Without Islam, is technological development considerably hindered?

[Zlorfik]

Then why did urbanization reach its nadir prior to the Islamic conquest?

Plagues, war, the islamic invasion itself, end of the "roman lake" mediterranean
Nothing a decent stretch of peace won't take care of

Actually, The Inheritance of Rome does argue that around 800-900 AD, outside of the Islamic states, we see more long distance trade in the North Sea than in the Mediterranean.

well, yeah
pirates and all. mediterranean isn't safe anymore (for the european countries)

Hrm. Cordoba's population was about 10,000 or so prior to the Islamic conquest. Are you really gonna say that nothing changed when the Umayyads came?

it wasn't a capital prior to that. silly argument
anyway, the flourishing of al-andalus came a couple centuries after the conquest.

why wouldn't a surviving visigothic spain have experienced such growth?
same population base. plenty of mediterranean trade route connections (assuming no islamic conquests)

What Islamic laws?

If Hellenistic knowledge was preserved elsewhere, why do we get so few sources from the Byzantines, relatively?

Ever heard of the renaissance?

And why do 8th century Byzantines know so little about their past? (There's a great chapter on this in the Dark Ages Iluminated).

8th century byzantium was just beginning to recover from the devastation of the islamic conquests. subtract the devastation and... surprise, surpise... that wouldn't have been an issue

I would dispute this; even Peter Heather, who is about as Pro-Roman as you can get, thinks the Berber irruptions were a ticking time bomb, and notes the decline in agriculture in Byzantine and Vandal North Africa.

Whatever decline in agriculture was happening then, it could not have compared to the goat-induced desertification that happened post-arabconquest IOTL

The Byzantines were an incredibly stagnant state, with little or no technological innovation. See, e.g., The Byzantine Economy. We have a couple instances of waterwheels in the Roman world, and some very impressive ones; but nothing like the scale of the later period, and the Byzantines didn't use them as extensively as other Christian states.

Are we talking about dark age byzantium?
Because really, that's because they had many, many problems to deal with. You know, fighting for survival and all.

But before/after that:


-medicine
-justinian code
-architecture
-grenades (seriously)
-silkmaking from china
-hand trebuchet
-brilliant military treatises
-adopting cataphract tactics
-art (macedonian renaissance, anyone?)

here's a debunking of the notion that they were somehow "anti-progressive"
http://www.csiic.ca/PDF/InnovationUnwantedAcademia.pdf

Or Justinian, who basically trashed Ostrogothic Italy.

That he did. Preventing that as well would've been very good for Italy

 

[Barbarossa Rotbart]

Three things:
- Slaves: according to modern West African historians the Islam was the worst that happened to them, because of the practice to castrate all their male African slaves and did not allow them to procreate. The result was the constant need for new slaves. (This is also the reason we have no people of mixed race in any part of the former Caliphate. In this regard the Arab slavers were much worse than European slavers.)
- Fundamentalism: Take a look at the Mughal empire. I cannot remember the names but the son of the builder of the Taj Mahal was a fundamentalist and after his successfull coup against his father the Mughal Empire ceased to be cosmopolitan. Or take a look at Al'Andalus. Cosmopolitan and progressive and liberal until a fundamentalist dynasty took control and enforced their very strict interpretation of Islam. This started the Reconquesta. Without them, the Christian kings would have not waged war against their Muslim neighbor in the south. And I am sure you can find many more examples.
- Books: I remember that I have read somewhere that one of the early Arab conquerors ordered the destruction of a great library. If the content of this books contradicts the Quran, they had to be destroyed because they contain lies, if they do not contradict the Quran, they are redundant, because the Quran is the only book a Muslim needs. And sadly this mentality is still quite common in the muslim world.

 

[Faeelin]

We are fortunate that medieval and modern Christians have never practiced widespread slavery or persecution by, for instance, turning Jews into soap.

 

[Barbarossa Rotbart]

Also, wasn't one of the great benefits the Caliphate gave to scientific advancements was that since it was so large and unified, new technology could expand throughout the empire and ideas could be spread and shared quickly? Ideas from China found their way to Europe through the Arabs (paper-making, chess, accurate maps and charts) and the Arabs also retained many notable Greek and Roman advancements they kept in Egypt that Europe lost. Europe gained a lot of information and insight from the Crusades which directly led to more advancements made during the Middle Ages. I'm not sure how these same advancements could be made without a very large and unified empire.

