WotW Chapter 9: The World of Islam as a New Civilization (pgs 391-396)

Summary

The script discusses the Islamic civilization's rise and spread, focusing on its religious, educational, and cultural networks that united a vast, diverse population. It highlights the role of the ulama in preserving Islamic teachings, the Sufis' spiritual influence, and the exchange of goods, technologies, and ideas across the Afro-Eurasian world. Despite external threats and internal divisions, Islamic civilization thrived, contributing to global advances in science, medicine, and technology. The civilization's unifying factors included shared faith, educational systems, trade networks, and pilgrimage, creating a dynamic and interconnected global presence.

Takeaways

• 🌍 The Islamic world operated without a central political authority, similar to Western Christendom but unlike China, and was unified by shared religious culture.
• ⚔️ Islamic civilization faced two major external threats: the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, which were devastating, and the Christian Crusades, which were less serious but more well-known in the West.
• 📚 The ulama, a group of learned scholars, played a key role in preserving Islamic knowledge, especially the sharia, serving as judges, prayer leaders, and educators.
• 🏫 Madrassas, formal Islamic colleges that emerged in the 11th century, taught a wide range of subjects, including the Quran, law, philosophy, mathematics, and medicine.
• 🕌 Sufi orders, emerging in the 10th century, spread Islam through personal devotional practices, especially in frontier regions, while accommodating local customs, which sometimes led to tensions with the ulama.
• 🕋 The hajj pilgrimage to Mecca unified the diverse Muslim world, giving a sense of global Muslim identity despite political fragmentation and local diversity.
• 💱 Islamic civilization was a vast network of trade and exchange, connecting much of the Afro-Eurasian world, and facilitated by shared language, laws, and religious practices.
• 🌾 Agriculture and water management techniques spread widely across the Islamic world, contributing to an ‘Islamic Green Revolution,’ which led to increased food production and population growth.
• 📜 The Abbasid caliph al-Mamun established the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, where Islamic scholars translated and built upon ancient Greek, Persian, and Indian texts, contributing significantly to fields like astronomy, medicine, and mathematics.
• ⚖️ Islamic scholars made significant contributions to science and medicine, accurately diagnosing diseases, advancing surgery, and creating medical institutions, with Arab medical knowledge later influencing European practices.

Q & A

What held the Islamic world together despite its political fragmentation?

The Islamic world was held together by a shared religious culture, a common commitment to Islam, and networks of faith, including the influence of the ulama and Sufi orders. These elements allowed people to feel part of a single civilization despite political and regional diversity.

Who were the ulama, and what role did they play in Islamic civilization?

The ulama were learned Islamic scholars who served as judges, interpreters, administrators, prayer leaders, and teachers of the sharia. They played a key role in preserving Islamic teachings and education, creating a system that bound together the diverse Islamic world.

How did the Sufi orders contribute to the spread of Islam?

Sufi orders, led by shaykhs, spread Islam through their devotional practices and personal transformations. They gained followers in frontier regions, blending local traditions with Islamic teachings, and creating a popular form of Islam. Their flexibility in incorporating local customs allowed Islam to take root in diverse regions.

How did commerce and trade flourish in the Islamic world?

Commerce in the Islamic world flourished due to its central location in the Afro-Eurasian region, the breakdown of earlier political barriers, and the positive value Islam placed on commerce. Islamic laws provided a framework for trade, and merchants became key players in global trade routes, helping to circulate goods and technologies across vast distances.

What agricultural and technological advancements spread within the Islamic world?

Agricultural products like sugarcane, rice, apricots, and artichokes spread across the Islamic world, along with Persian-style water management techniques. Technological advancements included improvements to rockets and the introduction of papermaking from China, which spread to the Middle East and Europe.

What was the significance of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad?

The House of Wisdom, established by the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun, was an academic center for research and translation of scientific, medical, and philosophical texts from ancient Greece, the Hellenistic world, and India. It played a crucial role in advancing Islamic scholarship and spreading knowledge across the Islamic world.

How did Islamic scholars contribute to mathematics and science?

Islamic scholars made significant contributions to mathematics by developing algebra, building on Indian numerical notation. In science, they advanced knowledge in fields like astronomy, optics, and medicine, with Arab physicians diagnosing diseases and developing treatments that influenced European medical practice.

How did Islamic civilization impact medical knowledge and practices?

