Transcription
Okay, good morning. So today we do Islam. Um, some quick facts. Some questions that we will look at today about, uh, the Islamic Golden Age. Uh, the first major question is, while Europe was in its Dark Ages, uh, Islam was embarked on its Golden Age. So the first question is, how did this happen? Why was there, where, why was there, there this divergence?
Second question, we're going to look at is, um, what ended the Islamic Golden Age? Why would this period come to an end? The third question, we're going to look at is, eventually, how did Christian Europe overtake the Muslim World? Um, so those are the three big questions we will look at in today's class.
Some quick facts about Islam. It is the world's second largest religion. Uh, Christianity has two billion people. Islam has 1 billion people. Uh, they are divided into two major sects: the Shia, which is based primarily in Iran, and the Sunni, uh, which is, uh, everywhere else. Uh, the light green are the Sunni people, and the dark green are the Shia people. And as you can see, uh, Islam extends all across Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, and into India. The most populous, uh, Muslim country in the world is actually Indonesia.
Uh, the Shia and the Sunni, the only, the only major difference is that the Shia believe that only a direct descendant of Muhammad's grandson, Ali, can be the leader of the religion, whereas the Sunni do not believe this. Now, um, this is a religion of 1 billion people, so there are many different belief systems, many different sects within this, uh, cosmology. But, um, this is really the major difference, okay, between the Shia and the Sunni.
Um, so Muslim means to submit yourself to God, to believe in God, and to commit yourself wholeheartedly to him. And, um, Islam was founded by a man named Muhammad, who, um, the Muslims consider the prophet of, of God, the final prophet. And Jesus was the penultimate prophet. And, um, the legend is that at age 40, Muhammad, who, who is a merchant or a trader, he has a vision. He goes into a cave to meditate, and the Archangel Gabriel visits him and reveals to him certain visions that he has memorized. And these visions become the basis for the holy book of the Muslim, um, tradition, called the Quran.
And he, and, um, Muhammad understands that his mission is to be a messenger of God and to reveal the truth of God to the pagan society in the Arabian world. So he's basically Mecca. And when he tries to reveal a truth, he is met with a lot of resistance, and eventually he's forced out of Mecca and he goes to, uh, Medina. This is called the Hijra in the Muslim tradition, the pilgrimage. And when he goes to Medina, um, he becomes the leader of the warring factions within, uh, Medina, primarily between the pagans, the Muslim tribes, and the Jewish tribe. So there are three major factions. And, um, at this point, Muhammad creates, calls the Constitution of Medina, which promises religious freedom to everyone within the Muslim tradition. Okay.
So ever since the beginning, and this is very important, the religion of Islam was an open, tolerant, and inclusive religion, and they have, they have basically maintained this tradition for the next thousand years. Okay.
Um, eventually Islam will spread from the Arabian desert to all across the Middle East. They will conquer the Persian Empire, and they will take at least half of the Byzantine Empire, including the richest parts of the Byzantine Empire, which are Syria and, uh, Egypt. They will also take Jerusalem, where they will build something called the Al-Aqsa Mosque. And legend has it that Muhammad, um, ascended to heaven from this place.
Now, what's really important for us to remember about this place is the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It's still there in Jerusalem, and it is built on top of something called the Temple Mount. Remember, in the year 70, the Romans burned down the Second Temple of the Jews, the holiest site in the Jewish faith. And now, and then the Muslims came and built the Al-Aqsa Mosque on top of the Temple Mount. Now, this is a very strange thing to do. If Muslim, if the Muslim tradition is open, inclusive, and tolerant, and Jews are welcome into the, into, into the tradition, why would you build a mosque on top of the Jewish holy site? That doesn't really make any sense. And quite honestly, this has been a mystery to everyone. No one has been able to figure this out. Okay.
So we will today attempt to solve one of the great mysteries in the Islamic tradition: why was the Al-Aqsa Mosque built on top of the Jewish Temple Mount?
Um, as I mentioned, the Arabs will expand from the desert of Arabia and they will conquer the Sasanian Persian Empire, and they will take at least half of the Byzantines. Okay. They will try to lay siege on Constantinople, but remember that when we discuss the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople is designed as an impenetrable fortress. So there'll be two major sieges, and because of the walls and because of Greek Fire, um, they will be unable to take the city.
The spread of Islam was lightning fast. In less than 100 years, they spread from the desert of Arabia, really the poorest place in this entire region, throughout most of, um, the Middle East. Okay. So the dark green is where they started, and the light green is where they eventually, um, expanded to. And remember, this process takes less than 100 years, which is remarkable.
Um, the, the Umayyad Caliphate was about 700. Okay. So let's just compare the Umayyad Caliphate with other empires, including the Tang. Uh, the Tang really is the height of Chinese civilization, but as you can see, the Umayyad Caliphate, um, really is the largest empire in the world at this time, and eventually they will also become the wealthiest empire, um, at this time.
Um, there are five pillars of Islam. It is an extremely simple and clear religion when compared with Christianity and Judaism. Okay. There are five pillars to the religion. Um, first of all, you have to believe that Allah, God, is the only God. Okay. And this mirrors the Christian and the Jewish faith. Um, you are required to pray at least five times a day, facing the direction of, uh, Mecca. You must give, uh, money to the poor. Um, you must fast during the holy days. The last thing is you must make something called the Hajj, which is a pilgrimage to the holy site in Mecca and perform rituals in Mecca. This is something that, um, all Muslims must do, and you will have the poorest Muslims, they will save, uh, their entire lives just so that they could make this Hajj.
The Muslim people are probably the most devout, uh, the most religious people you will meet. They take their religion very, very seriously. This is in Mecca, and, um, I was actually in Saudi Arabia and I tried to go there, and then I was told, "Only Muslims can go." And, and so I was, as, as a train station, I was trying to buy a, um, ticket to Mecca, and they said, "What's your Muslim name?" Like, "Well, I'm not Muslim." Like, "Well, you can't go then." So I was disappointed. Uh, but it is a beautiful, um, absolutely one of the most beautiful rituals in the world today. Okay.