You are joking. The Arab expansion was the reason there was no contact between europe and Eastern Asia for centuries.
All the ideas which came to Europe with the returning Crusaders would have reached Europe much earlier if the Arab expansion had not interrupted the trade with India and China.

 

[Barbarossa Rotbart]

We are fortunate that medieval and modern Christians have never practiced widespread slavery or persecution by, for instance, turning Jews into soap.

Medieval slavery in Europe did not destroy cultures. The slavery in post-medieval Europe (and America) was heavily influenced by Islamic practices but at least they did not castrate their male slaves or denied them the possibility to have children. Islamic slavery was the first racist slavery. Without it we would not have had the American slavery.

To bring the Nazis into this discussion tells me only one thing: you are out of arguments.

 

[Faeelin]

Medieval slavery in Europe did not destroy cultures.

I think you are really underestimating the effect of slavery on the Baltics and Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe. Slaves were, after all, one of Europe's biggest trade goods in the early medieval period.

You are also ignoring the fact that plantation agriculture was heavily influenced by Venetian practices in Crete, which they seized from the Byzantines.

 

[Nassirisimo]

Three things:
- Slaves: according to modern West African historians the Islam was the worst that happened to them, because of the practice to castrate all their male African slaves and did not allow them to procreate. The result was the constant need for new slaves. (This is also the reason we have no people of mixed race in any part of the former Caliphate. In this regard the Arab slavers were much worse than European slavers.)
- Fundamentalism: Take a look at the Mughal empire. I cannot remember the names but the son of the builder of the Taj Mahal was a fundamentalist and after his successfull coup against his father the Mughal Empire ceased to be cosmopolitan. Or take a look at Al'Andalus. Cosmopolitan and progressive and liberal until a fundamentalist dynasty took control and enforced their very strict interpretation of Islam. This started the Reconquesta. Without them, the Christian kings would have not waged war against their Muslim neighbor in the south. And I am sure you can find many more examples.
- Books: I remember that I have read somewhere that one of the early Arab conquerors ordered the destruction of a great library. If the content of this books contradicts the Quran, they had to be destroyed because they contain lies, if they do not contradict the Quran, they are redundant, because the Quran is the only book a Muslim needs. And sadly this mentality is still quite common in the muslim world.

What a load of horse shit. Nothing is actually cited and there's a gross simplification of history here, along with some oriental myths.

1: Estimates for both Atlantic and East African slavery are uncertain, but the generally accepted estimates tend to be around 12.8 million for the Atlantic slave trade, and around 8 million for the East African slave trade. Islamic slavery in West Africa tended to be practiced by West African Muslims rather than Arabs, and comparatively few of the slaves were taken out of the region by Muslim slave traders. In African Islamic states that practice slavery, the treatment of slaves in comparison to those in the Americas was somewhat tempered. Though I am curious to see which West African Historians argue that the Islamic slave trade was more damaging.

2: The ruler you are thinking of is Auruzangeb. His supposed fundamentalism is a lot less obvious than people think. For example, one of his proclamations was that his own secular decrees could supercede the Sharia, which is hardly the sign of a single minded fundamentalist. Likewise, his policies toward Hinduism shifted throughout his reign, and it is probably that only around 15 Hindu temples were destroyed in his reign, as well as support given to other Hindu temples at other points in his reign. Certainly his religious policy was far less liberal than Ackbar, though to say that he abandoned cosmopolitanism completely is a gross simplification.

You also have your chronology seriously wrong in regards to the history of al-Andalus. The Almoravids and Almohads were a response to rather than a trigger of renewed Christian success against Muslim rulers. The polity of al-Andalus fell in the mid part of the 11th century, as it split apart into competing small Muslim states, who fought each other and sometimes even allied with Christian powers against each other. Both the Almoravids and Almohads came at the request of local Muslims who were dissatisfied with the fecklessness of their rulers in the light of increasingly vigorous Christians in the North. It was really political troubles rather than fundamentalism that signaled the fall of Andalus. Again, hardly a significant indicator of fundamentalism being the culprit of the fall of Islamic states.

