Tell me about the Islamic golden age

Tell me about the Islamic golden age.

Was it a real thing, or a myth?

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armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2010/05/gods-battalions-case-for-crusades-by.html
aub.edu.lb/fas/cvsp/Documents/reading_selections/CVSP 202/Al-ghazali.pdf
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Bump

they picked up where the romans left off

The Islamic Golden age shows why it is good if your prohets make sure to put the interest of the state and the interest of the Church in different folders.

The only people who ever say it's a myth or who exaggerate what it was and did, or who say what it did do is exaggerated, are non-historian plebs.

>islamic golden age
2001?

It was real.

>prohets
What?

...

i think he meant profits

>Being this much grammar nazi

You're one of the good ones, Averroes!
It was better than it is now.

That's the history of the Islamic world.
>And then it got worse

armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2010/05/gods-battalions-case-for-crusades-by.html

This is the same guy who wrote that article about the Dark Ages meme that /pol/ loves so much they put a logo on it. Thinking it was a myth is, literally, on the same level of absurdity and willful ignorance as thinking Christianity caused the Dark Ages.

That meme only applies to Russians. It got worse when Mongols happened. But then Ottomans came, and things got better. And then Westerners carved it up after it fell, and things got worse. So just a normal track for a civilization.

>Tell me about the Islamic golden age.

Why does he praise Allah?

largely a myth
it was wealthy but not extraordinarily so, more that it ended the centuries of conflict between Persia and Rome creating a united edifice which enabled trade and exchange of idea.

Islam itself isn't exactly responsible for this beyond providing the catalyst for that unity

the "myth" part comes from the Enlightenment where Liberals created this idea that the Islamic world was some progressive liberal scientific paradise until the evil Catholics and steppe barbarians arrived which is a load of rubbish.

its as much of a myth as the one where Rome was actually a benevolent entity and its collapse was a bad thing

It was real, but not really because of individual contributions by Muslims. Instead the caliphate made Muslim lands more attractive to fleeing Greek scholars to immigrate. You have to remember, at the time western Christian lands were not tolerant of ancient Greek thought and banned its teaching.

This. People like Alhazen, Averroes, al-Biruni, al-Khwarizmi and so on were actually secret Greeks, but the liberals don't want you to know that.

This.

The approach to learning was different. Western Christianity only accepted any sort of study if it met church approval. Greek thought was seen as dangerous, not just because it was Pagan but because it presnted a rival view to religion about how the universe works. The Islamic societies were far more open to having non-religious understandings of the world. Avveroes even want as far as to suggest that religion needed to answer to philosophy, while the Catholic view had it the other way around.

Correct. Their religous understanding was closer to Deism than Islam.

Quite a lot of loyalty for a forced convert

>beyond providing the catalyst for that unity
Which was absolutely vital

>the "myth" part comes from the Enlightenment where Liberals created this idea that the Islamic world was some progressive liberal scientific paradise until the evil Catholics and steppe barbarians arrived which is a load of rubbish.
Ok, but that's a strawman. Liberals aren't the benchmark for history.

Aside from Averroes, I'm gonna need a citation for that.

You're trolling, but most people are going to take what you said at face value.

[The Islamic Golden Age] wasn’t that Islamic. While Harun al-Rashid and Ma’mun, the caliphates at the time, were strictly speaking “the rulers of the faithful” and their regime was theocratic, they came much closer to secularism than we ever did before or after. Ma’mun supported the Mu’tizili sect who believed in rationality and the scientific method, and tolerated religious dissidence and even non-believers. And also by all accounts these caliphs drank wine. So this era is not defined by the Muslim majority world following the tenets of Islam.
Also, by ascribing these things to Islam, you are ignoring the presence of non-believers in that movement, such as the translator Ibn al-Muqaffa’, or Muhammad al Warraq (who may have believed in god but certainly not Islam), or Ibn al-Rawandi.
But if you say this, you are replicating the authoritarian attitude of Islam even more fundamentally than ignoring non-Muslims.
Islam, basically, is a hegemony that spreads by trying to define everything by itself. It has rules for everything, and it makes its presence known in everything. But more fundamentally, it claims everything as its own. Science in Muslim majority country is Islamic science, economy in Muslim majority country is Islamic economy, art in Muslim majority country is Islamic art. That is why even the title “The Islamic Golden Age” is a repressive misnomer, and a reinforcement of Islamic hegemony. It can be the Middle Eastern and North African Golden Age, but to call it Islamic it means those territories belong to Islam and they are a sub-category of Islam. That is why us ex-Muslims feel so much excluded, because every aspect of our culture is defined by Islam.

