The Arab World

Hello all, anyone remember me? It's been a long time in waiting but I'm finally back!

Edited by andrew - 18-Nov-2008 at 01:35

If you mean Muslim world you may be correct. More than half of the scientists, scholars and achievements of the Muslim worlds came from Andelus, North Africa, Persia and northern India, so it is bias to call it simply Arab world. I guess you are an Egyptian Arab, so I am not surprised. No offense Btw...  

he meant the Arab "wishful thinking" World.

pinguin, for the sake of precision take care to differentiate between Arabs and Persians. You seem to use Arab as an umbrella term for all inhabitants of the Caliphate, while they were a minority outside the Arab heartlands and military towns. Further, Arabs and Persians are two very distinct groups and given their tense relations they tend to take offense to being mistaken for the other. 

I'm a bit pedantic about this because claiming the Caliphate can stand a comparison with China is an arguable case, but saying the Arabs as a people in the period 800-1200 were ahead of the Chinese is preposterous. As already pointed out the majority of the Caliphate's intellectuals were not Arabs but Persians. The Arabs were essentially soldiers and administrators during the early phase of the Caliphate, before being phased out by Persians and Turks in those roles during the Abbasids, after which they pass into relative obscurity.

We may be coming at this from different angles; when you hear Islamic world you see Al-Andalus while I see Baghdad and Cairo, but what I say holds true for Al-Andalus as well. Al-Andalus was largely a Berber project under Arab overlordship; Tariq bin Ziyad, the initial conqueror of Iberia, was a Berber leading Berbers, and from the Almovarid conquest onwards not even the ruling class was Arab.

As for the comparison with China, you write "I have the idea East Asia was slightly ahead", a phrasing which sounds very insecure and inclines me to believe you are speculating based on a mere skeleton of information here. If you read a few books on Chinese history, preferably from a sociological perspective rather than political, I think you will be awed at China under the Tang and Song. An online course which really helped me get started can be found at: http://www.east-asian-history.net/textbooks/PM-China/index.htm

Lastly, I feel like I come off as an Arab-basher here. That's not the intention but credit must be given where credit is due.

Originally posted by pinguin Al-Andalus a Berber project? I am afraid that isn't true. Al-Andalus was from the beginning a muslim project where the ruling elite was Arab and the intellectuals where multicultural, between Persians, Syrians and native Jews, Christians and Muslims. Most of the people of Al-Andalus was Spaniard. Besides, Al-Andalus spoke Arab as the official language (although proto-Spanish was the language of the people). With respect to the Almoravids, they just lead the decline and defeat of Al-Andalus and had not much to do with its glory at all.

Largely a Berber project. There is a significant difference. I am of course aware that to begin with the ruling class was Arab, I'm also aware that as soon as Tariq and his Berbers had conquered most of Iberia the Arab governor of Africa, Musa bin Nusair, swooped in, took charge and dismissed Tariq. In any case, if you choose to focus on the early period alone (until 1031) it can be argued that it was an Arab project, but Al-Andalus existed for a long time, from 711 to 1492, and for over half that time it was ruled by Berber dynasties.  Also note that when I speak of a "project" I'm only referring to organisation at the top level.

Originally posted by pinguin With respect to the comparisson with China, the muslim intellectuals were ahead of China in abstract science: astronomy, physics, mathematics and medicine, as well as ahead of every other people in the world. I have no doubt about it.

Muslim intellectuals, yes, now we're on the same page. And even if they weren't all Muslims the generalization is reasonable and the case can certainly be made that they were ahead of China in the areas you mention. Astronomy is an interesting example in particular, for the Chinese concluded the Earth was flat and the Heavens round. This was the prevailing belief until they encountered European astronomy in the 17th century.

Originally posted by pinguin China was ahead in technology, by just a bit, but mainly in manufacturing, but in theorical science they weren't at all. Absolutely not. You shouldn't forget that muslims merchants helped to enrich Tang China, and not the other way around.

Actually both ways, trade is never a one way process, it lies in the very nature of the concept. I trust you are aware that the Tang did not restrict trade in the same way as many other, more isolationist dynasties did. The Chinese traded far and wide in this era, not just with Muslims, and in most cases it was the foreigners who were after Chinese manufactures and not vice versa.

China was ahead in technology by a bit more than a bit and the Islamic civilisation relied heavily on Chinese inventions that travelled westward.

Edit: This is an enlightening book: http://www.innertraditions.com/Product.jmdx;jsessionid=2E1742F571331361497DABB06CB52361?action=displayDetail&id=3591&searchString=1-59477-217-7

Summary: "Undisputed masters of invention and discovery for 3,000 years, the ancient Chinese were the first to discover the solar wind and the circulation of the blood and even to isolate sex hormones. From the suspension bridge and the seismograph to deep drilling for natural gas, the iron plough, and the parachute, ancient China’s contributions in the fields of engineering, medicine, technology, mathematics, science, transportation, warfare, and music helped inspire the European agricultural and industrial revolutions."

Edited by Reginmund - 19-Nov-2008 at 12:34

Originally posted by pinguin Sorry. It were the Arabs who conquered the Maghreb and Islamized the Berbers, and not the other way around.

