by WGC Smith — The course of Islamic science and technology used to be portrayed as a play in four acts. manual in Persian covering crops, seed selection, preparing land, manures dubbed ‘the astronomical and mathematical “capital of the world”‘ in the Some Western science and technology entered Dar al-Islam with. European
113 KB – 65 Pages
PAGE – 1 ============
Science and technology in early modern Islam, c.1450-c.1850 William Gervase Clarence Smith fiSeek knowledge, even in Chinafl. Prophet Muhammad A contested narrative The course of Islamic science and technology used to be portrayed as a play in four acts. From around 750 to 950 CE, translators made available the wisdom of Ancient Greece. Scholars of the ‘golden age’ elaborated a little on this legacy, before transmitting it to Christendom. An Islamic ‘dark age’ began around 1100, usually ascribed to Turko-Mongol barbarian invasions and religious fanaticism, allowing the West to pull steadily ahead. Only in the twentieth century did Muslims enter the brave new world of universal science and technology. Almost every element of this standard tale has lately been challenged. A few aspects of Islamic scientific endeavour seemingly date back to the time of the Prophet, early in the seventh century. The role of translations has correspondingly been downgraded. At the same time, greater stress has been placed on materials obtained from India, Persia, Babylon, and Egypt. More prominence has been granted to experimentation and observation by Islamic scholars, who led Europe and East Asia for several centuries. The onset of decline has been moved to a later point, albeit without consensus as to when that might be. Revival began from the late eighteenth century, and, in part, involved a return to the wellsprings of Islamic vitality. The greatest controversy surrounds the causes of Islamic scientific ‘decline.’ For Toby Huff, ‘generalised and universal norms’ did not emerge in Islam, especially in the legal sphere, and an ‘ethos of secrecy in intellectual affairs’ prevailed. The theological victory of Asha’ri 1
PAGE – 2 ============
determinism over Mu’tazili rationalism reduced reason to mere common sense. Speculative and experimental researchers were pushed aside by lowly dividers of inheritance and mosque timekeepers. Institutes of higher education were elitist, had no corporate staff, failed to issue standardised diplomas, and rejected the ‘rational sciences,’ also known as ‘useful,’ ‘special,’ ‘ancient,’ ‘foreign,’ or ‘Greek.’ Educational and research institutions lacked autonomy, because waqf trusts were subject to intrusive religious regulation. Finally, the extended family predominated over social corporations such as guilds and professional associations. (Huff 1993: 3-4, 47-8, 55, 68-70, 73-87, 112-17, 153-5, 170-4, 181-6, 212-26., 233-4) Muzaffar Iqbal vigorously contests all this. He stresses the whiggishness of defining the Western scientific revolution as the only possible one, leading to the deduction that only Western conditions could give rise to such a revolution. The Quran calls repeatedly on people to ‘reflect on nature,’ and Hadiths against innovation refer only to the religious sphere. Huff’s ‘disinterestedness and organised scepticism’ were Islamic values, and knowledge circulated freely. Joseph Schacht, the main source of Huff’s views on law, is a ‘thoroughly discredited’ Orientalist. In reality, Islamic law was a unified and Quran-centred system, despite the existence of different schools. While some colleges did not teach the rational sciences, others did. Personal grants of an ijaza, a licence to teach, did not obviously work against scientific inquiry. ‘Thousands of texts’ attest to rights granted to guilds, merchants, cities, and other special interest groups, and that since the time of the Prophet’s Constitution of Medina. Moreover, such rights were effectively protected by the waqf system. Tellingly, Iqbal notes that most of Huff’s factors existed during both the ‘golden’ and the ‘dark’ age of Islamic science. (Iqbal 2002: 3, 140-52, 158-9) Other authors have added to the critique. Even if Islamic law did not recognise the juridical personality of associations, it did not prohibit 2
PAGE – 3 ============
them, and there is much evidence for collective organisations functioning within the law. (Ihsanoglu 2004: IX, 163) Charitable trusts, providing income in perpetuity for educational purposes, worked reasonably well. (Ihsanoglu 2004: X, 46-7) When problems arose, it was not because of Huff’s alleged religious interference, but rather due to poor management of funds. (Watson 1983: 142) Typically, there was ‘lack of continuing financial support, or inadequate supervision.’ (Azra 1992: 145) Some elements remain subject to controversy, and require more research. Sufi mysticism may have purveyed magical and superstitious thinking, but Sufism was a complex and potentially positive phenomenon. (Qadir 1990: 131-4; Rahman 2000d: 428-32) Given the undeniable role played by ‘people of the book’ in advancing Islamicate knowledge, the impact of fluctuating toleration for non-Muslims requires more research. (Sayili 1960: 426-7; Ihsanoglu 2004: viii; Kumar 2003: 675-6) The wider contours of borrowing from other civilisations, or refusal to do so, need to be better demarcated. (Sayili 1960: 428-9; Ihsanoglu 2004) Political culture remained resolutely absolutist, and some tyrants feared the subversive effects of knowledge, but rulers were also patrons of learning. (Qadir 1990: 134; Mohebbi 1996: 148-9) The abundance of slaves may well have dulled the need for labour saving mechanical inventions. (Mohebbi 1996: 207) More widely, servitude created a ‘stifling acceptance of the division of society into free men and un-free men.’ (Rosenthal 1960: 122) However, slavery could also free the Muslim elite for research and writing. (Shepherd 1980: 86-7) Most controversial is the rejection of Greek philosophy by Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali [Algazel, 1058-1111]. To be sure, al-Ghazali did not repudiate the rational sciences out of hand, nor indeed reason itself. Nevertheless, he considered that materialists tended to drift into atheism, naturalists were prone to deny life after death, and mathematics, natural sciences and medicine could all lead to unbelief. Above all, al-Ghazali elaborated on the Asha’ri position that there was no 3
PAGE – 4 ============
necessary link between cause and effect, since God perpetually recreated the universe at every instant. (Iqbal 2002: 109-10; Nasr 1987: 307-12, 318-21; Qadir 1990: 124-6, 131-4) The early modern conundrum The timing of ‘decline’ has been the subject of fierce and inconclusive argument. Iqbal asserts that Islamic science deteriorated from around 1450, despite a marked upswing in Muslim political fortunes. He revives the old story of Mongol invasions destroying libraries, scattering scholars and severing traditions of learning. This was compounded by the division of the Islamic heartlands into three rival empires, with the conversion of Persia [Iran] to Shi’i beliefs as an additional complication. For good measure, Iqbal adds that early modern empires were ‘almost bordering on decadence’ in developing a ‘pleasure-seeking high culture.’ (Iqbal 2002: 160-9) None of this hold up to a moment’s scrutiny. The long-term impact of Mongol conquest is negated by Iqbal’s own discussion of how Mongol converts blew a rejuvenating wind through learning, partly by strengthening connections with China. (Iqbal 2002: 164-5) Moreover, there were safe havens from Mongol invaders, notably India. (Rahman 2000d: 420-1) Architecture, poetry and painting may have diverted early modern energies, but the Abbasids of the scientific ‘golden age’ were just as ‘pleasure-seeking,’ if not more so. The caliphate was not obviously conducive to fresh thinking, and had become a hollow shell by 1258. Early modern borders certainly failed to hinder the free flow of ideas and scholars, even between Shi’i and Sunni areas. (Hodgson 1974: III, 33) In reality, an obsession with science has served to conceal the technological vitality of early modern Islamic states, from around 1450 to 1850. Indeed, the name ‘gunpowder empires,’ bestowed on them by Marshall Hodgson, underlines how much they owed to a technique 4
PAGE – 5 ============
borrowed from China and Europe. (Hodgson 1974: III) This was reinforced by the absorption of Inner Asian cavalry methods from Turks and Mongols, and, to a lesser extent, naval skills from Europeans and Southeast Asians. There were advances in civilian technology, notably in manufacturing, as well as a continuing emphasis on education. (Ihsanoglu 2004; Mohebbi 1996; Habib 1980) Indeed, Iqbal himself praises the hospitals, schools, public parks, caravanserais, and irrigation facilities of the gunpowder empires. (Iqbal 2002: xviii) Fusing science and technology into the single category of ‘useful and reliable knowledge’ leads to a rejection of the notion of an Islamic ‘decline.’ Even the suggestion of stagnation, advanced by A. Rahman, is unsatisfactory. (Rahman 2000d: 415) A gently rising plateau, exhibiting marked regional variations, is a better metaphor for the experience of early modern Islam. Many Muslim societies continued to innovate in practical ways, even if the intellectual brilliance of earlier generations had faded away. The sinews of war Although Muslims borrowed much firearms technology, initially from China and later from Europe, they were responsible for a number of innovations. One example was the zamburak system of swivelling light artillery, mounted on camels and fired with the animals in a kneeling position. This technique appears to have originated in Egypt, and spread from there to Iran, India and elsewhere. Indian Muslims attempted to adapt it to elephants, but the great beasts would not hold steady under fire. (Mohebbi 1996: 33; Bulliet 1975: 222-3; Khan 2004: 107-11) Mastery of firearms was crucial to the rise of the Ottoman empire. Mehmet II, the Conqueror [r.1451-81], ordered huge siege guns to be cast by a Hungarian renegade. With these, he breached the walls of Constantinople in 1453, and made the city his capital under the name of 5
