenized since Homer’s time, from Greek cultural dominance and, by promoting and spreading Turkish culture, turned it into Turkestan. Today the Turkish state stands there, and the city that in ancient times was the center of the Hittites is its capital. Another Turkish tribe held the Khwarazmian government (470–628 AH / 1077–1231 AD) and extended its power from the Ural Mountains to the Persian Gulf. It was in this political confusion and fragmentation that Genghis Khan turned toward Asian Islam.

The Islamic world, even in these years of decline, remained the torch-bearer of the world in poetry, science, and philosophy, and in methods of government was equal to the Hohenstaufen dynasty. Tughril, Alp Arslan, Malik Shah, and Sanjar rank among the most capable rulers of the Middle Ages; Nizam al-Mulk is counted among the greatest statesmen of the age; Nur al-Din, Salah al-Din, and al-Malik al-Kamil have also been placed on a level with Richard I, Louis IX, and Frederick II. All these Muslim rulers, and even minor kings, following the Abbasid style, encouraged literature and art and had poets such as Omar Khayyam, Nizami, Saadi, and Jalal al-Din Rumi at their courts; during their time architecture expanded and developed more than ever. But because they were strict in religion, philosophy had no opportunity to flourish. The Seljuks and Salah al-Din persecuted innovators, yet they treated Jews and Christians so well that historians of the Eastern Roman Empire record that certain Christian communities asked the Seljuk sultans to come and drive out the tyrannical Roman governors. During the Seljuk and Ayyubid periods western Asia once again prospered materially and spiritually. Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul, Baghdad, Isfahan, Rayy, Herat, Amid (Diyarbakir), Nishapur, and Merv surpassed all cities of the world in culture and beauty. In short, it was a brilliant period of decline.

The Muslims in the Maghreb: 1086–1300 AD (479–700 AH)

Al-Malik al-Salih, the last Ayyubid king, was killed in 647 AH (1249 AD). His widow and former concubine, Shajar al-Durr, secretly participated in the murder of her husband’s son and proclaimed herself queen. Muslim leaders, wishing to preserve hereditary honors and keep government in the hands of their own men, chose a Mamluk named Aybak to share rule with her. Shajar al-Durr married Aybak but continued to hold power. When Aybak tried to take sole control, Shajar al-Durr plotted to have him killed in the bath (655 AH / 1257 AD). Aybak’s concubines in turn beat the queen to death with wooden clogs.

Aybak had lived long enough to found the Mamluk dynasty. The white slaves called Mamluks were generally bold and strong Turks or Mongols whom the Seljuk sultans used as special bodyguards. These Mamluk guards, as they had done in Rome and Baghdad, also gained the sultanate in Egypt and ruled the country and sometimes Syria for 267 years (648–923 AH / 1250–1517 AD). During this period there was much assassination in the capital, but they also produced interesting architectural works. The bravery of the Mamluks saved Syria and even Europe from Mongol invasion, for they shattered the Mongol force at the Battle of Ain Jalut (658 AH / 1260 AD) and rushed to the aid of Palestine against the Europeans, driving out the last Christian warrior from Asia.

The greatest and boldest Mamluk sultan was al-Malik al-Zahir Rukn al-Din Baybars, who ruled from 658–676 AH (1260–1277 AD). He was a Turkish nephew who through his own ability rose to command the Egyptian army. It was he who defeated Louis IX at Mansura in 648 AH (1250 AD); and ten years later, with unmatched skill and courage under the command of Qutuz, the then Mamluk king, he fought at Ain Jalut. Afterward, on the way back to Cairo, he killed Qutuz and proclaimed himself king. Interestingly, he claimed for himself the victory ceremonies that the city had prepared for the slain conqueror. Baybars fought several battles against the Crusaders and won them all, and for this reason Muslims ranked him with Harun al-Rashid and Salah al-Din. A Christian historian of the same period said of him: “In peace he was moderate, chaste, just to his subjects, and even kind to his Christian subjects.” He organized the government of Egypt so firmly that it provided a solid foundation for his successors, some of whom were weak. The Mamluk government continued until 923 AH (1517 AD), when it was ended by the Ottoman Turks. Baybars provided Egypt with a strong army and navy; he repaired irrigation canals and founded the mosque in Cairo that bears his name.

Another Turkish slave who later became known as al-Malik al-Mansur Sayf al-Din Qalawun attacked Baybars’ son, deposed him, and took power himself (678–689 AH / 1279–1290 AD). He is most famous in history for the hospital he founded in Cairo, for which he allocated one million dirhams (500,000 dollars) annually. His son al-Nasir (693–741 AH / 1293–1340 AD) came to the throne three times and was deposed twice. He built aqueducts to bring water to the capital, constructed public baths, madrasas, khanqahs, and thirty mosques; he dug a canal connecting Alexandria to the Nile and forced 100,000 people into corvée labor for the work. He was an example of Mamluk extravagance; at his son’s wedding he slaughtered 20,000 animals; when traveling across the desert he loaded vegetable gardens on the backs of forty camels so that he would have fresh greens. During his reign the state treasury was emptied, and for this reason his successors became weak and the government declined.

The Mamluk sultans do not hold the same prestige in our eyes as the Seljuks and Ayyubids. Of course they left reputable public institutions, but most of this work was done by poor farmers and workers who were exploited beyond endurance by a government not responsible to the people or the nobility; the only way to escape these sultans was to kill them. Nevertheless these hard-hearted rulers had good taste and were generous in encouraging literature and art. The Mamluk period was the most brilliant era of medieval Egyptian architecture, and Cairo in the years 648–700 AH (1250–1300 AD) was richer than any city west of the Indus River. Markets were full of all necessities of life and many luxury items. In the slave markets men and girls were displayed for sale, and their small shops were filled with expensive and cheap goods. In the streets there was constant movement of people and animals, and the cries of peddlers and transport carts could be heard. These streets were deliberately made narrow to provide shade for passers-by and were crooked so that defense would be easy. Houses were hidden behind strong façades and had rooms that were dark and cool during the heat of the day; residents obtained air from the inner courtyard or nearby garden. The rooms were furnished with comfortable furniture, curtains, carpets, cushions, embroidered pillows, and works of art. Men who stayed at home chewed hashish to numb their nerves and sink into sweet dreams; women in the harem chattered or engaged in voyeurism from behind windows; the sound of music rose from thousands of lutes. Strange musical sessions were held in the citadel. Public gardens fragrant with the scent of flowers were crowded with spectators. Transport ships and pleasure boats floated on the great river and canals. Yes, this is how Muslim Cairo was in the Middle Ages. One of the poets of the city described it thus: What a pleasant garden where I had enjoyments; alas for those days when pleasure was prepared and adorned. I was content, the air was calm, and drops were falling; what days when at dawn I engaged in pleasure and the clouds were beautiful, and dew on the stems was like a necklace around necks, and flowers had bloomed and trembled from every side, and on every side fruits were abundant like a fox’s tail, and as if at sunset molten gold was poured on the leaves; there what golden companions I had with whom I sang songs of love.

The Almoravids and Almohads in the Maghreb and Spain

In the same period several dynasties ruled in North Africa; among them the Zirids (363–543 AH / 972–1148 AD) and Hafsids (626–981 AH / 1228–1534 AD) in Tunisia, the Hammadids (406–547 AH / 1015–1152 AD) in Algeria, and the Almoravids (448–542 AH / 1056–1147 AD) and Almohads (525–668 AH / 1130–1269 AD) in Morocco may be mentioned. The victorious Almoravids, who had once been simple African warriors, after overthrowing the emirs of Cordoba and Seville and seizing power themselves, became accustomed to the luxurious life of previous emirs; softness and love of peace replaced harsh military training, and courage gave way to wealth; so much so that money became the measure of greatness, perfection, and the desired goal. The influence of women, through beauty and charm, became equal to that of religious men who promised such pleasures in Paradise. Government officials turned to corruption; the administrative organization that had reached perfect order in the days of Yusuf ibn Tashfin (483–500 AH / 1090–1106 AD) became disordered in the days of his son Ali (500–538 AH / 1106–1143 AD). The government grew lax in performing its duties, security disappeared, robbery increased, insecurity spread on the roads, trade was disrupted, and wealth declined; the Catholic kings of Spain also took advantage of the opportunity and attacked Cordoba, Seville, and other Muslim cities of Spain, and the Muslims again sought help from Africa to escape these problems.

In 515 AH (1121 AD), as a result of a religious revolution, a new group led by Abdullah ibn Tumart gained power and rebelled. This group rejected the rationalism of philosophers and the anthropomorphism of Sunnis and prescribed a return to an unadorned life and the simple principles of religion. Abdullah called himself the awaited Mahdi and promised Messiah. The Berbers of the Atlas Mountains gathered around him, formed an orderly and powerful organization, and called themselves “Almohads.” They defeated the Moroccan Almoravid rulers and faced no major obstacles in gaining control of Spain. During the reigns of Abd al-Mu’min (540–558 AH / 1145–1163 AD) and Abu Ya’qub Yusuf (559–579 AH / 1163–1183 AD), the emirs of this dynasty, order and prosperity returned to al-Andalus and Morocco and literature and sciences flourished again. Philosophers were supported, but their books were supposed to be incomprehensible. Abu Yusuf Ya’qub (580–596 AH / 1184–1199 AD) submitted to the jurists, withdrew from philosophers, and ordered their books to be burned. Muhammad al-Nasir, his son (596–611 AH / 1199–1214 AD), paid no attention to religion or philosophy. He neglected the work of government and devoted himself to pleasure, and suffered a severe defeat at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa from the united Christian forces, as a result of which the Almohad-controlled Spain was divided into small independent states and the Christians conquered them one after another — Cordoba in 634 AH (1236 AD), Valencia in 636 AH (1238 AD), and Seville in 646 AH (1248 AD). The defeated Muslims retreated toward Granada; there the Sierra Nevada or “Snowy Range” was somewhat defensible and, because of flowing streams, vineyards and olive and orange groves were abundant and fruitful. A number of far-sighted governors ruled in Granada and preserved the independence of the province of Granada and its subject cities — Algeciras, Jaén, Almería, and Málaga — and repelled repeated Christian attacks. Trade flourished, industry revived, and art prospered; the people there became famous for their ornate clothes and merry gatherings. This small country remained until 898 AH (1492 AD) as the remnant of a civilization that for many centuries had been one of the glories of the human race in Europe.

Aspects of Islamic Art: 1058–1250 AD (450–656 AH)

During the period of Berber domination, great architectural works such as the palaces of the Alhambra in Granada, the Alcazar, and the Giralda tower in Seville appeared. This new architectural style is often called the Mudejar style, under the misconception that it came from Morocco, but in reality its primary foundations are from Syria and Iran, and the same elements appear in the Taj Mahal in India. Truly, how vast and rich Islamic art is! In this period the aim of architecture was all delicacy; it paid no attention to the strength and grandeur seen in the mosques of Damascus, Cordoba, and Cairo, but gave more importance to fine detail and beauty, and this artistic skill was applied in decoration where the sculptor influenced the architect.

The Almohads were very active in building. In the first stage they constructed buildings to defend their possessions. Around major cities they built strong walls with towers, such as the Torre del Oro that protected the Guadalquivir near Seville. The Alcazar of Seville was both a fortress and a palace, and its exterior façade appeared simple and unadorned. The plans of the buildings were prepared by Jalui, a Cordoban engineer, for Abu Ya’qub Yusuf (577 AH / 1181 AD). After 646 AH (1248 AD) the Alcazar became a favorite residence of Christian kings. Pedro I (754 AH / 1353 AD), Charles V (933 AH / 1526 AD), and Isabella (1249 AH / 1833 AD) made changes or repairs and added new sections; most of the building today dates from the Christian period, but the Islamic architectural style, or a blend of Islamic and Christian, is evident in it.

