Or how Persian scientists are suddenly naturalized “Arab”

The exhibition “The golden age of the Arab science”, which has just closed its doors at “l’Institut du Monde Arabe (Institut of the Arab World, Paris), tries to present to the French public the importance of what is presented like”an injustice “:” the history of Western sciences “would”have occulted for a long time what it owe to Arab science ".

The topic of the exhibition is simple : the “Arab-Islamic world” would have experienced a “brilliant development of its civilization”, which has been translated in particular by “fulgurating progress in several scientific fields”.

It is clear that a such point is far from the vision we have of this world today. We only see chaos, intellectual misery, corruption, dictatorships, religious fanaticism and economic disaster. We can easily imagine that those who are inhabited by “the Arab-Islamic identity” feel daily wounded when evolving in an environment organized mainly by concepts forged in Occident. Certainly, a majority needs recognition which would be formulated as follows : “we also, we invented, created, innovated”.

In truth, it is necessary to acknowledge that history taught in our schools leans little on the European extra influences which could mark its development. However, major inventions come from elsewhere, forwards by the “Arab-Islamic world”. We owe them in particular the techniques which were crucial for the development of mathematics : numbering system, equations of the third degree etc. Without speaking about the other disciplines like astronomy, medicine etc.

More deeply, the exhibition illustrates an interesting idea which will not please the culturalists thesis. The Western world (Europe) and “the Arab-Islamic world” (areas linked under the various caliphates) belong to the same civilization. Far from developing separately, with their own resources, they influenced eachother continually. Islam for example, isn’t it a religion outcomed from the Judeo-Christianity. ? To return to sciences, “the scientists from Andalousia, didn’t they transmitted the knowledge of the Greeks to Europeans who forgot their traditions” [1]

And more, the scientists of this world would have brought in Europe concepts taken in their neighbors, as India from witch they imported the concept of the zero that made it possible to develop the technics of equations. One can still quote the Chinese compass and caliper, the Persian check(chess). In spite of the fact that the exhibition don’t express it explicitly, general impression is that, rather than “creators”, the “arabo moslems” especially excelled in the role of passer.

Lastly, the exhibition tries to make pass furtively on the idea that “the Arab-Islamic world knew before Europe a philosophical modernity”. It was certainly only a moment of their history, appeared in particular in the kingdom of Andalousia, but one moment which left a powerful trace in the great history of civilizations. This “modernity” would have been carried for example by Averroes [2] who, at the beginnig of the XII century, defended an autonomy of the thought in relation to the religion. Europe would have spent centuries to tie again with this tradition. One can deplore the lack of honesty from the IMA (Institut du Monde Arabe) on this subject.

However, what is surprising at the exhibition is the lack of explanation about the end of golden age. We can imagine that its basic intention, the defense of a wounded pride, prohibited such a question. However the more one visit, the more one ask himself. Then the visitor tries to imaginate the causes of the Disaster. A cause that comes to mind is the mental conservatism, supplied by the religion, which came to choke the creative thought, to block any inversion of perspective on the way of understanding reality. These scientists had succeeded in organizing a known knowledge, inherited from the Greeks, Indians, Berbers or Persians. They had arranged knowledge of that time in categories always more finer. But they seldom invented new concepts. For example, they had all knowledge to deduce that the earth gravitated around the sun, but they was never able to produce such a statement. However, as Thomas Kuhn shows in his famous work “The structure of the scientific revolutions”, this is not the accumulation of knowledge which makes progressing the human knowledge, but the reversal of paradigms.

To conclude, let us forsake the epistemologic ground for the onomastic one. Most shocking in this exhibition is undoubtedly the designation “Arab scientists” and “Arab sciences”. Then we can accuse the IMA of trickery. The 95% - and still - “Arab” scientists were actually Persians, Jews, Syriacs, Berbers … who certainly wrote in Arab language, but in any way was Arabs. Moreover many of them did not obstruct themselves criticizing the Islamic religion more or less radically, such Al Razi, Omar Khayyam, the poet Abu Nuwas (all Persians, by the way).

The designation “Arab Sciences” is a holdup on sciences in particular the Indo-Persians ones. The fact that these scientists, philosophers and writers wrote their texts in Arabic does not mean they were themselves Arab. Baghdad, the capital of the Omeyyade caliphate and the center of the “arab̴ civilisation” was not at that time an Arab city. Even the name of the city is Persian (words bagh (God) and dad (given) : city “given by God”) and his architects, under the abasside caliph Al-Mansur, were not Arabs but an ex-zoroastrien Persian, Naubakht, and a Jew of Khorasan (Persia), Mashallah. The plans of the city are typical of Persian architecture and brings back to those of Firouzabad. The population of the city at the time of its splendour, between the VIII and X century, was mainly not-Arabic : one found there especially Kurds, Persians of Khorasan and Assyrians.

The Arabs were satisfied to hold the political power, whereas the trade and sciences were in non arabic hands. The great names of the medicine and alchimy of that time, Al-Tabari, Al-Razi and Ibn Sinna all came from Perse (and from a Jewish family, in the case of Al-Tabari). If they wrote in Arab language, it is for the good reason that the political power of that time was Arab and privileged this language. They spoke in the language of the Empire, so that their work would be read and appreciated. To include them under the term of “Arab scientists” is an abuse of language.

So one can describe Mouloud Feraoun or Mouloud Mammeri as French writers, since they wrote in the language of the empire of their time, in the same way the great Indian novelist R.K. Narayan can be considered as English since he wrote his novels in the language of Shakespeare, which was the one of the colonial empire where he was born. Rather, Feraoun and Mammeri are known as Kabylians Algerian authors and nobody denied the designation Indian wrighter to Narayan. There is then not any valid reason so that the Persian, Kurdish, Indian, Assyrian, Jewish, Berber, Andalousians scientists … who made the scientific glory of the Moslem world between the VII and the XII century are disghised with the term “Arab” .

Finally, I left this exhibition with a deep unease. The exhibition gave me the belief of a “revanchist propaganda” for the Westerners and a campaign of self persuasion for the organizers in order to cure the problem of self respect that the Arab peoples suffer from. The problem is that this (attempt of) therapy is done with money from the French taxpayers….

- By Cedric Wespizer for KabyleS.com
- Translated from french by ADN for north-of-africa.com

[1] There was a little philosophical revival - and still, it was primarily covers of Platonic and aristotelicians themes. Indeed when Ibn Rushid - Averroes - wrote, he lived under the reign of the Almohades caliphate , rigorous Morrocans Berber Moslem , who were all except politically modern.

[2] Abú Al-Walìd ibn Ruchd, best known under the name Averroès, Berber scientist of the XII century. He was in the same time philosopher, lawyer and doctor, Averroès will devote the core of its activity to the studied and the teaching of philosophy. Nevertheless he will leave a treaty of medicine translated into Latin under the name of Colliget.