Someone stupid who follows me on Twitter said “It seems @razibkhan forgot the Arabs gave us algebra and many other scientific/mathematical advances.” The history of algebra is actually somewhat more antique than the Arabs, as outlined in Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra. But the origin of the word is Arabic. From Wikipedia:
The word algebra comes from the Arabic الجبر (al-jabr lit. “the reunion of broken parts”) from the title of the book Ilm al-jabr wa’l-muḳābala by Persian mathematician and astronomer al-Khwarizmi.
Though Wikipedia says that al-Khwarizmi is Persian, it is more accurate to say he was Iranian-speaking, because as his name attests his origins were in Khwarezm, which is in Central Asia. It is accurate to say that Arab Islamic civilization was intellectually productive in the centuries before 1000 A.D., but it is not accurate to say that Muslim Arab scholars were responsible for this.
A huge number of these scholars were not ethnic Arabs. In the early years a substantial number were not Muslim. Though it is often said that many were Persian, as recounted in Lost Enlightenment many of the “Persians” were not from Persia proper, but from Iranian regions of Central Asia which over the centuries have now become Turkified.
Why is this important? The multicultural nature of early Muslim (and later Ottoman) polities might inform us as to the future of this sort of diverse society. Second, it’s preferable that you don’t seem like an idiot if you want me to listen to anything you say.
” It is accurate to say that Arab Islamic civilization was intellectually productive in the centuries before 1000 A.D.”
You’ve probably covered this before, but since I’m unfamiliar with the details of the subject I’d like to ask: What changed after 1000 AD in the Islamic world in your opinion, why weren’t there any intellectual advances there anymore? Was it due to external shocks like invasions by Turks or later Mongols, due to intellectual developments (maybe inherent in Islam itself), or something different?
you nailed the two general theses.
after 1000 AD there was a shift toward ‘islamic sciences’; eg interpretation and elaboration of shariah. the early period was more intellectually pluralistic and fluid (eg the shia-sunni split hadn’t really become a tribal identity marker). al-ghazali and the closing of the gates of itjihad (reasoning).
second, you point out major ‘shocks’ after 1000 AD. the unitary islamic polity really decayed fast in the 900s, but i was torn apart after 1000 AD, when non-muslim powers began to encroach on edges.
i think chinese history tells us that dynasties go through cycles. the decline of the arab civilization was inevitable. the thing to explain is why it didn’t wax again….well, the mongol shock is a big explanation, as the eastern islamic world fell off the map.
I find it fascinating that Maryam Mirzakhani, the first female Fields medalist, and Nima Arkani-Hamed, one of the very top theoretical physicists in the world today, are both Azerbaijanis, a relatively small ethnic group in that part of the world.
The Islamic Golden Age is filled with We Wuz Kangz. The important contributions were overwhelmingly commited by either non-Arabians, non-Muslims, heretics, or modeled on pre-Islamic sources. We don’t call Europe from the 1400s onward the Christian Golden Age.
We don’t call Europe from the 1400s onward the Christian Golden Age.
the (western) christian golden age is called the ‘aristotelian renaissance.’
also, the term ‘heretics’ only makes sense from a post-1000 AD viewpoint. the abbasids themselves veered from pro-alid to anti-alid a few times.
“I find it fascinating that Maryam Mirzakhani, the first female Fields medalist, and Nima Arkani-Hamed, one of the very top theoretical physicists in the world today, are both Azerbaijanis, a relatively small ethnic group in that part of the world.”
Maryam Mirzakhani isn’t Azerbaijani, and Arkani-Hamed only has an Azeri father. I would be careful reading about origins of Iranian figures on the internet because many nationalists in the Azerbaijani Republic claim them as their own, for petty nationalistic reasons. Even many Italian and Indian figures are falsely claimed by Azerbaijani nationalists on the internet, e.g. Bianca Balti and Freddie Mercury. The reality is the Azeri region of Iran is poorer than average, and their students are less likely to attend university than the Iranian average.
also, there are like 30 million azeris. that’s not a small group. medium sized.
I remember arguing with some liberal white person on twitter who was arguing the arab version of “we wuz kangs” He used the same argument of the arabic word algebra and argued that it proves they invented it.
Arabic numerals is another example of something called arabic but whose origins are not arabic.
Why do westerners do this Razib? Does it have anything to do with the protestant and catholic conflict over the centuries?
>Though Wikipedia says that al-Khwarizmi is Persian, it is more accurate to say he was Iranian, because as his name attests his origins were in Khwarezm, which is in Central Asia.
???
Khwarezm was in modern-day Uzbekistan/Kazakhstan.
You might as well say al-Khwarizmi was Asian as Iranian.
Did anyone of his time even call themselves “Iranian”?
Did anyone of his time even call themselves “Iranian”?
i should have said (and on twitter was more clear) that he was iranian-speaking. he was actually turanian….
And Kwarezm was the first to collapse under the Mongol onslaught. I think I read claims that the region never recovered from the Mongol invasion. That seems overwrought, but does speak to the level of devastation and subsequent cultural and economic disruption.
A significant amount of significant figures in the so-called Islamic Golden Age either modeled from non-Islamic sources (complete with one praising the gods of the Greeks and denigrating Islam) or engaged in haram activities. For more on this:
forumbiodiversity.com/showthread.php?t=46783
And yeah, “Aristotelian Renaissance.” Not “Christian Golden Age.”
>Why do westerners do this Razib? Does it have anything to do with the protestant and catholic conflict over the centuries?
The narratives of the tyrannical Catholic Church and Christian hostility to science both root in anti-Catholic mythology peddled by the likes of Protestant spokesmen.
The narratives of the tyrannical Catholic Church and Christian hostility to science both root in anti-Catholic mythology peddled by the likes of Protestant spokesmen.
only some. anti-clericalism within catholic cultures, especially france, pushed this.
Hi. About the history of Arab and Muslim thought and society, I wonder if you have read Timur Kuran’s books, for instance: “The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East” (https://sites.duke.edu/timurkuran/research/books/the-long-divergence/). If yes, what is your opinion about them?
no.
first, probably multicausal.
second, when economists do economic history it’s good. when economists do history, often not as impressive. does that make sense?
It kind of makes sense. I think you are saying that when economists do history they only look at specific factors (often these are quantifiable in some way), and ignore factors which may be important but may not be easily quantifiable. Am I understanding your point correctly?
If so, it reminds me of what Paul Krugman once wrote (http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/dishpan.html) about cartography. Very old maps of the African interior were of course inaccurate, but contained a fair bit of detail based on various reports. As map-making technology improved, the stories about the interior were not deemed sufficiently rigorous to show on a map, so the interior was “empty”. Only later when the techniques allowed good data on the interior were the maps filled up.