Um, so to summarize the introduction, there are three major mysteries to the history of Islam that we still haven't really solved today. Okay. The first mystery is, um, we know that they have something called the Constitution of Medina. We also know that Jews, who are literate, were part of the early movement of Islam. So why do we have, we have no early records for the first 100 years? What, the first 100 years of the movement? That's very, very strange.
Um, another strange question, another strange, um, thing is, why would the Muslims go to war against two major empires, the Romans and the Persians? That's kind of suicidal. They didn't know they were going to win. So why did they go to war? That's the first mystery we'll solve today. Second mystery is, remember I said that the Shia and the Sunni, um, have a major sectarian divide? The Shia believe that only the descendants of, of Muhammad's grandson, Ali, can be the caliph, the leader of the Muslim people. The Sunni don't. So why didn't Muhammad just name a successor and avoid the civil wars that erupted after his death? The third question, uh, is why was Al-Aqsa built on the site of the Temple Mount? And this is still a problem today because a lot of the conflict, uh, in the Middle East is driven by this problem where the Jews want to rebuild the Temple, uh, but to do so, they would have to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is the third holiest site in the Islamic world. So this is a very important question that is still relevant to us today.
So we will also look at these three mysteries. And again, no one knows the answers to any of these three questions, and no one will ever know because so much of the historical record has been lost to us. But I will try to provide you with an explanation, okay, given, uh, my understanding of the Islamic world, which, by the way, is extremely limited. Okay. So, uh, please ask questions. Please challenge me. I'm looking at you, Doug. Okay. All right. All right.
Okay, so today's topic is the Islamic Golden Age. So let's just have a quick look at the Golden Age. Um, at the height of, uh, Islamic influence, there were a few centers of incredible cultural, um, creativity. One such site is Bukhara, Uzbekistan. It's still there, guys. You can get on a plane like Doug did and visit it. It is an incredible city. I say that without actually having visited it, but I, I've heard terrific things from Doug, and you can go online as well and look at videos, but it is an incredible city, and it shows you the immense creativity, the artistic creativity of this, um, golden age. But the main cultural center of the Islamic Golden Age is Baghdad. Okay. It's not so beautiful now, but back then, it was really the center of the world.
Um, it's a round city, and it's a new city. This is a, um, topographical map of the city. As you can see, it's surrounded by the Tigris and Euphrates, and it is a round city. Okay, one of the few round cities of that time. Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, which started the Islamic Golden Age. The Abbasid Caliphate is the successor to the Umayyad, um, empire. Okay. And this is where the Abbasid Caliphate was, and this is, uh, what, what Muslims consider the height of their civilization.
The thing that's really important for us to understand about the Abbasid, uh, empire is that not only were they influential in the Muslim world, but they eventually, but they eventually would come to create the world that we live in today. Okay. So when we think of globalization, we think of this as a recent phenomenon, but look at the trade routes that the Abbasid Caliphate would create over its three to 400-year history. It connects the entire world.
Um, as I mentioned last semester, globalization has always existed to a certain extent in world history, but the Abbasids, the Muslim religion, would take these existing networks and make them richer, a lot richer, a lot more dense, and a lot faster. Okay. So, um, you may not know this, but the Abbasids traded heavily with the Tang and the Song dynasties. In fact, it is the Abbasids who would initiate something called the Maritime Silk Road. The Overland Silk Road has existed for a long time, but it is the Abbasids who will eventually create the Maritime Silk Road and will bring China into the world to a greater extent than ever before. Okay.
So, uh, this is a trade. Um, the main center for cultural production, uh, in the Muslim world is something called the House of Wisdom, and it's modeled, um, its model is the Library of Alexandria. Okay. Remember last semester we discussed the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, and its mission was to be the first university to take all existing knowledge and culture and systematize it for, um, uh, dissemination. Okay. And the House of Wisdom, uh, was doing the same thing, where it would take all knowledge and culture within the Islamic world and outside the Islamic world and systematize and categorize it for mass dissemination. Okay.
So, um, the things that they were doing were, they were, they were taking Hindu numerals, okay, so 0, 1, 2, 3, we still use them today. They took them from India and again, they standardized it and disseminated this knowledge. They took works from Aristotle and Plato, translated into Arabic and Persian, and then disseminated it. Um, the, the main contribution of the Islamic Golden Age to world culture is in actually mathematics. Okay. So they took all the math, um, in the Greek world, and in the Persian world, and in the Hindu world, and then they would systematize it and then build on top of it.
Um, this is a rendition of the House of Wisdom. This is where the three major creative civilizations would meet and exchange ideas, right? The Greeks, the Jews, and the Persians. They would also take ideas from the Indian tradition and the Chinese tradition as well.
Um, the major literature, or literary work, that we still have today from the Islamic Golden Age is the Arabian Nights. Okay. Scholars have looked at this very closely, and most scholars believe that these stories are actually from India. Also, what's important for us to understand is that at that, at the time this was translated, it was actually not that popular within the Muslim world. Poetry, philosophy, mathematics, science were considered the high arts. This was considered low art. Uh, why we have it today is that the Europeans would discover this centuries after the Islamic Golden Age, and they fell in love with these stories, and that's why we still have them today. Okay. And Disney movies are based on on this as well.
Okay, so, so let's look at the, some of the major thinkers, and philosophers of this, uh, Golden Age. So at this time in world history, we don't differentiate between philosophers, poets, uh, scientists, mathematicians. Okay. All intellectuals engaged in all these different fields. Okay. So one most famous is Rumi, who is Persian, a poet, a mystic, a philosopher. Um, Ibn Sina is probably the most famous intellectual of the Islamic Golden Age. His books, his works were admired in Europe. Okay. So the Islamic, the Islamic philosophy, um, was being exported to Europe, where, where it would have a major influence on many of Europe's major thinkers. You may have heard of a man named Leonardo Fibonacci. You should have heard of him in math class. Well, well, at this particular time in history, he was going to Baghdad to study from the leading mathematicians of this time and taking their ideas and importing them all back to Europe. Okay. So this is Ibn Sina, and the Latin name is Avicenna.
