Chapter 44 Chapter 10 Islamic Culture and Philosophy

The invasions suffered by the Eastern Roman Empire, Africa, and Spain differed from the northern barbarian invasion of Western Europe in the following two aspects: 1. The Eastern Roman Empire lasted until 1453 AD, nearly a thousand years longer than the Western Roman Empire; 2. The main invaders of the Eastern Roman Empire were Muslims. They did not convert to Christianity after conquering the Eastern Roman Empire, but developed their own important civilization. Hegira, from which the Islamic era began, began in AD 622; Muhammad died ten years later.Immediately after his death the Arabs began their campaign, and they advanced with extraordinary rapidity.In the east, Syria was invaded in AD 634 and fully succumbed within two years.Persia was invaded in 637 AD and completely conquered in 650 AD.India was invaded in AD 664; Constantinople was besieged in AD 669 (re-sieged in AD 716-717).The march westward was not so sudden.Egypt fell in 642 AD, and Carthage didn't fall until 697 AD.Apart from a small corner in the northwest, Spain was also conquered in AD 711-712.Expansion towards the west (except for Sicily and southern Italy) was halted by the defeat of the Muslims at the battle of Tours in 732 A.D., exactly one hundred years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

(The Ottomans, the Turks, who finally took Constantinople, belong to a later period and have nothing to do with the era to which we are now concerned.) A number of circumstances at the time facilitated this expansion.Both Persia and the Eastern Roman Empire were fatigued by their long wars.The Syrians, who were Nestorians, had long suffered persecution from the Catholic Church, but the Mohammedans tolerated all Christians who paid tribute and donations.Likewise, the monosexuals, who made up the majority of the Egyptian population, welcomed the invaders.In Africa, the Arabs formed an alliance with the Bebels, who had never been fully subdued by Rome.The Arabs joined forces with the Bebels to invade Spain, where they were aided by the Jews, long persecuted by the Visigoths.

The religion of the Prophet Muhammad was a purely monotheistic religion, without the subtle theology of the Trinity and the Incarnation of Christ.Not only did the Prophet Muhammad not claim to be God, neither did his followers make such a claim for him.He restored the Jewish commandment against worshiping carved images and forbidding the consumption of alcohol. The duty of faithful believers is to conquer as much of the world as possible for Islam, but not to persecute Christians, Jews, or Zoroastrians—the Koran calls them "people of the Bible," that is, they follow the scriptures man of.

Much of Arabia is desert, and its production is increasingly insufficient to supply the needs of its population.Some of the first campaigns of the Arabs were for plunder, and it was only after they experienced the impotence of the enemy that they turned to long-term occupation.Suddenly, for about twenty years, these people, accustomed to a hard life on the fringes of the desert, found themselves masters of some of the richest regions in the world, enjoying not only luxuries, but All the exquisite heritage of ancient civilizations.But they were better than most northern barbarians who resisted the temptation for change.Since they did not have many brutal wars when they won the country, they rarely destroyed it, and their civil affairs were almost intact.The Persian and Byzantine empires were already highly organized civilly.Originally ignorant of the intricacies of civil administration, the Arab tribes had to keep veterans in charge of the old institutions in their service.Most of them showed no disdain to serve their new masters.This change really made their job easier because the taxes were greatly reduced.Ordinary people, in order to avoid paying tribute, abandoned Christianity and converted to Islam in large numbers.

The Arab Empire was an absolute monarchy under the caliphate.The Caliph is not only the successor of the Prophet Muhammad, but also inherits many of his holiness.The office of caliph was nominally determined by election, but soon became hereditary.The first dynasty, the Umayyad dynasty, which lasted until 750 AD, was founded by a group of people who accepted the teachings of Muhammad for purely political reasons, and they always opposed the more fanatical elements of the faithful.The Arabs, though they had conquered most of the world in the name of a new religion, were not a very pious people; their motives for war were not so much religious as plunder and wealth.It is precisely because of their lack of fanaticism that a small group of fighters can rule more smoothly over a large number of people with a higher level of civilization and who believe in different religions.

The Persians, on the contrary, were from earliest times extremely religious and highly speculative.After their conversion to Islam, they created many more interesting, more religious and more philosophical elements in Islam than expected by the Prophet Muhammad and his relatives.Since the death of Muhammad's son-in-law Ali in 661 AD, Muslims have been divided into two factions: Sonny and Shia.The former was the larger faction; while the latter followed Ali and considered the Umayyads to be usurpers.The Persians have always belonged to the Shia sect.Mostly due to the influence of the Persians, the Umayyad dynasty was finally overthrown and replaced by the Abasi dynasty representing Persian interests.The coup was marked by the transfer of the capital from Damascus to Baghdad.