3: Look at my bookshelf, and you'll see a lot more than the Quran on there. This is true for many of my Muslim friends, family etc. Muslims do not reject knowledge from sources other than the Quran, and many Muslims read many more books than this. This is starting to come away from standard Orientalism territory and is becoming uncomfortably wrong-headed.

 

[Malta]

Three things:
- Slaves: according to modern West African historians the Islam was the worst that happened to them, because of the practice to castrate all their male African slaves and did not allow them to procreate. The result was the constant need for new slaves. (This is also the reason we have no people of mixed race in any part of the former Caliphate. In this regard the Arab slavers were much worse than European slavers.)
- Fundamentalism: Take a look at the Mughal empire. I cannot remember the names but the son of the builder of the Taj Mahal was a fundamentalist and after his successfull coup against his father the Mughal Empire ceased to be cosmopolitan. Or take a look at Al'Andalus. Cosmopolitan and progressive and liberal until a fundamentalist dynasty took control and enforced their very strict interpretation of Islam. This started the Reconquesta. Without them, the Christian kings would have not waged war against their Muslim neighbor in the south. And I am sure you can find many more examples.
- Books: I remember that I have read somewhere that one of the early Arab conquerors ordered the destruction of a great library. If the content of this books contradicts the Quran, they had to be destroyed because they contain lies, if they do not contradict the Quran, they are redundant, because the Quran is the only book a Muslim needs. And sadly this mentality is still quite common in the muslim world.

Muslims were by no means the first civilization to treat slaves extremely crudely and even that such as the Fundamentalists you mention depends on the nature of the slave owner. In Sharia law slaves are treated as him and with certain basic rights, especially co religionists.

Averroes the Islamic Scholar writings on philosophy and sciences can account for over 20,000 pages. It is ridiculous to say the Muslims did not write books or destroyed books because they were Muslim. Again it comes to the nature of the specific person. Are the Chinese against reading because the First Emperor of the Qin ordered libraries destroyed so it is coded into Chinese culture?

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

Then why did urbanization reach its nadir prior to the Islamic conquest?



Actually, The Inheritance of Rome does argue that around 800-900 AD, outside of the Islamic states, we see more long distance trade in the North Sea than in the Mediterranean.



That's true; Byzantium was the punching bag for the Umayyads, the Slavs, the Lombards, the Rus, briefly... I would frankly say they excelled only at dying.



You keep harping on slaves; do you think the late Roman Republic, and early Empire, with its reliance on slaves, was also a disaster?



Go read Al-Hind, the Making of the Indo-Islamic World, and then we'll talk.

I want to note that at this point the Islamic states are too weak to make people to convert to Islam, except when they all converted, but it apparently forced people to adopt camels at knife point in a manner that's somehow lost in our written sources.





Hrm. Cordoba's population was about 10,000 or so prior to the Islamic conquest. Are you really gonna say that nothing changed when the Umayyads came?



What Islamic laws?

If Hellenistic knowledge was preserved elsewhere, why do we get so few sources from the Byzantines, relatively? And why do 8th century Byzantines know so little about their past? (There's a great chapter on this in the Dark Ages Iluminated).




I would dispute this; even Peter Heather, who is about as Pro-Roman as you can get, thinks the Berber irruptions were a ticking time bomb, and notes the decline in agriculture in Byzantine and Vandal North Africa.

Maybe they'd find some magical agricultural techniques, in the ATL?



The Byzantines were an incredibly stagnant state, with little or no technological innovation. See, e.g., The Byzantine Economy. We have a couple instances of waterwheels in the Roman world, and some very impressive ones; but nothing like the scale of the later period, and the Byzantines didn't use them as extensively as other Christian states.



Or Justinian, who basically trashed Ostrogothic Italy.

Of course in 800-900 AD there was more, bc the Umayyads trashed the whole area with their pirates and invasions of Sicily, Crete and Nicoisia, the Khilafah didn't care at all about Mediterranean trade and frankly did whatever they could to ruin it crushing the life out of a previous Empire. Btw, I saud 700 AD during the Rashidun was the North Sea greater, anything after that and until the crusades is plagued by Arab pirates.