Even Averroes, also, um, a major intellectual at this time. Just to show you how influential these two were in Europe, let's look at Dante's Divine Comedy. So Dante is in, uh, hell, and there in limbo, he's meeting the most influential, the greatest philosophers in human history who have influenced European civilization. Obviously, he's, he's going to name Socrates and Plato. Okay. But guess what? But he also names Averroes and Avicenna. Okay. So Dante is acknowledging the debt Europeans have to Islam. This is important for us because, um, the Muslim intellectual influence on Europe has been whitewashed from history. This is something you do not learn in, in school, usually. But without Islam, you can make the argument that Europe could not have modernized. Okay. And later on, I'll explain why that's the case.
Omar Khayyam is also another famous, um, intellectual, poet, philosopher. This is, this man, Musa al-Khwarizmi, is considered the father of modern-day algebra. His Latin name is Algoritmi. Okay. And if this sounds familiar, it's because his name will give us the modern English word algorithm. Both algebra and algorithm were originally Arabic words. All right. So most of the math you're studying in school actually originated during the Islamic Golden Age.
This name is Al-Hazen, and he invented physics, basically optics. Um, again, extremely influential, and again, these ideas will be, um, imported back to Europe, and they will become the basis of the Renaissance. Okay.
Al-Zahrawi is the father of surgery. At this time in world history, the very best hospitals are in the Islamic world, by far. This is the first, uh, 24-hour hospital in Baghdad. What's also amazing about these hospitals is that if you were poor and could not pay, you could receive medical treatment for free. That was just part of the faith. All poor were treated with great charity and kindness.
During the Islamic Golden Age, this is Al-Qarawiyyin. Will again, guys, I don't speak Arabic. I'm probably butchering the name, but it was founded in 859 in Fez, Morocco. This is important because this, this is actually the first degree-granting university in the whole world, and it's still there, guys. Okay. This is the oldest university in the world. What's also amazing is it was founded by a woman who inherited a, uh, fortune from her father, and she spent all her money on building this university. All right. Interruption. If you ever get a chance to go to Morocco, absolutely. Morocco is an amazing country as well. Okay.
So, um, 1258, the Islamic Golden Age officially came to an end, or, or that's what scholars believe. And the reason why is on 1258, the Mongols will sack Baghdad and they will burn all the books. Or, or that's what the legend tells us. Baghdad had a thriving bookstore culture, and this was, this was unique in the world. Um, intellectuals, or the elite, they spent a lot of their resources on buying books, and they, um, imported paper from China. They learned how to make paper from China, so books were extremely popular within the, uh, within Baghdad, especially among the elite. Um, as well, because of the Quran, it was necessary for the elite to be literate. It was the mandate of, uh, you to be, uh, literate, and the Quran will also standardize Arabic, um, and make it the official language of the entire, uh, Muslim world.
But just because the Islamic Golden Age ended does not mean that creativity stopped in the Muslim world. This is Ibn Khaldun, and he is considered the father of social science. Economics, quantitative history, politics. This man invented a lot of these disciplines. He is most famous for his idea of asabiyyah, which is means social cohesion. So he was actually the first, um, to systematically think about grand history, why do civilizations, why do civilizations rise, and why do they decline? And his conclusion is that the borderlands are able to conquer empires because the borderlands, the people there, have asabiyyah, which just means that they are more egalitarian, more free, more cohesive as a culture, whereas the empire, because it's so big, it loses a lot of cohesion.
Um, and again, even Khaldun is a major inspiration for the history that I try as well. From 1300 to 1700, the world will be dominated by three major empires: the Ottomans, the Safavids in Iran, and the Mughals in, uh, India. They are collectively known as the, uh, gunpowder empires. So what's amazing is since, uh, its inception, about 622, up until the year 1700, the Islamic religion dominated the world. And so the question for us is, why was that the case? How did Islam overtake Europe and overtake Christianity? Okay, that is a mystery and question for us today that we will look at.
Okay, so let's go back to the three mysteries that I introduced, um, earlier. Why do we have no written records, even though we know that the people within the movement, Jews and Christians, knew how to read and write? Okay, that's the first question. Second question is, is why didn't Muhammad name a successor? The third question is, why was the Al-Aqsa Mosque built on top of the Temple Mount?
Um, this, this is a paradox because Jews were an extremely important part of that early movement, right? So why, why, why would you offend the Jews like this, right? Okay. To understand what happened, let's go back in time, and we know that in 622, Muhammad goes to Medina, and that's what starts the, um, Islamic movement. But let's just go over to Jerusalem and figure out what's happening there. And once we do that, then we're able to figure out what's going on in that world. It turns out that in 622, there's a major war going on between the two major powers at this time, the Persians and the Byzantines, and it is a deadly war that is engulfing the entire Middle East.
Okay. So this is from Wikipedia. All right. Now, guys, um, never trust Wikipedia as a historical source, but it's useful for us to understand what contemporary historians think. Okay. So this, this is from Wikipedia. The Jews have aligned themselves with the Persians. Why? Because first of all, the Romans control Jerusalem, and in the year 70, the Romans burned down their Temple, and in the year 135, the Romans expelled the Jews from Jerusalem, their holy city. So ever since then, the Jews, obviously, they want revenge, but they also want to return to their holy city and rebuild the, um, Temple. And with the Persians, they saw this as an opportunity because historically, the Persians and the Jews have gotten along very well. Okay.