More like religious understanding of learned Muslims at the time happened to resemble Deism in some ways. That doesn't mean they weren't Islamic

>Which was absolutely vital
desu either a Byzantine or Zoroastarian victory would have had the same result
and considering the Byzantines had more or less crushed Persia by that time it would have happened either way

really the only difference is the Near East would be full of Orthodox/Nestorian types + a billion heresies and Christians fighting with one another forever rather than united to a degree against a common enemy

>That is why us ex-Muslims feel so much excluded, because every aspect of our culture is defined by Islam.
Wow, you poor thing. Your life sounds so sad. I'm playing a tiny violin for you.

>desu either a Byzantine or Zoroastarian victory would have had the same result
Doubtful, considering both had several centuries to prove otherwise, and most of the vibrant works the period became known for came about outside of traditional Greek Orthodox or Zoroastrian centers of learning.

What did he say to deserve your mocking?

If I eat this pork, will you die?

Not who you responded to, but baiting in a Veeky Forums thread isn't very nice.

It would be extremely Haram

It's just a copy-paste from an online article.

You're a big ghazi

For Allah

>mfw knew what the responses would be even before they were posted

Never change, Veeky Forums

>[The Islamic Golden Age] wasn’t that Islamic.
Well it was, it's just that Islamic back then meant a lot of different things than Islamic today. The article that this comes from isn't saying the era was a myth, but that it shouldn't be called Islamic. It's mostly a fedora opinion, and not any better than the opposite which ascribes strict religiosity to everything about the period.

Stop whining. Since the 7th century there's been an Islamic civilization sharing a common intellectual culture unified by Islam. That civilization and it's intellectual culture is hence called Islamic, and the 'golden age' that it went through in around the time of the Abbasids is called the 'Islamic Golden Age'. It doesn't matter if the a few Christian or Jewish scholars were involved, or if not every Muslim scholar was 100% orthodox Sunni Muslim. It was Islamic because it was a part of Islamic civilization. That's what the 'Islamic golden age' was, a golden age of Islamic civilization, not a 'golden age of Islam', whatever the hell that would mean.

You're basically like those people who claim that ISIS isn't 'real' Islam, except applying it to past accomplishments instead of modern extremism.

al-Khwarizmi was Persian af bro

It was a golden age that happened during the Islamic period

The Islamic golden age was neither Islamic nor golden nor an age.

The funny thing is that Averroes' works were publicly burned after his death and his teachings banned

>"""islamic""" golden age
More like a spaniard pretending to be muslim so as not to not have to pay taxes stumbling upon Greek works.

I guess Galileo was "christian science" then.

Stupid fucking nigger

There is literally no dispute over whether it happened.
The debate was over whether it was truly Islamic in nature or just during Islamic rule. Even then there's no real question

>Even then there's no real question
Correct.

It was DESPITE Islam. It's funny how you refugee cocksucking lefties suddenly become islam theologists when it comes to defending Islam in order to bow down to politically correct pressure. I'm sure all you self-proclaimed theologists don't even know who the Muzatilites and the Asharites were.

>this little girl is clogging up the board

Hey I believe you just insulted me of being a little girl in another thread.

Do you fantasize about raping me? I know you shitkin mudslimes have an unhealthy tendency to want to rape underage girls.

Every accomplishment shilled by muslims is either grossly exaggerated or fabricated.

Calm down, little girl.

>It was DESPITE Islam
Said no historian

Nah m8 during the golden age the Caliphate didn't give a shit about your religion, unlike the Persians and Byzzies. Furthermore, the period of peace and the huge area of trade, along with exceptionally low taxes (even when counting jizya) could not have happened under the Persians or the Romans.

>along with exceptionally low taxes (even when counting jizya)
I've seen claims like this before. Can I see some numbers or a source for it, or something that goes into some detail? Was this just during the Abbasid period, or was true under the Umayyads and Fatimids/Seljuks too?

You're one of the good ones Averroes!

Baneposting is the greatest meme.

>Islamic
>Golden
>Age

>I guess Galileo was "christian science" then.
In some sense yes, but these little periods older historians like dividing history into are defined either by their contrast with other periods, or their relationship with the contemporary period of the historian.