Oh yes I will go read a book and by the time I have and come back to respond this thread is already dead. No thanks, if there is something you know say it. I still do not believe anyone can say that the Khilafah was a good things for India regardless of whatever trade they gave them.



You are right that the Roman Empire suffered from slavery and it was a problem for them, however it was only a significant problem when it came to Sicily and other rural areas. Hellenic slavery based more around the city is much more stabile and economically sound as it 1 does not stifle urban growth by having land allocated to slave agriculture and 2 it keeps slaves from toiling in such awful conditions that lead to rebellions. Wherever Rome practiced rural slavery problems followed (servile wars). With this said, Rome crushed its slave revolts decisively and eventually outgrew its excessive slave practices, did the Khilafah win its wars?

Yea, Byzantium who was constantly on the defensive was just a terrible empire. But the question is why did Byzantium survive so long? It's either Byzantium was a much stronger regime than you say or the Khilafah had a huge flaw that it was unable to overcome. I tend to favor the latter, it is hard to wage real wars for territory if whenever you launch an invasion there is 2k Shurha who have invited 40k + Zanj or Berber slaves into rebellion who are burning the entire country side of Iraq or North Africa.

Still you have not answered the disastrous effect the Khilafah had in East Africa and how it could be a venue for innovation, so I will take it as an agreement on your part.

Qurtubah might have had a small population before Umayyads, but during it's time under Visigothic Iberia, hmm. The population bases of Roman Iberia where elsewhere. Either ways the Umayyads, either ways the question is innovation without Khilafah, which you haven't answered.

 

[Zlorfik]

christians were about as fundamentalist as you could call the muslims of that time...
both practiced slavery. the christians on a much smaller scale, sure, but still. venice, for example, didn't care less about whether it was damaging or inhumane

neither of those are really essential to the question: without islam, would civilization/knowledge/technology in that region have still developed about as much?
answer's still yes, for so many reasons.

there was no existential threat to it to begin with, except for the arab conquerors themselves.

byzantium was, if not exuberantly, at least fairly innovative. as shown above
admittedly I know less about persia, but I doubt they would've fallen behind on any important innovations, not with their centuries-long rivalry with the romans.

eastern innovations would've still made their way to the romans, and then to westerners in general, just fine. there was consistent trans-indian ocean traffic either way, and while the sassanids would've posed at least somewhat of an obstacle to sino-roman technological diffusion, they couldn't have prevented it entirely.

whatever useful military innovations the sassanids would adopt (gunpowder, e.g.) the romans would follow suit, just as they did with cataphracts. even if they have to steal the technology, as they did with silkmaking.

things like paper weren't exactly vital until much later in history (printing press) and would've had time to diffuse to the sassanids first or to the romans directly.

in sum, no, the muslim expansion did not "save progress," which is what the title of this topic would suggest.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

What a load of horse shit. Nothing is actually cited and there's a gross simplification of history here, along with some oriental myths.

1: Estimates for both Atlantic and East African slavery are uncertain, but the generally accepted estimates tend to be around 12.8 million for the Atlantic slave trade, and around 8 million for the East African slave trade. Islamic slavery in West Africa tended to be practiced by West African Muslims rather than Arabs, and comparatively few of the slaves were taken out of the region by Muslim slave traders. In African Islamic states that practice slavery, the treatment of slaves in comparison to those in the Americas was somewhat tempered. Though I am curious to see which West African Historians argue that the Islamic slave trade was more damaging.

2: The ruler you are thinking of is Auruzangeb. His supposed fundamentalism is a lot less obvious than people think. For example, one of his proclamations was that his own secular decrees could supercede the Sharia, which is hardly the sign of a single minded fundamentalist. Likewise, his policies toward Hinduism shifted throughout his reign, and it is probably that only around 15 Hindu temples were destroyed in his reign, as well as support given to other Hindu temples at other points in his reign. Certainly his religious policy was far less liberal than Ackbar, though to say that he abandoned cosmopolitanism completely is a gross simplification.