Quite, but I was talking about Al-Andalus.

Originally posted by pinguin China was ruled by Mongol dinasties, but nobody speaks about a "Mongol" civilization. In Spain nobody has idea what language Berbers spoke, however most people know some Arab words.

Actually China under the Yuan dynasty is commonly referred to as the Mongol Empire. But the analogy is weak anyhow.

Concerning your second statement it points back to what I wrote earlier about the Arabs establishing a political framework with a single language and religion, which is later taken over from within by the subjugated peoples (Berbers in Spain, Persians and Turks in the Middle East).

Only for correction not being pain in somewhere! Al-Kwarismi was not Afghan(Pashtun), he was Persian(Tajik). Take a look at this and then decide who is arab and who is not. Persians are not considered Arabized.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_scientists
Ignore some new adds which are funny to me instead of adding Scientists some people add any random person to satisfy their inferiority complex. They put every muslim astronaut in the list some kazakh guy, a syrian pilot, a Saudi prince pilot, an Iranian space tourist wtf?


Edited by Suren - 19-Nov-2008 at 23:46

Originally posted by pinguin Thanks!!! I was afraid I was wrong with him. I just recalled he was afgan by memory. In any case,quite a bit of the most outstanding genious of the "Arab" civilization came from Persia!

Thank you for your comment. Persians make a portion of them not all. I guess most of the Arabs were pretty busy in ruling the caliphate , war, politic and collecting money. If they were not busy ruling the country they may contribute more in science and art than what they did in those days; consequently, they may have reached to a higher level of civilization which may last many more centuries. Crusades had a bad impact on Islamic attitude and somehow slowly changed the love of science and art with war and jihad. Andalus before turning to an unstable warring state between Muslims and Christians, were a good example of glorious Islamic civilization.


Edited by Suren - 20-Nov-2008 at 00:07

Just to throw the perspective on the situation. Until the rise of ethnic-nationalism in the past 200-300 years, the guys ethnicity didn't matter. Languages of course, made a difference, but religion was the predominate form of identity. So a muslim was a muslim, and if he was born in Iraq it hardly mattered if he was Chaldeian, Assyrian, Persian or Arab.

Originally posted by pinguin Actually, the parallels are striking. Almoravids were just a dinasty more in Al-Andalus. The origin could be Berber, but the culture was still the same as before theirs invasion. In the case of the Yuan and the Ming dinasties, they also were a foreign rulers of a country whose culture they didn't change but rather had to addapt.

Let's not get the issues confused. Like the Mongols the Berbers placed themselves on top of a more advanced civilization and were assimilated, certainly, but this part of our argument stems from my claim that Al-Andalus was largely a Berber project, and I've already made it clear that by project I meant organisation at the top political level. With this in mind, calling Al-Andalus a largely Berber project is reasonable when you consider how the initial conquest was conceived by Berbers and how Al-Andalus was ruled by Berbers for over half the time it existed.

When I said the analogy was weak it was as a response to your claim that just like no one speaks about a Berber civilization nobody speaks of a Mongol civilization either, when in fact the Mongol Empire is very much a historiographical term while the "Berber Empire" is not.

Lastly, the Ming dynasty was not foreign but on the contrary represented a restoration of Han Chinese rule. But maybe you were thinking of the Qing?

Originally posted by pinguin Yeap. As a Hispanic, and even after three centuries of Inquisition, I can tell you in the Spanish speaking world Al-Andalus (Andalucia) is still the core of the identity that our peoples have in common, both in Europe and in the Americas.

Among artists and intellectuals this wouldn't surprise me, but what of strict Catholics or, in Latin America at least, those proud of their limpieza de sangre?

Originally posted by Suren Crusades had a bad impact on Islamic attitude and somehow slowly changed the love of science and art with war and jihad. Andalus before turning to an unstable warring state between Muslims and Christians, were a good example of glorious Islamic civilization.

I agree, but there is room for nuance. The contrast between an early Andalusian civilization concerned with arts, sciences and butterflies and a later one concerned only with Jihad is a bit too stark. Warfare with the Reconquista movement was a constant feature from the establishment of Asturias in 717 to the fall of Granada in 1492, although as the Christians were increasingly successful and the Moors lost ground, including major educational centres like Seville and Toledo, their intellectual output unsurprisingly declined.

There can be no doubt the crusading movement caused a militarization of the Iberian peninsula, but this was a two-way responsive process and nothing new. Christian holy wars against those who were seen as unbelievers encroaching on Christendom had been going on for centuries by the time it was finally given a clear ideological shape in form of the crusade, the only difference being the theoretical need of an official Papal indulgence. These developments are unlikely to have occurred in the first place had it not been for the  siege mentality fostered by pressure on Christendom, exerted by among others the Arabs/Muslims through among other things the conquest of Iberia.

Originally posted by Zagros Of course it mattered. It's always mattered otherwise Ferdowsi would never have bothered and we'd all be speaking Arabic.

Upon reading medieval primary sources there can be no doubt that there was a concept of race. A very loose and undefined concept of a race but a concept nonetheless, usually thrown around by writers wishing to create distance to an other.


Edited by Reginmund - 20-Nov-2008 at 09:27