Islamic Renaissance

[Satyrane]

Stolen this idea shamelessly from Max Sinister's "Muslims Conquer Italy" thread. My instant response to his question was, what would the Italian Renaissance be like under Islamic rule? That thread has now more sensibly turned to discussion of how the conquest might come about, but I wonder, if we accept the conquest as given, how people think the Renaissance might have turned out?

Here are my initial thoughts:

Well, the scientific/mathematical advances of the Italian Renaissance were promted in large part by rediscovery of Classical knowledge of maths (especially geometry), much of which was, by all accounts, already known to Arabic mathematicians. So Islamic Italy might actually have got there quicker.

However, many of the advances in art made by applying this recovered knowledge were explicitly figuratively religious in a way that stricter forms of Islam do not, I think, permit: pictures (sculpted/painted/whatever) of Biblical stories and Biblical figures.

They also took a great deal of energy from comparison with and reference to pagan Classical mythology, to which again stricter forms of Islam might have some objection.

So if you have a strict Islamic Renaissance, you have artistic genii forced to work only with abstract patterns, or maybe the odd nature scene or landscape if you're lucky, which I think comes to a dead end quite quickly, artistically speaking.

Or we see the emergence of a body of Islamic literature/art that includes Classical references and pictorial representation of holy figures, perhaps in conjunction with a more liberal, 'decadent', European Islam.

The other question is whether an Italy dominated by a single Islamic empire would be as imaginatively fertile as a collection of warring city-states. In OTL, intense competition between these cities and royal/noble dynasties gave rise to some of the talismanic images of Western culture. Ruling families poured huge sums into artistic projects in desperate one-up-manship. Without the energy imparted by that rivalry, the Italian Renaissance might have been comparatively tame.

(Big fat bonus points and a cookie to anyone who posts examples of Italian-Islamic Renaissance art!)

[Chingo360]

Obviously the art would be different. I mean they woudlnt go drawing Jesus or western pictures. Also, I think the architecture would be different. The main question is, why would the Renaissance involve Islam?

[LordKalvan]

OTL Renaissance got a big boost by the influx of Greek refugees after the fall of Constantinople. These refugees brought with them a knowledge of Classical greece which had been lost for centuries in the West.
I doubt the same phenomenon might have occurred as a result of an Arab (or Ottoman) conquest. Frankly, if I look at Greece or the Balkans under Ottoman domination, my scepticism increase

[Satyrane]

Bleedin historical detail - always gets in the way!

Um ... I dunno, is the short answer. Both the threads about Islamic conquest of 15th Century Italy, by Moors and Arabs, seem fairly sceptical. And, as you say, there's nothing to indicate a conquered vassal state would produce the same creative energy that the rich, warring city-states of OTL did.

So maybe it's ASB, in Italy at any rate. I am still interested in people's thoughts on how the art (in the broadest sense) of the period might have turned out. Can you have a Renaissance in a culture that is uncomfortable with graven images, or that lacks the narrative wealth of Scripture? Are either of those fair assessments of 15th Century Islam?

[waffle] On a side-note, I wonder whether a certain secular mindset is required for artistic revolution, whether perhaps that helps give rise to the willingness to break free from sanctified artistic forms: certainly many of the Great Works seem to me monuments more to their corporeal creator than to God (quite Romantic in that regard). Not lack of belief, but making belief secondary to the work, so that you're allowed visually to interpret Scripture through Classical Paganism. Or something. [/waffle]

[new waffle] I was rather wondering whether somebody would tell me that there has already been an Islamic Renaissance in the court of the Ottoman Sultan Orhan the 73rd in the Twelvetieth Century, whose followers invented central-heating, air travel and the microwave while Europe was still working out how many beans make five, etc.etc.) [/new waffle]