Abu Ya’qub Yusuf, the founder of the Alcazar, is the same ruler who in 567 AH (1171 AD) founded the Great Mosque of Seville; nothing now remains of that mosque; its magnificent and famous minaret, known to the people of the Maghreb as the Giralda, was built in 593 AH (1196 AD) by the architect Jabir. Later the victorious Christians converted the mosque into a church (632 AH / 1235 AD). In 804 AH (1401 AD) the church was destroyed and the Great Cathedral of Seville was built in its place, using materials from the mosque. The lower sixty meters of the Giralda are the original construction, and the remaining twenty-five meters were added by the Christians in complete harmony with the Islamic part. The upper two-thirds of the building are richly decorated with connected balconies and intricate plaster and stone latticework. At the top of the tower a bronze statue representing faith was placed (975 AH / 1568 AD), which does not indicate the unchanging religious attitude of the Spanish people, for it turns with the wind, and the Spanish word Giralda is derived from this meaning — something that turns. The Muslims also built towers in the city of Marrakesh (462 AH / 1069 AD) and Rabat (575 AH / 1197 AD) that are no less beautiful than the Giralda.

Muhammad ibn al-Ahmar (629–672 AH / 1232–1273 AD) in 646 AH (1248 AD) founded the greatest building in Spain, the famous Alhambra palace in Granada. The palace site was a high hill surrounded by deep valleys overlooking the Darro and Genil rivers. There had been a fortress called the Alcazaba since the ninth century; the emir added new buildings, created the outer walls of the Alhambra and the main structure, and inscribed his modest motto “There is no conqueror but God” on all parts of the building. In later periods other sections were added to the main structure and parts destroyed by Christians or Muslims were repaired. Among them, Charles V added a square palace in Renaissance style to the Alhambra, which is a large, gloomy, and incongruous building. An unknown architect designed within the enclosure a space capable of holding forty thousand men, following the military architectural style that had developed and matured in the eastern Islamic lands. But the luxury-loving taste of the next two hundred years gradually turned this fortress into a complex of courtyards and palaces with delightful decorations of flowers, plants, and geometric shapes carved or painted in plaster, brick, and colored stone, unmatched in beauty and delicacy. In its courtyard is a pool in which the branches of trees and carved doors are reflected, and behind it stands a strong tower that served as an impregnable refuge for the defenders. The Hall of Ambassadors is in this tower; the emirs of Granada sat on the throne there and foreign envoys were astonished by the art and wealth of the country. Charles V looked from the balcony of one of the windows of the hall at the gardens, orchards, and rivers below and, after much thought, said: “How unfortunate is he who loses all these things!” In the main palace courtyard, known as the Court of the Lions, twelve marble lions are placed in a frightening manner around a marble pool. The surrounding porticos with tall and beautiful columns, floral capitals, muqarnas, and colored Kufic inscriptions whose splendor time has worn away, have made the palace a remarkable example of the Mudejar style. Perhaps the Moors, out of luxury and zeal, overdid artistic delicacy. So much decoration becomes tiresome and destroys the strength and security that should be felt from a building; nevertheless, the decorative covering of the building has survived almost completely after twelve earthquakes. Of course the ceiling of the Hall of Ambassadors has collapsed, but the rest of the hall still stands. This beautiful complex of gardens, palaces, pools, and balconies represents the peak of Islamic art in Spain and at the same time shows the weakness of the art and the excess of wealth, love of comfort, and idleness of the conquerors, making it clear that refined aesthetic taste has replaced strength, grandeur, and splendor.

In the twelfth century Islamic art spread from Spain to North Africa, and the cities of Marrakesh, Fez, Tlemcen, Tunis, Sfax, and Tripoli, with beautiful palaces, stunning mosques, and intertwined neighborhoods, reached the height of perfection. In Egypt and the eastern regions the Seljuks, Ayyubids, and Mamluks gave new vitality to Islamic art. Salah al-Din and his successors built the great citadel of the city in the southeast of Cairo, using Crusader prisoners in the construction and perhaps taking the style from the Crusader castles in Syria. The Ayyubids founded the Great Mosque and Great Citadel in Aleppo, and the tomb of Salah al-Din in Damascus. Meanwhile a transformation occurred in architecture and throughout the eastern Islamic world the old mosque style with its vast courtyard was replaced by the madrasa-mosque style. The new style arose because mosques had increased and a large courtyard was no longer needed to accommodate many worshippers; on the other hand, new madrasas were needed to facilitate teaching. For this reason, around the mosque — the place of prayer, which now almost always has a large dome — four side sections were built, each with its own minaret, decorated door, and large hall for lessons. Often each of the four Sunni schools of law occupied one of these side sections for its own theological and legal madrasa. As one righteous sultan said, support for all four schools was desirable so that, in every case, at least one of these schools would approve the actions of the government. The Mamluks continued this transformation in their mosques and tombs — mosques and tombs that were built of stone, protected by large and strong bronze-decorated doors, receiving light from colored windows, and adorned with shining mosaics, colorful plaster reliefs, and durable tiles whose method of manufacture only Muslims knew.

Less than one percent of Seljuk architectural works remain. In Armenia — the “Mosque of Ani”; in Konya — the magnificent portal of the “Divriği Mosque,” the splendid “Ala al-Din Mosque,” and the cave-like vestibule and decorated façade of the “Sırçalı”; in Mesopotamia — the “Great Mosque” of Mosul and the “Mustansir Mosque” of Baghdad; and in Iran — the “Tughril Tower” in Rayy, the “Tomb of Sanjar” in Merv, the astonishing mihrab of the “Alaviyan Mosque” in Hamadan, the ribbed dome and small unique squinches of the “Friday Mosque” of Qazvin, and also the large arches and mihrab of the “Haydariya Mosque”: all these are glimpses of works that demonstrate the architectural skill of the Seljuks and the perfect taste of the Seljuk sultans. The most beautiful of all is the “Friday Mosque” of Isfahan, which in all Iran only the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, built later, can be compared with it. The “Friday Mosque” of Isfahan is the most interesting architectural work of the Seljuk period and, like Chartres Cathedral or Notre-Dame, is a collection of architectural works from different centuries. Construction of the mosque began in 481 AH (1088 AD), was expanded several times, and reached its present form in 1021 AH (1612 AD). The largest dome of the mosque, built of brick, bears the mark of Nizam al-Mulk and the date 481 AH (1088 AD). The portal of the mosque and the entrances to the prayer hall, one of which is about twenty-five meters high, are decorated with tile and mosaic work unparalleled in the history of this art. The interior sections of the mosque have ribbed domes, successive small squinches, and ribbed vaults resting on thick columns. The plasterwork of the mihrab (710 AH / 1310 AD), decorated with grape leaves, lotuses, and Kufic script, has no equal anywhere in the Islamic world.

These works mock those who say the Turks were a savage people. Just as the Seljuk rulers and viziers rank among the powerful rulers and statesmen of history, the Seljuk architects were also great builders in the Age of Faith, which was also the age of grand architectural designs. The Seljuk architectural style, which tended toward extreme thickness, moderated the Iranian decorative taste, and from the combination of these two styles a new architecture spread in Asia Minor, Iraq, and Iran; interestingly, this new style coincided with the perfection of Gothic architecture in France. The Seljuks did not follow the previous Muslim style in which the prayer area or main building of the mosque was almost hidden on one side of the courtyard. They built a large and interesting façade for the main part of the mosque, increased its height, and raised a round or conical dome above it that covered the entire area and united all parts of the mosque into one main unit. It was in this period that the ribbed vault, squinch, and dome were pleasingly combined in construction.

In this strange period of glory and decline, all the arts reached the height of perfection. To the Iranians, pottery was one of the necessities of refined life that could not be dispensed with. In no period was pottery as varied and beautiful as in this era. The Iranians perfected the techniques of glazing, underglaze and overglaze painting, enameling, brick-making, tile-making, and glass-making, which they had learned from the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Sasanians, and Syrians, and in these fields Chinese art, especially in painting figures, had influence but did not overcome the Iranian style. In those days Chinese porcelain was imported from China, but since Chinese clay was scarce in the Near and Middle East, the Muslims could not imitate these semi-transparent vessels; nevertheless, throughout the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries Iranian pottery had no equal in the world in variety, precision, composition, luster, design, and beauty.

The minor Islamic industries were also of special importance. In this period, in Aleppo and Damascus they performed miracles in making delicate enameled glass vessels. In Cairo they made enameled glass lamps for palaces and mosques that art lovers of our time make great efforts to acquire. The Fatimid treasures that Salah al-Din distributed included thousands of crystal vases made with such skill that modern artists are helpless to imagine them. The art of metal decoration, which was practiced in ancient Assyria, reached such perfection in Egypt and Syria that it had no precedent, and in the fifteenth century it reached Venice from these two regions. From copper, bronze, brass, silver, and gold, by casting or hammering, they made kitchen utensils, weapons and armor, lamps, jugs, basins, bowls, trays, mirrors, astronomical instruments, vases, candlesticks, pen cases, inkstands, braziers, incense burners, animal statues, Qur’an boxes, fire screens, keys, and scissors with recessed designs and sometimes inlaid with metals or jewels. They engraved many designs on brass tables. Beautiful metal grilles were made for mihrabs, doors, and tombs.

In the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston there is a silver vessel with the image of a mountain goat and the name of Alp Arslan engraved on it, dating to 459 AH (1066 AD). It is said to be the most famous silver work surviving from Islamic Iranian art and the only silverwork from the Seljuk period.

Sculpture was subordinate to the other arts and was limited to reliefs and carving of designs or script on stone and plaster. Sometimes a bold ruler would commission a statue of himself, his wife, or one of his singers, but this was a sin that remained secret and was rarely shown to the people. Wood carving, however, developed and doors, pulpits, mihrabs, Qur’an stands, curtains, ceilings, tables, windows, trays, chests, and combs were decorated with delicate designs; craftsmen sat cross-legged and turned their drills with bows. Turners also worked in this craft. Other workers, who exerted even more effort, wove taffeta, atlas, flowered silk, bordered fabrics, velvet, gold brocade, curtains, and tents and produced delicate carpets whose novel designs astonished the world. Marco Polo in 669 AH (1270 AD) saw the most beautiful carpets in the world in Asia Minor. According to John Singer Sargent, “The importance of Persian carpets equals all the pictures that have ever been painted,” but, according to experts, today’s Iranian carpets are imperfect samples of the carpet-weaving art in which Iranians have surpassed the whole world. Of the Iranian carpets woven in the Seljuk period only fragments remain, but their unmatched precision and beauty can be understood from the small carpets woven in the Mongol period in that style.

Islamic painting was a respected art in the field of miniatures but was considered a minor art in wall painting and portraiture. Al-Amir, the Fatimid caliph (495–524 AH / 1101–1130 AD), employed a number of artists to draw portraits of the poets of that time in his room in Cairo — it appears that the prohibition on “image-making” had gradually lost its former strength. During the Seljuk period painting reached perfection in Transoxiana because the Sunni aversion to this art had weakened due to distance. Many images of Turkish heroes remain in Turkish manuscripts. No miniature work that can definitely be attributed to the Seljuk period has survived, but the flourishing of this art in the Mongol period in the eastern Islamic lands leaves no doubt about its blossoming in the Seljuk era. Rich minds and artistic hands prepared Qur’ans for the Seljuk, Ayyubid, and Mamluk mosques, as well as for the great men of the nation and the madrasas, whose beauty constantly increased. On the covers of Qur’ans, made of leather or enameled sheets, designs were drawn as delicate as a spider’s web. The wealthy gave some of their money as payment to artists to produce beautiful books. Sometimes a group of copyists, calligraphers, painters, and bookbinders worked for seventeen years on a single book; great care was taken in choosing the paper. It is said that paintbrushes were made from the white hairs of the necks of cats less than two years old. Blue ink was obtained from ground lapis lazuli and cost its weight in gold. Dissolved gold was used to draw certain lines or letters in illustrations or text. One Iranian poet said on this subject: “The pleasure that the mind takes from the sight of a fine line, imagination cannot grasp.”

