The Golden Age of Islam

The golden mount up of Moslem (and/or Muslim) art lasted from 750 to the 16th century, when c datemics, glass, metalwork, textiles, illuminated manuscripts, and woodwork flourished. Lustrous glazing was an Moslem contribution to ceramics. Islamic luster-painted ceramics were imitated by Italian potters during the Renaissance. Manuscript illumination veritable into an important and greatly respected art, and portrait small painting flourished in Persia.Calligraphy, an essential aspect of written Arabic, genuine in manuscripts and architectural decoration. This paper volition examine the Islamic literature, music and philosophers. The most easily know work of fiction from the Islamic foundation was The mass of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), which was a compilation of m each earlier folk tales told by the Persian Queen Scheherazade. The expansive took form in the 10th century and reached its final form by the 14th century the pattern and type of tales have va ried from one manuscript to another.All Arabian hallucination tales were often cal lead Arabian Nights when translated into incline, regardless of whether they appeared in The record book of One Thousand and One Nights, in any version, and a number of tales are kn confess in Europe as Arabian Nights despite alive in no Arabic manuscript (L. Sprague de Camp, pg. 10). This epic has been influential in the West since it was translated in the eighteenth century, first by Antoine Galland. Many imitations were written, especially in France. Various characters from this epic have themselves become heathen icons in Western culture, such as Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba.However, no medieval Arabic source has been traced for Aladdin, which was incorporated into The Book of One Thousand and One Nights by its French translator, Antoine Galland, who heard it from an Arab Syrian Christian fictionteller from Aleppo. place of its popularity may have sprung from the increasing historical and g eographical knowledge, so that places of which little was known and so marvels were slick had to be set further long ago or farther far away this is a process that continues, and finally culminate in the fantasy world having little connection, if any, to actual times and places.A number of elements from Arabian mythology and Persian mythology are now common in modern-day fantasy, such as genies, bahamuts, wizardly carpets, magic lamps, etc ( crapper Grant and John Cute, pg. 52). When L. Frank Baum proposed writing a modern fairy tale that banished stereotypic elements, he included the genie as well as the dwarf and the fairy as stereotypes to go. Ferdowsis Shahnameh, the guinea pig epic of Iran, is a mythical and heroic retelling of Persian history.Amir Arsalan was also a popular mythical Persian story, which has influenced some modern whole caboodle of fantasy fiction, such as The Heroic Legend of Arslan. A known example of Arabic poetry and Persian poetry on romance (love) is Layla and Majnun, dating back to the Umayyad era in the 7th century. It is a tragic story of undying love much identical the later onwards Romeo and Juliet, which was itself said to have been inspired by a Latin version of Layli and Majnun to an extent. Ibn Tufail (Abubacer) and Ibn al-Nafis were pioneers of the philosophical clean.Ibn Tufail wrote the first pretended Arabic novel Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (Philosophus Autodidactus) as a response to al-Ghazalis The Incoherence of the Philosophers, and then Ibn al-Nafis also wrote a novel Theologus Autodidactus as a response to Ibn Tufails Philosophus Autodidactus. Both of these narratives had protagonists (Hayy in Philosophus Autodidactus and Kamil in Theologus Autodidactus) who were autodidactic feral children living in seclusion on a desert island, both being the earliest examples of a desert island story.However, piece of music Hayy lives alone with animals on the desert island for the rest of the story in Philosophus Autodidactu s, the story of Kamil extends beyond the desert island displace in Theologus Autodidactus, developing into the earliest known coming of age plot and eventually becoming an aboriginal example of proto-science fiction (John Grant and John Cute, pg. 52). Theologus Autodidactus, written by the Arabian polymath Ibn al-Nafis (12131288), is an early example of proto-science fiction.It deals with unhomogeneous science fiction elements such as spontaneous generation, futurology, and the end of the world and doomsday. Rather than giving apparitional or mythological explanations for these events, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to explain these plot elements using the scientific knowledge of biology, astronomy, cosmology