BAGHDAD: THE JEWEL in the crown of the ancient Arab empire, the centre of its great cultural achievements and symbol of all that Islamic fundamentalists would like to see resurrected.
But not so fast. The idea that Islam unadorned gave rise to an enviable civilisation in the Middle Ages, that the great faith alone was responsible for a golden age, is a myth, a half-truth, a glib soundbite that obscures and distorts what actually took place.
In fact, Baghdad’s golden age — let us say between AD765 and 1000 — occurred during the least fundamental period of Muslim medieval history, when Indians, Chinese, Christians, Jews and pagans were all welcome and influential in the Arab world, when the Arab elite was wide open to foreign influences and conceded privately that, whatever the Koran might say, no single belief system had a monopoly on wisdom. Sadly, this period of openness didn’t last, and the Muslim world has been suffering the consequences ever since. But as war approaches, as the voices of Islamic fundamentalism attempt to drill their atavistic message into our subconscious, it is more important than ever to counter the view they would have us believe.
For example, when the great caliph, al-Mansur, created Madinat al-Salam, the City of Peace, as Baghdad was officially called, in 762, an impressive centre of learning already existed not far away at Gondeshapur in southwestern Persia. Here flourished a large community of Nestorians, a heretical Christian sect which had been forced to flee, in the 5th century, from territory further west. Alongside them, other political and religious refugees arrived in Gondeshapur, including some who had been expelled from the pagan Academy in Athens (the one founded by Plato) when that institution was closed down by Christians in 529.
For many years, Gondeshapur had been home to scholars of every belief and none and, in particular, to physicians. They had a vested interest in learning about medicinal herbs, surgical methods and other treatments from across the known world. For them the translation of foreign texts became second nature. Many Nestorian families in Gondeshapur developed into medical dynasties, passing down the (translated) medical manuscripts from father to son. Gondeshapur, and not Baghdad, as Muslims claim, had the first hospital, the Bismaristan.
Inside the city there was a great variety of languages spoken: Greek, Syriac, Aramaic, Sanskrit, reflecting many traditions. Texts were chiefly translated out of Greek and Sanskrit into Syriac and Aramaic. After Gondeshapur was conquered by the Arabs in 638, these scholars quickly learned the tongue of their conquerors and an intensive programme of translation into Arabic from Greek and Indian medical, geometrical and other scientific manuscripts was begun. Many texts were translated first into Syriac, and only then into Arabic.
It was this model that was transferred to Baghdad and Damascus, so the very idea of translating valuable foreign manuscripts was originally a Christian/Jewish/pagan practice. There was no such tradition or precedent in the Arab world and, as Gondeshapur was ecumenical and international, with as many Jews and pagans as Christians leading the way, that is how the translations were organised in Baghdad. As the City of Peace grew in size and importance, many descendants and successors of the Nestorian medical dynasties moved from Gondeshapur.
After this, probably the next significant arrival was the treatise known to the Arabs as the Sindhind. This was originally an Indian work, the Brahmasphuta Siddhanta, which was known in Baghdad from the late 8th century. It is the best known work of the great Indian mathematician Brahmagupta, and contained his early contributions to algebra (al-jabr), which the Arab mathematician al-Khwarizmi (780-c.850) was to expand on so successfully.
Even more important, for non-mathematicians, the same Indian merchant who brought the Sindhind to the West also brought a second manuscript, which introduced for the first time outside India the nine “Hindu” numerals. These are the ones we still use —1, 2, 3, 4 etc. — and which we often now call “Arabic”. (Before that, numbers were written out as words, or used letters of the alphabet.) This same document also contained the first mention of the tenth numeral, the “0” — the zero or cipher. This second work was apparently translated into Arabic about 775 and without it modern mathematics would be next to impossible.
The medieval Arabs were to prove formidable mathematicians, and in time would pass on their skills to Europeans, but that aspect of their civilisation was kick-started by the Indians.
Then, at the beginning of the 9th century, the Islamic world was fortunate in having an open-minded Caliph, al-Mamum, who was sympathetic to a semi-secret sect, the Mutazilites, who were rationalists obsessed with reconciling the text of the Koran and the criteria of human reason. Al-Mamum, it is said, had a dream — possibly the most important dream in history — in which Aristotle appeared. As a result of this dream the Caliph sent envoys as far afield as Constantinople in search of as many Greek manuscripts as they could find, and to establish in Baghdad a centre devoted to translation.
A number of libraries and centres of learning had been established in the great Islamic cities, based largely on Greek models discovered during the Arab conquests of Alexandria and Antioch. But by far the most famous was al-Mamum’s House of Wisdom (bayt al-hikma), founded in 833. Many translations were carried out in the bayt, as well as astronomical observations, chemical experiments and teaching. Even here, however, the “Sheikh of Translators”, as he was called, was Hunayn ibn-Ishaq (809-873), yet another Nestorian Christian from al-Hirah, who spoke four languages and was appointed superintendent of the House of Wisdom and given control of all scientific translation. He taught his son, Ishaq, and his nephew, Hubaysh, to follow him and between them they translated Aristotle’s Physics, Plato’s Republic, seven books of anatomy by Galen (now lost in Greek), and works by Hippocrates and Dioscorides. Hunayn also translated the Old Testament from the Septuagint — the ancient Greek translation from the Hebrew scriptures — but this has been lost.
His position was not a one-off. No less distinguished was Thabit ibn Qurra, the founder of a second school of translators, who transcribed into Arabic the works of Euclid, Archimedes, Ptolemy (including the Almagest) and Apollonius. Had it not been for ibn Qurra, the number of Greek works in existence today would have been smaller. And ibn Qurra wasn’t a Muslim either — he was a member of a pagan sect, the Sabians, who, fortunately, were mentioned in the Koran and therefore had protected status.