The Age of Omar Khayyam: 1038–1122 AD (430–516 AH)

Apparently the number of poets and scholars of this period was no less than that of artists. Cairo, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Baalbek, Aleppo, Damascus, Mosul, Homs, Tus, Nishapur, and many other cities prided themselves on their great madrasas. In Baghdad alone in 457 AH (1064 AD) there were thirty such schools; a year later Nizam al-Mulk founded another madrasa — the Nizamiyya; and in 635 AH (1234 AD) Caliph al-Mustansir added another that surpassed all others in size, architecture, and equipment and, according to one traveler, was the most beautiful building in Baghdad. This school had four independent sections for teaching Islamic law in which students received free instruction, food, and medical care; in addition, each received one gold dinar for other necessary expenses. The school had a hospital, bath, and library that were freely available to students and teachers. Women probably also attended some of these schools in certain cases, since we have heard of a female sheikha (woman teacher) whose lessons, like those of Aspasia and Hypatia in the West, attracted many listeners (574 AH / 1178 AD). The public libraries of this time were more numerous and richer than in any other period of Islam. In Muslim Spain alone there were seventy public libraries. Many grammarians, lexicographers, encyclopedists, and historians appeared. One of the main and entertaining arts of the Muslims was writing books of biographies: Ibn al-Qifti (568–646 AH / 1170–1248 AD) included the lives of 414 philosophers and scholars in his book; Ibn Abi Usaybi’a (600–668 AH / 1203–1270 AD) recorded the biographies of 400 physicians; Muhammad Awfi (626 AH / 1228 AD) provided an encyclopedia of the biographies of 300 Persian poets without mentioning Omar Khayyam; Muhammad ibn Khallikan (608–681 AH / 1211–1282 AD) surpassed all of them with his book Wafayat al-A’yan, which briefly records the lives of 865 great figures of Islam. The book, despite its wide scope, is remarkably accurate; nevertheless Ibn Khallikan apologizes for its shortcomings and says: “God has not willed that any book other than the Qur’an should be without defect.” Muhammad al-Shahrastani in his book al-Milal wa al-Nihal (522 AH / 1128 AD) described the famous religions of the world and summarized their history and philosophy; no Christian of that period could have produced a book of such richness and impartiality.

Muslim fictional literature was limited to various episodic stories whose unity was preserved only by the continuity of one person’s actions. After the Qur’an, Muslims knew the books of One Thousand and One Nights and Kalila wa Dimna (by Bidpai), and the Maqamat of Hariri, the work of Abu Muhammad al-Hariri al-Basri (446–516 AH / 1054–1122 AD), more than any others. The Maqamat of Hariri narrates the adventures of Abu Zayd, a carefree vagabond who has an interesting personality, and for this reason the reader forgives his scattered talk, crimes, and misdeeds because of the elegance of his speech, skill, cleverness, and attractive, sensual ideas. In one of the maqamat he says: Do not obey an adviser who prevents union with the beautiful; be free and do whatever you can; leave the words of claimants and do what is proper.

Almost everyone who could read and write composed poetry, and there was no ruler who did not encourage poetry. If we accept Ibn Khaldun’s statement, hundreds of poets resided in the courts of the Almoravids and Almohads in Africa and Spain. In the poets’ debate assembly in Seville, a blind poet from Tudela (Tutila) won the prize with two verses that contained half the poetry of the world: When she laughs, pearls appear; and when she removes the veil from her face, the moon is seen; the world with all its breadth is narrow for her, but she has a place in my heart.

According to reports, other poets did not recite their odes. In Cairo, the poet Zahi, long after his hair had turned white, spoke of love. The division of the state into relatively small kingdoms in the eastern Islamic world, like nineteenth-century Germany, increased the number of emirs and notables who competed in encouraging literature. Iran had more poets than any other Islamic nation. Anwari (d. 585 AH / 1189 AD) read his odes for a long time at Sanjar’s court and praised him only after himself.

I have a heart like fire and a tongue like water
A sharp thought, a docile intelligence, and a flawless nature
Alas, there is no worthy object of praise
Alas, there is no worthy beloved for a ghazal

His contemporary poet, Khaqani (500–582 AH / 1106–1185 AD), was no less boastful; his pride provoked his teacher to compose a satirical poem about his lineage: O Khaqani, although you know good speech
I will tell you one point for free
Do not satirize someone who is older than you
He may be your father and you do not know it

People in Europe know Persian poetry more than any other through the verses of Omar Khayyam. Iranians place Khayyam among their scholars and consider his quatrains a pastime that “one of the great mathematicians of the Middle Ages” engaged in. Abu al-Fath Omar Khayyam, son of Ibrahim, was born in Nishapur in 430 AH (1038 AD). Khayyam means tent-maker, but this title does not indicate that he or his father was actually a tent-maker, because in his time professional titles did not have their ordinary meaning, just as the words smith, taylor, baker, porter are used as names and titles in other regions but do not convey that meaning. History tells almost nothing about Khayyam’s life but mentions the names of many of his works, including a book on algebra that was translated into French in 1851. Khayyam advanced this science beyond what al-Khwarizmi and Greek scholars knew. He found solutions for cubic equations that, according to experts, may be the most important mathematical discovery of the Middle Ages. Another of his books on algebra (manuscript in the Leiden library) is a critical investigation of the axioms and definitions of Euclid. Sultan Malik Shah Seljuk in 467 AH (1074 AD) appointed him along with a group of scholars to reform the Persian calendar, and the result of their work is a calendar that has one day’s discrepancy every 3,770 years, which is slightly more accurate than our usual calendar that has one day’s discrepancy every 3,330 years; the choice between the two calendars belongs to future civilization. Islamic religion had more influence on people than Islamic sciences, and for this reason Khayyam’s calendar could not replace the Hijri calendar among Muslims. Khayyam’s fame as an astronomer is known from the account of Nizami Aruzi, who saw him in Nishapur.

In the winter of the year eight hundred and five, in the city of Merv, the sultan sent a messenger to the great vizier Sadr al-Din Muhammad ibn al-Muzaffar, may God have mercy on him, telling the master Imam Omar to choose a day so that we may go hunting in which there will be no snow or rain for several days, and the master Imam Omar was in the vizier’s company and would stay in his palace. The vizier sent a messenger and called him and told him the matter. He went and worked for two days and made a good choice and himself went and mounted the sultan with the chosen day; and when the sultan mounted and had gone one parasang, clouds gathered, wind rose, and snow and storm began. There was laughter; the sultan wanted to return, but the master Imam said the king should be at ease, for the clouds will clear at this very moment, and there will be no moisture in these five days. The sultan rode on and the clouds cleared, and in those five days there was no moisture and no one saw a cloud.

A rubai in Persian poetry is a poem consisting of four hemistichs, the first, second, and fourth of which rhyme. Each rubai presents a complete meaning in a perfect poem. We do not know the origin of this meter, but it dates back to a time long before Khayyam. The rubai in Persian poetry is not part of long pieces but each rubai is an independent unit. For this reason Iranians, when collecting rubaiyat, did not observe the order of thoughts but based it on rhyme. There are now thousands of Persian rubaiyat whose authors are often unknown; among them 1,200 rubaiyat are attributed to Khayyam, most of which are doubtful. The oldest manuscript of Khayyam’s rubaiyat (Bodleian Library, Oxford) dates to 1460 AD and contains 158 rubaiyat arranged alphabetically, some of which belong to poets before Khayyam. Several rubaiyat are by Abu Sa’id Abu al-Khayr and one by Ibn Sina; except in a few cases it is difficult to be certain that the rubaiyat attributed to Khayyam are really his.

The first to draw the attention of the Western world to Khayyam’s rubaiyat was the German orientalist von Hammer in 1818 AD. After that Edward FitzGerald in 1859 translated seventy-five rubaiyat into elegant English verse that was outstanding in its kind. Although the price of each copy of this edition was more than a penny, only a few people welcomed it, but later repeated and more detailed editions brought the Iranian mathematician into the ranks of the world’s famous poets. According to those familiar with the original rubaiyat, of FitzGerald’s other 120 pieces only 49 are exactly equivalent to one Persian rubai; 44 others are each taken from two or more rubaiyat; two others reflect the whole collection; six others are translations of rubaiyat attributed to Khayyam but probably not his; two others reflect the influence of Hafiz’s ghazals on FitzGerald’s mind; and three pieces cannot be found at all among the rubaiyat attributed to Khayyam — apparently FitzGerald composed them himself and did not include them in the second edition. No equivalent can be found in Khayyam’s rubaiyat for FitzGerald’s piece 81.

O Thou who didst create man from base clay,
And placed us in Paradise,
Every sin for which man is blackened,
Forgive and grant him pardon.

Except for this, in FitzGerald’s translation, compared with a literal translation of the Persian text, the spirit of Omar Khayyam is evident, and his translation, as far as can be expected from the translation of poetry, corresponds to the original. FitzGerald, because of the Darwinian tendencies prevalent in his time, ignored Khayyam’s sweet irony and deepened the anti-religious tendencies of his verses. Iranian writers who lived a century after Khayyam also described him in a way that matches FitzGerald’s words. According to Mirsad al-Ibad (620 AH / 1223 AD), he was an atheist, materialist, and unfortunate philosopher. According to Ibn al-Qifti in Tarikh al-Hukama (638 AH / 1240 AD), Khayyam had no equal in astronomy and philosophy, but he was a strong atheist and out of necessity kept his tongue. A thirteenth-century writer said: “He was a bad-tempered man, a follower of Ibn Sina,” and mentioned two of his books on philosophy that are now lost. Some Sufis interpret Khayyam’s rubaiyat according to their own terminology, but Najm al-Din Razi counts him among the greatest atheists of his time.

Khayyam, perhaps because of the influence of science or the effect of Ma’arri’s poems, rejected and mocked the words of religious scholars, and boasted that he had stolen the prayer rug from the mosque. He accepted the deterministic thinking of the Muslims and, since he had no hope for any life other than this world, pessimism dominated him and he sought entertainment and peace in study and wine. Rubaiyat 132 and 133 of the Bodleian manuscript elevate drunkenness to the rank of a world philosophy:

He who has gone to the tavern with his beard
Has abandoned both good and evil of the whole world
Say, what are both worlds but a jar in the street
On which a drunkard sleeps by the stream

From everything that is not joy, shortness is better
Wine too from the hands of idols is better in a tavern
Drunkenness, qalandarism, and waywardness are better
One draught of wine from the moon to the fish is better

But when we consider that so many Iranian poets sing in praise of unconsciousness, we ask ourselves whether this Bacchic piety is only a literary pastime like Horace’s bisexual loves?