Islamic civilization made substantial advancements in medicine, with Arab physicians like al-Razi and Ibn Sina diagnosing diseases and performing surgeries. They also established the first hospitals and developed examinations for medical professionals. This body of knowledge was later transmitted to Europe, where it influenced medical practice for centuries.

What role did the hajj pilgrimage play in unifying the Islamic world?

The hajj pilgrimage to Mecca brought together Muslims from across the Islamic world, fostering a sense of unity within the umma. It transcended local identities based on ethnicity or state, allowing Muslims to collectively reaffirm the central elements of their faith.

How did Islamic civilization become a global trading network?

Islamic civilization became a global trading network by integrating large areas of the Afro-Eurasian world into a single system that practiced Islam and spoke Arabic. This allowed goods, technologies, and ideas to circulate widely, with Muslim merchants becoming prominent in trade routes across the Mediterranean, Silk Roads, and Indian Ocean.

Outlines

00:00

🌍 The Global Civilization of Islam

This paragraph explores the development of Islamic civilization, which, unlike China but similar to Western Christendom, did not have a dominant political center. Instead, it was unified by a shared religious culture. Despite external threats from the Mongols and Christian Crusaders, Islamic civilization flourished and integrated various cultures across the Afro-Eurasian hemisphere. The ulama, learned scholars, played a key role in preserving and transmitting Islamic teachings, particularly the sharia, through institutions like madrassas. Sufi orders, with their devotional practices, further spread Islam to frontier regions, though they sometimes clashed with the ulama over deviations from Islamic law. Islamic civilization was seen as the first global civilization.

05:05

🕋 Unity through the Hajj and Networks of Exchange

This paragraph emphasizes the pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj) as a central unifying event for Muslims, fostering a sense of community (umma) across the diverse Islamic world. Besides faith, the Islamic civilization thrived as a vast exchange network for goods, technologies, and ideas. It became a hub of trade, especially with Afro-Eurasia, aided by common political systems and the shared Arabic language. Commerce was highly valued, and Islamic laws (sharia) provided a consistent legal framework for trade. Cities like Baghdad became centers of commerce and culture, and Muslim merchants dominated major trade routes, contributing to a thriving, interconnected economy.

10:09

📚 Innovations in Learning and Science

The final paragraph discusses the contributions of Islamic civilization to global learning and science. Drawing on knowledge from Greece, India, and Persia, Muslims advanced in fields such as algebra, astronomy, optics, and medicine. Arab physicians made groundbreaking diagnoses and developed new treatments, contributing to advancements in hospitals and medical education. Islamic scholarship, particularly in medicine, heavily influenced European practices for centuries. This integration of earlier traditions led to a distinctive Islamic civilization that made significant new contributions to global knowledge.

Keywords

💡Islamic Civilization

Islamic Civilization refers to the cultural, scientific, and political systems that developed as Islam spread across Afro-Eurasia. In the script, it is described as history’s 'first truly global civilization,' thriving despite political fragmentation and external threats like the Mongol invasions and Christian Crusades. This civilization was united by religious, educational, and commercial networks.

💡Ulama

The ulama were Islamic scholars responsible for interpreting and teaching Islamic law (sharia). They were influential in transmitting Islamic beliefs and practices, particularly through education and religious leadership. The script highlights their role in preserving Islamic teachings, binding the vast Islamic world through a shared religious framework.

💡Sharia

Sharia is the Islamic legal system derived from the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. It governed not only religious practices but also aspects of daily life, including commerce and law. The script emphasizes the ulama’s role in upholding sharia, which was key to maintaining unity in the fragmented Islamic world.

💡Madrassas

Madrassas were Islamic schools where students received advanced instruction in religious and secular subjects, including the Quran, philosophy, and law. Beginning in the 11th century, these institutions played a central role in disseminating Islamic learning and connecting scholars across regions. The script underscores their importance in fostering intellectual continuity across the Islamic world.

💡Sufis

Sufis were Islamic mystics who emphasized personal experience of the divine over strict adherence to Islamic law. Sufi orders spread across the Islamic world, often accompanying traders and conquering armies. Their practices and veneration of saints helped integrate Islam into local cultures, though they sometimes clashed with the ulama’s more legalistic interpretations of the faith.

💡Crusades

The Crusades were a series of Christian military campaigns aimed at reclaiming holy lands from Muslim control. The script refers to the 12th- and 13th-century Crusader outposts in the eastern Mediterranean, which were relatively small and temporary but still posed a threat to Islamic civilization. These conflicts were a significant chapter in Islamic-Christian relations during this era.

