Talk:Islamic Golden Age

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The article is clearly one-sided and anti-Islamic OneGuy 20:03, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • yes — unfortunately, I lack the time and the knowledge to fix it. Would you like to try? m.e. 12:19, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC) OK, I've rearranged the page to reduce the bias, but it still needs lots of help. 12:39, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] I took out an inaccurate part

Specifically the statements:

However critics have claimed that most of this scholarship was in fact conducted by non-Muslims, particularly Christians and Jews,...

Please provide citation for that. I have sources that state otherwise. e.g. "Golden Age of Persia" by Richard Frye. I see enough mathematicians here to invalidate such a claim: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Indexes/Arabs.html

The value of these intellectual achievements have also been questioned. There was a lot of speculation and very little application, whether in technology or politics.

That is highly opinionated. An entire book has been written contradicting this:

http://ebs.allbookstores.com/book/074860457X

Futhermore, science IS the foundation of technology. Therefore to say that: "There was a lot of speculation and very little application in technology" is quite an erroneous statement. Without trigonometry, for example, optical technology could never have progressed.--Zereshk 12:53, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Note on nationalities

Moses Maimonides was Spanish and not Egyptian as stated in the previous version of the article.--Vonaurum 07:17, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality

This page is clearly one-sided favoring Islam. Specifically:

  • a period when the Islamic world was more tolerant and learned than its neighbours, more liberal and tolerant world of Islam - these are highly disputable statements
  • many societies embraced Islam - how can you have greek and jewish societies embracing islam? that's just ridiculous
  • merchants did not convert the Chinese to Islam on even a small scale
  • islams attitudes towards race has been consistently colourblind- this is actually anti-Islamic
  • and one should wonder, about the possibilities of an industrial revolution- if it was in the 19th century why would someone wonder about an event that never occured?
  • From Spain the Arabic philosophic literature was translated into Hebrew and Latin- what about Ladino?
  • Sections concerning Medicine, Commerce and Urban Life, Architecture and Engineering, The Agricultural Revolution and Mongolian invasion and gradual decline dont even have any content

In addition the entire page is badly written and is full of grammatical errors. freestylefrappe 21:41, May 1, 2005 (UTC)

I started editing it, but I see Zereshk is making appropriate changes also so I'll hold off until she is done. I might make some changes at 8pm. freestylefrappe 23:11, May 1, 2005 (UTC)

OK. I'm done. Heres what I did:

  1. I'm taking out that inaccurate opening sentence and replacing it: The Golden Age was not about tolerancy at all, because many people were persecuted at that time because of their beliefs. The Golden Age was more about scientific achievement.
  2. I inserted sections for medicine and commerce from the sources that I have. I see that User:Warlockgruffles has been adding stuff as well. I will not check his stuff, because he's currently working on it.
  3. Fixed grammar, where I spotted it.--Zereshk 23:52, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
  • the Muslims allowed Christians and Jews to live as protected minorities, which Christians did not allow then.
  • Arabs, Berbers, Romans (Spanish and Sicilian), Turks and Indians all embraced Islam — that's many societies.
  • the Hui minority in China are Muslim; how were they converted?
  • Ladino is surely an irrelevance; the point is that the West was able to read Aristotle because of Latin translations via Arabic.
  • yes it still needs more work.

More generally, if the facts are correct, the article should stand. That doesn't make it one-sided. Anyway, there is a criticism section at the end. m.e. 11:03, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Ladino was not irrelevant. It was the key link between maintaining Sephardic culture after being expelled. Ladino is still an important language to Jews in Argentina, Brazil, and Costa Rica. While it is not necessarily important to the article as a whole it was just as important as translations to or from Hebrew. freestylefrappe 22:27, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

i hope im inserting this answer correctly as its my first time commenting here. Points are only "relevant" or "irrelevant" in a given context, and the point seems to be that no matter how relevant the Ladino language/dialect may be/have been to intra Jewish communication then or now, it remains irrelevant to the passing on into Western Europe of Greek texts through Latin translations.Talmidh2006 16:49, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] June 3rd cleanup

I think my cleanup needs some explanation. I removed the See also section and relocated the links to the introduction and the "Science" section. In addition, I relocated Philosophy-specific information that was under the Science section to Philosophy. freestylefrappe 02:41, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)


[edit] When was the Islamic Golden Age?