It is very likely that the rubaiyat, which did not have much importance in Khayyam’s eighty-five-year life, give a false picture of him to the reader. We should view him not as a wine-drinker who wandered drunk in the streets, but as an elderly scholar busy with cubic equations, astronomical zijes, and celestial maps, who sometimes drank a cup with his scholarly colleagues who were scattered like stars on the grass. Apparently he, like all those confined to a dry region, was a flower-lover. If we accept Nizami Aruzi’s statement, he reached his desire and was buried in a place where flowers bloom. Nizami says:

In the year six hundred and five, in the city of Balkh, in the street of the slave-sellers, in the house of Amir Bu Sa’d Jarrah, the master Imam Omar Khayyami and the master Imam Muzaffar Isfizari had taken residence, and I had joined their service. In the midst of a merry gathering I heard from the Proof of Truth Omar that he said: “My grave will be in a place where every spring the north wind will scatter flowers upon me.” This speech seemed impossible to me and I knew that he would not speak idly.

When I reached Nishapur in the year thirty, four years had passed since that great man had drawn the veil of earth over his face, and the lower world was orphaned by him, and he had the right of a teacher over me. One Friday I went to visit him and took someone with me to show me his grave. He brought me out to the Hira cemetery, and I turned to the left; at the bottom of the wall of a garden I saw his soil placed, and pear and apricot trees had put their heads out of that garden, and so many blossom leaves had fallen on his soil that his soil was hidden under the flowers; and the desire I remembered was that story I had heard from him in the city of Balkh. Tears fell from me because in the expanse of the world and the quarters of the inhabited quarter I saw no equal to him anywhere. May God, blessed and exalted, place his abode in Paradise by His mercy and grace.

The Age of Saadi: 1150–1291 AD (545–690 AH)

A few years after Khayyam’s death a poet was born whom Iranians honor far more than Khayyam. His birthplace was in Ganja, present-day Kirovabad, near Tiflis. Elias Abu Muhammad, who later became known as Nizami, unlike Khayyam was characterized by piety and virtue throughout his life; he never touched wine, and spent all his time on paternal duties and poetry. His Layla and Majnun (584 AH / 1188 AD) is the most famous love story in Persian poetry. The summary of the story is that Qays Majnun fell in love with Layla, but Layla’s father forced her to marry another man. Qays’s grief from this loss drove him to madness; he became a wanderer in the deserts and only came to his senses for a moment when Layla’s name was mentioned before him. When Layla became a widow she came to him, but soon died. Qays also, like Romeo at Juliet’s grave, gave up his life on Layla’s grave. No translation can reflect the power of expression and beautiful melody of the Persian text.

The Sufis also spoke of love, but they emphasized that their meaning of love was divine affection. Muhammad ibn Ibrahim, known in the literary world as Farid al-Din Attar, was born near Nishapur (513 AH / 1119 AD) and because he sold perfume he was called Attar. When his religious feelings strengthened he abandoned his shop and joined the Sufi khanqah. Of his forty books, which contain 200,000 verses, Mantiq al-Tayr is the most famous. Its summary is that a group of birds (that is, Sufis) set out together in search of the king of birds, named Simurgh (truth), and pass through the valleys of quest, love, knowledge, detachment, unity (that they know all things are one), and bewilderment (that is, abandoning the sense of individual existence). Thirty of the birds reach the seventh valley, the valley of poverty and annihilation (annihilation of the self), and knock on the hidden door of the king. The chamberlain shows them the record of each one’s deeds, and from excessive shame they turn to dust, but from the dust they are raised as light and understand that they and the Simurgh (that is, thirty birds) are one, and from this moment, like a shadow hidden in sunlight, they are annihilated in the Simurgh. In his other books Attar speaks more explicitly about the unity of existence and says: “The intellect cannot know God, because it cannot know itself, but through attraction and passion it can reach God, for God is the original truth and the hidden force of all things and the source of all actions and movements and the spirit of the life of the world.” No one can reach happiness except by becoming part of this universal spirit. True religion is the longing for this union, and true eternity is the annihilation of the self in His essence. Sunnis did not approve these ideas and considered them innovation and error; a group of common people attacked his house and burned it completely, but Attar escaped safely. According to repeated accounts he lived one hundred and ten years and blessed with his own hand a child who later called him his teacher but surpassed him in fame.

Jalal al-Din Rumi (604–672 AH / 1207–1273 AD) was born in Balkh but spent most of his life in Konya. A strange Sufi named Shams Tabrizi had come to this city and spoke with the people; his words so affected Jalal al-Din that he founded the Mawlawiyya order whose center is still in Konya. In his relatively short life Jalal al-Din composed several hundred pieces of poetry. His short poems collected in his Divan, the Ghazaliyat-i Shams, are distinguished by deep feeling, sincerity, richness, and harmony with nature and are the most beautiful religious poetry written since the time of the Psalms. His book Mathnawi Ma’nawi is a detailed explanation of Sufism and a religious epic, longer than the entire work of Homer; it has extraordinarily beautiful parts, but beauty accompanied by heavy words is not always a source of pleasure. The subject of the Mathnawi, like Attar’s book, is the unity of the universe.

One came and knocked at the door of the Friend
The Friend said: Who are you, O trusted one?
He said: I. The Friend said: Go, this is not the time
On such a table there is no place for the raw
The raw has nothing but the fire of separation and parting
That cooks and frees him from hypocrisy
Since you are still you and you have not left yourself
You must burn in the hot fire
That poor one went and spent a year in travel
In separation from the Friend he burned from the spark
The burned one became cooked, then returned
He came back and became the companion of the house
He knocked at the door with a hundred fears and politeness
So that no impolite word would escape his lips
His Friend called: Who is that at the door?
He said: At the door it is you too, O heart-stealer
He said: Now that you are I, O I, come in
For two I’s cannot fit in this house

I measured all the crosses of the Christians
There was nothing in the cross
I turned the reins of quest toward the Kaaba
In that goal there was neither old nor young
I asked Ibn Sina about his state
There was nothing to the measure of Ibn Sina
I looked into my own heart
I saw it there, there was nowhere else

Every form you see, its origin is in the world of no-place; if the form is destroyed, what grief, for its origin remains eternal. Do not grieve over the passing of every beautiful form you see or every wise word you hear, for in truth it has not passed away. As long as the river is full of water, streams flow from it; remove grief from your heart and pass by this stream and do not think that the water will disappear, for its source is eternal. From the beginning you came to this world; they have placed a ladder ahead so that you may escape the world by it.

From mineral I became and grew as plant
From plant I died and rose as animal
I died as animal and became man
Why then should I fear? When did I become less by dying?
I shall die again from man
So that I may grow wings and feathers like angels
Once more I shall fly from the angel
I shall become that which is not in imagination
Know death as the agreement of the community
For animal water is hidden in darkness

Now we speak of Saadi. His real name is Musharraf al-Din ibn Muslih al-Din Abdullah. His father held a position at the court of Sa’d ibn Zangi, Atabeg of Shiraz; when Saadi’s father died, the Atabeg took the son under his protection and he, following Muslim custom, added the name of his patron — Sa’d — to his own. His birth and death dates have been given variously as 579–682 AH (1184–1283 AD), 580–690 AH (1184–1291 AD), and 590–690 AH (1193–1291 AD). In any case he lived nearly one hundred years. He himself says: “In the days of my childhood I was devout, rose early, and was eager for asceticism and abstinence.” After studying in the Nizamiyya madrasa of Baghdad (624 AH / 1226 AD) he began his strange world travels that lasted thirty years and took him through all the lands of the Near and Middle East, India, Ethiopia, Egypt, and North Africa. In this journey he endured various hardships and tasted the bitterness of poverty and deprivation. He himself says that his feet were bare and he had no means to buy shoes; distressed he entered the mosque of Kufa and saw a man who had no feet; he gave thanks for God’s blessing and was patient with being without shoes.

When he was in India he discovered the mechanism of an idol that was said to perform miracles and killed a boastful Brahmin who was hidden there and was the god of the device; in his later cheerful poem he recommends this same quick method for all deceivers of people:

When you learn of a corrupter’s deed
Remove him from his feet when you understand
Do not put your foot after the deceiver
When you have gone and seen, do not give him safety
For if you leave that talentless one alive
He will not want another life for you
I killed that wicked one completely with a stone
For from the dead no further story comes

He fought in the Crusades and was captured by the “infidels” and freed for ten dinars. In gratitude to his liberator he married his daughter; but this woman “was ill-tempered, quarrelsome, and disobedient” and spoiled his pleasure; on this subject he wrote: “The locks of the beautiful are chains on the feet of reason” and divorced her and gave his heart to another lock and fell into another chain, and when his second wife died, at the age of fifty he chose seclusion in a garden in Shiraz and spent the remaining fifty years of his life there.

With a load of life experience he began to write. According to historians he wrote his important books during the period of seclusion. His “Pandnama” is a book of wisdom and advice; his Divan is a collection of short poems, most in Persian, some in Arabic, some pious, and some humorous. In the book Bustan Saadi presents his philosophy in didactic poetry and sometimes for variety adds pieces hinting at delicate physical pleasures.

In all my life I had no sweeter moments than that night when I took my beloved in my arms and gazed at her sleepy eyes. ... I said to her: “O my beloved, O tender cypress, now is not the time for sleep. Sing, my nightingale of song. Open your lips like a rosebud. O disturber of my soul and heart, sleep is enough; with your lips give me the honey of love to drink.” My beloved looked at me and whispered: “Am I the disturber of your soul and heart? While you disturb my sleep?” ... Your beloved has repeated all this time that she has never belonged to anyone else ... and you smile, for you do not know she is lying. But what does it matter? Are her lips joined to yours any less warm, are her shoulders that you caress with your own hand any less soft? They say the spring breeze, like the scent of flowers and the song of the nightingale and the carpet of grass and the indigo sky, is pleasant and beautiful. Ah, O ignorant one, if the beloved is not with you all this has no beauty.

The Gulistan (656 AH / 1258 AD) is a collection of didactic stories with delightful verses interspersed among them.

One of the unjust kings asked a pious man which act of worship is most excellent. He said: Your midday sleep, so that in that one breath you do not harm the people.

Seven dervishes can sleep under one blanket, but two kings cannot fit in one clime.

O captive of the leg-irons of family
Do not bind the thought of ease again

The wise man who becomes angry at unpleasantness resembles a stream with little water.

Whoever speaks before others so that they may know his excellence, know the degree of his ignorance.

If you have one virtue and seventy faults
A friend sees only that one virtue

A swift Arab horse runs two gallops quickly
A camel walks slowly night and day

Learn virtue, for the kingdom and government of the world are not to be trusted.

If a virtuous man falls from fortune there is no grief, for virtue in itself is fortune.

The tyranny of a master is better than a father’s love

If intellect were to disappear from the surface of the earth
No one would think of himself that I am ignorant

From its lightness one can know that the walnut is without kernel.

Saadi was a philosopher, but he lost his philosophical fame because of his clear writing. His philosophy is truer and healthier than that of Omar Khayyam. He realized that faith is a source of consolation and knew how to heal the wound of knowledge with the blessing of a loving life. Saadi passed through all the tragedies of the human comedy; nevertheless his life was long and he reached one hundred years. In addition to being a philosopher he was also a poet: he was sensitive to beauty in every form and combination. From the “cypress stature” of a woman to a star that for a moment covers the night sky; and he could express wisdom and dry speech with brevity, delicacy, and beauty. For every occasion he had a revealing analogy or an eloquent and delightful phrase ready. “The education of the unworthy is like throwing walnuts on a dome;” “I and friendship had conversation like two kernels in one shell;” “That miserly merchant if the sun had been in place of his bread in the tray until the Day of Resurrection no one would have seen daylight except in a dream.” Finally, Saadi with all his wisdom remained Saadi the poet and with all his heart devoted his wisdom to the pure service of love.