So the Jews helped the Persians take Jerusalem and push out the Byzantines. But when that happens, the Christians in Jerusalem revolt and they force out the Jews, and then the Byzantines, under their Emperor Heraclius, they return to Jerusalem. In the First Crusade, this is the beginning of the idea of crusade, and they retake the city. And then what they do is they expel the Jews from Jerusalem, obviously, but then they start to kill a lot of Jews, and they force these Jews outside of Jerusalem. So now these Jews have nowhere to go. But there's something called the Constitution of Medina in Arabia, right? There is a prophet Muhammad who is promising religious tolerance for all. All can practice their faith in peace, right? So it makes sense for a lot of these Jews, not all of them, but a lot of them, to join this early movement.
What's important for us to understand is that at this point, Islam, Muslim, is not a distinct religion. Okay. All these people are called believers because Muhammad himself is the final messenger of God. Okay. Abraham was the first, then you had Moses, then you have Jesus, and now Muhammad is the very last. So all these three different traditions, the Christian tradition, the Jewish tradition, and the Islam tradition, in the beginning, were all just one religion, one idea, which is to bring God to Earth and make everyone understand that God is the true God. Okay. To create monotheism on Earth. That's the origin of this new religion of Islam.
And this is the Constitution of Medina, which is in the Quran, and which we know to be historically true, maybe not, not the wording, okay, but we know that this existed, and these people were called believers. And also, this would also include, uh, people who believe in Zoroastrianism, okay, because Zoroastrianism was also, um, a monotheistic religion. So it was, so the Constitution of Medina was an attempt to unite all monotheistic religions into one single tradition that fought for God.
Okay. Also, what's really important for us to understand is, um, not only is there all this persecution going on against Jews, and against Christians, and against Zoroastrians, okay, but also this is an apocalyptic stage where all three traditions believed this was literally the end of the world. If you were Jewish, you believed in a final battle called Armageddon between the Messiah, who would lead you, and against two enemies called Gog and Magog. Guess what? The Persians and the Romans were fighting each other. So you could easily interpret this to mean the Persians and the Romans were the Gog and Magog enemy in your tradition. This will be the final battle. This is when Jerusalem is most threatened. Well, the Romans, the Byzantines just took your city and massacred your people. So in the Jewish tradition, this is the end of days. This is the final battle, and the Messiah would emerge to lead you to final victory. That person, a lot of Jews could interpret to be Muhammad.
Okay. For the Jews, this is the end of days. But for Christians, okay, they also believe this is the end of days because, uh, there's a final battle between the Antichrist and the Messiah. The Antichrist is obviously Heraclius, who is the emperor of the Byzantines, who have been persecuting, uh, Roman Christians for a long time. Remember, the official religion of the Byzantines is the Holy Trinity, but most Christians didn't believe in the Holy Trinity and they were persecuted for the refusal to believe in, in the Holy Trinity. So for Christians, this is also the final battle. Zoroastrians believe in the final battle between good and evil. Okay.
So this is an apocalyptic age where everyone believes this is it, the final battle. Muhammad is saying to everyone, guys, we're all one people, united by God, and we are here to fight for him. Okay. And this is very appealing for people.
So the best evidence for my argument is actually the Quran. Okay. So again, we don't have any written records of Muhammad, but what we do believe is the Quran. Um, it is a collection of many of Muhammad's original sayings that have been redacted over time. So let's look at some passages from the Quran to better understand how Muhammad was thinking and what he was preaching to the Christians, the Jews, and the Zoroastrians.
"O people of the Book," by this he means both the Christians and the Jews, "why do you argue about Abraham when the Torah and the Gospel were not revealed until after him? Will you not reason?" So he's saying, why are we arguing about scripture? Why are we arguing about belief? We all acknowledge that Abraham is our forefather. Okay. And Abraham came before the Bible, it came before the Old Testament and the New Testament. So what's the argument here? You argue about things you know, but why do you argue about things you do not know? Allah knows and you do not know. Abraham was neither a Jew nor nor a Christian, but he was a monotheist, a Muslim.
So this is what Muhammad is saying: a Muslim is someone who believes in God as the only true God, and that includes Jews and Christians, and he was not of the polytheists. Let's also look at Muhammad responding to the Christian tradition. Remember, in the Christian tradition, a lot of conflict arises from a debate over the nature of Jesus and his relationship with God. And what Muhammad is saying is, guys, the idea of Jesus makes no sense. Jesus cannot be God. Jesus, at best, can only be a messenger, a prophet of God, just like me. And the idea that Jesus is, is God makes no sense. Jesus was a human, just like me. God is God. He would not represent himself through a human.
And so, let's, let's look at what he says: "They disbelieve, those who say Allah is the Messiah, the Son of Mary. But the Messiah himself said, 'Messiah is Jesus, O children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord.'" He's making a clear distinction. God is my God. I'm not God. I'm not his son. He is God. "Whoever associates others with Allah, Allah has forbidden him Paradise, and his dwelling is the Fire. The wrongdoers have no saviors."
All right. If you believe that Jesus is God, you are committing heresy against the true God. There can only be one God. There can't be two Gods together. "They disbelieve, those who say Allah is a third of three. But there is no deity except the One God. If they do not refrain from what they say, a painful torment will befall those among them who disbelieve."
So what he's saying, this is very important, is that Muhammad is saying the Holy Trinity, the idea, is just nonsense. "They disbelieve, those who say Allah is a third of three. Allah cannot be a third, a fraction of anything. He is the one and only."
Now, in our time, and we hear this, we don't really have an emotional reaction. But place yourself back in their time, the year 622. Most Christians are being persecuted for refusing to accept the Holy Trinity as scripture because it makes no sense. We discussed this in class. Okay. And now, but if you say it makes no sense, you could be killed. You'll be persecuted for sure. And now Muhammad is saying, you guys were right all along. You should have believed in yourselves all along. You were right all along.
So let's use an analogy. Let's just say, for example, like the world government. Okay. We have a world government, and for whatever reason, the world government tells us the sky is red, and you're like, "Wait a minute. I know blue, and I know red, and the sky is blue." But if you say the sky is blue, you will be put in jail. You are not allowed to say the sky is blue. And then you have people, teachers like me, telling you the reason why you believe the sky is, uh, blue and not red is your eyes lie to you. You cannot trust yourself. Your eyes are defective. That's a problem with human beings. We can't trust what we see. Okay. And you have to go through life believing the sky is red, even though you know in your heart it's blue.
