# All Beneficial Knowledge is Revealed”: The Rational Sciences in the Maghrib in the age of al-Yūsī (d. 1102/1691) (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Rise and Fall of Science and Philosophy in Islamic Civilizations
Islam arose in the seventh century. History has recorded a huge number of Muslim scientists between the eighth and the sixteenth century, who contributed to the civilizations that flourished in that era. Among them were astronomers and astrophysicists, chemists and alchemists, mathematicians, physicists, biologists, architects, geographers, etc. However, a great mystery which has engaged many contemporary scholars is that why the progress stopped. Why while Europe, after experiencing Renaissance, rapidly and increasingly developed in science and technology and, as a result, prospered materially, Islamic civilizations—mainly the Middle East, ceased to thrive? This essay is concerned with exploring the cause of decline of science and philosophy in Islamic world after a period, the three centuries of which has come to be called the Islamic Golden Age. In order to do so, first I need to demonstrate that there actually was a Golden Age, that is, a period of rise of great Muslim scientists and philosophers in the Muslim civilizations, which is taken to refer to the region which today is called the Middle East as well as the Medieval Muslim region of what is now Spain. These will be discussed in Part One. In Part Two, some of the most important proposed explanations for the decline will be looked at.
POLARISING ʿIlm: SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN EARLY MODERN ISLAM
'Ilm: Science, Religion, and Art In Islam, 2019
The polarisation of the traditional concept of ʿilm, ‘knowledge’, into ʿilm, modern ‘science’ versus dīn, ‘religion’, has a short history in the Islamic tradition. Emerging awareness of the conflict between ʿilm and dīn can be traced back to the early decades of the 19th century; however, intense public debate of the polarity began later in the same century. Views about the conflict emerged after exposure to the European Enlightenment ideas generally, and the works of the fabricators of the ‘conflict thesis’, JW Draper and AD White, specifically. Arab and Turkish scholars celebrated Draper’s view that, unlike Christianity, Islam nurtured and advanced science. Taking this as evidence of Islam’s superiority over Christianity, they restricted the conflict thesis to Christendom and saw it as a result of the repressive practices of the Church. By the mid-20th century, new adaptations of the conflict thesis emerged, which mapped the polarity of science and religion over the traditional Islamic division of sciences into rational (ʿaqlī) and transmitted (naqlī). This chapter discusses the polarisation of ʿilm into science and religion, which occurred in the 19th century, in order to show, first, its inconsistency with pre-19th century Islamic sources on the classification of the rational and transmitted sciences, and, second, the distinct trajectory the polarity took in the Arab-Islamic context. It argues that the questions the polarity has raised in the Islamic context are concerned primarily not with historiography and the lost moral guidance of the scientific enterprise, but rather with Islam’s schizophrenic approach to modernity and its humanistic foundations.
American Journal of Islam and Society
This article strives to chart the intellectual history of Muslims and the trans-civilizational, discursive tradition of Islam spanning fourteen centuries. It chronicles the scholarly projects shaping Islamic thought as they developed in the wake of the Prophet’s (s) death and intensified in the ensuing centuries despite the numerous changes and tumultuous times the Muslim ummah encountered. Together with an accompanying map and visual timeline, it endeavors to empower students of Islam in general and Islamic Studies programs in particular with an appreciation of the breadth and depth of Muslim intellectual history. The article begins by tracing the foundation of early regional centers, the side-by-side formation of disciplines, the development of the various legal schools as well as the many strains of Islamic thought, and how they not only influenced one another but also became absorbed into mainstream Islam, ending with an overview of the impact of modernity on Islamic thought. Th...