You also have your chronology seriously wrong in regards to the history of al-Andalus. The Almoravids and Almohads were a response to rather than a trigger of renewed Christian success against Muslim rulers. The polity of al-Andalus fell in the mid part of the 11th century, as it split apart into competing small Muslim states, who fought each other and sometimes even allied with Christian powers against each other. Both the Almoravids and Almohads came at the request of local Muslims who were dissatisfied with the fecklessness of their rulers in the light of increasingly vigorous Christians in the North. It was really political troubles rather than fundamentalism that signaled the fall of Andalus. Again, hardly a significant indicator of fundamentalism being the culprit of the fall of Islamic states.

3: Look at my bookshelf, and you'll see a lot more than the Quran on there. This is true for many of my Muslim friends, family etc. Muslims do not reject knowledge from sources other than the Quran, and many Muslims read many more books than this. This is starting to come away from standard Orientalism territory and is becoming uncomfortably wrong-headed.

I agree on your points regarding Islam and I am not going to delve into an argument of Atlantic vs Trans Saharan slavery because the numbers are blurry and it is silly to rate levels of suffering. Btw, I have seen estimates of 15 + million slaves for the trans Saharan, 3.5 million for the Crimean and around 2.2 million for Barbary/Mediterranean idk the numbers for India but in Ghaznavid literature it is common to see rulers claim the capture of thousands if slaves after campaigns. However, the evidence is that the Khilafah for some reason was unable to control its slaves and was crushed by them. Still we are talking about the Khilafah and the possibility of innovation without them in the Mid East or Africa.

How would the Almohads be a reaction to the Christian states whenever it rebelled against the decadence of the Almoravids? I mean Ibn Tumart called himself the Mahdi, and claimed that the Almoravids where decadent and he was to bring them back to Allah and remove their percieved Bidaa. Ibn Tumart did not say I have come to strike the Kaffir but to combat Bidaa. I mean whenever your first ruler calls himself Al Mahdi and your state name is Al Muwahhidūn (the unifiers) then I do not know how you say they are not fundamental lol.

I feel this is getting off topic though, how about we all discuss the possibility of innovation in the Mid East and Africa without the Khilafah.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

christians were about as fundamentalist as you could call the muslims of that time...
both practiced slavery. the christians on a much smaller scale, sure, but still. venice, for example, didn't care less about whether it was damaging or inhumane

neither of those are really essential to the question: without islam, would civilization/knowledge/technology in that region have still developed about as much?
answer's still yes, for so many reasons.

there was no existential threat to it to begin with, except for the arab conquerors themselves.

byzantium was, if not exuberantly, at least fairly innovative. as shown above
admittedly I know less about persia, but I doubt they would've fallen behind on any important innovations, not with their centuries-long rivalry with the romans.

eastern innovations would've still made their way to the romans, and then to westerners in general, just fine. there was consistent trans-indian ocean traffic either way, and while the sassanids would've posed at least somewhat of an obstacle to sino-roman technological diffusion, they couldn't have prevented it entirely.

whatever useful military innovations the sassanids would adopt (gunpowder, e.g.) the romans would follow suit, just as they did with cataphracts. even if they have to steal the technology, as they did with silkmaking.

things like paper weren't exactly vital until much later in history (printing press) and would've had time to diffuse to the sassanids first or to the romans directly.

in sum, no, the muslim expansion did not "save progress," which is what the title of this topic would suggest.

Agreed. The opportunity for Ethiopian innovation and expansion would lay open to funnel Eastern innovation to the West, whereas the Khilafah was sort of a sponge taking in but not letting out.

Still the argument was not slavery practiced in Khilafah vs not in Euro, but it was the effect slavery had on the Mid East vs its effect on any other part of the world which when combined with ineffective tax methods, and an encouragement of the Bedouin lifestyle caused a lot of problems for the Mid East that would not have existed in a status quo Roman-Sassanid world which had its own difficulties.

 

[Nassirisimo]

I agree on your points regarding Islam and I am not going to delve into an argument of Atlantic vs Trans Saharan slavery because the numbers are blurry and it is silly to rate levels of suffering. Btw, I have seen estimates of 15 + million slaves for the trans Saharan, 3.5 million for the Crimean and around 2.2 million for Barbary/Mediterranean idk the numbers for India but in Ghaznavid literature it is common to see rulers claim the capture of thousands if slaves after campaigns. However, the evidence is that the Khilafah for some reason was unable to control its slaves and was crushed by them. Still we are talking about the Khilafah and the possibility of innovation without them in the Mid East or Africa.