The days do not leave her by my side
So that I may take my right with a kiss from her lips

I take the same lasso that captures the hearts of people
And draw it to myself

But I dare not touch that lock of hair
For beneath every twist is the heart-money of the people

I am the slave of the stature of that idol whose height
They have cut delicacy like a garment on her body

From your color and scent, O cypress of silver form
The splendor of the wild rose and the garden and the narcissus has gone

Place one foot in the rose garden by the command of sight
For you will trample the Judas tree and the jasmine

It is no wonder if from jealousy of you on the flowerbed
The cloud weeps and the blossom laughs on its meadow

In this manner of yours, if you pass by a dead man
It is no wonder if a cry comes from his shroud

No disturbance remains in the days of the king except Saadi
Who is disturbed by your beauty and the people by his speech

Islamic Sciences: 1057–1258 AD (449–656 AH)

Islamic scholars in the Middle Ages divided peoples into two classes: peoples who had science and peoples who did not. Hindus, Iranians, Babylonians, Jews, Greeks, Egyptians, and Arabs were placed in the first class. In their view these were the chosen ones of the world; and the best peoples of the second class were the Chinese and Turks who resembled animals more than humans. Of course this judgment was especially wrong about China.

In the period we are speaking of, Muslims still held unrivaled superiority in the sciences. In mathematics interesting advances occurred in Morocco and Azerbaijan; here once again we witness the wide spectrum of Islamic civilization. Hasan al-Marrakushi in 627 AH (1229 AD) prepared tables that determined the sine of an angle at every degree, and also prepared tables showing the full sine, the sine of an arc, and the sine of parts of an arc. One generation later Khwaja Nasir al-Din al-Tusi wrote the first treatise in which trigonometry was considered an independent science and not one of the branches of astronomy; this book, named Shakl al-Qatta, remained unrivaled in this field until two centuries later when Regiomontanus wrote his book on trigonometry. Probably the trigonometric calculation that appeared in China in the second half of the thirteenth century had an Arabic origin.

The most famous book of that period in physics was the Mizan al-Hikma written in 516 AH (1122 AD) by a Greek-born slave from Asia Minor named al-Khazini. This book gives a history of physics, formulates the laws of the lever, sets up tables of the specific gravity of many liquids and solids, and proposes the theory of gravity as a universal force that draws everything toward the center of the earth. The Muslims perfected the device known as the shaduf, which was known to the Greeks and Romans. The Crusaders saw these devices drawing water from the Orontes River and took them to Germany. The work of alchemists had increased so much that, according to Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, alchemists knew “three hundred ways to deceive people.” It is said that one alchemist took a large sum of money from Nur al-Din to spend on scientific research and then disappeared. Then one wit prepared a list of the names of fools and wrote Nur al-Din’s name at the top and said that if the alchemist returned he would write his name instead of Nur al-Din’s. Apparently this witty person suffered no harm from the sultan.

In 474 AH (1081 AD) Ibrahim [ibn Sa’id] al-Sahdi, one of the scholars of Valencia, prepared the oldest celestial globe mentioned in history. This globe, made of brass, had a diameter of 209 millimeters and on its surface 1,015 stars were recorded within 47 constellations; the stars were shown according to their astronomical magnitude. The Giralda of Seville (1190 AD) was both a minaret and an observatory, and Jabir ibn Aflah prepared his observations there, which he published in the book Islah al-Majisti (638 AH / 1240 AD). In the writings of Abu Ishaq al-Bitruji al-Qurtubi (Alpetragius) a similar revolt against Ptolemaic astronomy occurred; with his destructive criticism of the theory of spheres and concentric circles with which Ptolemy sought to explain the paths and movements of the stars, he paved the way for Copernicus.

This age produced two famous geographers, al-Idrisi and Yaqut al-Hamawi, whose fame spread throughout the Middle Ages. Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Idrisi (493–560 AH / 1099–1165 AD) was born in Ceuta, studied in Cordoba, and in Palermo at the request of Roger II, king of Sicily, wrote the Kitab al-Rujari in which he divided the earth according to climate into seven climes, each clime into ten parts, and drew a detailed explanatory map for each of the seventy parts; his maps were the best of medieval cartography and unrivaled in perfection, accuracy, and extent of coverage. Like most Islamic scholars al-Idrisi had no doubt about the sphericity of the earth and considered it an established truth. Abu Abdullah Yaqut al-Hamawi (575–627 AH / 1179–1229 AD) shared with al-Idrisi the honor of carrying the banner of geography in the Middle Ages. Yaqut was a Greek-born man from Asia Minor who was captured in war and sold as a slave in the market; but a Baghdadi merchant who bought him educated him well and later freed him. Yaqut traveled a great deal, first as a merchant and later as a geographer fascinated by cities and peoples, their clothing, and different ways of life. How delighted he was to find ten public libraries in Merv, one of which had 12,000 volumes; the librarian, out of consideration for him, allowed him to take up to two hundred books home at a time. Those who love this vital material of great men — books — can guess how happy Yaqut was when he gained access to this vast spiritual treasure. After that he went to Khiva and Balkh and there nearly fell captive to the Mongols during their destructive advance; but he escaped without clothes, yet carried his writings with him, passed through Iran, and reached Mosul; while earning his living by copying with bread and salt he completed the famous book Mu’jam al-Buldan (626 AH / 1228 AD). This is a detailed geographical encyclopedia that gathers almost all the geographical knowledge of the Middle Ages and omits nothing from astronomy, natural sciences, archaeology, human geography, and history; in addition it speaks of the importance and distances of cities from one another and the lives of the notables of the city and their deeds. Few people have loved the globe as much as this great scholar.

Botany, which after Theophrastus had been forgotten, regained life through the Muslims of this age. Al-Idrisi wrote a book on plants and described 360 kinds of plants. His attention was not limited to medical matters but he discussed more from a scientific and botanical point of view. Abu al-Abbas al-Ashbili (613 AH / 1216 AD) became famous as “al-Nabati” because of his studies on the various plants that grow between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea. Ibn al-Baytar (586–646 AH / 1190–1248 AD), with extraordinary skill, gathered all Islamic botanical knowledge in a detailed and rich book that remained the reference and authority in this field until the sixteenth century and raised him to the rank of the greatest botanist and pharmacist of the Middle Ages. Among the most important works in agriculture is the book al-Filaha by Ibn al-Awwam al-Ashbili in which he spoke of types of soil and fertilizer, the method of cultivating 585 kinds of plants, 50 kinds of fruit trees, grafting methods, and the signs of plant diseases and their treatment. His book is considered the most complete research of all the Middle Ages in the field of agriculture.

In this period also, as in the previous one, the greatest physicians of Asia, Africa, and Europe arose from among the Muslims. The most important field of specialization of these physicians was eye diseases, perhaps because such diseases were common in the Near East and there, as elsewhere, people spent large sums on treatment — and very little on prevention. Eye doctors performed operations for dropsy of the eye or cataract. The caliph Ibn Abi al-Mahasin the physician was so confident in his skill that he operated on the dropsy of the eye of a one-eyed man. Ibn al-Baytar in his book al-Jami’ li-Mufradat al-Adwiya wa al-Aghdhiya wrote the history of herbal medicine and mentioned one thousand four hundred kinds of plants, foods, and medicines, three hundred of which had previously been unknown; he determined their chemical compounds and healing powers; and he made precise observations on the manner of their use. But the most famous Muslim physician of this period without doubt was Abu Marwan ibn Zuhr al-Ashbili (484–557 AH / 1091–1162 AD) who in European medical circles is known as Avenzoar. Ibn Zuhr was the third generation of six generations of famous physicians, all from one family, each of whom was the standard-bearer of medicine in his time. He wrote the book al-Taysir [fi al-Mudawah wa al-Tadbir] at the request of his friend Ibn Rushd, who was the greatest philosopher of that period and considered Ibn Zuhr the greatest physician in the world after Galen. His art was in clinical description. He wrote classical analyses of tumors, inflammation of the inner lining of the heart, intestinal tuberculosis, and paralysis of the larynx. The Hebrew and Latin translations of the Taysir had an extraordinary influence on European medicine.

Islam was also a pioneer in the world in creating good hospitals and providing their equipment. The hospital that Nur al-Din Mahmud established in Damascus in 556 AH (1160 AD) treated patients without charge for three full centuries and also gave free medicine. According to historians, the stove of this hospital remained lit continuously for 267 years and never went out. Ibn Jubayr, who went to Baghdad in 580 AH (1184 AD), was astonished at the sight of the great Adudi hospital of the city, which rose like royal palaces on the bank of the Tigris and gave patients free food and medicine. In Cairo also Sultan Qalawun in 684 AH (1285 AD) founded the Mansuri Hospital, which was by far the largest hospital of the Middle Ages. Inside a vast enclosed square space four buildings rose, and in their midst was a courtyard surrounded by porticos with pools and streams that cooled its air. It had separate sections for different diseases and convalescent patients, as well as several laboratories, a public pharmacy, clinics for outpatients, several kitchens and baths, a library, a prayer hall, and a lecture hall; especially, delightful views were attached to the section for mental patients. Patients, whether men or women, rich or poor, free or slave, were treated there without charge. Patients who recovered were given a sum of money when leaving the hospital so that they would not immediately need to work to earn their strength. Patients suffering from insomnia listened to soft music and professional storytellers, and sometimes received historical books for reading. In all the great Islamic cities there were asylums for the care of the insane.

Ghazali and the Religious Revival

While the sciences advanced on the path of development, religion tried to preserve the interest of the educated class. The conflict between science and religion cast many people into doubt about religious beliefs and even led some to unbelief and atheism. Ghazali divided Islamic thinkers into three groups, all of whom he considered infidels: theologians, dahriyya or naturalists, and materialists. The theologians believed in God and the immortality of the soul but denied the creation and resurrection of bodies and said that Paradise and Hell are spiritual states; the dahriyya believed in a deity but denied the immortality of the soul; in their view the world is a self-operating mechanism; and the materialists denied the existence of God altogether. The Dahriyya, who were a semi-organized sect, openly admitted their agnosticism; their followers were executed. Among the followers of this religion was Isfahan ibn Qurra who on one day of Ramadan said to a pious fasting man: “You trouble yourself for nothing; man grows and develops like a seed and after harvest perishes forever ... . Eat and drink.”

The reaction to this skeptical movement was the appearance of Abu Hamid Ghazali, the greatest religious scholar of Islam who combined philosophy and religion and among Muslims is like Augustine and Kant among Europeans. Abu Hamid Ghazali was born in Tus in 450 AH (1058 AD). As a child his father died and a Sufi friend took charge of his upbringing. In his youth he studied jurisprudence, theology, and philosophy; when he reached thirty-three he became professor of jurisprudence at the Nizamiyya madrasa in Baghdad, and before long his eloquence, mastery, and power of reasoning astonished the Muslims. After three years in this position, when his fame had spread everywhere, he was struck by a mysterious illness: he could not work, his appetite for eating and drinking and his digestion were disturbed, and occasionally stuttering made his speech ugly; then his mental powers began to decline. A skillful physician diagnosed the basis of his trouble as a mental illness. In reality Ghazali, as he later confessed in the account of his life, had begun to doubt the ability of reason to understand the secrets of the Islamic religion and found the hypocrisy of his religious lessons unbearable. In any case, in 487 AH (1094 AD) he left Baghdad; outwardly he intended to perform the pilgrimage, but in truth he wanted to withdraw from people, spend time in solitude, silence, and peace, and occupy himself with thought and contemplation. Since he saw no help from science for renewing his wavering faith, he broke with the external world and turned to introspection; he believed that there he would find the eternal truth that is the firm foundation of faith in the spiritual world by a closer path. He sharply criticized the world of the senses — which is the basis of the materialist movement. He did not trust the external senses, saying that the external senses make the stars appear small although they are undoubtedly much larger than the earth, otherwise seeing them from that distance would not be possible. From this example and hundreds of others he concluded that the senses alone are not a reliable means of reaching truth. In his view reason is higher than the senses and coordinates and corrects the things it receives through the different senses; but ultimately reason also relies on the senses. Perhaps man has a surer knowledge than reason that can lead him to truth. Ghazali felt that he had found this kind of knowledge in Sufi introspection: the Sufi approaches the hidden truth more closely than the philosopher; the best kinds of knowledge is contemplation of the wonder of the mind so that God appears to the thinker from within and the self itself is annihilated in the vision of unity.