and geology known in his time. His main purpose behind this science fiction work was to explain Islamic phantasmal teachings in terms of science and philosophical system through the use of fiction.A Latin translation of Ibn Tufails work, Philosophus Autodidactus, first appeared i n 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke the Younger, followed by an English translation by Simon Ockley in 1708, as well as German and Dutch translations. These translations later inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe, regarded as the first novel in English (James Thurber, pg. 64). Philosophus Autodidactus also inspired Robert Boyle to write his own philosophical novel set on an island, The Aspiring naturalist (James Thurber, pg. 64).The story also anticipated Rousseaus Emile or, On Education in some ways, and is also similar to Mowglis story in Rudyard Kiplings The Jungle Book as well as Tarzans story, in that a baby is throw away but taken care of and fed by a mother wolf. Dante Alighieris Divine Comedy, considered the greatest epic of Italian literature, derived umteen features of and episodes about the hereafter directly or indirectly from Arabic works on Islamic eschatology the Hadith and the Kitab al-Miraj (translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before (James Thurber, pg. 4) as Liber Scale Machometi, The Book of Muhammads Ladder) concerning Muhammads ascension to Heaven, and the spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi. The Moors also had a noticeable influence on the works of George Peele and William Shakespeare. Some of their works featured Moorish characters, such as Peeles The Battle of Alcazar and Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus and Othello, which featured a Moorish Othello as its title character. These works are said to have been inspired by several(prenominal) Moorish delegations from Morocco to Elizabethan England at the beginning of the 17th century (Nazami, 1980).A number of musical instruments used in classical music are believed to have been derived from Arabic musical instruments the lute was derived from the alud, the rebec (ancestor of violin) from the rebab, the guitar from qitara, naker from naqareh, adufe from al-duff, alboka from al-buq, anafil from al-nafir, exabeba from al-shabbaba (flute), atabal (bass drum) fr om al-tabl, atambal from al-tinbal, the balaban, the castanet from kasatan, sonajas de azofar from sunuj al-sufr, the conical bore perfume instruments, the xelami from the sulami or fistula (flute or musical pipe), the shawm and dulzaina from the reed instruments zamr and al-zurna, the gaita from the ghaita, rackett from iraqya or iraqiyya, the harp and zither from the qanun, canon from qanun, geige (violin) from ghichak, and the theorbo from the tarab.A speculation on the origins of the Western solfege musical notation suggests that it may have also had Arabic origins. It has been argued that the Solfege syllables (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti) may have been derived from the syllables of the Arabic solmization system Durr-i-Mufassal (Separated Pearls) (dal, ra, mim, fa, sad, lam). This origin heory was first proposed by Meninski in his Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalum (1680) and then by Laborde in his Essai sur la Musique Ancienne et Moderne (1780). See as well the gifted Ziryab (A bu l-Hasan Ali Ibn Nafi). Ottoman military bands are thought to be the oldest variety of military marching band in the world. Though they are often known by the Persian-derived word Mehter. The standard instruments employed by a Mehter are Bass drum (timpani), the kettledrum (nakare), Frame drum (davul), the Cymbals (zil), Oboes and Flutes, Zurna, the Boru (a tolerant of trumpet), Triangle (instrument), and the Cevgen (a kind of stick bearing small concealed bells).These military bands inspired many Western nations and especially the Orchestra enliven the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Arab philosophers like al-Kindi (Alkindus) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Persian philosophers like Ibn Sina (ibn-Sina) played a major role in preserving the works of Aristotle, whose ideas came to dominate the non-religious thought of the Christian and Muslim worlds. They would also absorb ideas from China, and India, adding to them tremendous knowledge from their own stu dies. Three speculative thinkers, al-Kindi, al-Farabi, and Avicenna (Ibn Sina), fused Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam, such as Kalam and Qiyas.This led to Avicenna founding his own Avicennism school of philosophy, which was influential in both Islamic and Christian lands. Avicenna was also a critic of Aristotelian logic and gift of Avicennian logic, and he developed the concepts of empiricism and tabula rasa, and peremptory between essence and existence. From Spain the Arabic philosophic literature was translated into Hebrew, Latin, and Ladino, contributing to the development of modern European philosophy. The Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides, Muslim sociologist-historian Ibn Khaldun, Carthage citizen Constantine the African who translated ancient Greek medical texts, and the Muslim Al-Khwarzimis collation of mathematical techniques were important figures of the luxurious Age.One of the most influential Muslim philosophers in the West was Averroes (Ibn Rushd), founder of the Averroism school of philosophy, whose works and commentaries had an clash on the rise of secular thought in Western Europe (Nawal Muhammad Hassan, 1980) He also developed the concept of existence precedes essence. Another influential philosopher who had a significant influence on modern philosophy was Ibn Tufail. His philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, translated into Latin as Philosophus Autodidactus in 1671, developed the themes of empiricism, tabula rasa, nature versus nurture, condition of possibility, materialism, and Molyneuxs Problem. European scholars and writers influenced by this novel include John Locke, Gottfried Leibniz, Melchisedech Thevenot, John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens. George Keith, Robert Barclay, the Quakers, and Samuel Hartlib(Nawal Muhammad Hassan, 1980).Al-Ghazali also had an important influence on Jewish thinkers like Maimonides and Christian medieval philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas. However, al-Ghazali also wrote a devastating critique in his The Incoherence of the Philosophers on the speculative theological works of Kindi, Farabi and Ibn Sina. The study of metaphysics lineaged in the Muslim world collectible to this critique, though Ibn Rushd (Averroes) responded strongly in his The Incoherence of the Incoherence to many of the points Ghazali raised. Nevertheless, Avicennism continued to flourish long after and Islamic philosophers continued making advances in philosophy through to the 17th century, when Mulla Sadra founded his school of Transcendent Theosophy and developed the concept of existentialism.Other influential Muslim philosophers include al-Jahiz, a pioneer of evolutionary thought and natural woof Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen), a pioneer of phenomenology and the philosophy of science and a critic of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Aristotles concept of place (topos) Biruni, a critic of Aristotelian natural philosophy Ibn Tufail and Ibn al-Nafis, pioneers of the philosoph ical novel Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi, founder of Illuminationist philosophy Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, a critic of Aristotelian logic and a pioneer of inductive logic and Ibn Khaldun, a pioneer in the philosophy of history and social philosophy. Despite a number of attempts by many writers, historical and modern, none seem to agree on the causes of decline.The main views on the causes of decline comprise the next political mismanagement after the early Caliphs (10th century onwards), foreign involvement by invading forces and compound powers (11th century Crusades, 13th century Mongol Empire, 15th century Reconquista, 19th century European compound empires), and the disruption to the cycle of equity based on Ibn Khalduns famous model of Asabiyyah (the rise and fall of civilizations) which points to the decline being mainly due to political and economic factors.References 1. L. Sprague de Camp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers The Makers of Heroic Fantasy, p 10 ISBN 0-87054-076-9 2. John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, Arabian fantasy, p 52 ISBN 0-312-19869-8 3. James Thurber, The Wizard of Chitenango, p 64 Fantasists on Fantasy edited by Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski, ISBN 0-380-86553-X 4. NIZAMI LAYLA AND MAJNUN English Version by Paul smith 5. Nahyan A. G. Fancy (2006), Pulmonary Transit and Bodily Resurrection The Interaction of Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in the Works of Ibn al-Nafis (d. 1288), pp. 95101, Electronic Theses and Dissertations, University of Notre Dame. 3 6. Dr. Abu Shadi Al-Roubi (1982), Ibn Al-Nafis as a philosopher, Symposium on Ibn al Nafis, Second International Conference on Islamic Medicine Islamic Medical Organization, Kuwait (cf. Ibnul-Nafees As a Philosopher, Encyclopedia of Islamic World). 7. Nawal Muhammad Hassan (1980), Hayy bin Yaqzan and Robinson Crusoe A study of an early Arabic impact on English literature, Al-Rashid House for Publication.