You would do best to actually cite sources for these claim, as all of them sound rather excessive to me.

How would the Almohads be a reaction to the Christian states whenever it rebelled against the decadence of the Almoravids? I mean Ibn Tumart called himself the Mahdi, and claimed that the Almoravids where decadent and he was to bring them back to Allah and remove their percieved Bidaa. Ibn Tumart did not say I have come to strike the Kaffir but to combat Bidaa. I mean whenever your first ruler calls himself Al Mahdi and your state name is Al Muwahhidūn (the unifiers) then I do not know how you say they are not fundamental lol.

The Almoravids were quickly losing ground to the Christians, and this was what made them such easy prey to the Almohad movement. The Almohads were fundamentalists, but my point overall was that Fundamentalism was a symptom rather than a cause of al-Andalus' decline.

Agreed. The opportunity for Ethiopian innovation and expansion would lay open to funnel Eastern innovation to the West, whereas the Khilafah was sort of a sponge taking in but not letting out.

Still the argument was not slavery practiced in Khilafah vs not in Euro, but it was the effect slavery had on the Mid East vs its effect on any other part of the world which when combined with ineffective tax methods, and an encouragement of the Bedouin lifestyle caused a lot of problems for the Mid East that would not have existed in a status quo Roman-Sassanid world which had its own difficulties.

I can't begin to say how outdated and false this view is. The book I previously mentioned, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance details how knowledge from the Islamic world and beyond filtered to Europe by way of Islamic civilization. The characterisation of the Caliphate as a "sponge" of innovation is fundamentally false.

And you have provided no evidence that the Arabs presided over a deurbanization in the Middle East. Indeed, Albert Hourani in his book A History of the Arab People notes that despite the myth of the Arab nomad ruling a might empire, Muslim rulers often relived very heavily on urban power-bases. Not only this, but the Muslim world was host to a number of cities that were home to even more people than had been resident in places such as Antioch and Ctesiphon. The arguments that you and others have put forward seem to be in complete ignorance of the enormous contributions of Muslims made during the hight of the Caliphate, while simultaneously putting little evidence forward for equal achivements in the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires. No awareness of more recent scholarship on the value of the contribution of the Islamic world to the development of the Scientific method is show.

In short, there's very little on this thread that convinces me that there was a way for scientific development to keep up to OTL's level in the absence of an Islamic, or at least an Arab Empire to the scale of OTL's. Neither the Byzantines nor the Sassanids had the ability to conquer one or the other which meant that the areas of the Middle East that proved fertile ground for innovation in the Islamic era would likely be war-torn. Neither Empire was more urbanized than the Caliphate either. In short, I'm really struggling to understand what actual advantages science would have in the Byzantine or Sassanid Empires over the Caliphate.

 

[Zlorfik]

The arguments that you and others have put forward seem to be in complete ignorance of the enormous contributions of Muslims made during the hight of the Caliphate, while simultaneously putting little evidence forward for equal achivements in the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires. No awareness of more recent scholarship on the value of the contribution of the Islamic world to the development of the Scientific method is show.

Romans and greek innovated in all those fields.
As the excellent analysis I linked to detailed, even the late romans were no slouches in innovation.

By your article's own admission, the islamic innovations sprung from classical knowledge. And a plurality of the innovators were persian

What, exactly, necessitates islam (and nothing else) for existing innovators to dig into existing knowledge?

In short, there's very little on this thread that convinces me that there was a way for scientific development to keep up to OTL's level in the absence of an Islamic, or at least an Arab Empire to the scale of OTL's. Neither the Byzantines nor the Sassanids had the ability to conquer one or the other which meant that the areas of the Middle East that proved fertile ground for innovation in the Islamic era would likely be war-torn.

Doesn't matter if the border area is war torn. Innovations don't have to happen in those specific places.
Alexandria, for example, was a very fertile ground for innovation

Mind you, the arabs left a lot of damage to the mediterranean in their wake. Who's to say they didn't nip a potential carthaginian latin-speaking renaissance in the bud?

Neither Empire was more urbanized than the Caliphate either.