With this way of thinking Ghazali wrote his most important book, Tahafut al-Falasifa, in which he used all the arts of reason against reason. This Muslim Sufi employed philosophical dialectic with a precision like that of Kant to prove that human reason leads to doubt and causes spiritual bankruptcy, moral decline, and social collapse. Seven centuries before Hume, Ghazali reduced reason to the limits of the law of causality, and the law of causality to mere succession of things, and said that all we perceive is that “B” always follows “A,” but we do not know whether “A” is also the cause of “B” or not. He said that philosophy, logic, and science cannot prove the existence of God or the immortality of the soul; only direct inspiration or intuitive knowledge can prove these two beliefs, without which no moral order — and therefore no civilization — can survive.

Finally Ghazali returned through Sufism to all the original beliefs of religion. All the hopes and fears he had in his youth were renewed, and he admitted that he felt the threat and presence of an overpowering God above his head. He again began to warn people of the torment of Hell and said that these sermons are necessary for the moral reform of the common people. He once more believed in the Qur’an and Hadith. In the book Ihya Ulum al-Din he described the return to his former beliefs and defended them with all the eloquence and fervor of his prime. Skeptics and philosophers in Islam never had a fiercer enemy than him. When Ghazali died in 505 AH (1111 AD), the wave of atheism had receded and the hearts of devout believers were at peace. When his books were translated into foreign languages, the men of Christian religion were also pleased with their contents, which were a defense of religion and an explanation of the rules of righteousness and piety — and had no parallel since the time of Augustine. From the time of Ghazali onward, although Ibn Rushd appeared at the far end of the Islamic world, philosophy lost its popularity, scientific debates turned to intoxication, and Hadith and the Qur’an took the place of all other sciences in the attention of Islamic minds.

Ghazali’s attention to the Sufi religion was a great victory for the Sufis, and after him Sunnis turned to Sufism, so much so that for a time Sufi ideas dominated theology. Of course the scholars of religion and Sharia remained dominant over the Sharia and official religion, but the field of religious thought became the arena of the sheikhs of the tariqa and the saints. It is a strange coincidence that the appearance of the Franciscans in Christianity coincided with the formation of a new kind of asceticism and holiness in the Islamic world of the sixth century. Sufi ascetics withdrew from family life, lived the life of a religious brotherhood under the supervision of a sheikh, and called themselves “faqir” or dervish. They tried in various ways to elevate their spirit and annihilate it in the spirit of God so as to become capable of performing strange deeds — some through prayer and contemplation, some through asceticism, self-denial, and mortification, and others through the ecstasy obtained from dhikr.

These ideas took shape in one hundred and fifty books from the writings of Muhyi al-Din ibn Arabi (561–638 AH / 1165–1240 AD), a Muslim of Spanish origin residing in Damascus. He said that the world was never created, because it is the external manifestation of an existence whose inner truth is God Himself. History is nothing but the appearance of God’s self-awareness, and this self-awareness is ultimately realized in human existence. Hell is a temporary abode; and all people will ultimately be saved. Love, if attached to perishable and physical manifestations, has gone astray; it is God who manifests in the form of the beloved, and the true lover sees the manifestation of universal beauty in every beautiful form and falls in love with it. Perhaps Muhyi al-Din remembered the saying of some Christians of the time of Saint Jerome and told people: “Whoever falls in love and remains chaste until death has died a martyr” and has reached the highest degrees of sincerity. Many married dervishes openly said that they lived with their wives in this way.

Some Islamic sects became rich through the abundant gifts that people gave and were content to enjoy the pleasures of life. One of the sheikhs of Syria around 648 AH (1250 AD) complained: “The Sufis were once a people disheveled in appearance and united in meaning; now they are a group united in appearance and disheveled in meaning.” People smiled at those who wanted both religion and the world and paid them no attention. But they held genuine, sincere ascetics in respect, attributed miraculous powers and deeds to them, celebrated their births, hoped for their intercession, and visited their tombs.

When the Sunnis triumphed, the spirit of religious tolerance weakened. From the time of Harun al-Rashid onward the strict regulations attributed to Umar ibn al-Khattab were gradually revived. According to these regulations, which were not always observed in practice, non-Muslims were required to distinguish their clothing with yellow lines and riding horses was forbidden to them; they were allowed only to ride donkeys and mules; they were not allowed to build new churches or synagogues, but could only repair previous temples; they were not allowed to carry crosses outside churches, and ringing bells was also prohibited. Children of non-Muslims had no place in Muslim schools but could have special schools for themselves: the written text of Islamic regulations still says this, but it is not always enforced. Nevertheless, in Baghdad alone in the tenth century there were 45,000 Christians; Christian funerals were carried through the streets without interference or harassment; and Muslims constantly complained about the employment of Jews and Christians in government offices. Even in the heat of the Crusades Salah al-Din was able to treat his Christian subjects with generosity and kindness.

Ibn Rushd

Philosophy continued for some time in Islamic Spain because it published ideas with wisdom and caution that were in harmony with religion and mild in criticism. Thought gained unstable freedom in the courts of emirs who enjoyed philosophical discussions in private gatherings but considered them harmful for the common people. The emir of Saragossa, who was from the Almoravids, chose Abu Bakr ibn Bajja, who was born in the same city around 500 AH (1106 AD), as his vizier and friend. Ibn Bajja or, as he later became known in Europe, Avempace, while still young attained an extraordinary position in the natural sciences, medicine, philosophy, music, and poetry. According to Ibn Khaldun, the emir was so astonished by the poems of the young scholar that he swore that whenever he came into his presence he would walk on gold; Ibn Bajja, fearing that this oath would reduce the desire to see him, placed two gold coins in his shoes. When Saragossa fell to the Christians the scholarly poet vizier fled from there to Fez, where among Muslims who considered him an infidel he struggled with poverty and died at the age of thirty, according to some accounts from poison. His treatise on music, which is lost, is considered the best work in this precise field among the writings of the Islamic Maghreb. More famous than all his works is the book Tadbir al-Mutawahhid in which he renewed discussion on one of the basic issues of Arab philosophy. In Ibn Bajja’s view human intellect is composed of two parts: one “material intellect” that is attached to the body and will die with the death of the body, and the other “active intellect” or impersonal universal intellect that exists in all people and is the only one that does not die with the death of individuals. Thought is the highest duty of man and only through it can man reach knowledge of the “active intellect,” which is God Himself, and become one with it, not through Sufi ecstasy. Thought is a dangerous method unless it is carried out in silence. The wise man lives in a quiet corner, far from physicians, jurists, and all people; it is possible that a number of philosophers may form an association in which they strive for knowledge with gentleness and tolerance far from the clamor and madness of the people.

Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl, who is known to Europeans as Abubacer (501–581 AH / 1107?–1185 AD), continued Ibn Bajja’s ideas and almost realized his lofty goals. He too was a scholar, poet, physician, and philosopher. In Marrakesh, the capital of the Almohads, he became vizier and physician to the caliph Abu Ya’qub Yusuf. He spent most of his waking hours in the royal library and between study and state affairs had enough time to write, among other technical and rich books, the greatest philosophical story of the Middle Ages. Ibn Tufayl took the title of his story from Ibn Sina and perhaps his story, which was translated into English by Ockley in 1708 AD, inspired Defoe’s story of Robinson Crusoe.

The summary of the story is that Hayy ibn Yaqzan, after whom the story is named, is abandoned as an infant on an uninhabited island. A gazelle suckles him, he becomes an intelligent and clever youth, and personally provides his shoes and clothing from animal skins; he contemplates the stars, dissects living and dead animals and “in this field of knowledge reaches the level of the most excellent naturalists.” Then he turns from the natural sciences to philosophy and theology, demonstrates to himself the existence of a powerful Creator; then lives like ascetics, eats no meat, and forms a spiritual bond with the “active intellect.” At the age of forty-nine Hayy is ready to teach other people. Fortunately a Sufi named Asal seeking solitude steps onto the island and meets Hayy. This is the first time Hayy becomes aware of the existence of human beings. Asal teaches him speech and is happy to see that Hayy has reached knowledge of God without help from others and tells him that he has come from a place where religious beliefs are tainted with violence, and regrets that people have acquired even a little good morals only as a result of the promise of Paradise and fear of Hell. Hayy decides to leave his island and lead these ignorant people to a more complete and philosophical religion. When he reaches them he begins to call to his religion, which is the unity of God and the universe, in the public market; but the people avoid him or do not understand his words. And he realizes that if religion is not mixed with myth, miracle, customs, and divine reward and punishment, people will not learn social order. Then he becomes regretful of his work, returns to the island, lives with Asal in the company of harmless animals and the active intellect, and the two continue to worship God until the moment of death.

Around 548 AH (1153 AD), Ibn Tufayl introduced a young judge and physician to Abu Ya’qub Yusuf who among Muslims is known as Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Rushd (520–595 AH / 1126–1198 AD) and in medieval Europe was called Averroes, and who was the greatest philosopher of Islam in terms of influence on minds. By this act Ibn Tufayl showed that he was free from rivalry and envy to a degree rarely found in human nature. Ibn Rushd’s grandfather and father were themselves chief judges of Cordoba and had provided the means of his education as far as was possible in Cordoba. One of Ibn Rushd’s students has narrated from his own words about his first meeting with the emir.

When I was introduced to the Commander of the Faithful, no one was there except Ibn Tufayl. Ibn Tufayl began to praise me excessively. ... The emir began speaking with this question: “What is the opinion of the philosophers about the spheres? Are they eternal or created?” I became confused and anxious and sought an excuse not to answer. ... But when the emir saw my anxiety he looked at Ibn Tufayl and spoke with him on this subject and recited the opinions of Plato and Aristotle and other philosophers, and the objections of Muslim scholars to them, from memory in such a way that even professional philosophers could not have done likewise. The emir calmed me and tested my knowledge. As soon as I left his presence he sent me a sum of money, a horse, and a valuable robe of honor.

Ibn Rushd became chief judge in Seville in 565 AH (1169 AD) and in Cordoba in 568 AH (1172 AD). Ten years later Abu Ya’qub Yusuf summoned him to Marrakesh and made him his personal physician, and he remained in this position until the caliphate passed to Ya’qub al-Mansur (580 AH / 1184 AD). In 591 AH (1194 AD) Ibn Rushd was exiled to a place near Cordoba to calm the people’s dissatisfaction with his philosophical ideas, then he was pardoned and returned to Marrakesh in 595 AH (1198 AD). But he died the following year, and his grave is still there.