But then one day, someone like a teacher says to you in class, "Actually, guys, we've been lying to you all along. The sky is blue." Imagine your sense of relief and empowerment and liberation when someone of authority actually tells you what you've always believed. Okay. That's what Muhammad is doing. Muhammad is confirming to everyone that what they believed, what they knew about God was right all along.
Okay. So Muhammad's final message to the people is: God is God, and only God, and he is everywhere, and you can see him, you can touch him, because he's everywhere. And as such, you can feel him, and he can be inside of you. Okay. And so this idea, walk, occupy most of the Quran. And this is what he says: "With Him are the keys of the Unseen; none knows them except He. And He knows all that is on land and in the sea. Not a leaf falls but He knows it, and there is not a single grain in the darkness of the earth, nor is there anything wet or dry but is in a clear record."
All right. God is everywhere. You can see and touch him in everything. Okay. And so, in other words, what's happening is that Islam is really the first monotheistic religion in the modern sense. When we think of monotheism, we're actually thinking of the Islamic version of monotheism. All right.
So what is the power of Islam? And I want you guys to remember this. Islam's power and beauty comes from how Islam is able to unite two major intellectual traditions in the world. The first is paganism, right? Remember the Vikings? The Vikings told stories, they acted out rituals, and therefore there was an intimacy, concreteness, and interconnectedness to paganism that made us feel happy and good. It made us understand the world. It made us feel as though we could influence the world. That's the power of paganism.
But Islam is doing the same thing by making God concrete. Okay. You can feel God. God is everywhere. He knows everything. But what Islam is also doing is it's seeing the simplicity, clarity, and absoluteness of monotheism. Okay. Monotheism is nice because with monotheism, everything becomes clear to you, right? Okay. There's one God, therefore I just have to follow him. I just have to believe in him. There's like a million gods in paganism, so it's unclear what you should do or how you should relate to these million gods. But here in monotheism, the relationship between God and you, it's very, very clear. Okay.
So, in other words, Islam is a major intellectual revolution in human history, and we have forgotten this because Islam, the idea, has embedded itself into modernity itself. Does that make sense? All right. So, um, what I will show you over the course of the semester is that Islam really is the precursor to modernity. When we say that modernity began in Europe, we forget that Islam really built the basis for modernity. All right.
Fulfillment of the law and prophecy. It's completing the story in the Bible. It's bringing God to the people. You can now touch God. You can now know God. That's the beginning of the idea of Protestantism. Okay. And create heaven on Earth. And this is the idea of science. Why do we use science to make the world better? Because God wants us to make the world better. All right. So a lot of the ideas that will underpin modernity, that God can be in us, and that God expects us to make the world better, it's already there in the beginnings of Islam. And that's why we will have the Islamic Golden Age, because they are propelled by their devotion to the one true God. Is this clear to you guys? Any questions so far? Any questions so far?
All right. So let me very, very quickly answer the three mysteries. Okay. The first, the first problem is, why were there no written records? The answer is, first of all, Islam marks a revolution. Okay. It is overturning the social order. The problem, though, is that eventually Islam will become the social order. So you obviously don't want to paint Muhammad as a revolutionary. That's the first problem. Muhammad, um, represented a revolution against a social order. All right. That's the first thing.
Second thing is that we know that his early followers, the companions, were all wiped out. They're all dead. They all died. The official history says that they were, they died in military conflicts. But here's the amazing thing about early Islamic history: we don't have that much evidence of military conflict between the Arabs and the Persians and the Byzantines. We don't. There's maybe one city, Ctesiphon, where there was a siege, but, but we think that a lot of the conquest happened, um, organically, or maybe, um, their enemy surrendered to them rather than fight them. And that, that's why I would say it's a revolution. It's not a, it's not a conquest. It's a revolution where ordinary people, um, were so disgusted with the current leadership that they opted for, um, a new, a new belief system.
The problem, though, is that once you amass power, and it's a coalition, the question then is, who's now in charge? So for the next 1500 years, there'll be a series of civil wars to to determine who will be in charge. Those early companions were probably purged. The word we use is "purged." They're wiped out, including the Jews and the Christians. We know for a fact that in the early days of Islam, Jews and Christians were part of the hierarchy. There's a man named St. John of Damascus, who was very famous, and he was a, uh, lead official in the Umayyad Caliphate. We, we know that as a fact. But eventually, they were purged from the system. And if they're purged, what happens is they also purge history. Okay. Because if these are the companions of Muhammad, Christians and Jews, then they're legitimate. They're more legitimate than you are. So therefore, they have to purge that history. Okay. But knowing that, and the third thing is that there will be a series of continuous civil wars, but, uh, among the Arabs in order to to determine who will be the caliph. And obviously, they want to disguise this history. They want to disguise this history of civil conflict.
So the first 100 years, it was revolutionary, but it was also very tumultuous and bloody, and that's why they had to disguise the first 100 years of, um, Islamic history. Right? Does that make sense to you guys? And again, this is my explanation. I could be wrong. All right. There, there could be other explanations. Yeah. Just throw in another idea. I think what you said doesn't either. One thing that's hard for us to imagine is that that our culture would actually record its history. Historiography. It seems to us as a given. You know, Chinese culture, official historians going back for 2200 years and so on, right? The Greeks had their ancient historians, the Romans had their ancient historians, but not every culture has historians. The Persians didn't write history. Right? The Indians didn't write history. Guessing the, um, the Arabs didn't have a tradition of writing down their history either, right? So that this would actually be recorded in a sense that we're familiar with, right? Probably was the case. That is a great point. Thank you, Doug. So, so the, so Doug's point is that, um, the tradition of history comes to us from the Greeks and the Romans, who wrote everything down. Okay. But as Doug says, there are many cultures who not believe, or do not, they do not have institutions to write down history. We sort of take it for granted today, but back then, it was actually a pretty rare thing to actually want to write down your history. Okay. So be, and the good, a good reason why is that if you write down the history, you're also constrained by the history, right? And, and, and that's why a lot of empires chose not to write down their history. Okay. So, so, so thank you. Okay. All right.
