So if there were no Golden Age how do you account for the careers and achievements of Ibn Khaldun, Avicenna, Muhammad ibn Musa al Kwarizmi (father of algebra), Ibn Rushd, and Maimonides (who was Jewish but was still influenced by the Islamic culture around him and wrote in Arabic)? What about all the poetry, architecture, calligraphy and so on? It’s difficult to hide an entire civilization.
Wow, 1400 years and that is all they got from it?
Ibn Khaldun, 1332-1406, Tunisian. Al-Abili was his teacher beyond the usual Quran. who was thus enabled, particularly under the supervision of al-Abili, to learn about the philosophy and the main problems of Arabo-Muslim thought. He was however to undergo much suffering. The Marinid occupation ended in disorder and bloodshed, and in addition the terrible Black Death which ravaged the world in the middle of the century, etc… see here for the whole
article.
It seems that he was in Spain and not in the middle of the ME. He had a chance to get an education out of the usual Islamic one.
Avicenna, He learned Indian arithmetic from an Indian greengrocer, and he began to learn more from a wandering scholar who gained a livelihood by curing the sick and teaching the young. Not too much else on that wandering scholar, but one has to get out of the usual Islamic education to get anything else. He was a gifted person though.
On wikipedia: Though the threads which comprise Unani healing can be traced all the way back to Claudius Galenus of Pergamum, who lived in the second century of the Christian Era, the basic knowledge of Unani medicine as a healing system was developed by Hakim Ibn Sina in his medical encyclopedia The Canon of Medicine. The time of origin is thus dated at circa 1025 AD, when Avicenna wrote The Canon of Medicine in Persia. While he was primarily influenced by Greek and Islamic medicine, he was also influenced by the Indian medical teachings of Sushruta and Charaka.
Once again he had to reach outward for knowledge.
Muhammad ibn Musa al Kwarizmi, this guy isn’t the father of algebra - Diophantus is. Diophantus lived centuries before al Kwarizmi, and from what I found his works are lost.
I am sure he contributed, but I don’t know what, to algebra.
Ibn Rushd also known as Averros. He was a European it seems. Not immersed in the ME Islamic studies so was able to reach out for his acquired knowledge by other sources.
Maimonides, ironic that the Muslims want to claim a Jew. He was a Rabbi.
This guy should tell us that the area where the others who lived in Europe had available to them knowledge other than the usual Islamic studies.
Here is a quote on his accomplishments: is regarded by many as the greatest Jewish philosopher ever. As a doctor, rabbi, religious scholar, mathematician, astronomer, and commentator on the art of medicine, his influence has spanned centuries and cultures. He was born in Spain and educated by his father, a Jewish judge. Eventually settling in Cairo, he became court physician to two viziers of Egypt, Saladin and el Fadil, and chief rabbi of the city’s Jewish community. His Guide of the Perplexed (1190) used philosophical reasoning to argue that the Bible and Jewish faith did not conflict with Artistotle’s popular system of thought. Today, Maimonides’ “Thirteen Principles of Faith” are still recited in synagogues. His works continue to be studied by Jewish scholars, including Commentary on the Mishnah (1168), nicknamed “The Luminary,” and Mishneh Torah (1180), 14 volumes of biblical and rabbinic law, coded and compiled.
I don’t know, it just seems that you are proving my case more than your case.
And even if these men (or most of them) were Muslim they each had outside influences to help them.
) over 1400 years and not too much to speak of except that they had to reach out of the usual Islamic studies to become something.