Galileo wasn't part of the Christian Golden Age because there was already a period of time preceding it where Christianity was already the defining point of contrast with the period even further beyond that one. Furthermore to the Enlightenment historian Galileo's era was defined by a rebirth of the Classics, so he becomes a Renaissance scientist even though he himself would probably say he's a Christian.

The Islamic Golden Age is called what it is because to Orientalists there was no other point of contrast from the previous Byzantine/Persian one greater than Islam, whether culturally, theologically, or politically, in the Middle East. And when looking at the decadence of the region in modern times, the Golden Age was to them an obvious height of civilization from which the region deteriorated.

The Westerners came because the Ottomans started sucking. then they self destructed. If Germany had won WWI, they would've lasted only slightly longer, but it was inevitable that they would've collapsed. Everyone who wasn't Turkish loathed the Ottoman elite by WWI.

>it was wealthy but not extraordinarily so

It was filthy rich you fucking retard. The Empire was not, but no Empire becomes the largest on earth without becoming insanely wealthy.

>Islam itself isn't exactly responsible for this beyond providing the catalyst for that unity

It absolutely was, because Islam did not spread quickly. The borders ruled by Muslims did, but early Muslims did not want people converting to Islam, because Muslims can not tax Muslims.

One of the main reasons the Ummayad dynasty fell was because they pissed off new converts by instituting a law making them pay taxes even though they converted.

>this idea that the Islamic world was some progressive liberal scientific paradise

It was. They were the most scientifically advance region on earth, and their art was full of all kinds of gay sex and shit like that. Atheists weren't popular, but they freely debated against religious scholars. These debates were recorded, and no one gave a shit, just like in the west today.

>until the evil Catholics and steppe barbarians arrived

The Islamic Empire grew too decadent, too large. It split apart, and then split further. And then the eastern half was completely murdered. And then some Turks came over. and then they fell.

just like European Empires fell because they became too large and decadent, ruled their populations with fear and murder, and that culture caused a self destruction in the form of WWI and WWII. The only reason Europe isn't worse off than the Middle East right now is because it was propped up by the US.

No one propped up the Middle East.

>our culture

It happened without a doubt. Debatable points are:

>was Islam responsible for it starting?
>was Islam responsible for it ending?
>would another religion have done as well/better/worse in the same situation?

Generally speaking, people will argue according to their preconceptions of Islam, not the historical record. Good luck getting serious answers.

I love baneposts

oh, thank you for exposing the bait. I had this long rant about how incorrect the claim was.

It's like saying atheists in the US aren't influenced by Islam, or have no knowledge of Jesus. Hell, even atheists know the stuff Jesus said was good stuff. It was the same way in the Islamic Empires. People openly disagreed with the prophet, but respected him for eliminating a lot of backwards, pagan ideas about reality.

Yeah that was good times for islam, they had cordoba, constantinople, sicily, tripoli, cairo, damascus. Any oriental or european lords would fund the arts with the money from all those successful conquests

Eventually they became equally poor unsuccessfully defending european conquests and a series of coups from their slave warriors. They still haven't industrialized to this day

Im confused on why the Mongols were so intent on dismantling the Islamic world.. Especially seeing how they converted to Islam. WHy did Timur devastate Mesopotamian architecture and make the Timurids a fucking steppe nomad people? Couldn't they have easily maintained the golden age of commerce and learning the caliphates prior did?

You're one of the good ones Averroes!

You're one of the good ones Averroes!

Well Islamic scholars were studied in European universities from their founding in the 11th century onward and said scholars often predated the founding of European uni's.

The nature of aristocracy and kingship had changed since the 9th century. Originally, there was an emperor of Muslims, the caliph, who legitimized and created mandates for theoretically subservient governors who, in reality, gained their support from the local Muslim aristocracy of their region, which were usually an urbanized if tribal elite of tax farmers and bureaucrats.

By the 15th century however, this had all changed. The caliph was no longer an emperor but a fount of prestige with no real diplomatic power outside of Iraq. The imperial bureaucratic elite were no longer in charge of the military, but instead subservient to tribal nomad confederations formed by soldiers of fortune and their loyal retinue. These nomads dominated the countryside, and with it all overland trade. So leaders like Timur no longer needed legitimacy from the support of an urban elite, but from the respect of career frontiersmen who made their living not through commerce and a knowledge economy but with campaigning and looting.