💡Mongol Invasions

The Mongol invasions, particularly in the 13th century, were devastating to the Islamic world, especially in Central Asia and Persia. The script identifies the Mongols as the most serious external threat to Islamic civilization, though many Muslims were eventually incorporated into the Mongol Empire. This episode reflects both destruction and cultural integration in Islamic history.

💡Hajj

The Hajj is the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam. The script highlights how this pilgrimage fostered a sense of unity among Muslims from diverse regions. By participating in the Hajj, Muslims experienced the global scope of the umma (Islamic community), reinforcing their collective identity despite local differences.

💡House of Wisdom

The House of Wisdom was an academic center established in Baghdad in the 9th century by the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun. It played a critical role in translating and preserving Greek, Persian, and Indian scientific and philosophical texts. The script refers to it as a symbol of the intellectual flourishing of Islamic civilization, contributing to fields like mathematics, medicine, and astronomy.

💡Islamic Green Revolution

The Islamic Green Revolution refers to the spread of agricultural techniques and crops across the Islamic world, leading to increased food production and population growth. The script notes that crops like rice, sugarcane, and citrus fruits were introduced to new regions, while water-management technologies improved farming in arid areas, contributing to the prosperity of the Islamic civilization.

Highlights

Islamic civilization operated without a dominant political center, bound more by a shared religious culture than by a shared state.

The Mongol conquest of Central Asia and Persia in the 13th century was devastating but incorporated many Muslims into the Mongol domains.

The Christian Crusaders established small and temporary outposts along the eastern Mediterranean during the 12th and 13th centuries.

Despite external threats and internal conflicts, Islamic civilization flourished and spread across the Afro-Eurasian hemisphere.

The ulama, Islamic scholars, played a crucial role in preserving and teaching the sharia, which helped bind the Islamic world together.

Madrassas, formal Islamic colleges, offered instruction in subjects such as the Quran, law, philosophy, theology, and mathematics starting from the 11th century.

Sufi orders, starting in the 10th century, played a significant role in spreading Islam through their devotional practices and personal transformation teachings.

Sufi orders such as the Qadiriya spread throughout the Arab world and sub-Saharan Africa, playing a key role in frontier regions of Islam.

The hajj pilgrimage to Mecca brought together Muslims from all over the Islamic world, reinforcing the sense of a unified umma.

Islamic civilization became a vast trading network, spanning the Afro-Eurasian world, with Muslim merchants playing dominant roles in trade routes.

The spread of agricultural products like sugarcane, rice, and citrus fruits contributed to the 'Islamic Green Revolution,' boosting food production and urbanization.

Technologies such as papermaking and rocketry spread within the Islamic world, facilitating written culture and military advancements.

The House of Wisdom in Baghdad, established in 830, became a center for research and the translation of scientific and philosophical texts from ancient Greece, India, and Persia.

Islamic scholars contributed to advances in algebra, astronomy, and optics, building on earlier Greek, Indian, and Persian knowledge.

Arab physicians such as al-Razi and Ibn Sina made significant contributions to medicine, including the diagnosis of diseases and surgical techniques, which influenced European medical practice.

Transcripts

The World of Islam as a New Civilization 

As the religion spread and the Abbasid dynasty  declined, the civilization of Islam, unlike that  

of China but similar to Western Christendom,  operated without a dominant political center,  

bound more by a shared religious culture than  by a shared state. Twice that civilization was  

threatened from outside. The most serious  intrusion came during the thirteenth  

century from the Mongols, whose conquest of  Central Asia and Persia proved devastating  

while incorporating many Muslims within the huge  Mongol domains. Less serious but more well known,  

at least in the West, were the Chris tian  Crusaders who established in the twelfth and  

thirteenth centuries several small and temporary  outposts along the eastern Mediterranean.  

Despite these external threats and its various  internal conflicts, Islamic civilization  

flourished and often prospered, embracing at least  parts of virtually every other civilization in the  

Afro-Eurasian hemisphere. It was in that sense  “history’s first truly global civilization,”  

although the Americas, of course, were not  involved. What held this Islamic world together?  

What enabled many people to feel themselves part  of a single civilization despite its political  

fragmentation, religious controversies,  and cultural and regional diversity?

Networks of Faith At the core of that vast civilization was  

a common commitment to Islam. No group was more  important in the transmission of those beliefs and  

practices than the ulama. These learned scholars  were not “priests” in the Christian sense,  

for in Islam, at least theoretically, no person  could stand between the believer and Allah.  