Politically, the Abbasid dynasty was more fanatic than the previous Umayyad dynasty.Even so, they did not unify the entire empire.A branch of the Umayyad royal family escaped the massacre and went to Spain, where it became the rightful ruler.Spain thus became independent from the rest of the Muslim world from that period. In the early days of the Abbasid Dynasty, the status of the Caliph reached its peak.One of the most famous of their caliphs was Harun al-Rashid (died 809 AD).He was contemporaneous with Charlemagne and Empress Irene, and through the Arabian Nights he became known as a legend.His court was a splendid center of luxury, poetry, and learning; his income was colossal; his empire stretched from the Strait of Gibraltar in the west to the Indus in the east.His will is absolute; he is constantly accompanied by the executioner, who executes his duties at the first nod of his head.However, this grand occasion did not last long.His successors erred in forming the main body of their army with Turks, who were not tame, and soon they reduced the caliph to a mere puppet; Blind, or in danger of being killed.Nevertheless, the caliphate continued; in 1256 AD, the last caliph of the Abbasid dynasty was massacred by the Mongols along with 800,000 Baghdad citizens.

The shortcomings of the Arabs in terms of political and social systems and other aspects are similar to those of the Roman Empire.Due to the combination of absolute monarchy and polygamy, each time a ruler died, it often led to a dynastic war, which ended in the victory of one of the ruler's princes and the execution of all the others.Primarily as a result of the victories, numerous slaves were produced; and dangerous slave rebellions arose from time to time.Especially because the Caliphate is located in the middle of the East and the West, so its business has been greatly developed. "Not only the mastery of great wealth created a demand for luxuries such as Chinese silk, and Nordic furs, but trade was also facilitated by special circumstances: such as the vastness of the Muslim empire, the spread of the Arabic language as an Esperanto, The lofty status given to merchants in the Islamic ethical system, etc.; we remember that the Prophet Muhammad himself was a merchant, and he also praised it on the way to Mecca on the pilgrimage, "This kind of commerce is like the rule of the army, which depends on the succession of the Arabs. Massive highways in Rome and Persia.They did not allow these highways to fall into disrepair, as the conquerors of the North did.Even so, the empire gradually fell apart—Spain, Persia, North Africa, and Egypt all broke away to gain full or near-full independence.

The best aspect of the Arab economy is agriculture, and because they live in places where water is scarce, they are particularly good at irrigation.Until today, Spanish agriculture has also benefited from the Arabs' water conservancy projects. The unique culture of the Muslim world, although it originated in Syria, then prevailed in both East and West: Persia and Spain.The Syrians, admirers of Aristotle during the conquest, the Nestorians valued Aristotle over Plato, a philosopher beloved by Catholics.The Arabs first acquired their knowledge of Greek philosophy from the Syrians, and from the first they considered Aristotle to be more important than Plato.Even so, Aristotle, as they understood it, was clothed in the cloak of Neo-Platonism.Gindi (c. 873), who wrote philosophy in Arabic for the first time and was the only famous philosopher of Arab origin, translated part of the Nine Chapters by Plotinus and presented them in the His translation was published under the name of Aristotle's Theology, which brought great confusion to the Arab conception of Aristotle.It has taken Arab philosophy centuries since then to overcome this confusion.

At that time in Persia, Muslims had contact with India.In the eighth century they acquired a rudimentary knowledge of astronomy from Sanskrit books.Around 830 A.D., Muhammad ibn Mosa al-Fharazmi, a translator of Sanskrit texts on mathematics and astronomy, published a book later translated into Latin in the twelfth century A.D. called The Indian Book of Numbers.It is from this book that the West first learned what we call "Arabic" numerals, which should have been called "Indian" numerals.This man also wrote a book on algebra, which was used as a textbook in the West until the sixteenth century AD.