True

In short, I'm really struggling to understand what actual advantages science would have in the Byzantine or Sassanid Empires over the Caliphate.

Vice-versa too

 

[Nassirisimo]

Romans and greek innovated in all those fields.
As the excellent analysis I linked to detailed, even the late romans were no slouches in innovation.

By your article's own admission, the islamic innovations sprung from classical knowledge. And a plurality of the innovators were persian

What, exactly, necessitates islam (and nothing else) for existing innovators to dig into existing knowledge?

Nothing necessitates Islam specifically. However, it is untrue to say that the Byzantines as opposed to the Romans and Greeks innovated in the areas that Islamic civilizations did. The Byzantine state was not hostile to innovation, and indeed showed a remarkable capacity to reform itself following severe challenges. However, the article mentions little if anything on innovations in areas such as astronomy and mechanics, which alongside other things leads me to conclude in certain areas, the Byzantine Empire was just as conductive to the development of science as the Caliphate was. If you have anything to disprove this I'd be interested in seeing this.

I'm not quite sure what your second point is trying to say. Most scientific theory is based on what has gone before, and it is likely that any development in the Early Middle Ages would be based on the works of the classics. As for the point about the Persian scientists, my point isn't about Muslims having some natural scientific ability lacked by others, but that the Caliphate produced an environment more conductive to scientific research than either Sassanid Persia or Byzantium.

Doesn't matter if the border area is war torn. Innovations don't have to happen in those specific places.

Mind you, the arabs left a lot of damage to the mediterranean in their wake. Who's to say they didn't nip a potential carthaginian latin-speaking renaissance in the bud?

I remember reading someone making a point on the board a year ago that the Arab desertification of North Africa was a myth propagated by the French in the 19th century to justify their colonialism. It was based largely on selective readings of ancient sources to exaggerate the previous productivity of North Africa as a granary. Unfortunately I can't find any sources to back this up at the moment.

Vice-versa too

Vice-versa too

Actually, Albert Hourani notes that the first few centuries of Islamic rule "led to the growth of large cities", largely due to the absorption of such a large area into a single Empire, which created an enormous economic unit and so forth. If one is to go off the "Big History" perspective and believe that innovation is the result of increasingly complex societies which are made up of larger numbers of potential innovators, there is a compelling case that the creation of the Caliphate, and the subsequent unit of the "Muslim World" was indeed an advantage for scientific innovation that Byzantium and the Sassanid Empire lacked.

 

[RGB]

I remember reading someone making a point on the board a year ago that the Arab desertification of North Africa was a myth propagated by the French in the 19th century to justify their colonialism. It was based largely on selective readings of ancient sources to exaggerate the previous productivity of North Africa as a granary. Unfortunately I can't find any sources to back this up at the moment.

Those dastardly French imperialists, they had Ibn Battuta and Inb Khaldoun on the payroll the entire time!

But then I suppose wholesale destruction just isn't if a Muslim does it.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

You would do best to actually cite sources for these claim, as all of them sound rather excessive to me.


The Almoravids were quickly losing ground to the Christians, and this was what made them such easy prey to the Almohad movement. The Almohads were fundamentalists, but my point overall was that Fundamentalism was a symptom rather than a cause of al-Andalus' decline.

I can't begin to say how outdated and false this view is. The book I previously mentioned, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance details how knowledge from the Islamic world and beyond filtered to Europe by way of Islamic civilization. The characterisation of the Caliphate as a "sponge" of innovation is fundamentally false.

And you have provided no evidence that the Arabs presided over a deurbanization in the Middle East. Indeed, Albert Hourani in his book A History of the Arab People notes that despite the myth of the Arab nomad ruling a might empire, Muslim rulers often relived very heavily on urban power-bases. Not only this, but the Muslim world was host to a number of cities that were home to even more people than had been resident in places such as Antioch and Ctesiphon. The arguments that you and others have put forward seem to be in complete ignorance of the enormous contributions of Muslims made during the hight of the Caliphate, while simultaneously putting little evidence forward for equal achivements in the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires. No awareness of more recent scholarship on the value of the contribution of the Islamic world to the development of the Scientific method is show.