Ibn Rushd’s enormous fame in philosophy has almost caused his medical works to be forgotten, but in reality he was one of the great physicians of his time, and the first to describe the work of the retina of the eye, and said that whoever has had smallpox once is immune to this disease. His medical encyclopedia named Kitab al-Kulliyyat fi al-Tibb, which was translated into Latin, was widely taught in Christian universities. At the same time the emir Abu Ya’qub Yusuf expressed interest in having someone write a clear commentary on Aristotle’s theories for him and, at Ibn Tufayl’s suggestion, assigned this task to Ibn Rushd. The philosopher warmly accepted this proposal, because in his view all philosophy was contained in Aristotle’s theories, and it was sufficient to explain and interpret them so that they would suit every age. Ibn Rushd set out to prepare, for every authentic book of Aristotle, first a summary, then a short commentary on it, and then a detailed commentary for students of philosophy who had advanced in this field — this style of commentary, which begins simply and gradually becomes complex, was customary in Islamic universities. Unfortunately he did not know Greek and had to base his work on the Arabic translations of Aristotle’s books that had been taken from Syriac translations; but his patience, clear mind, and power in precise analysis made him known throughout Europe as “the Great Commentator” and earned him a respected position among the philosophers of Islam, as the successor to the great Ibn Sina.

In addition to these commentaries Ibn Rushd himself also wrote books on logic, physics, psychology, metaphysics, theology, law, astronomy, and grammar and wrote a reply to Ghazali’s Tahafut al-Falasifa which he named Tahafut al-Tahafut. He too, like Francis Bacon, said that a little philosophy may make a man irreligious, but the unhindered study of philosophy leads to a better understanding of the relationship between religion and philosophy. For although the philosopher cannot accept the dogmas of “the Qur’an, the Bible, and other heavenly books” in their apparent meanings, he realizes that these teachings are necessary to instill piety and good morals in people who, because of the difficulties of life, think about the problem of eternity and temporality only occasionally, superficially, and riskily. For this reason the perfected philosopher does not speak against religion. Instead, the philosopher should be allowed to strive for truth; but he must confine his discussions to the learned and not propagate his ideas among the common people. In his view, if the principles of religious belief are interpreted symbolically, they can be reconciled with the results of science and philosophy; the symbolic and allegorical interpretation of sacred texts had been followed for centuries, even among the official religious authorities. Ibn Rushd did not explicitly teach the principles of belief that Christian critics attributed to him, and he did not say that a proposition can be true in philosophy (among the educated) but false (harmful) in the realm of religion (and ethics); but his teachings imply this meaning, and for this reason Ibn Rushd’s theories should be sought not in the short treatises he wrote for general students of philosophy, but in the richer and more difficult commentaries he wrote on Aristotle.

Ibn Rushd defines philosophy as: discussion of the truth of things for the purpose of improving the condition of man. According to him the world is eternal; the movements of the stars have no beginning or end; and creation is nothing but a legend.

The advocates of creation claim that God creates [new] beings without need of existing matter. ... This very idea has led the three following religions to say that something is created from nothing. ... Motion is eternal and continuous; and every motion arises from a previous motion. Without motion there will be no time. We cannot imagine in the mind a motion that has a beginning and an end.

Nevertheless, he says that God is the creator of the world, that is, the world exists at every moment by the blessing of the divine preserving force or sustaining power and at every moment receives new creation by the active force of God. Therefore God is the order, strength, and intellect of the universe.

The system and intellect that moves the spheres and stars comes from this supreme system and universal intellect. The active intellect, which penetrates the body and mind of man, appears from the intellect of the last sphere (the lunar sphere). Human intellect has two parts. The passive or material intellect, which is the capacity and power of thought and rational knowledge, this intellect is part of his body and perishes with the perishing of the body (nervous system?); and the other is the active intellect which is from God and it is He who drives the passive intellect to thought. The active intellect does not differ in individuals but is the same in all and it alone is permanent and everlasting. Ibn Rushd likens the action of the active intellect in man or the passive intellect to the effect of the sun whose light illuminates many bodies and is the same everywhere and always as it was. The passive intellect strives to unite with the active intellect, just as fire penetrates all combustible bodies. Human intellect through union with the active intellect becomes like God because potentially through its thought it encompasses all beings. In truth the world and everything in it has no meaning for us except through the intellect that perceives it. Only the perception of truth through reason leads the intellect to union with God, which the Sufis imagine they can reach through asceticism and sama. Ibn Rushd is far from Sufi ideas. In his view Paradise is that calm and lovable wisdom from which the wise benefit.

Aristotle also reached this conclusion; it is needless to say that the theory of the active intellect and the passive or potential intellect is taken from Aristotle’s book On the Soul (III 5), according to the interpretation of Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius of Alexandria, and it is this theory that has become the theory of emanation or the emanation theory of the Neoplatonists and has reached us through Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Bajja. This Arab philosophy was Aristotle’s philosophy poured into a Neoplatonic mold, but while Aristotle’s ideas were modified by most Christian and Muslim philosophers to fit the requirements of theology, Islamic beliefs were organized by Ibn Rushd to harmonize with Aristotle’s theories. For this reason Ibn Rushd’s influence in the Christian realm was greater than in the Islamic lands. Contemporary Muslims persecuted him, later generations forgot him, and the Arabic text of most of his works was lost; but the Jews preserved most of it in Hebrew translations. Ibn Maimon too, like Ibn Rushd, wanted to reconcile religion and philosophy. In the Christian world the translation of Ibn Rushd’s commentaries from Hebrew to Latin was the most important source of the heresies of Siger of Brabant and the rationalism of the Padua school and threatened Christianity as a danger. Thomas Aquinas wanted to turn back the wave that Ibn Rushd’s works had created and wrote the Summa Theologica for this purpose; but in many matters he followed him; among them in the method of commentary, in several interpretations of Aristotle, in choosing matter as the “principle of individuation” of things, in the symbolic interpretation of the anthropomorphism of sacred texts, in accepting the possibility of the eternity of the world, in rejecting Sufism as a basic pillar of theology, and in affirming that some religious propositions are above reason and can be accepted by faith. Roger Bacon counts Ibn Rushd as the successor of Aristotle and Ibn Sina and, with the exaggeration usual to him, says: “In our age [around 669 AH / 1270 AD] the philosophy of Ibn Rushd is accepted by all the wise.”

In 545 AH (1150 AD) al-Mustanjid, the Abbasid caliph, ordered all the books of Ibn Sina and the treatises of the Brethren of Purity to be burned in Baghdad. In 591 AH (1194 AD) Abu Yusuf Ya’qub al-Mansur, who was then in Seville, ordered that all the works of Ibn Rushd, except a few on the natural sciences, be burned, and prohibited the teaching of philosophy to his people, and encouraged them to throw any philosophy book they found into the fire. The people enthusiastically carried out the command of the Seville caliph, because they were greatly distressed by the philosophers’ encroachment on the limits of faith, which for most of them was the dearest source of consolation for the pain and weariness of life. At the same time Ibn Habib was sentenced to death for studying philosophy. After 597 AH (1200 AD) Islam turned away from theoretical thought. When political power weakened in the Islamic world it gradually sought support from the religious scholars and Sunni jurists. They in turn, in return for preventing independent and free thought, supported the caliphate; nevertheless these supports were not enough to save the declining state. In Spain the Christians advanced city by city until nothing remained for the Muslims except Granada; in the east the Crusaders took Jerusalem and in 656 AH (1258 AD) the Mongols captured and destroyed Baghdad.

The Mongol Invasion: 1219–1258 AD (616–656 AH)

Here history once again demonstrated the truth that the comfort obtained from civilization causes the victory of savage peoples over civilized people. The Seljuks had given new strength to the eastern Islamic world, but they too had become accustomed to weakness and luxury and had allowed Malik Shah’s state to be divided into independent countries that were culturally brilliant but militarily weak. Religious and racial fanaticism had divided the people into opposing and hostile groups and prevented them from uniting to resist the Crusaders.

Meanwhile, in the plains and deserts of northwestern Asia, the Mongols were constantly gaining strength through enduring hardships and high reproduction. They lived in tents or in the open air, moved to new pastures following their herds, made their clothes from cow skins, and with excitement and interest learned the customs of war. These new Huns, like their relatives eight centuries earlier, were skilled in using daggers and swords and in shooting arrows from fast horses. If we accept the statement of the Christian missionary Giovanni da Pian del Carpine about them, “this people ate whatever came into their hands, even lice”; and they did not dislike eating field mice, cats, dogs, and human blood, just as civilized people of our time have no objection to eating lobster and oysters. Genghis Khan (549–624 AH / 1167–1227 AD) organized these peoples with strict regulations, built a great force from them, and set them in motion to conquer Central Asia from the Volga River to the Great Wall of China. While Genghis was absent from his capital Karakorum, one Mongol general rose against him and allied with Ala al-Din Muhammad, king of the independent Khwarazmian state. Genghis suppressed this rebellion and proposed peace to the king; he accepted. But shortly afterward in Transoxiana two Mongol merchants were killed as spies by the sultan’s governor in Otrar. Genghis demanded that the governor be handed over for punishment; the king refused this demand, killed the chief of the Mongol envoys, and shaved the beards of the rest and sent them back. Genghis Khan went to war and the Mongol invasion of the Islamic lands began (616 AH / 1219 AD).

The Mongol army, under the command of Jochi, son of the Khan, defeated the sultan Muhammad’s 400,000 troops near Jand; and as a result of this defeat the sultan fled to Samarkand, leaving 160,000 dead on the field. Another Mongol army under the command of Chagatai, son of the Khan, marched toward Otrar, captured and plundered it. A third army, under the command of the Khan himself, marched toward Bukhara and burned the city, took thousands of women captive, and killed 30,000 men. Samarkand and Balkh surrendered without fighting but did not escape plunder and mass slaughter. Ibn Battuta, who saw these cities a hundred years later, says that most of them were still ruins and owl nests. Tolui Khan, son of Genghis, attacked Khorasan with 70,000 troops and destroyed every city he reached. The Mongols placed captives in front of their lines and gave them the choice of fighting their countrymen ahead or being killed from behind. Merv was opened by betrayal and completely burned; the libraries of the city, which were the pride of Islam, became fuel for the fire; the people were allowed to leave the city with their property, only to be plundered and slaughtered one by one outside the city. According to Muslim historians this massacre lasted thirteen days and 1,300,000 people were killed. Nishapur resisted bravely for a long time and when it surrendered (618 AH / 1221 AD) all the men, women, and children of the city were put to the sword except for four hundred skilled craftsmen who were sent to Mongolia, and a terrifying pyramid was built from the skulls. The beautiful city of Rayy with 3,000 mosques and famous pottery workshops was destroyed and, according to one Muslim historian, all its people were killed. The son of Sultan Muhammad, Sultan Jalal al-Din, gathered a new army of Turks, fought Genghis on the bank of the Indus River, but was defeated and fled to Delhi. Herat rebelled against the Mongol governor and as punishment 60,000 of its people were killed. This savagery was part of the Mongol method of war; they wanted to instill a paralyzing terror in the hearts of their future opponents and leave no possibility of rebellion among the conquered — and their purpose was achieved.

Then Genghis returned to his own lands, spent some time happily with his 500 wives and concubines, and died in bed. His son and successor Ögedei Qa’an sent an army of 300,000 to capture Sultan Jalal al-Din, who had gathered a new army in Diyarbakir. Jalal al-Din was defeated and killed, and since the Mongol warriors saw no further resistance they engaged in raids in Azerbaijan, Mesopotamia, Georgia, and Armenia (632 AH / 1234 AD). Hulagu, grandson of Genghis, after learning that a rebellion led by the Hashishiyya [or followers of Hasan Sabbah] had occurred in Iran, passed through Samarkand and Balkh with an army, destroyed the Hashishiyya fortress in Alamut, and headed toward Baghdad.