The article givest the dates 750-1500 CE for the Islamic Golden Age. Where do these dates come from? These numbers are way off the mark. Please see the consult the following academic source: [[1]] (this is a power-point presentation, please refer to slide 7 of 7). Academic historians believe that the Islamic Golden Age began after 700 CE and ended after 1000 CE, after which the Islamic empire went into a 200 year decine until the Mongol invasions that caused the fall of the Islamic Empire, the loss of the Caliphate, and the destruction of Baghdad on February 10, 1258 CE. It's obviously false that the Islamic Golden Age survived the Mongol sacking of Baghdad in the year 1258 CE, so the dates 750-1500 CE are definitely wrong. 750 CE seems to coincide with the year in which the Ummayad dynasty was replaced by the Abbasid dynasty - this is not a very accurate point of reference for when the Islamic Golden Age began, it actually began somewhat earlier. Now I have no idea where the editors of the article got th year 1500 CE from, but it's wrong and seems more like a nice round number that someone pull out of thin air. --Zeno of Elea 04:09, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Good points. I'll look at my Encyclopedia of Islam and ponder a bit. Zora 06:09, 28 July 2005 (UTC)


I think that the peak of the Islamic Golden Age was somewhere around 800-1050 CE, but the Golden Age itself did not die out completely with the Mongol invasion. It only declined in prominence. Some of the more spectacular architecture from Islam occurs after the Mongol invasion. Same for some of Islam's greatest scientific centers like the Samarkand observatory where Ulugh Beg, Kashi, Qazi Zadeh etc worked. Not to mention that Andalusia was not affected by the invasions at all. As I recall, the Islamic Golden Age is thought to have died out with the fall of Granada in 1492 to Ferdinand and Isabel.--Zereshk 13:08, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
It's as vague a concept as the Islamic Empire or whatever, and generally stems from an attempt to fit the entire corpus of Muslim history under a singular banner. It is more an attempt to classify the time period when Muslim lands were the First world nations. In Andulasia it ran from about 800 through 1000 under the Umayyads. In the Middle east, some beleive Harun Al Rashid and Some al-Mamun was the height of it's expansion again around 800 to 1050, then again quite a few include the early Seljuk time period until the death of Malik Shah and fragmentation just prior to the First Crusade, ofcourse the Fatimids based off Cairo followed a slightly altered time period, and the flourishing of Central Asia only started under Mahmud of Ghazni at about 1000 until the Mongol Invasions and the Black death. The Ottomans and the Turko-Mongol central asian realms are usually seen as post golden era revivals more of culture and political power than science. So you see the golden age is by definition an amorphous collection of time periods and shifting centers, however it extended under a singular cultural entity likely peaking at about 950-1050 when all center were operational. Note that this timeframe works semi-independently of the political decline or rise of dynasties. The feuding of the Taifa's and the Reconquista in Andalusia was still a gradual decline on the edges and had been compensated for with the rise of the central asian centers but the Mongol Invasion and the black death were precipitative as it impacted the heartland and the seats of learning--Tigeroo 13:00, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Black seed

Someone added a sentence to the medicine section, which stated that Muhammad had discovered the virtues of Nigella sativa, which cures everything except death. A little googling established that Muslim doctors had made much use of "black seed" or "black cumin", due to a hadith, or oral tradition, that Muhammad had recommended it. There are many Islamic websites touting the virtues of Nigella and listing various "scientific" studies made of the seed, usually by Muslim scientists.