Persian civilization has always been admirable intellectually and artistically.But since the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, it has been in a slump.Umar Khayyam is the only poet and mathematician I know of who revised the calendar in AD 1079.Strangely, his best friend is actually the founder of the assassination party, the legendary "Mountain Old Man".The Persians were great poets: Firdussy (c. 941), author of the Shanama, was said by those who read him to be the equal of Homer.Persian is also excellent as the mystic, but not the other Hui.Existing Sufis have great freedom to interpret orthodox teachings both mystical and allegorical; the sect is more or less neo-Platonist. Greek influence first spread to the Muslim world through the Nestorians, but their worldview was by no means purely Greek.In 481 AD their school in Edessa was closed by the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno; afterward, their scholars moved to Persia, where they continued their work, but not without Persian influence.The Nestorians valued Aristotle only for his choice. At first, the Arab philosophers believed that the most important thing was his logic.Afterwards, they also studied his works and "On the Soul".Arab philosophers were generally encyclopedic: they were interested in alchemy, astrology, astronomy, zoology, and in general what we might call philosophy.They were watched with suspicion by a fanatical and obsessive crowd; their safety (when they were safe) was due to the protection of the more enlightened princes. Deserving our special attention, there are two Islamic philosophers: one is the Persian Avicenna, and the other is the Spaniard Averroes.The former is famous among Muslims, the latter among Christians. Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (A.D. 980-1037) lived in the kind of places people usually think of only in poetry.He was born in Pokhara, and at twenty-four he went to Kiva, "the lonely Kiva in the desert"— Then go to Krasan - "Lonely Coast of Krassim".He taught medicine and philosophy for a period in Isbhahan before settling in Tehran.He is even better known in medicine than in philosophy, though he adds little to Gaelan medicine.From the twelfth century AD to the seventeenth century AD, he was regarded by Europeans as a teacher of medicine.He was not a holy figure, in fact, he was very drunk and lewd.He was suspected by orthodox sects, but he made friends with some kings because of his medical connections.He had been in trouble from time to time because of the hostility of the Turkish mercenaries; sometimes he went into hiding, but sometimes he was thrown in prison.He wrote an encyclopedia, almost lost in the East because of the hostility of theologians, but influential in the West because of its Latin translation.His psychology has an empirical tendency. His philosophy was closer to Aristotle and less to Neoplatonism than that of his Moslem philosopher predecessors.Like the later Christian scholastics, he was preoccupied with the problem of universals.Plato said that the universals existed prior to all things.Aristotle had two views, one when he thought for himself, and another when he refuted Plato.This makes Aristotle an ideal subject for commentators. Avicenna invented a formula which has since been restated by Averroes and Albertus Magnus: "Thought leads to generality of form" From this formula one can conceive He does not believe, leaving the universal of thinking.However, this view is also far from simple.The class concept—that is, the universal—is, according to him, at the same time before, in and after everything. He explained this as follows.In God's understanding, the concept of class exists before all things. (For example, God decided to create cats, which requires that God should have the concept of "cat", so in this respect, this concept is prior to individual cats.) The concept of species exists in all things, in the natural among things. (When cats were created, felineness existed in each cat.) The concept of class exists behind everything, in our minds. (When I see many cats, we notice their resemblance to each other and get the general concept of "cat.") This insight is clearly intended to reconcile various different theories. Averroy (Ibn Rashad) (1126-1198 AD) was different from Avicenna, living at the other end of the Muslim world.He was born in Cordoba, where his father and grandfather were judges; and he himself was judge, first in Sebiye and later in Cordoba.At first he studied theology and law, and later medicine, mathematics, and philosophy.Some people thought that he could analyze the works of Aristotle, and recommended him to the "Caliph", Abe Yakub Yusuf (however, he does not seem to understand Greek).The ruler favored him; Appointed him as his physician in 1184, unfortunately the patient died two years later.His successor, Yaqub al-Mansy, continued his father's patronage of Averroes for eleven years; afterward he was astonished by the opposition of the orthodox sect to the philosopher.He lost his job.He was first exiled to a small place near Cordoba, and then to Morocco.He was accused of engaging in the development of ancient philosophy at the expense of true faith.Al-Mansy issued a proclamation to this: God has ordered the fires of hell to be prepared for those who imagine that reason alone will lead to truth.So all books involving logic and metaphysics were burned. Before long, the territory of the Moors in Spain was greatly reduced by the raids of the Christians.Moslem philosophy in Spain ended at the same time as Averroes; strict orthodoxy elsewhere in the Moslem world killed philosophical speculation. Uberwick has wittily defended Averroes against the charge against orthodoxy—a matter, it might be said, left to Mohammedans.Uberwick points out that, according to the mystics, every verse in the Koran has seven, seventy, or seven hundred interpretations, and the literal meaning is only for the ignorant laity.According to this, it seems impossible for a philosopher's teaching to conflict with the Koran; because at least one of the seven hundred different interpretations must be suitable for the philosopher's claims.In