>The Islamic Empire grew too decadent, too large. It split apart, and then split further. And then the eastern half was completely murdered. And then some Turks came over. and then they fell.
>just like European Empires fell because they became too large and decadent, ruled their populations with fear and murder, and that culture caused a self destruction in the form of WWI and WWII. The only reason Europe isn't worse off than the Middle East right now is because it was propped up by the US.
>No one propped up the Middle East.

I don't want to be that contrarian guy, but Europe did come into the same position after the fall of Rome and still manage to rise up. Sure, you may say they did get some help from the Arab world and they are getting quite harassed but the surrounding world, but at the time the Europeans were raided from three directions of four by Vikings, Arabs and Magyars and the Arabs got much easier to take information from Europe now than the opposite then.
And the African part of the Arab world was never touched by the Mongols or the Timurid, so it wasn't like the entire Arab world were wrecked that way.

Not him, but the period after the fall of Rome isn't that comparable to the post-Mongol Middle East. The Vikings, Arabs, and Magyars raided, but didn't actually destroy the wealth and infrastructure of Europe. In the case of the first two, they even opened up Western Europe to the wealth of the growing North Sea trade and the agricultural developments of the Middle East. European wealth was based on its agriculture and industry, which these raids didn't disrupt and even saw them improve by the end of the period.

Middle Eastern wealth on the other hand was all about trade, and the 13th century did a real number on it. The Mongols disrupted its flow and changed it from large scale urban merchant caravans to steppe tribes, made the border between Syria and Iran dangerous for trade, and in the following centuries of war with Egypt and Turkey destroyed urbanized society throughout the Middle East. And meanwhile, while Africa wasn't touched by the Mongols, the Iberians and Italians certainly did. The fall of Granada, the conquests of North African coastal towns, and the supremacy of Latin maritime trade and piracy whittled away at North African wealth and stability and eventually led to the loss of urban culture as well.

Basically, the raids after the fall of Rome forced Western Europe into the towns, monasteries, and cities that formed the basis of its economic prosperity, while the raids and conquests of the Middle East after the 13th century ultimately disintegrated them into the tribes and empty countryside that defines their poverty to this day.

>Islamic
>Golden
>Age

it's a leftist myth spun by the faggots in ivory towers much like the supposed "dark ages" of western christendom

Averoes was born in Cordoba bro...

You're one of the good ones Averroes!

It is extremely adaptable to any situations. Few memes are like that

You're one of the good ones, Averroes

The paintings of gay sex were done in private circles. It was as liberal as the Victorian Era or the middle east today.

In private people drank alcohol and painted lewd things (illegally), but in public it was outlawed and punished.

/thread

/comment

Among other contributions, much classical thought would have been lost to history without the interest of Arabic thinkers. They translated, and thus preserved many much that Europeans were content to burn, or write over.

They dug around in Cordoba a lot recently and found pretty much no trace of the supposed 500k muslim city.

>Islamic
>Golden
>Age

It says a great deal about the supposed
>Islamic
>golden
>age

that the first achievement they can think of is that they allegedly preserved the works of classical antiquity.

Arabs claiming the scientific and philosophical genius of Persians and later aping it.

Exactly. Especially when Muslims today are all about how the only book people should ever need is the Q'uran. Should just call the golden age after the dynasties.

>Europeans were content to burn
What? You've been watching too much John Green. Byzantium did this too and to a greater extent

>tfw most American teachers are either fedora tipping atheists or anti-catholic protestants
>thus all of them teach that Catholicism burnt books from Roman antiquity

Plenty of Arab rulers burned and banned classical works as well. There was no one group who acted homogeneously in embracing or denying classical civilization. All traditions have purists and syncretists.

Al Andalus fag

Lots of rehashing, refining, and recording of Greek, Persian, Indian knowledge.

Very little innovation.

No one even talks about Byzantium. Byzantium a shit.

>I have never read Avicenna the post.

Basically all Greek stuff rehashed.

yeah it is funny

>>I have never read Avicenna the post.

Says you.

>None, however, of the Muslim philosophers engaged so much in transmitting Aristotle’s lore as did the two men just mentioned (Avicenna and al-Farabi).
- al Ghazali

aub.edu.lb/fas/cvsp/Documents/reading_selections/CVSP 202/Al-ghazali.pdf

Even his fellow Muslims from the Muslim golden age agree that he was primarily rehashing the Greeks.

This is not about the Muslim 'Golden age', more about the Crusades. It has like a paragraph about it