Second question is, why didn't Muhammad name a successor? Again, this is just my theory, but if it's the end of days, if it's the end of the world, you don't need to name a successor because God's coming, right? What's the point? In fact, if you name a successor, then you are admitting defeat, right? What Muhammad is saying to everyone is that every of your traditions, Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, are right. It's the end of days. God is coming. There'll be peace on the world. Therefore, we will no longer need leaders. You won't need Muhammad. I'm the last prophet, man. Okay. So that's, that's why I think, uh, that's why I think he didn't name a successor. But there could be other explanations. Okay. Do, do you have another explanation?
Okay. Now, third is, why did they build the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Second Temple, on, on the Temple Mount? And this explanation is going to be very controversial. Okay. So the Jews supported the Persians in the war against the Byzantines on the condition that the Persians would allow them to return to Jerusalem, but also on the condition that the Jews would be allowed to rebuild their Temple, which is exactly what Cyrus the Great did, right? Cyrus the Great is called the Messiah in the Bible. He's the only foreign leader called the Messiah in the Bible because Cyrus the Great allowed them to rebuild the Temple.
So what I'm saying is this: our Al-Aqsa Mosque was originally the Third Temple. It is what the Arabs promised the Jews for their support. But over time, as these purges happen, as civil conflicts happen, then the Arabs needed to consolidate their authority. So they turned the Third Temple into the Al-Aqsa Mosque. That's what I think happened. If you go into the, I don't have time to go into the very detailed history of how the Al-Aqsa Mosque was built, but it was a process that took about 200 years. It's very possible during these 20 years, intentions changed. So again, I, I know this is an extremely controversial statement, but I think that's what happened. Originally, it was meant to be the Third Temple, but then over time, the Arab leaders changed their minds and thought to themselves that if we do this, then we make, um, the Jews into a very powerful political entity within the Muslim world. Okay. Does that make sense to you guys? Right. Okay. Again, like these are my explanations. It's my interpretation. This is not historical fact. All right.
Now, now that we've done the three mysteries, let's go back to the three original questions. First question is, why did Islam enter its Golden Age and Christian Europe enter its Dark Age? Second question is, why did the Islamic Golden Age end? And third question is, how did Christian Europe overtake the Muslim World? Okay. To answer these three questions, all we have to do is compare and contrast these three major religions together: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Right? There are both strengths and weaknesses to all religions. So it's very quickly compare and contrast these three major religions to see why they thrive in a certain historical context.
So Judaism. The Bible, uh, it's a wonderful piece of literature. It has a very rich history going back thousands of years, right? So the Jews were the first to have a complete history of themselves. There are beautiful stories in the Bible that still inspire today. The stories of Adam and Eve, the stories of the Patriarchs, the story of Moses, they still inspire us today, and they inspire us to create great literature. And then you have a literary culture. So, um, the Jews were expected to be people of the book. They were expected to be literate in order to practice their religion. And this helps us understand, uh, why Jews are so dominant in, uh, academia, universities, in the media, and in culture, and in the legal profession. Okay. Because these are people of the book. They have a tremendous respect for learning and for literacy.
That said, there are certain problems with the tradition. The first is, um, it's contradictory. When you read the Bible, it's always contradicting itself. Um, it's almost schizophrenic, you could say. It's very hard to pick out a definite message from the Bible. And that's why the oral tradition, called the Torah, is actually much more important. And so Jews have to go, um, to the synagogue, uh, all the time, where the rabbi will explain to them the meaning of the Bible, because if you read it by yourself, it's almost impossible to understand.
Second problem is their God, Yahweh. He's, he's very problematic. He's extremely problematic. As we know from last semester, when we looked at the Bible, he doesn't seem to know what he's doing, and he's very, very, um, violent. Okay. He often commands the Israelites to go kill all their enemies. So he's a very problematic God.
The third major problem in the tradition is, um, faith versus history. If you believe that you are the chosen people, if you believe that Yahweh is the only true God, then why are you being persecuted all the time? Okay. Why were the Romans able to kick you out of Jerusalem and burn down your Temple, which is the house of God? Why are you homeless? Why do you lack a homeland? Okay. And this has been going on for thousands of years, and there are no easy explanations to any of these problems. Okay. So within the Jewish faith, there's a lot of conflict and debate and doubt.
So the Christian faith was created, in many ways, to try to resolve a lot of the issues within the Jewish tradition. The first major advantage of the Christian faith is it's the personification and perfection of divinity. Right? Remember how we said that Yahweh is problematic? Well, now we have Jesus, who we can understand, and Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice, therefore we know him to be the ultimate good. Second advantage is, okay, now that there's a person, we can follow him, deliver a consistent message of being kind, being merciful, being loving. Okay. The third advantage is the idea of progress, of history leading to the return of Jesus, the second coming. Okay. So you may suffer now, but don't worry, because Jesus is returning, and that will end history for us all.
Okay. So these are the advantages of Christianity. But when you do that, when you have Jesus, personified God, you create a lot of issues. The first issue is, it's a really confusing story. Why would God come down to Earth, manifest himself as a human, and then sacrifice himself? That's really, really confusing. Like, I know there are a lot of really good explanations as to why this is the case, but still, if you're just a normal person, you can't understand the story. It makes no sense to you. Okay.
Second is that it's counterintuitive. A lot of the ideas in Christianity, it's just counterintuitive. The Holy Trinity must be the strangest idea in religion, where God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus are separate but equal. It makes no intuitive sense to anyone. The third is distant divinity. Okay. God is out there somewhere. You don't know where. You can't talk to him. You can't see him. You have absolutely no idea where he is. Okay. It's a very distant divinity.