I deleted the sentence. It might find a place in an Islamic medicine article (is there such a thing?) but it seems out of place in this one. Even non-Muslim historians of medicine agree that superstitions aside (use of Nigella, drinking water made from ink rinsed from prayers and Quranic inscriptions, Hand of Fatima, etc. etc.) Muslim medicine was generally much less drastic and much more successful than European medicine of the time.

There should probably be a link to Academy of Gundishapur in there. A lot of what the Muslims did was built on previous Persian achievements. Zora 09:59, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Germen, you re-added the black see material and added extra evidence of "superstition". One, it's wrong to credit this to LATER scholars, since superstition and empirically-established cures existed side by side, and were practiced by one and the same physicians, I believe. Two, your polemic intent is clear and not helpful. Zora 10:04, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

If you think about placing it somewhere else, than it should be here Early Muslim medicine. Cheers -- Svest 23:34, 27 October 2005 (UTC)  Wiki me up™

I think we can start a new article on Prophetic herbal medicine , that can include nigella , honey , olive oil , halal meat , abstainence from alcohol/pork e.t.c.
About superstition , I think for a lot of people , every alternative medicine is a superstition . Almost all Indians believe in Kundlini Shakti & practice some form of Yoga , another one billion chinese believe in chi & practice taichi/chi gong . Homeopathic drugs contain almost no drug molecules in higher dilutions . Crystal therapy , magnet therapy , reiki , color therapy .........man...homo sapian is such a superstitious species . F.a.y.تبادله خيال /c
Hi UTC,

I was trying to clean it up based on the original note that you had written up in responce to the quote from "OneGuy" The clean up was done based on the historical studies and keep in line the essence of Wiki's neutrality factor.

[edit] Mathematics section

An anon added a long and erudite section on mathematics, which seems to have been cribbed from [2]. I removed it. Zora 06:10, 27 December 2005 (UTC) hjk

[edit] This article is hilarious

Since when has Wikipedia allowed such celebrations of revisionism? I suppose anyone with an official-sounding source may come in here and correct it all, though. 209.7.59.172 18:23, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Section in Medicine with references to cataract removal contradict Cataract_surgery#History

I read the last sentence of the last paragraph of Islamic_Golden_Age#Medicine - and then read Cataract_surgery#History. These two articles are at odds with each other. I vote the last sentence of the last paragraph which states that "Indeed, Muslim doctors were removing cataracts with hollow needles over 1000 years before Westerners dared attempt such a task." is removed unless evidence is available to the contrary. Ttiotsw 20:04, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed the opposing views section

The entire section is uncited and it's mostly just anti-Islamic nonsense. To my knowledge, there is no scholarly dispute that the Islamic Golden Age never existed. And if there is, it should be cited. The section mentions the book, Rebirth by Shoja-e-din Shafa. I find this citation to be dubious, as a simple Google search show that the man used to work for Shah Pahlavi and has consistently written controversial works attacking Islam. I've come across disputes over the Islamic Golden Age in the past. Two professors at my college -- one of history and one of philosophy -- told me previously that there is no scholarly dispute over the Golden Age of Islam, one main reason being because of the abundance of Arabic terms which made their way into the English language. In the absence of extraordinary contribution to science, there's no real justification for how so many scholarly terms are of Arabic origin. Robocracy 01:57, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

This article is terribly biased - I am so sick of hearing people mention "Islamic Golden Age" - the truth is that most of these "Muslims" got their ideas from the non-Muslim societies they conquered and forced into conversion (not necessarily by violent means) ie. through the Jizya tax which had to be paid by non-Muslims. This whole idea of Muslims translating Greek and Roman texts into Arabic - THOSE WERE NOT MUSLIM TRANSLATORS - THEY WERE ASSYRIANS.
Excuse me but please restrain yourself from saying such things that can create confusion in historical facts without evidence. The article is not biased since there are reference from not only website but from various books as well. Please refer to the References section for details. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it( words by George Santayana,philosopher, in his book: The Life of Reason, Volume 1:1905). RiZius 01:57, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
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