In short, there's very little on this thread that convinces me that there was a way for scientific development to keep up to OTL's level in the absence of an Islamic, or at least an Arab Empire to the scale of OTL's. Neither the Byzantines nor the Sassanids had the ability to conquer one or the other which meant that the areas of the Middle East that proved fertile ground for innovation in the Islamic era would likely be war-torn. Neither Empire was more urbanized than the Caliphate either. In short, I'm really struggling to understand what actual advantages science would have in the Byzantine or Sassanid Empires over the Caliphate.

I said I have seen not necessarily believe. However Robert C.Davis on Europe, Halail Inalick in "Servile labour in the Ottoman Empire", Janes William Broadman "Ransoming captives in Crusader Spain", Mikail Kizilov "slave trade in early modern Crimea", Murray Gordon "slavery in the Arab world", BBC "Focus on the slave trade", "revisiting the Zanj and revisioning revolt".

Perhaps, I never said fundamebtalism was its decline, but the Muwahhidūn where definitely not a reaction to Crusades but to the Bidaa of the Almoravids.



The Khilafah exported knowledge to Europe? When? Why don't you read my first comment on this thread where I compliment Islam and its achievements but to be uncreative. Still tell why there needs to be a massive Arab empire to do this rather than a recreation of Pax Romana, continued Persian stabillity and growth and the possibility of a strengthening of Ethiopia.

 

[Nassirisimo]

Those dastardly French imperialists, they had Ibn Battuta and Inb Khaldoun on the payroll the entire time!

But then I suppose wholesale destruction just isn't if a Muslim does it.

(Albert Hourani addressing the argument made by Ibn Khaldun)

"Modern research has shown, however, that the process was not as simple as this. Elements of the Banu Hilal did indeed enter Tunisia from Egypt in the first half of the eleventh century... it does not appear that the Banu Hilal were hostile to settled life as such; they were on good terms with other dynasties. If there was a shift in the rural balance of this time, it may have resulted from other causes, and seems to have been neither universal nor perpetual. Parts of the Tunisian countryside revived when strong government was restored... The expansion of pastoralism, in so far that it existed, was possibly therefore an effect rather than the main cause of the breakdown in the rural symbiosis"

Certainly this would mirror the process in other parts of the Islamic World, where pastoralism tended to come after the decline of settled agriculture rather than before. Feel free to dismiss this argument as an example of my obvious Islamic bias if you wish though.

 

[Basileus444]

The viewpoint that the Byzantines did nothing but stagnate and die is reflective of Byzantine historiography…two hundred years ago. “What should be kept in mind is that the Byzantines were much more conservative-and deliberately so-in their ideological pronouncements than they tended to be in practice.” (Angeliki Laiou, “Economic Thought and Ideology” in The Economic History of Byzantium, pg. 1124) And if it took the Byzantines a thousand years to die, obviously they weren’t very good at the dying part.​

/​

The Byzantines could be quite innovative. Byzantine missionaries were responsible for creating the Glagolitic alphabet, from which the Cyrillic alphabet used by Serbs, Bulgarians, and Russians is derived. Before the Byzantines those people did not have a written language. They had women physicians. (Alexander Kahzdan, Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, pg. 157) ​

/​

In the early 800s they had an optical telegraph using signal fires and synchronized clocks to relay signals between the frontier and Constantinople. (Warren Treadgold, The Byzantine Revival 780-843, pg. 308)​

/​

The Arabs themselves considered the Byzantines to be the foremost people in the world when it came to art, architecture, and craftsmanship. It was said that in Constantinople one could find “bronze and marble statues, columns, and marvelous talismans “the likes of which are not to be found in the lands of the Muslims.”” The Arabs called them the “most skilled nation in painting”. “The [Arab] texts of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries include a discussion concerning the role of the Byzantines in the scientific and philosophical knowledge passed on to the Muslims.” (Nadia Maria El-Cheikh, “Byzantium through the Islamic Prism from the Twelfth to the Thirteenth Century” in The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, pg. 56-58)​

 

[Faeelin]

here's a debunking of the notion that they were somehow "anti-progressive"
http://www.csiic.ca/PDF/InnovationUnwantedAcademia.pdf

A linguistic analysis is not, IMO, persuasive.