And so these are the disadvantages of Christianity. And so Islam now makes sense because it's trying to remedy and rectify these failings of Christianity. Okay. The first is that it takes the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition and makes it part of itself. Okay. So it is really
The continuation and the perfection of the Jewish Christian tradition. Second is the absoluteness of God. Okay, this is now true monotheism where God is everywhere, and you can see him. But if God is everywhere, then what's amazing is that God can come inside you through your faith, through your devotion, and through your practice. All right, and so what this means is you now know how to behave in the world. There's a clarity of purpose and action. You know that as long as you do those five things, those five pillars of Islam, your life will be good. God is in you, and that gives you strength and purpose and power. Okay, and this is these these ideas is what will start the Islamic Golden Age and allow Islam to propel itself past everyone.
Okay, the problem though is it's too simple and clear. The advantage of being contradictory is you allow for different belief systems, which come in conflict with each other. And with this contradiction and conflict, it allows for innovation. That's why capitalism will eventually will eventually give way to process theology, which is a reinterpretation of the Bible. But it's because the Bible is so contradictory that this innovation is about to happen. The Bible was extremely clear, the Quran is extremely clear. But if that's the case, then you cannot allow for radical rejection of the past and embrace of the future.
Okay, second problem then is it, it's inflexible. It can't be as innovative as Christianity and Judaism. The third problem is it, Islam purports to stand outside of history. Judaism is to be inside of history. Christianity is inside of history as well. But Islam is eternal. When you read the Quran, it's meant to be the eternal words. These words are always true. But then the problem then is how do you go about and interpret your actions through the lens of history, and how do you improve your society based on this interpretation?
All right, so in the beginning, the very aspects, the very strengths of of Islam will give rise to a tremendous period of creativity. But over time, um, you will have, um, these innovations will become dogma, and they will ossify, and they will prevent further growth in society. All right, so does that make sense to you guys? All right, so let me reframe what I said in a different way. All right, so let's just compare, sorry, um, let's, sorry, so I'm going to compare and contrast Christianity with, um, Islam. So, so, and, and, and then, and then this will be a bit more clear to you, right? Okay, but are any questions before I continue? Is this clear to you guys? So I apologize, I'm making a lot of generalizations, but again, this is a macro view of of history.
All right, so let's look at, let's look at Christianity and compare it with Islam. All right, so as I have said, um, in previous classes, Christianity was developed by the Roman Empire in order to co-opt first the Jews and eventually, um, these barbarian invaders. And therefore, the religion is one of empire and power. Okay, it's really about how to control people. But Islam, as I just mentioned, it is a revolutionary religion that must be open and inclusive and tolerant in order to attract as many followers as possible.
All right, now the main mechanism of control, uh, for an empire is the idea of orthodoxy. Orthodoxy just means the correct thinking. Okay, but if you're orthodox, then you have the idea of heresy. Orthodoxy is with God, heresy is against God. If you agree that the sky is red because I say the sky is red, then you are orthodox. But if you insist the sky is blue, then it is heretical. Okay, and that constrains or limits the imagination. Right, and the philosopher that you base your society on is Plato. So the idea of the bishop, the idea of the Pope, it's really the idea of Plato's philosopher king.
All right, so I'll explain, uh, Plato's philosophy in a bit, in a second. Okay, but, but let's look at Islam. So it's a revolutionary religion, and therefore you must activate the energy of all your followers. You must get them to believe, and you must get them to fight. Therefore, it's a religion based on intuition. God is with you. You know God, God is inside you. Okay, and the idea of intuition is what allows for science. You can discover the truth by just observing through empirical observation, through your own analysis, through your own belief. Okay, and the person who argues this is, of course, Aristotle. So this is the argument I'm making to you, okay?
A lot of scholars believe, um, the Islamic age happened because the Islamic going, the Islams had books, they had wealth. But the Byzantines also had access to all these, uh, major thinkers, Plato and Aristotle. They all, Byzantines had a lot of wealth. Okay, what I'm arguing is that a culture needs to have an attitude, a perspective, a worldview, an orientation. For the Byzantines and the Europeans, they chose Plato. But the Muslims chose Aristotle, and that is the major difference.
Okay, so let's go over, um, let's summarize Plato and Aristotle, how the philosophies differ. Okay, for Plato, the true God is called the Form of the Good. The Form of the Good is the beginning of everything. It is what is immutable, that cannot be changed. It is, uh, perfect and is eternal. Eternal means it's always, it was always there and it will always be there. The Form of the Good, this God, he thinks, and he emanates new concepts called ideals, like justice, uh, reason, beauty, power. Okay, and these ideals will manifest themselves into perfect forms, okay, like a horse, like a perfect horse, the perfect woman. Okay, this we can say is just heaven. We live in something called a shadow world, which is just an imitation of heaven, but it's a bad imitation. So everything sucks. Okay, so for example, uh, if you fall down and you break your leg, it hurts because we live in the shadow world. So in this conception of the universe, what we're trying to do is return to, uh, the Form of the Good. And for Plato, he argues that you can do this through mathematics and geometry because mathematics is what is most like the Form of the Good. It is, it is immutable, perfect, and eternal. So by studying mathematics and geometry, you are able to ascend back into the, uh, Form of the Good. But guess what? Augustine will take Plato and he will adapt it to the Christian faith. Right, because how do you leave this world? By not sinning, by having faith. If you do that, then you are allowed to go to heaven. Okay, so in the Platonic Augustinian understanding, we in this world, just we all we have to do is not make a mistake. So do nothing. Okay, do nothing and you'll be good.
