5 ms·

The title should say "Arabic golden age" the secular attributes alone of the Arab culture created that golden age. In fact the golden age ENDED for religious r

The title should say "Arabic golden age" the secular attributes alone of the Arab culture created that golden age. In fact the golden age ENDED for religious reasons (just like the Catholic church did with Galileo for example) before the Mongols invaded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwXtTwNvWXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwXtTwNvWXc and http://www.patheos.com/blogs/marginoferr/2014/06/05/lets-stop-talking-about-the-islamic-golden-age/ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/marginoferr/2014/06/05/lets-sto...

alphonsegaston 10y ago
Secularism is a modern construct that can't be ahistorically projected to make past societies conform to our notions of modernity.
- jlebrech 10y ago
  secularism is what people do despite any religiosity
pm90 10y ago
Its not as simple as that. I will reply later with a more detailed response but a common religion most certainly helped the Islamic empires (whether Arabs or Persians or Mughals) immensely by providing an almost contiguous corridor of co-coreligionists stretching from Anatolia all the way to India; this greatly facilitated trade.
- jlebrech 10y ago
  Islam helped drive large projects that wouldn't have been completed in one's life time. One admirable attribute of Islam is that they can plan ahead like the west use to do with tunnels and bridges for example, nowadays projects are not planned to take more than 20 years, in the Muslim world they still are.
  - kissickas 10y ago
    Does that have anything to do with Islam or more with autocracy? I'm not being snarky, I live in Saudi Arabia and certainly see the benefits of having an autocratic government for some things. I'm not sure religion plays a bigger role here in planning than it would anywhere else, though.
    - pm90 10y ago
      Good point. I think its a little bit of both. I don't think you need autocracy as much as a strong state: and Islamic states were pretty strong. But the common religion basically meant that a muslim in India could travel to Baghdad and have something in common. It meant that technological advancements in one part of the world would travel faster to the other. That skilled people could travel to different countries...and religious scholars as well. I believe this contributed a lot to the progress in Islamic society during this time.
truetraveller 10y ago
Note: I'm not taking sides, but just trying to be factual. This is very misleading. It was, in fact, Islam that was the cause of the 'golden age'. The Arabs existed for centuries with ~nil progress. If you notice, almost 99% of the inventors were Muslims, and based on their writings, dedicated ones.
- jlebrech 10y ago
  they did a lot of hostile takeovers and suffered later on from a culture problem.
- dreen 10y ago
  What about the Persian empires, the Sassanids for instance? They had built huge military and civic structures, and rivalled the Roman Empire in many areas, but weren't as expansionist. Please correct me if I'm wrong, not a historian but it seems to me whatever the 'golden age' was, it would happen regardless of whether the dominant religion was Islam, Arian Christianity or whatever else.
- zeveb 10y ago
  I think it's fairer to say that the conquest of developed (Byzantine) Romans & Farsis by the newly-Islamic Arabs enabled the conquerors to reap the fruits of antiquity.
  - jlebrech 10y ago
    it should be called "the world's first successful merger"
    - zeveb 10y ago
      Hostile takeover, I think.
simonh 10y ago
I think there's a pretty reasonable case to be made that the cultural and political impact of Islam itself was a major factor in creating the conditions for the Golden Age. It established Arabic as a language of learning and philosophy; emphasized community and shared values; catalyzed the development of a unified legal code and judicial framework; explicitly promoted education and the acquisition of knowledge.
sctb 10y ago
We've updated the title from “The hidden underground world of the Golden Age of Islam” to a representative phrase from the article.
partycoder 10y ago
Objectively, it's not a "Global golden age", it's a "Islamic golden age". That's very different. This guy does some heavy time travelling in order to justify his revisionism. He moves from circa 900-1200 AD (Golden age of Islam), to 1800-2000 AD (Nobel Prize counting). After losing to the Mongols and being razed to the ground, then came the Ottomans, and then the Triple Entente backstabbed them with the Sykes-Picot agreement after World War I. They never came back from losing to the Mongols. His point is so nonsensical, that is equivalent to saying that the Roman empire was weak because Italy did not win the World War 2, or that Ancient Greece is not worthy of recognition because modern Greece doesn't win Nobel prizes. He is comparing different millenia. Then he changes subjects to the militaristic side of things. He mentions how they invaded Europe many times. However European nations constantly invaded each other all the time anyways. And that trend only ended in the early 20th century when Americans ended wars of aggression through NATO and the UN. Follow better authors.
ocschwar 10y ago
Israeli Jew here. And I think that's a bit unfair. There's a critical difference between Islam and Christianity, and it bears nothing, because without grasping this detail you can't really give Islam a fair understanding. Secularism in the Christian World is the result of peacemaking after the Wars of Religion. It's 1648, you want Christians to stop killing each other. Since this involves a religion whose followers engaged in near-genocidal wars over the inclusion of the word "filiouque" in one creed, you agree on a peace deal where the two sides agree to avoid all God-talk altogether. Voila, secularism. Meanwhile, you have several chapters in Muslim history where Sunni and Shia decide to have peace, for the sake of a prosperous humane existence. You get a lot of the same things: a flowering of art and scholarship. An improvement of daily life. Pluralism. A golden age, if you will. However, Sunni and Shia (and others) have a lot of God-talk in common that has never provoked any dispute. The wording of the daily prayer and so much more. So you get all the benefits that European history associated with secularism, as above, but everyone keeps on with putting inshallah, alhamdullillah, astagfirullah, et cetera in every sentence. That's why there's not really a secular strain in Arabic culture.
- emmelaich 10y ago
  > and it bears nothing and it bears noting?
  - ocschwar 10y ago
    Whoops.