Rather, they served as judges, interpreters,  administrators, prayer leaders, and reciters  

of the Quran, but especially as preservers  and teachers of the sharia. Supported mostly  

by their local communities, some also received  the patronage of sultans, or rulers, and were  

therefore subject to criticism for corruption  and undue submission to state authority.  

In their homes, mosques, shrines, and Quranic  schools, the ulama passed on the core teachings  

of the faith. Beginning in the eleventh century,  formal colleges called madrassas offered more  

advanced instruction in the Quran and the sayings  of Muhammad; grammar and rhetoric; sometimes  

philosophy, theology, mathematics, and medicine;  and, above all else, law. Teaching was informal,  

mostly oral, and involved much memorization  of texts. It was also largely conservative,  

seeking to preserve an established body of Islamic  learning. The ulama were an “international elite,”  

and the system of education they created served to  bind together an immense and diverse civilization.  

Common texts were shared widely across the  world of Islam. Students and teachers alike  

traveled great distances in search of the most  learned scholars. From Indonesia to West Africa,  

educated Muslims inhabited a “shared world of  debate and reference.” Paralleling the educational  

network of the ulama were the emerging religious  orders of the Sufis. By the tenth century,  

particular Sufi shaykhs, or teachers, began  to attract groups of disciples who were eager  

to learn their unique devotional practices  and techniques of personal transformation.  

The disciples usually swore allegiance to  their teacher and valued highly the chain  

of transmission by which those teachings and  practices had come down from earlier masters.  

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,  Sufis began to organize in a variety of  

larger associations, some limited to particular  regions and others with chapters throughout the  

Islamic world. The Qadiriya order, for example,  began in Baghdad but spread widely throughout  

the Arab world and into sub-Saharan Africa. Sufi  orders were especially significant in the frontier  

regions of Islam because they followed conquering  armies or traders into Central and Southeast Asia,  

India, Anatolia, parts of Africa, and elsewhere.  Their devotional teachings, modest ways of living,  

and reputation for supernatural powers gained  a hearing for the new faith. Their emphasis on  

personal experience of the Divine, rather than on  the law, allowed the Sufis to accommodate elements  

of local belief and practice and encouraged  the growth of a popular or blended Islam.  

The veneration of deceased Sufi “saints,” or  “friends of God,” particularly at their tombs,  

created sacred spaces that enabled Islam to take  root in many places despite its foreign origins.  

But that flexibility also often earned  Sufi practitioners the enmity of the ulama,  

who were sharply critical of any deviations from  the sharia. Like the madrassas and the sharia,  

Sufi religious ideas and institutions  spanned the Islamic world and were yet  

another thread in the cosmopolitan web of Islamic  civilization. Particular devotional teachings and  

practices spread widely, as did the writings  of such famous Sufi poets as Hafiz and Rumi.  

Devotees made pilgrimages to the distant tombs of  famous teachers, who, they often believed, might  

intercede with God on their behalf. Wandering  Sufis, in search of the wisdom of renowned  

shaykhs, found fellow seekers and welcome shelter  in the compounds of these religious orders.  

In addition to the networks of the Sufis and the  ulama, many thousands of people, from kings to  

peasants, made the grand pilgrimage to Mecca —  the hajj — no doubt gaining some sense of the  

umma. There men and women together,  hailing from all over the Islamic world,  

joined as one people to rehearse  the central elements of their faith.  

The claims of local identities based on  family, clan, tribe, ethnicity, or state  

never disappeared, but now overarching them all  was the inclusive unity of the Muslim community.

Networks of Exchange The world of Islamic civilization  

cohered not only as a network of faith but also  as an immense arena of exchange in which goods,  

technologies, food products, and ideas circulated  widely. Now large areas of the Afro-Eurasian  

world operated within a single political  system, practiced Islam, and spoke Arabic.  

