Abbasid Dynasty: the Top of Islamic Civilization
Hasan A. Yahya, Ph.D
Shifting the capital of Islam to Damascus, and ninety years later to Baghdad, Medina remained the center of the Muslim religious learning center unlike the new conquered land which was influenced by Hellenistic culture of East Rome. The two monuments show the interaction with the older civilization was symbolized by the Umayyad dynasty , the great Mosque of Damascus, and the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem. These monuments were equated with fusion of sects and heresies in the far provinces.
The cleavage between the religious and secular institutions of the Muslim community began before the end of the Umayyad dynasty and continued through the Abbasid dynasty aswell. Where the conflict emerged as a new development of Islam inside and outside Arabia. The main two divisions as a result of religious secular spectrum was the spiritual grounds of revelation, and the secular process of interaction with other deep rooted cultures and civilization
Another result was the released intellectual energies of other cultures mainly to promote assimilation to the teaching of Islam and in the same time new sciences were established in Prophetic Tradition side by side with philosophy, history, and law. While material civilization was not effective in the Umayyad period. The Abbasid Caliphs (Khulafa) succeeded to make Baghdad their capital in 762 A.D. where the Muslim civilization began to be witnessed as a world civilization through industry, commerce, architecture at Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt.
Intellectual life culminated a great position at Samarqand, North Africa and Spain in literature and thought drawing upon Greek, Persian and Indian sources in a new shape independent of Muslim Tradition reflects the revolt against the narrowness of the Orthodox system created a new stimulus to widen the physical and intellectual horizons in both material and spiritual flavors.
Under the Abbasid dynasty new sciences began to be introduced in addition to Muslim science of history and philology at Kufah and Basra schools in Iraq. New secular history and writing arts were found. Medicine and mathematical science of the Greek were made accessible by translations, developed mostly by non-Arab thinkers and scientists namely, Persians in addition to Arab scholars.
Subjects covered in that time, include Algebra, trigonometry and optics. Geography was the mother of all other branches of knowledge, political, organic as well as natural sciences (mathematics and astronomical) which came from far land civilization in time and space.
In the process, Greek logic and philosophy created an inevitable negatively conflict by the beginning of the third century (Hijri). Pure rationalism was the danger posed and competed with the spiritual foundations. The Hellenizing school of philosophy became suspicious in the eyes of some Muslim philosophers and became apologetic in their thinking and practices, an example was, in part, al-Ghazali, while other philosophers followed intellectual pursuit, such as . Ibn Sina (Avicenna), al-Farabi, and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). Unfortunately, the Arabic philology was based on pre-Islamic poetry and story telling, as it was the case in Medieval age Europe and the debate among Christians using Latin as basis of the church writings and literature.
Depending on the social heritage of Rome, idealization was the symbol of both periods where the first four hundred years , literature was written in Arabic language, which influenced other cultures under Islamic rule. (553 words) www.hasanyahya.com
Hasan Yahya is an Arab American scholar, and a professor of sociology. He published 20 plus books and 180 plus articles on sociology, psychology, politics, poetry, IQ Test Measurement and short stories in both Arabic and English. His articles may be found on articlesbase.com, Face book and other internet sites. His recent book published on Amazon titled: Arab Palestinians and Jews: Sociological Approach (2009)
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