the Mohammedan world, however, the ignorant always seem to be against all learning beyond the knowledge of the Koran; and even if there is nothing heresy to blame, the situation is still dangerous.The mystic view that the masses should follow the literal interpretation of the Koran and that wise men need not do so is difficult to win over the masses. Averroes worked to improve the Arab interpretation of Aristotle. This interpretation has been disproportionately influenced by Neoplatonism in the past.He gave Aristotle a reverence for the founder of a religion—far more than even Avicenna gave Aristotle.He believed that the existence of God could be proved by reason independent of revelation, a view also held by Thomas Aquinas.When it comes to the immortality of the soul, he seems to have stuck closely to Aristotle, arguing that the soul is not immortal, but the intellect (nous) is. This, however, is not enough to guarantee the immortality of the individual soul, for the intellect, though expressed in different individuals, is one and the same.This view has naturally been refuted by Christian philosophers. Averroes, though a Moslem, was not strictly orthodox, like most Moslem philosophers of later times.At that time there was a body of purely orthodox theologians who opposed all philosophy and considered it injurious to faith. Among this group was a philosopher named Al Qazer who wrote a book called The Destruction of the Philosophers, in which he stated that since all the necessary truths are contained in the Koran, there is no longer any need for a separate Philosophical debate beyond revelation.Averroes wrote a book answering him called The Destruction of Destruction.The dogmas which Al-Qazare especially championed and used against the philosophers were: the creation of the world in time out of nothing; the reality of the attributes of God; and the resurrection of the body.Averroes believed that religion contained philosophical truths in metaphorical form.This statement is especially applicable to creation, and he gives an Aristotelian interpretation of creation from his philosophical standpoint. Averroes is more important in Christian philosophy than in Islamic philosophy.In Islamic philosophy he is the end; but in Christian philosophy he is the beginning.His works had been translated into Latin by Michael Scotus in the thirteenth century AD, which is surprising since his works belong to the second half of the twelfth century AD.In Europe his influence was great, not only among the scholastics, but also among many lay free thinkers who denied the immortality of the soul and were called Averroes.Among the professional philosophers, his special admirers were at first mostly Franciscan monks and some people in the University of Paris.But this topic will be dealt with in a later chapter. Arabic philosophy is unimportant as original thought.People like Avicenna and Averroes were mainly commentators.In general, the insights of the more systematic Arab philosophers came largely from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists in logic and metaphysics, Galen in medicine, and Greece and India in mathematics and astronomy. , and among some mystics, some ancient Persian beliefs were mixed in their religious philosophy.Arab writers have shown some ingenuity only in mathematics and chemistry - where the latter, too, was a fortuitous outcome of the study of alchemy.The Islamic civilization in its heyday was commendable in terms of fine arts and many technologies, but it did not show the talent of independent thinking on theoretical issues.Its importance as a teacher cannot be underestimated.A period of darkness interspersed between ancient and modern European culture.The Mohammedans and Byzantines lacked the intellect to innovate but maintained the tools of civilization— Education, books, and scholarly leisure.Both the Mohammedans and the Byzantines gave Western Europe a stimulus when it came out of barbarism—Muslims mainly in the thirteenth century A.D., Byzantines mainly in the fifteenth century A.D.In both cases, this stimulus produced new ideas that surpassed those created by the teachers themselves—the Scholastics in the one case, and the Renaissance in the other (the Renaissance had other causes, of course). The Jews formed a useful link between the Moors and the Christians in Spain, and there were many Jews in Spain who continued to remain when Spain was reconquered by the Christians.Because they knew Arabic and were forced to learn the language used by Christians, they were able to do all kinds of translation work.Another form of infiltration arose during the thirteenth century from the Moslem persecution of the Aristotelians, which made Moore's philosophers seek refuge with the Jews, especially in Provence. place. Among the Spanish Jews emerged an important philosopher, Maimonides.Born in Cordoba in AD 1135, he went to Cairo at the age of thirty, where he remained for the rest of his life.He wrote in Arabic, but was soon translated into Hebrew.Probably at the request of Emperor Friedrich II, his work was again translated into Latin within a few decades of his death.He wrote a book called "The Lost Man's Guide" for philosophers who lost their faith.Its purpose was to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy with Jewish theology.Aristotle is the authority on earth, Revelation is the authority in heaven.But philosophy and revelation go together in the knowledge of God.The search for truth is a religious duty.Astrology was dismissed. The Torah should not always be interpreted literally; when the literal meaning conflicts with reason, we should seek an allegorical interpretation.He opposed Aristotle, arguing that God not only created form, but also content out of nothing. He wrote an overview of the Timaeus (he only read it in Arabic translation).At some point he liked the book more than he liked Aristotle.The essence of God is unknowable because God is beyond all perfection that can be expressed in words.The Jews considered him a heretic, and even instigated the authorities of the Christian church to attack him.Some people think that he influenced Spinoza, but this is very doubtful.