Al-Musta’sim, the last Abbasid caliph of the East, was one of the great scholars and famous calligraphers and an example of mildness and gentleness, and paid great attention to religion, books, and charity: and all this was contrary to Hulagu’s taste. The Mongols accused the caliph of sheltering rebels and refusing to fulfill his promise of cooperation against the Hashishiyya; they told the caliph to submit obediently to the great Khan as punishment for his behavior and to completely evacuate Baghdad of weapons and means of defense. Al-Musta’sim proudly rejected this demand. The Mongols besieged Baghdad. One month after the siege the caliph sent gifts to Hulagu and proposed peace. He was deceived by Hulagu’s promise of good treatment and surrendered with his two sons to the Mongols. Hulagu and his army entered Baghdad (656 AH / 1258 AD) and for forty days engaged in plunder and massacre; according to some historians they killed 800,000 of the city’s people. In this general massacre thousands of scholars, learned men, and poets perished; libraries and treasures that had been gathered over centuries were destroyed or plundered in one week; hundreds of thousands of books were burned. Finally the caliph and members of his family were forced to reveal the hiding places of their treasures; after that their blood was shed. Thus the Abbasid caliphate ended in Asia.

Hulagu returned to Mongolia. His army, under the command of other generals, set out to conquer Syria, confronted the Egyptian army under the command of Qutuz and Baybars, Mamluk emirs, at Ain Jalut and was shattered (658 AH / 1260 AD). This joyful news spread throughout the Islamic lands and in Europe and all people of religions rejoiced; the spell was broken and fear was gone; in 703 AH (1303 AD) a decisive battle near Damascus ended the Mongol calamity and saved Syria for the Mamluks and probably Europe for Christianity.

No civilization in history has suffered such sudden destruction as Islamic civilization. For example, the conquest of Rome by the barbarians occurred gradually over two centuries and in the interval between each attack the conquered part had the opportunity to recover; and the Germanic conquerors had respect in their hearts for the dying state they had helped to destroy, and some of them even tried to preserve it. But the Mongol raids lasted only forty years: they had not come to conquer and stay but to kill and plunder and take the spoils to Mongolia. When the bloody Mongol wave receded, what remained was an economy in severe disorder, canals destroyed or blocked, madrasas and libraries burned, states so poor, weak, and fragmented that they had no power to administer the country, and populations reduced to half and with broken spirits; but even before the foreign invasion, Epicurean pleasure-seeking, physical and spiritual exhaustion, military cowardice and incompetence, religious sectarianism and ignorance-seeking, corruption and political chaos had brought the state to collapse. These factors, and not climate change, replaced the global leadership of western Asia with poverty, misery, and ruin, and afflicted dozens of prosperous and important cities of Syria, Mesopotamia, Iran, the Caucasus, and Transoxiana with the present poverty, disease, and backwardness.

Islam and the Christian World

The rise and decline of Islamic civilization is one of the great events of history. For five centuries, from 81 to 597 AH (700 to 1200 AD), Islam was the leader of the world in power, order, expansion of government territory, purification of morals and behavior, standard of living, establishment of just and humane laws and religious tolerance, literature, scholarship, science, medicine, and philosophy. In architecture it surrendered its superiority to the European cathedrals in the twelfth century; and Gothic sculpture found no rival in the Islamic world, which considered this work forbidden; Islamic art devoted all its force to decoration and suffered greatly from the narrowness of scope and monotonous boredom of style; but within the limits it imposed on itself no art has yet surpassed it. In the Islamic lands art and culture were more widespread among the people than in the Christian regions of the Middle Ages. Kings were calligraphers, and how many merchants there were who, like physicians, were philosophers.

Probably in these periods the Christian lands had superiority over the Islamic regions in sexual customs, but the difference was not very noticeable; Christian monogamy, although not actually and precisely observed, limited sexual instinct and gradually raised the status of women, whereas Islam covered women’s faces with veil and chador. The Christian Church had strictly restricted divorce; apparently in Christian countries and even in Renaissance Italy sodomy was not as widespread as in Muslim life — we do not say in Islamic law. It seems that Muslims were nobler than Christians; they observed treaties better, were more merciful to the vanquished, and in their history rarely resorted to the kind of savagery that the Christians committed when they took Jerusalem (493 AH / 1099 AD). At a time when Islamic law had an advanced judicial method carried out by enlightened judges, Christian laws continued to use the ordeal method by single combat, water or fire. The Islamic religion, whose innovative aspect is less than that of Judaism and is not as eclectic as Christianity, preserved its customs more simply and cleanly than Christian customs and paid less attention to spectacular manifestations than Christianity, and yielded less to the polytheistic tendencies of humans. Islam, in that it despises the fancifulness of the religions of the Mediterranean region, is similar to Protestantism, but in the picture it gives of Paradise it surrenders to popular imagination. The Islamic religion completely avoided a priestly system or religious hierarchy, and while Christianity was moving toward one of the most ornate periods of Catholic philosophy, Islam became trapped in a dry and spiritless official orthodoxy.

The influence of the Christian world on Islam was almost limited to certain religious and military customs. Sufism, seclusion, and the veneration of saints probably entered the Islamic world from Christian models. The story of Jesus and his personality penetrated Muslim memory and received attention in Islamic poetry and art.

Islam had varied and great influence on the Christian world. Christian Europe learned foods, drinks, medicines, treatments, weapons, the use of special family emblems, taste, and artistic motivation, tools and techniques of industry and trade, and laws and sea routes from Islam and often borrowed their words from the Muslims as well. Words such as: orange, lemon, sugar, syrup, sherbet, julep, elixir, jar, azure, arabesque, mattress, sofa, muslin, satin, fustian, bazaar, caravan, check, tariff, traffic, douane, magazine, sloop, barge, cable, admiral; with slight distortion are the same as the words narang, limu, shakar, shira, sharbat, gulab, iksir, jarra, azraq, arabana, matrah, saffa, musili, sabati, fustati, bazar, karvan [Persian], shahmat [Persian-Arabic], tarif, tarfiq, diwan, makhzan, sulub (a single-masted war galley), barka [Persian], habl, and amir al-ma’. The game of chess reached Europe from India through Islam and acquired Persian names along the way, for example the word checkmate is a distortion of “shahmat.” The names of some of our musical instruments indicate their Semitic origin; among them lute “ud,” rebeck “rabab,” guitar “qitara,” tambourine “tanbur.” The poetry and music of the troubadours came from Muslim Spain to Provence in France, and from Muslim Sicily to Italy. Perhaps the Arabic stories of journeys to Paradise and Hell influenced Dante’s Divine Comedy. Indian legends and numerals reached Europe in Arabic dress or form. Islamic scholars preserved and perfected Greek mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and medicine, and transmitted this Greek heritage, which had become much richer, to Europe. Even today Arabic scientific terms are abundant in European languages; among them: algebra “al-jabr,” zero and cipher “sifr,” azimuth “al-sumut,” alembic “al-anbiq,” zenith “al-samt,” and almanac meaning “calendar” which is a distortion of the word “al-manakh.” Islamic physicians were the standard-bearers of world medicine for five hundred years. Islamic philosophers preserved Aristotle’s works for Christian Europe and at the same time distorted them.

Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd were, in the view of the scholastic philosophers of Europe, who placed these two after the Greeks in authority, the lights of the East.

The arch and ribbed vault in the Islamic lands is older than in Europe; but we cannot trace the path by which it reached Gothic architecture. The conical minaret and the bell tower of Christian churches owe much to the minarets of mosques, and perhaps the lattice decoration of Gothic windows was inspired by the pointed arches of the Giralda tower. The revival of the art of pottery in Italy and France is considered the result of the transfer of Muslim potters to these two countries in the twelfth century and the journey of Italian potters to Islamic Spain. Blacksmiths and glassmakers and also bookbinders of Italy, armor weavers and weapon makers of Spain, all learned their techniques from Muslim craftsmen. Almost everywhere in Europe weavers looked to the Islamic lands for samples and designs; even gardens also showed signs to a large extent from Iranian gardens.

Later we will speak in detail about the paths through which this Islamic influence reached Europe, but here we mention them briefly: trade and the Crusades; the translation of thousands of books from Arabic to Latin; the travels of scholars such as Gerbert, Michael Scot, and Adelard of Bath to Muslim Spain; Christian youths whom their Spanish parents sent to the courts of Muslim emirs to be educated there and learn the customs of chivalry — for Muslim nobles were counted among knights and great men, even if they were Maghribi; and also the daily contact of Christians with Muslims in Syria, Egypt, Sicily, and Spain. Every advance the Christians made in Spain was followed by a wave of Islamic literature, sciences, philosophy, and art transferred to the Christian realm. For example, we say that the Christian conquest of Toledo in 478 AH (1085 AD) increased Christian astronomical knowledge and preserved belief in the sphericity of the earth.

But behind this cultural borrowing a silent and unquenchable hatred burned, because after bread nothing is dearer to humankind than religious beliefs; man does not live by bread alone, he also needs faith to live, which creates hope in his heart. For this reason the human heart is inflamed most by things that endanger its strength or belief. Christians for three full centuries witnessed the progress of the Muslims who constantly took Christian provinces one after another and brought Christian peoples successively into their sphere of influence. They felt the strong hands of the Muslims over Christian trade, and everywhere heard that Christians were called infidels; finally the expected conflict occurred: two rival civilizations clashed in the Crusades and the elite men of East and West shed each other’s blood. This mutual enmity was a powerful factor throughout medieval history. A third religion, namely Judaism, also received blows from both warring sides. The West lost the Crusades but won the war of beliefs; all Christian warriors were driven out of the Promised Land, but the Muslims whose late victory had drained their blood and whose lands the Mongols had ruined in turn fell into a dark age of ignorance and poverty; while the defeated West, which had learned from the constant efforts of experience and forgotten its defeats, acquired a thirst for knowledge and interest in progress from its enemies; built cathedrals whose heads touched the clouds; began to traverse the fields of reason; transformed its new harsh languages into the style of Dante, Chaucer, and Villon; and with pride stepped into the Renaissance.

In reality ordinary readers are astonished by this long discussion of Islamic civilization, and scholars regret its undue brevity. Only in the golden ages of history has a society been able, in a period as short as this — four centuries from Harun al-Rashid to Ibn Rushd — to produce so many distinguished men in the fields of government, education, literature, lexicography, geography, history, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, philosophy, and medicine. Part of this brilliant activity drew material from the Greek heritage; but most of it, especially in politics, poetry, and art, was valuable innovations. The peak of the Islamic movement was in some respects the liberation of the Near East from Greek scientific influence, which not only flourished in Sasanian and Achaemenid Iran but had also spread in Solomon’s Judea, Ashurbanipal’s Assyria, Hammurabi’s Babylon, Sargon’s Akkad, and the unknown kings of Sumer. Thus once again it becomes clear that the rings of history are linked: for earthquakes, widespread diseases, famines, destructive migrations, and deadly wars do not destroy the basic foundations of civilization. A younger culture snatches these materials from the heart of the fire and continues them with imitation and borrowing, and then with invention and innovation, so that the living and youthful spirit of a people is manifested. Just as the children of Adam are members of one another, and different generations are moments of the great human generation, civilizations are also units of a larger whole called history and are the different stages of human life. Civilization has diverse materials and is the product of the cooperation of different peoples, classes, and religions, and whoever studies the history of civilization cannot employ prejudice in favor of one people or one religion. Therefore, although the researcher is attached to his country by strong bonds of kinship, at the same time he feels that he is a citizen of the realm of reason that knows neither enmity nor borders. If during his studies he follows political prejudices, or racial discriminations, or religious hostilities, he is not worthy of his title; he must thank and honor every nation that lights the torch of civilization and enriches its heritage.