This huge region rapidly became a vast trading  zone of hemispheric dimensions. In part, this was  

due to its central location in the Afro-Eurasian  world and the breaking down of earlier political  

barriers between the Byzantine and Persian  empires. Furthermore, commerce was valued  

positively within Islamic teaching, and laws  regulating it figured prominently in the sharia,  

creating a predictable framework for exchange  across many cultures. The pilgrimage to Mecca,  

as well as the urbanization that accompanied  the growth of Islamic civilization, likewise  

fostered commerce. Baghdad, established in 756 as  the capital of the Abbasid Empire, soon grew into  

a magnificent city of half a million people.  The appetite of urban elites for luxury goods  

stimulated both craft production and the desire  for foreign products. Thus Muslim merchants,  

Arabs and Persians in particular, quickly became  prominent and sometimes dominant players in all  

the major Afro-Eurasian trade routes of the  third-wave era — in the Mediterranean Sea,  

along the revived Silk Roads, across the  Sahara, and throughout the Indian Ocean basin.  

By the eighth century, Arab and Persian traders  had established a commercial colony in Canton in  

southern China, thus linking the Islamic heartland  with Asia’s other giant and flourishing economy.  

Various forms of banking, partnerships, business  contracts, and instruments for granting credit  

facilitated these long-distance economic  relationships and generated a prosperous,  

sophisticated, and highly commercialized  economy that spanned the Old World.  

The vast expanse of Islamic civilization also  contributed to ecological change as agricultural  

products and practices spread from one region  to another, a process already under way in the  

earlier Roman and Persian empires. Among the  food crops that circulated within and beyond  

the Islamic world were different varieties  of sugarcane, rice, apricots, artichokes,  

eggplants, lemons, oranges, almonds, figs, and  bananas. Equally significant were water-management  

practices, so important to the arid or semi-arid  environments of many parts of the Islamic world.  

Persian-style reservoirs and irrigation  technologies spread as far as Tunisia and Morocco,  

the northern fringes of the Sahara, Spain, and  Yemen. By connecting different environmental  

zones, particularly those where water availability  was the major obstacle to agricultural growth,  

particular regions could draw upon  a wide range of crops and practices.  

All of this contributed to an “Islamic Green  Revolution” of increased food production as  

well as to population growth, urbanization, and  industrial development across the Islamic world.  

Technology too diffused widely within the realm  of Islam. Muslim technicians made improvements on  

rockets, first developed in China, by developing  one that carried a small warhead and another  

used to attack ships. Papermaking techniques  entered the Abbasid Empire from China in the  

eighth century or earlier, with paper mills  soon operating in Persia, Iraq, and Egypt.  

This revolutionary technology, which everywhere  served to strengthen bureaucratic governments,  

passed from the Middle East into India  and Europe over the following centuries.  

Everywhere it spurred the emergence of books  and written culture at the expense of earlier  

orally based cultural expressions. Ideas likewise  circulated across the Islamic world. The religion  

itself drew heavily and quite openly on Jewish and  Christian precedents. Persia also contributed much  

in the way of bureaucratic practice, court ritual,  and poetry, with Persian becoming a major literary  

language in elite circles. Scientific, medical,  and philosophical texts, especially from ancient  

Greece, the Hellenistic world, and India,  were systematically translated into Arabic,  

providing an enormous boost to Islamic scholarship  and science for several centuries. In 830,  

the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun, himself a poet and  scholar with a passion for foreign learning,  

established the House of Wisdom in Baghdad as an  academic center for this research and translation.  

Stimulated by Greek texts, a school of Islamic  thinkers known as Mutazalites (“those who stand  

apart”) argued that reason, rather than  revelation, was the “surest way to truth.”  

In the long run, however, the philosophers’  emphasis on logic, rationality,  

and the laws of nature was subject to increasing  criticism by those who held that only the Quran,  

the sayings of the Prophet, or mystical  experience represented a genuine path to God.  

But the realm of Islam was much more than a museum  of ancient achievements from the civilizations  

that it encompassed. Those traditions mixed  and blended to generate a distinctive Islamic  

civilization with many new contributions to  the world of learning. Using Indian numerical  

notation, for example, Arab scholars developed  algebra as a novel mathematical discipline.  

They also undertook much original work  in astronomy and optics. They built on  

earlier Greek and Indian practice to create a  remarkable tradition in medicine and pharmacology.  

Arab physicians such as al-Razi and Ibn  Sina accurately diagnosed many diseases,  

such as hay fever, measles, smallpox, diphtheria,  rabies, and diabetes. In addition, treatments  

such as using a mercury ointment for scabies,  cataract and hernia operations, and filling  

teeth with gold emerged from Arab doctors.  The first hospitals, traveling clinics, and  

examinations for physicians and pharmacologists  were also developed within the Islamic world.  

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, this  enormous body of Arab medical scholarship entered  

Europe via Spain, and it remained at the core  of European medical practice for many centuries.