alphonsegaston 10y ago

Secularism is a modern construct that can't be ahistorically projected to make past societies conform to our notions of modernity.

jlebrech 10y ago
secularism is what people do despite any religiosity

pm90 10y ago

Its not as simple as that. I will reply later with a more detailed response but a common religion most certainly helped the Islamic empires (whether Arabs or Persians or Mughals) immensely by providing an almost contiguous corridor of co-coreligionists stretching from Anatolia all the way to India; this greatly facilitated trade.

jlebrech 10y ago
Islam helped drive large projects that wouldn't have been completed in one's life time. One admirable attribute of Islam is that they can plan ahead like the west use to do with tunnels and bridges for example, nowadays projects are not planned to take more than 20 years, in the Muslim world they still are.
- kissickas 10y ago
  Does that have anything to do with Islam or more with autocracy? I'm not being snarky, I live in Saudi Arabia and certainly see the benefits of having an autocratic government for some things. I'm not sure religion plays a bigger role here in planning than it would anywhere else, though.
  - pm90 10y ago
    Good point. I think its a little bit of both. I don't think you need autocracy as much as a strong state: and Islamic states were pretty strong. But the common religion basically meant that a muslim in India could travel to Baghdad and have something in common. It meant that technological advancements in one part of the world would travel faster to the other. That skilled people could travel to different countries...and religious scholars as well. I believe this contributed a lot to the progress in Islamic society during this time.

truetraveller 10y ago

Note: I'm not taking sides, but just trying to be factual. This is very misleading. It was, in fact, Islam that was the cause of the 'golden age'. The Arabs existed for centuries with ~nil progress. If you notice, almost 99% of the inventors were Muslims, and based on their writings, dedicated ones.

jlebrech 10y ago
they did a lot of hostile takeovers and suffered later on from a culture problem.
dreen 10y ago
What about the Persian empires, the Sassanids for instance? They had built huge military and civic structures, and rivalled the Roman Empire in many areas, but weren't as expansionist. Please correct me if I'm wrong, not a historian but it seems to me whatever the 'golden age' was, it would happen regardless of whether the dominant religion was Islam, Arian Christianity or whatever else.
zeveb 10y ago
I think it's fairer to say that the conquest of developed (Byzantine) Romans & Farsis by the newly-Islamic Arabs enabled the conquerors to reap the fruits of antiquity.
- jlebrech 10y ago
  it should be called "the world's first successful merger"
  - zeveb 10y ago
    Hostile takeover, I think.

simonh 10y ago

I think there's a pretty reasonable case to be made that the cultural and political impact of Islam itself was a major factor in creating the conditions for the Golden Age. It established Arabic as a language of learning and philosophy; emphasized community and shared values; catalyzed the development of a unified legal code and judicial framework; explicitly promoted education and the acquisition of knowledge.

sctb 10y ago

We've updated the title from “The hidden underground world of the Golden Age of Islam” to a representative phrase from the article.

partycoder 10y ago

Objectively, it's not a "Global golden age", it's a "Islamic golden age". That's very different. This guy does some heavy time travelling in order to justify his revisionism. He moves from circa 900-1200 AD (Golden age of Islam), to 1800-2000 AD (Nobel Prize counting). After losing to the Mongols and being razed to the ground, then came the Ottomans, and then the Triple Entente backstabbed them with the Sykes-Picot agreement after World War I. They never came back from losing to the Mongols. His point is so nonsensical, that is equivalent to saying that the Roman empire was weak because Italy did not win the World War 2, or that Ancient Greece is not worthy of recognition because modern Greece doesn't win Nobel prizes. He is comparing different millenia. Then he changes subjects to the militaristic side of things. He mentions how they invaded Europe many times. However European nations constantly invaded each other all the time anyways. And that trend only ended in the early 20th century when Americans ended wars of aggression through NATO and the UN. Follow better authors.

ocschwar 10y ago

Israeli Jew here. And I think that's a bit unfair. There's a critical difference between Islam and Christianity, and it bears nothing, because without grasping this detail you can't really give Islam a fair understanding. Secularism in the Christian World is the result of peacemaking after the Wars of Religion. It's 1648, you want Christians to stop killing each other. Since this involves a religion whose followers engaged in near-genocidal wars over the inclusion of the word "filiouque" in one creed, you agree on a peace deal where the two sides agree to avoid all God-talk altogether. Voila, secularism. Meanwhile, you have several chapters in Muslim history where Sunni and Shia decide to have peace, for the sake of a prosperous humane existence. You get a lot of the same things: a flowering of art and scholarship. An improvement of daily life. Pluralism. A golden age, if you will. However, Sunni and Shia (and others) have a lot of God-talk in common that has never provoked any dispute. The wording of the daily prayer and so much more. So you get all the benefits that European history associated with secularism, as above, but everyone keeps on with putting inshallah, alhamdullillah, astagfirullah, et cetera in every sentence. That's why there's not really a secular strain in Arabic culture.

emmelaich 10y ago
> and it bears nothing and it bears noting?
- ocschwar 10y ago
  Whoops.