PAGE – 6 ============
Istanbul. He and his successors decimated European pike men with field artillery, carried in ox-wagons, and the Janissary corps of servile musketeers. Turkish hosts reached the gates of Vienna in 1529, and again in 1683. The Ottomans procured some advanced weapons from Europe, together with relevant specialists, but they were long able to defend themselves without imports. In the eighteenth century, as the arms gap widened perilously, they made determined efforts to import, copy and adapt Western techniques. (Ihsanoglu 2004: I, 51-5; Cleveland 1994: 41-3, 61-3, 77; Hoodbhoy 1991: 147; Stavrianos 1975: 14) Unlike other Islamic gunpowder states, the Ottoman empire became a major naval power. Mehmet the Conqueror constructed shipyards in Istanbul, and his fleet of galleys wrested control of the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea from the Italian city states. (Cleveland 1994: 41) During the eighteenth century, the Ottomans successfully converted their fleet from oar to sail. (Braudel 1981-4: III, 476-7) Although taken by surprise by the unexpected arrival of the Russian Baltic fleet in 1768, they subsequently set up new arsenals and modernised their naval forces. (Cleveland 1994: 51, 62) The Safavids revived the glories of ancient Iran in a Shi’i guise. Defeat at Ottoman hands in 1514 led Shah Isma’il [r.1501-24] to develop his own artillery and musket corps, further enhanced by Shah Tahmasp I [r.1524-76]. (Mohebbi 1996: 174) Shah Abbas I [r.1587-1629] closely copied Ottoman methods of slave musketeers and artillery to bring Persia to the peak of its early modern power. (Cleveland 1994: 54; Stavrianos 1975: 12; Winter 1986: 584) The usurper Nadir Shah [r. 1736-47], developed a system to carry cannon slung between two mules, while the Qajar dynasty, in power from the 1790s, developed horsed artillery on European lines. (Mohebbi 1996: 32-3) However, Iranian production of firearms, whether cannon or muskets, was somewhat fitful, occasionally leaving the country dangerously dependent on imports. (Winter 1986: 601-2; Mohebbi 1996: 173-5) Despite the fleeting successes of Nadir 6
PAGE – 8 ============
Firearms brought success beyond the frontiers of the three great empires. Crimean Tatars sacked Moscow outside the Kremlin walls in 1571, and ‘harvested’ Christians from steppe and forest. Uzbek khans of Turkistan held Russia, Persia and China in check. Southeast Asian rulers restricted Dutch penetration, and nearly turned the tables on enfeebled Europeans in the late eighteenth century. A Yunnanese sultanate broke away from China between 1855 and 1873. On the other side of the world, Ahmad al-Mansur of Morocco [r.1578-1603] destroyed the flower of Portuguese chivalry at Alcazarquivir, and crossed the Sahara to take the middle Niger. Ahmad ‘the left-handed’ came close to swamping the Ethiopian Christian bastion in the sixteenth century. At a later stage, the Sokoto Caliphate nearly ‘dipped the Quran in the sea’ at the Niger’s mouth. Swahili-Arab power lay athwart the Congo by the 1860s, poised to break through to the Atlantic. (Clarence-Smith, forthcoming) Lesser Islamic states also distinguished themselves at sea. Ensconced from Tripoli to Sale in the Maghrib, Barbary corsairs mounted lightning raids as far as Iceland and the Newfoundland Banks in the seventeenth century. They remained undefeated and defiant until the 1810s. Omani sultans drove the Portuguese back in the western Indian Ocean from the seventeenth century, and successfully adopted European ships. The Moros of the southern Philippines raided from Luzon to Sumatra and from Borneo to New Guinea. Their light sailing ships, dismantled outside the raiding season, were only contained by Europeans with the advent of steamers in the 1840s. (Clarence-Smith, forthcoming) Transport Rulers generally envisaged communications from a military angle, although improvements implied civilian gains. Roads and bridges were to the fore, but canals and harbours also received attention. The notion that 8
PAGE – 9 ============
the Islamic world regressed by losing the use of wheeled vehicles is misleading. An improved camel saddle, adopted before the rise of Islam, favoured pack transport in the arid zone, but wheeled vehicles continued in use elsewhere, notably in the Ottoman and Mughal domains, and even in Tunisia. (Bulliet 1975: 9, 87, 202) Mehmet the Conqueror ordered the repair of roads and bridges after seizing Constantinople in 1453, and Ottoman miniatures accurately depict carts and wagons. (Bulliet 1975: 235) Koja Mi’mar Sinan threw a long bridge over the Danube in a sixteenth century campaign, and became a famous architect. (Hodgson 1974: III, 124-5) A lighthouse on the Bosphorus was described in 1550 as being far in advance on anything in Europe, with its 120 steps, leaded glass windows and twenty wicks in a pan of oil. (Jones 1981: 175) The Ottomans planned canals from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and from