the exchange of knowledge |
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Following extensive migrations and conquests in the sixth and seventh centuries, a vast Arabic and Islamic empire extended from the Atlantic Ocean across North Africa and the Middle East to Central Asia. In this realm, a great civilization developed that fostered education and prized literature, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, and science. Often its cultural leaders were not Arabs, but members of other ethnic groups and even Christians and Jews. Christian scholars in such places as Spain and Sicily gained much from Islamic knowledge, and scholasticism and Western science derived in part from the Arabs. The rise of the Seljuk Turks in the 11th century and the Ottomans in the 13th ended the specific dominance of Arabs in Islam, but Muslim culture continued to rest on its Arabic foundations. The reception of Classical learning in Western awareness continued to develop as Classical texts were translated from earlier Arabic translations into Latin. |
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[22] Alexandria's Libraries
Hartmann Schedel. Register des Buchs der Chroniken und Geschichten. (Nuremberg: 1493). An artist’s conception of the burning of the storied library at Alexandria, Egypt, from the German 1493 edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle. Pre-Islamic Alexandria held the greatest collection of writings in the ancient world. Its destruction is regretted in Western and Middle Eastern sources alike. The settlement was founded in 332 B.C.E. by Alexander the Great and became the largest city in the Mediterranean basin. It was the greatest city of Hellenistic and Jewish culture, fostering such achievements as the Septuagint, a translation by Jews of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek. An amazing 700,000 scrolls were housed in two celebrated libraries, and a fine university developed. In later Roman and Byzantine times, it became a great center of Christian learning, rivaling Rome and Constantinople. The libraries were gradually destroyed from the time of Caesar’s invasion (48 B.C.E.) and suffered especially in 391 A.D. when Theodosius I ordered Pagan temples and other facilities to be destroyed. The city was in commercial decline when it fell to Muslim Arab forces in 642, and its importance lessened further when they moved their capital to Cairo in 969. |
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[23] The Great Physician and Philospher
Avicenna, 980-1037. Principis Avic. Libri canonis, necnon De medicinis cordialibus [et] Cantica / ab Andrea Bellunensi ex antiquis Arabum originalibus ingenti labore summaq[ue] diligentia correcti atq[ue] in integrum restituti vna cum interpretatione nominu[m] Arabicoru[m], q[uae] partim mendosa p[ar]tim incognita lectorem antea moraba[n]tur. Opus plane aureu[m], ac omni ex parte absolutum. (Venice: [1527]). Ibn Sina (980-1037), known to the West as Avicenna, was of Persian origin and became the most famous philosopher of medieval Islam and was everywhere the most influential medical writer from 1100 to 1500. His classification of the sciences was adopted by the medieval schools of Europe. In the illustrated title page of this medical book, portraits appear of the great classical and medieval Islamic figures of medicine and philosophy: Aesculapius, Hippocrates, Galen, Avicena, Rasis, Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus and Averroes. Also shown is a view of the first page of the glossary of Arabic medical terms from the front of the book. It is not by accident that the Venetian printer Lucantonio Giunta included three Muslim men of learning with the names and portraits of the great Greek and Roman scientists and philosophers: Avicenna, Rasis and Averroes. Rasis, also rendered as Rhazes (850-923), is known to Arabs as abu-Bakr Muhammed ibn-Zakariya al-Razi. He was born in Persia and rose to the position of chief physician in a great hospital in Baghdad. Having written 140 medical works, the most important being translated later into Latin, he had a great influence on medical science in medieval Europe. Averroes (1126-1198), known by his full name in Arabic as Abu 'l-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd, is better known just as Ibn Rushd. Averroes was an Andalusian polymath born in Córdoba, Spain, in its Muslim era; he died in Marrakech, Morocco. In his career, Averroes was an authority in early Islamic philosophy and theology , Islamic law and jurisprudence, logic, psychology, in the sciences of medicine, astronomy, geography, mathematics and physics, and even in Arabic musical theory. His school of philosophy is known as Averroism. His theological thinking took some unusual turns, and he has been described as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe. |
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[24] The Turkish World Map of 1568-1569 Hadjii Ahmed. [The representation of the whole world depicted in its entirety] (Venice: Marc' Antonio Giustiniani, 1568). Restrike: Venice: Pinelli, 1795. This woodcut map with place names and text in Turkish had a curious history. It is based on Oronce Fine’s Cosmographia universalis ab Orontio olim descripta, Venice, 1566. This version has been rendered in Arabic characters, but in the Turkish language, along with Persian and Arabic loanwords. The story goes that it was prepared by a Venetian domestic slave named Hadjii (Haci) Ahmed and intended for the Middle Eastern market. Ahmed was described as a learned man of Tunis, having studied law and philosophy in Morocco before his capture. While the economy of the Venetian Republic was entirely geared to commercial principles, the government judged the geographical information contained in the map too powerful to be marketed to the Ottoman Turks, and a danger to civil security. Its suppression was ordered and the woodblocks were impounded by the Venetian government. These artifacts came to light again in 1795, when they were used to make 24 new impressions. The copy held by the John Carter Brown Library is one of at least six known to have survived. |
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[25] European Korans
Eberhard Happel. Thesaurus Exoticorum, oder eine ... Schatz-Kammer. (Hamburg: 1688). The principal focus of the book is on the Islamic peoples, and it includes at the end a complete Koran in German. European presses produced Korans in Latin and vernacular languages from the mid-sixteenth century. |
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[26] The Study of Islam
Adriaan Reelant. Four treatises concerning the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Mahometans. (London: 1712). Reelant, a professor of Oriental Languages in the Netherlands, was probably the first European to publish a systematic study of the beliefs and practice of Islam, in particular making an effort to dispel common misperceptions. |
