4 ms·
> ..."Islamic"...I took it to refer to "the culture that was flourishing in the Arabic world in the 7th C". There is unfortunately no convenient single term to
by wrp 4y ago
> ..."Islamic"...I took it to refer to "the culture that was flourishing in the Arabic world in the 7th C".
There is unfortunately no convenient single term to refer to the intellectual milieu of the Middle East in that period. Among historians, I think the most commonly used terms are "Hellenic" for those communities publishing in Greek, and "Arabic" once they had switched to that language. Just remember that not everyone publishing in Greek was a Greek and not everyone publishing in Arabic was a Muslim.
- oa335 4y agoThe term you are looking for is “Islamicate”, coined by historian Marshall Hodgkin iirc. It refers to places where Islam is culturally , but not specific to Muslims or the religion of Islam per se. e.g Maimonides, a Jew in Muslim Spain, would be classified as an “Islamicate” philosopher.
- wrp 4y agoAccording to his Wikipedia page, Marshall Hodgson (sp) introduced "Islamicate" to describe non-religious aspects of a predominantly Islamic culture. I'm here following Bernard Lewis in using the Hellenistic/Arabic distinction to cover the situation in the Near East where communities of Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc. transitioned from publishing in Greek to Arabic, without otherwise changing their cultural identities. Greek and Arabic were the languages of publication, not daily conversation in academies. The bulk of scientific writing in the early Islamic era came from Jewish and Christian academies, so historians being careful about terminology shy away from calling it "Islamic".