the Don to the Volga, although neither project was followed through. (Hodgson 1974: III, 48-9) Abbas I [r.1587-1629] was the greatest Persian road builder, ordering the construction or reconstruction of three great military arteries. They had a sand or gravel base and stone paving, and were thus more expensive to maintain than the light surfaces developed in late eighteenth century Europe. Wheeled vehicles were scarce in much of Iran, but roads extended the season in which caravans of pack animals could function without getting bogged down in mud. The Safavids also built combined bridges and dams over some rivers. (Mohebbi 1996: 23-4, 87-8) The Mughals launched an ‘ambitious policy of road building,’ especially on the great trunk road from Kabul to Bengal. Close to densely populated areas and large cities, surfaces of broken brick paving, or even stone, were supplied. More common were slightly convex laterite surfaces with lateral drains, regularly repaired by corvée labour. Major roads were supplied with shade trees and rest houses. Permanent bridges, mainly made of brick rather than stone, were typically encountered close to religious centres. There were combined bridges 9
PAGE – 10 ============
and dams, but boats lashed together to form pontoon bridges were more common in North India, where the flow of water varied enormously according to the monsoon. The ox-cart was the typical wheeled vehicle, although pack animals remained more common. (Deloche 1980: 99-200, 231-85) Agriculture In the early centuries of the faith, Muslims probably engendered an ‘agricultural revolution’ across Eurasia. They perfected existing irrigation techniques, as well as spreading crops from one area to another. Andrew Watson considers that the potential for further improvements was almost exhausted by 1100, and he paints a bleak picture of decay thereafter. He blames salination, climate change, decreasing fertility of marginal lands, high transport costs in zones of discontinuous settlement, crude techniques of invaders, insecurity, crushing tax and rent, the ‘dead hand’ of waqf trusts, the decline of Islamic science, and competition from the New World. (Watson 1983: 139-46) Deterioration in Iraq, the heartland of the old caliphate, was certainly clear, in part due to invasions from the steppe and a long struggles between Ottomans and Safavids for mastery over this buffer zone. (Hasan and Hill 1986: 282) Iraq was far from typical, however, and Watson’s equation of the Islamic world with the Arab world is unacceptable. Early modern agriculture was dynamic to the north and south of the arid zone, in part because of the adoption of New World crops such as maize and tobacco, as Watson himself acknowledges. (Watson 1983: 146) Irrigation methods remained impressive. (Iqbal 2002: xviii) ‘Persian wheels’ were still spreading slowly, whether the saqiya turned by animals or the na’ura worked by water, both with wooden gearing. (Hasan and Hill 1986: 38-52, 279-81) In Egypt, eighteenth century beys encouraged the cultivation of new crops. (Hodgson 1974: III, 141) 10
PAGE – 11 ============
Early modern European travellers in Iran were impressed by the number of water wheels, the complex system of underground irrigation channels (qanat), and efficient breast-straps for oxen. (Winter 1986: 583, 599-600) The Safavids encouraged irrigation, placing a novel emphasis on building dual purpose dams and bridges on large water courses. Official attempts from the fourteenth century to spread the heavy wheeled plough of the western Caucasus were unsuccessful, but this may have reflected thinner soils in Iran. (Mohebbi 1996: 33, 80-1, 87-8, 97-8, 108) India probably witnessed the most impressive agricultural growth, accompanied by intensified commercialisation. Lands were reclaimed from the forests of the Himalayan foothills, and from jungles in the Deccan. New World crops spread widely, notably maize, tobacco, chilli pepper and groundnuts, while existing cultivation of wheat and cotton expanded. Superior Gujarati methods of rice cultivation raised yields and saved seed. Coffee was introduced from Yemen in the seventeenth century, and indigo became a major export crop. Europeans were impressed by South Indian drill ploughs. Hindu prejudices against human ordure limited manuring, but canals were repaired and extended in the Indus valley, especially by Shah Jahan [r.1628-58]. Babur [r.1526-30], founder of the Mughal dynasty, gave a detailed description of irrigation wheels. (Gopal 2000) Mainly powered by camels or oxen, these wheels appeared in Mughal miniatures, but not in those of earlier periods. (Mohebbi 1996: 108-10; Jones 1981: 199) The growth of cash cropping for export was apparent on the Islamic periphery, notably in Southeast Asia. Although the Dutch were able to establish a monopsony over cloves, nutmeg and mace in the seventeenth century, black pepper remained out of their effective control. The profits drawn from this product remained a potent source of resistance to further European encroachment. (Andaya 1993) 11
113 KB – 65 Pages