Islamic science : crossroad of cultures. An exhibition at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine ... 19 June to 12 November 1985 / [compiled by Nigel Allan].

  • Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine
Date:
1985
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Islamic science : crossroad of cultures. An exhibition at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine ... 19 June to 12 November 1985 / [compiled by Nigel Allan]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    A crossroad has been defined as a point of intersection between two or more roads. It is therefore appropriate that crossroad of cultures should be the subtitle to an exhibition devoted to Islamic science for Islam stands at a point of contact between Judaism, Christianity and Islam, between the ancient cultures of the east and west which in turn produced Islam's own distinctive science and culture. A crossroad however, is not a convergence of roads from different places to a termination at one point but rather continues across the point of convergence to many different destinations. By the same token the synthesis that took place at Islam's crossroad of cultures diverged again to many destinations in South East Asia, India, the Near East, North Africa and Southern Spain. By this convergence of ideas Islam both preserved and developed the sciences of the ancient world until such time as the western world had emerged from semi-barbarism and was fit to receive and further develop them into the scientific knowledge of the twentieth century. This is the debt the western world of our own day owes to the Islamic world of medieval times. This synthesis of ideas was a process which began before the rise of Islam as the inevitable result of contact between different peoples through commerce and trade. With the decline of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity the burden of Greek learning passed from the former to the latter. The intermediaries between ancient Greece and the Arabs were Christians whose language was Syriac, a Semitic language in many respects similar to Arabic but containing much Greek vocabulary, hence a suitable vehicle of transmission from the Hellenistic to the Islamic world. Under the 'Abbasid Caliphs Baghdad became the centre of Islamic science largely due to Christians acting as translators from Greek into Syriac and Arabic at the famous Bayt al-^tikma House of Wisdom established by the Caliph al- Ma'mun (d.218/833) and directed by Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d.260/873), a Nestorian Christian and physician who had studied at* the famous Christian university in Gondishapur in South West Iran. Rhazes (d. c. 313/925), a Moslem from the Iranian city of Rayy, in his great medical compendium quotes the writings of Perzoes the monk sent by Anushirwan (d.579 A.D.) to India to collect drugs. Avicenna (d.428/1037), born near Bokhara in Turkestan, philosopher, statesman and physician brought together all medical knowledge of his time in his K. al-Qanun. This work was studied by students of medicine both east and west until late in the medieval period. Science in the Islamic world transcended cultural and religious differences. Maimonides (d.601/1204), the 850th anniversary of whose birth in Moorish Cordova is celebrated this year, although the greatest Jewish philosopher and also a physician of distinction, was a pupil of distinguished Islamic philosophers. Later in Egypt he was appointed physician to the Caliph. Ibn Butlah (d.458/1066), a Nestorian priest and physician wrote medical and theological_ works and organised hospitals in Aleppo and Baghdad; 'AlT b. 'Isa (d.c. 400/1010), a physician and secretary to the Catholicos Johannes, changed his allegiance from the Nestorian to the Greek church while Ibn Jazla (d.493/1100) also a physician converted from Christianity to Islam. -1-
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