Aristotle has a different conception of the universe. He believes the Form of the Good is called a Prime Mover. All right, God is a Prime Mover. So God is the first thing that acts and moves things. Okay, and when he does that, when he creates motion, other things start to happen as well. Okay, so we're constantly moving about. Where we're going is we are seeking truth, and it's called telos. Telos means purpose. So each of us, by our nature, has a purpose. If you're, if you're a soldier, your purpose is to be the best warrior. If you're a mathematician, your purpose is to be the best mathematician. Okay, and that is the idea of truth, to fulfill your purpose. And therefore, you must be constantly acting. Okay, now the, the beauty of this idea of motion is you can now study it through empirical observation. You can observe things and then start to understand their nature, and this gives rise to the idea of science.
Okay, right, so the Muslim world had a decidedly Aristotelian perspective, whereas the European world had a Platonic perspective. Now, the great thing about history, the great thing about civilization is that what will happen is the Europeans will learn from the Muslims. They'll copy the Muslims, right? They'll bring back Aristotle, they'll bring back science, uh, and they'll bring back intuition. All right, and they will do so through three major events. The first is the Renaissance, where they bring back Aristotle. The second is the Protestant Reformation, where they will bring back God. Remember, the Catholic religion, God is a, God can only be understood through the Pope or the priest. Okay, but the Protestant religion is, no, God is with us. God is in us. For your actions, you can, um, you can win God's favor. Okay, the last is science, right? The Scientific Revolution. And these are the three major events that will give us modernity.
Okay, but guess what? The Europeans are just emulating the Muslims. But, and this is really important, they will improve on the Muslims. Okay, so the problem with science is, yes, in the beginning, you will have this, all this discovery, but this innovation will eventually lead to something called dogma. All right, and so what you need to do is create institutions to destroy dogma. And that's what the Europeans will do, which will, and this idea that dogma can be destroyed through discussion and debate and analysis is what will become a basis of the Scientific Revolution, which will create the modern world that we live in today.
Okay, so we will go through all of these three major, uh, movements in future classes. But please remember that it's the Islamic Golden Age which will inspire the Europeans to do all three of these things, which in turn will create the modern world that we live in today. And that's why I believe that the Islamic Golden Age is really the, the, is really the proto-modernity of human history. All right, that is my argument to you. Any questions? Anything you are unclear about? Was this clear? Okay. May, I don't know if it's a question or just just an observation. Sure. The, are you able to go back a couple slides to the, sure, to the, uh, empire, empire and power versus religion? Okay, sure. Right here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is like one thing that you got me thinking about. The, the years of Islam and there's kind of two movements. Like the first one is like with the Umayyad Caliphate, which lasts about 100 years, right? And it was really kind of that revolution that that you're talking about, like very expensive growth, very, very quick. Um, but it was also very Arab, right? It was done by the Arabs. Okay. And what, what's really interesting is like, if we look at the Abbasids that come afterwards, um, as Mr. Jen said, like it moves to Baghdad, and right now that, and Iraq as an Arab place, but at that time it was Persian. Okay. And, um, by moving there, it represents partly a change in culture and moving away from, uh, from an Arab, uh, homeland basically. And there's a whole bunch of, there's an amazing cultural openness, um, by moving there. There's contacts, like you said, with, um, India, um, Central Asia, um, sorry, moves into Central Asia. There's more contacts with, with China and so on. And there's a real cultural dynamism going on there. And, and Islam has to be very open to those cultures and be inspired by those cultures, um, and engage with them in in a pretty deep way, right? So in some ways, it's not just the, the religion that's the deciding factor for what makes it a golden age, but, but just being able to draw on so many different and rich traditions in a way that say, Byzantium or in Western Europe, um, you know, Catholics, right? Yeah, that's a great point. So, um, let me elaborate on on this point. Um, so there's a literary critic, Northrop Frye, right? Yeah, Canadian, right? So, so, so Northrop Frye is a Canadian literary critic, okay? And one thing that that he's obsessed about is how literature is developed. Okay, and what he's observed is there's certain moments in history when great literature comes about, and that the moment is when a nation, okay, or a people or culture becomes an empire. Okay, and the idea here is, okay, with a nation, you have tradition, you have cohesion, okay, you have a certain, um, uh, literary basis, right? And then when it becomes an empire, it's forced to have a vista, it's, it's forced to have like a global perspective. And this change from a nation, a coherent people, into a conquering empire, at this stage in history, um, you can, it's possible for them to produce great literature. Okay, and there are many examples of this. So the first example, of course, is Athens. Athens is the, um, civilization part excellent, right? And so when did Athens produce all its great, like literature? Well, it was basically the, the Age of Pericles, which lasted from like, you know, 500 to about 400, okay, maybe 350, okay, but it was not that long. And this is important because this period is also when Athens, which was a, you know, a very small polis, suddenly became an empire. And it was this transition that forced it to look outwards. Okay, so Athens is one example. But then, of course, you have King David and the Israelites. And again, um, after Saul collapsed, uh, David was able to like create, um, an Israelite nation and then conquer a lot of this territory. Okay, so these people now were a small empire. They weren't a great empire, they were a small empire. Okay, and the last example that we, we have is England. Right, think of Shakespeare. When was Shakespeare? Around the 1600s, okay? And that was when England, which for the longest time was this poor, um, island, island was now becoming emerging as a global empire, and with it, a cosmopolitan perspective. Right, so this is the pattern in history, which picks up on on Doug's point, where, um, the new, um, um, Islamic empire, when they shifted their capital to Baghdad, they, and they now became a global empire, and as such, they had to absorb all these different traditions and cultures and become a multicultural, universal empire. Okay, all right, so Northrop Frye has made this observation. Um, it sounds convincing. I, I haven't, I haven't done enough research to fully buy into this theory, okay, but, but he has made this argument and he has made these observations with these examples. All right, so thanks for that. Okay, any more questions? Okay, so, um, next class, what, what we'll do is the Middle Kingdom China. Okay, the reason why is, at this stage in history, China is being brought into world history, and the reason why is the rise of the Mongols. Okay, so, so next class will be on the Middle Kingdom China, and after that, we will do the Mongols, and then after that, we will return to Europe and do, uh, the Crusades, then we'll do the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific Revolution. Okay.