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the spread of printing and engraving | ||
The art of printing in the German lands of central Europe was quickly harnessed for religious purposes, making mass production of indulgences possible and providing for faster reproduction of Bibles and religious treatises than had been possible in the manuscript tradition. Engraving had a similar utility for the production of maps and illustrations. As the trade of printing spread, governments, trade groups and religious bodies made efforts to control and regulate it. In Russia, printing was placed under the control of the Orthodox Church and used solely for religious purposes until the time of Peter the Great, when printing for secular purposes began. In Ottoman Turkey, the idea of Turkish or Arabic printing was viewed with concern and scribal resistance, and limited initially to secular purposes. Beginning in 1729, Ibrahim Müteferrika was authorized to issue almost a score of books in a range of secular subjects. Beginning about two centuries earlier, religious minorities were permitted to print works in other languages, notably Hebrew. |
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[28] Latin America in Turkish
Francisco López de Gómara. [Historia de las Indias. Turkish] [Tarih-i Hind-i garbi]. (Constantinople: Ibrahim Müteferrika, 1730). Drawing on descriptions in López de Gómara’s sixteenth-century account of America and other sources, a Turkish artist imagines a scene in which an archer prepares to shoot an opossum that threatens a chicken house. A sloth is poised nearby, while a rooster stands guard. This is thought to be the first illustrated book in Ottoman Turkish. The text in this book is in the Arabic script used to print Turkish until the adoption of the Roman alphabet by Kemal Atatürk in the twentieth century. |
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[29] Job, a Muslim Slave in Maryland
Thomas Bluett. Some memoirs of the life of Job, the son of Solomon the high priest of Boonda in Africa; who was a slave about two years in Maryland; and afterwards being brought to England, was set free, and sent to his native land in the year 1734. (Hartford: Elisha Babcock, 1790). A great untold story is composed of the countless silent narratives of African origins: the homelands, the family histories, the religious training and practice of each individual uprooted from an accustomed life and sold multiple times into a new world of servitude in the Americas. Whether they came from Islamic or traditional African religious origins, many of the adults likely continued their religious customs in whatever way possible. There is some record of awareness of plantation managers of religious identities, as for example those who provided their workers rations of beef, rather than the customary pork that was less expensive, but objectionable to Muslims. A rare exception to this information vacuum is the life of one Job, the grandson of Hibrahim, of the kingdom of Futa or Senegal. Job’s given name was Hyuba, Boon Salumena, Boon Hibrahima, and his surname is given as Jallo. In his community, Job’s father taught his son Arabic and how to read the Koran. Job had two wives and four children when he was taken. Having learned beginning English in Annapolis, Maryland, Job wrote a letter to his father in Arabic, relating the misfortunes that had befallen him. A series of compassionate acts resulted in his traveling with Bluett and others to England. On ship he was observed to conduct devotions faithfully and permitted to execute the traveling party’s stock for meals, so that he could be certain it had been prepared under Islamic dietary regulations. Job’s freedom was secured in England, where he was received in noble company, and he was returned to Gambia on one of the African Company’s ships, to “the honour of the English nation.” The remainder of the book presents stories of Job’s African life as related to Bluett. Job had memorized the Koran, and wrote out three manuscript copies while in England. Bluett emphasized Job’s monotheism, his objections to pictorial images, and his piety and character. The author hoped that the spirit of English charity would return more Africans to their homelands. |
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[30] A Landmark Turkish Atlas
William Faden. Mahmud Raif Efendi. [Cedid atlas tercümesi / Tab'hane-yi Hmayunda (Istanbul, Turkey)]. [Istanbul] : 1804. Published by the Ottoman Military Engineering School Press and containing 24 maps, this is the first Muslim-published world atlas based on European geographic knowledge and cartographic methods. The maps were based on William Faden’s General Atlas; Faden’s miniature Atlas minimus is presented next for comparison. Issued with the Turkish Atlas is Mahmud Raif’s Ucaletü'l-cografiyye, an 80-page geographical study. Shown here is the Western Hemisphere. The text and labels are in Ottoman Turkish in the Arabic script used up to 1928 (when Arabic script was prohibited). |
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[31 & 32] An Atlas's British Model
William Faden. Atlas minimus universalist, or a Geographical abridgement of the Earth, in fifty-five maps composed principally for the use of schools &c. .... (London: 1798). Faden’s General Atlas was the model for the Turkish Atlas shown above. It is represented here by Faden’s miniature atlas. |
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[33] Korans in America
The Koran, commonly called the Alcoran of Mahomet. Translated from the original Arabick into French. By the Sieur de Ryer. ... The whole now faithfully translated into English. First American Edition. (Springfield: 1806). The earliest documented Koran to be brought to North America was owned by Francis Daniel Pastorius (1651–1719) who arrived in Pennsylvania from Germany in 1683 and was named mayor and justice of the peace for Germantown. The learned statesmen John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both owned Korans that have survived, and Jefferson spent some time teaching himself Arabic. The Adams Koran is preserved at the Boston Public Library and Jefferson’s at the Library of Congress. The edition shown at left is the first Koran printed in the United States; it draws on the well-circulated French-language version of Du Ryer. |
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[34] The Second American Koran The Koran, commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed. Translated into English immediately from the original Arabic; with explanatory notes ... by George Sale, Gent. A new edition, with a memoir of the translator. Philadelphia: Thomas Wardle ... John Wiley ... New York., 1833. The second Koran to be printed in North America was the edition shown here. It was the first American edition of the George Sale translation from Arabic. It includes scholarly apparatus. LOAN FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION |