English – Page 11 – Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (BRIIFS)

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Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (BRIIFS)

The early Islamic period witnessed the appearance of a new astronomical disci-pline, ʿilm al-hayʾa (science of the configuration’ of the universe), which had no Greek equivalent per se. In an effort to determine the conditions underlying this development, the paper argues that its main impetus was a rejection of the discipline of astrology, which was conceived to be an integral part of the imported Greek astronomical tradition and which was opposed by social forces sufficiently influential to compel the principal intellectuals of the day to dissociate themselves from it. Astrology’s opponents were not only religious figures, but included, among others, physicians and even astronomers who, in the end, created a new discipline that was free of the stigma attached to Greek astronomy. The evidence for these developments comes from the work of a contemporary author named Abū Maʿshar al-Balkhī (AD 787-886), whose famous astrological work, Al-Madkhal ilā ʿilm aḥkām al-nujūm (Introduction to the science of the judgements of the stars), devotes a full chapter to the opponents of astrology, which included most sectors of society, even those considered the discipline’s natural allies. In order to corroborate Abū Maʿshar’s assessment, recourse is made to the well-known, but relatively later Muʿtazilite author, ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. AD 1025/26), whose famous work, Tathbīt dalāʾil al-nubuwwa (Confirmation of the signs of prophecy), contains a full attack upon astrology and all those associated with the foreign sciences in Islam. The paper concludes by asserting that the identification of astrology with Greek astronomy and its consequent denigration in the newly-emerging Islamic environment left practicing Islamic astronomers with no option but to dissociate themselves from both disciplines and to create a new astronomy that may be called Islamic. In order to distinguish this new astronomy from its Greek antecedents, it was given a new name: ʿilm al-hayʾa.‬

“This paper begins with a brief outline of two major positions on the question of whether the ancient (or ‘rational’) sciences were excluded from Muslim madrasas and cognate teaching institutes. In the section that follows, I take up positions formulated by Jonathan Berkey and Michael Chamberlain, who both stress the importance of networks, rather than schools, for Muslim education in the post-classical period, to show that these networks integrated the teaching and studying of mathematics, astronomy, astrology, philosophy, logic and/or the occult sciences into the Muslim educational landscapes. In the third and fourth sections of the paper, I talk about the differences between the ancient and the ‘rational’ sciences and about partnerships between the religious and philological sciences, on the one hand, and the ‘rational’ sciences, on the other. In section five, I discuss the inimical attitudes of religious scholars toward the ancient and ‘rational’ sciences and illustrate some of their strategies to deal with them. Finally, in the conclusion, I claim that the much-debated decline of the ancient sciences did not result from their exclusion from the religiously-dominated Muslim educational landscapes, but rather from their integration into them.

Historians of science in Islamic civilization usually study science as it was practiced in the context of falsafa: the mathematical sciences, the physical sciences, the life sciences, and medicine and its allied disciplines. But within the milieu of Islamic civilization, the physical sciences, particularly theories of matter, space, time and motion, were also discussed by scholars immersed in the discipline of kalām. Preserved in eleventh-century kalām texts, these discussions highlight problems of physical theory that arise as a result of kalām’s minimal parts atomism, which is similar, in many ways, to Epicurean atomism. These problems include the nature of space and of motion, the possibility of relative motion within an absolute space and the questions of place, the earth’s motion and falling bodies. Kalām ‘s engagement with these problems provides a vivid illustration of the anti-Aristotelian spirit of its physics, which is generally evident in its embrace of discontinuity, atomism, vacuum and impetus. kalām perspectives on these problems of physics are echoed in earlier as well as later historical developments, although there do not seem to be any clear lines of influence or transmission. Kalām discussions are therefore a rich source for the study of the history of these problems, some of which are central to the evolution of physics.‬

This essay examines the relationship between scientific and religious knowledge as reflected in theological works written in the fourteenth century. It argues that later works differ from earlier, classic works of theology partly as a result of developments in the field of astronomy. I contend that the theology that previously informed astronomy itself underwent theoretical adjustment and transformation under the influence of new conceptual trends in the science of astronomy. I also maintain that the new theology was conceptualized as a limited, rather than a comprehensive, field of knowledge.

This article focuses upon three main concerns. The first is an overview of the textual tradition of a central part of Arabic mechanics dealing with the science of weights. A short paragraph on the ongoing digitization of Arabic mechanical writings is appended to this description of texts in order to indicate how they are being analyzed with the new tools of information technology. This is followed by an assessment of the historical significance of the Arabic science of weights, in which the transformation brought about in this important sub-field of Arabic mechanics is interpreted as the reorganization of a core part of ancient mechanics into an independent science of weights. Upon this basis, a strong claim is made in favour of the independent status of ʿilm al-athqāl, which may no longer be confused with ʿilm al-ḥiyal, understood as a general descriptive discourse upon different types of machines. Finally, the paper presents a preliminary survey of the institutional setting for the control of weighing instruments in Islamic medieval society through the office of ḥisba.‬

This paper investigates the problems of transferring scientific literature from one culture to another, in this case, with respect to the translation of texts from Arabic into Latin in the sixth-seventh centuries AH/twelfth-thirteenth centuries AD. It takes as its starting point the injunction of Ibn ʿAbdūn to the market-traders of Seville in the early sixth/twelfth century that they “should not sell to the Jews or Christians books concerning science . . . [because] they translate them and attribute them to their co-religionists and their bishops” and investigates whether Christian translators made the translations against the will of Islamic authorities, disguised the translations’ Arabic origin to pass off the works as their own and dishonoured Islam in their treatment of Arabic books. Only in the last case is there some evidence of practices that may give grounds for Ibn ʿAbdūn’s prohibition.

First §: AN IMPORTANT SHIʿI MUSLIM community, the Ismailis have had a complex history dating to the formative period of Islam, when different communities of interpretation were developing their doctrinal positions. In time, these communities acquired specific designations and were generally classified as Sunni or Shiʿi, Islam’s two main divisions. From early on, the Ismailis, who were dispersed throughout much of the Islamic world, from North Africa to Central Asia and India, represented a multiplicity of ethnic groups as well as social and cultural milieus; they also produced a rich literary heritage in a variety of languages. On two occasions in the course of their long and eventful history, the Ismailis established states of their own, the Fatimid Caliphate (909-1171) and the Nizari Ismaili state (1094-1256), also making important contributions to Islamic thought and culture.

This paper surveys the development of the institution of the fundug in the Islamic Mediterranean world, from its pre-Islamic origins as the Byzantine pandocheion until the fifteenth century AD. This institution mediated relations between different cultural and religious groups in the medieval Islamic world and was itself transferred, in slightly differing forms, between groups. By the twelfth century, the funduq had evolved into the parallel form of the fondaco, the Latinate term for hostelries housing communities of Western Christian merchants in Muslim Mediterranean cities. At the same time, the fundug also served as a charitable facility in the Egyptian Jewish community, as testified by documentation in the Cairo Geniza.

This paper focuses upon the interaction between the Northern Tswana kingdoms, located in present-day Botswana, and evangelizing missionaries. Agents of such highly institutionalized, monotheistic ‘religions’ as Judaism, Christianity and Islam mutually conceive of their faiths as entirely incompatible with others and as defining radically distinct communities. The relationship between such communities involves issues of conflict and coexistence that are basically different from the case of the Tswana. Where ‘religion’ is immanent, institutionally as well as culturally, the interface might not only be characterized by processes of separation, but also by mutual adaptation. Evangelizing missionaries, Christianity and the Tswana interacted on the basis of cultural models that only partially overlapped, a fact that gave rise to some controversy. Coexistence may be attributed to the limited extent to which Tswana ideas about superhuman forces are externalized in public rituals that are perceived as ‘religious’ by missionaries. By extension, notions of ‘faith’ and the sacred-secular divide are questioned as concepts adequate for cross-cultural comparison. Such considerations suggest that the colonized are not necessarily the passive victims of evangelizing missionaries. Yet, amongst the Tswana, Christianity has, at times, contributed significantly to aggravate the tensions and conflicts inherent in Tswana polities. This has led Tswana rulers to tackle various challenges, including the rise of indigenous Christian movements, by incorporating the missionary church in their polities as a kind of ‘state church,’ granting it a monopoly.

Tracing the historical development of the Crimean Tatar diaspora of Turkey, the Balkans and Central Asia, this paper looks first at the migration of this small Muslim ethnie from 1783 to the twentieth century, particularly after the Russian Empire’s victory in the Crimean War and Josef Stalin’s deportation of Muslim communities in the final year of World War II. Conquered, persecuted and scattered, the Crimean Tatars were either assimilated into host societies, as in Turkey, or rejected by them, as in Bulgaria and Romania. Yet, many maintained or rediscovered their Crimean Tatar identity in the twentieth century, especially during their long period of exile in Central Asia when they came to form a true diasporan community. Supported by their co-ethnics in Turkey and the Balkans, many Tatars took the opening that appeared in the final days of the Soviet Union to return to an uncertain future in their homeland. The case of the this little-studied ethnic group has obvious implications for scholars interested in ethnically-based oppression, national and diasporic identity construction and Muslim-Christian relations in the marginal zone between Christianity and Islam.