The world is held up by four pillars: The wisdom of the learned, the justice of the great,the prayers of the righteous and the valour of the brave.'This inscription was found at the entrance to universities in Spain during the Muslim era. It will be noticed that wisdom heads the list, which is not surprising when one recalls that Islam praises learning in several verses in the Glorious Quran, coupled with the proclamation of prophet Muhammed (SAW) that 'scholar's ink is more precious than the martyr's blood.'For several centuries, Muslims remained faithful to this tenet of their religion. According to Philip K. Hitti in his Precis d'Histoire des Arabs, that is, Short History of the Arabs, 'no other people made important contribution to human progress as did the Arabs, if we take this term to mean all those whose mother-tongue was Arabic and not merely those living in the Arabian peninsula. For centuries, Arabic was the language of learning, culcivilisation, it should be borne in mind that this civilisation was not created by the Arabs alone, it was and still is, the work of people of different races and tongues, brought together under Islam into one spiritual and supernatural community. It is not a gain saying that Islam owes the glories of the civilisation through its faith that imparted the lesson of the unity of God and impressed that there is no partner in His sovereignty and authority, and also that He is free from anthropomorphism, injustice and tyranny, defects and shortcomings.When talking about the muslim created in the crucible of Islam, one cannot emphasise strongly enough the formative role played by Arabic, that fascinating language with all its marvellous subtlety and evocative power, which for hundred years, like Latin in christendom during the middle ages, was not only the language of culture but also the virtual lingua franca of all the countries of Islam. Arabic as a liturgical language has left an immense and profound impression on most of the languages of Muslim community and its predominance during the centuries when Islamic civilisation was at its peak.It is not feasible to overlook Muslim's contribution to language and literature during the fourteenth century and later there have been many renowned men of letters, whose literary writings and style bear the lasting impression of the Arabic literature. In 1349 A.D, Boccaccio, and Italian novelist and poet, the author of Decameron, has written stories under the caption 'Ten morns' in which the style of world renowned stories, the Arabian Nights, has been imitated.Shakespear has derived the theme of one of his plays from the Arabian Nights. Also, the German playwright, Lissing, has borrowed the plot of his drama 'Nation, the Physician' from the same source. Chaucer (1340-1400), the father of modern English poetry, has drawn upon Boccaccio most. They had met in Italy, and it was after that that he had written his 'Canterbury Tales', the famous poem of Dante (1265 - 1321) , 'Divina Comedia'in which he has recounted the tales of his journey to the other world. It has been said that Dante, at the time of writing this poem, had on his mind deep impression of the treaties 'Gufran'by Abul-ula Al-Mu'arra and all that Ibne-Arabi has written about the Genii. Emperor Frederick II was fond of cultural pursuit and pastimes, studied the cultural literature in the Arabic language. Dante was acquainted with the life of the Prophet Muhammed and the details of the ascent of Prophet and the accounts of the heavens furnished by the holy traditions.Some stories among theArabs during the middle ages had a deep impact on Europe during the renaissance. These stories included stories of horsemanship and other feats of strength and valour that the renowned Arabs had performed for the sake of love and magnificence. In this connection, the translations of the Arabian Nights' into the European languages had a profound effect on the European fiction. More than three hundred editions of this book have been published in the European langauges. So much so that several critics of Europe are of the opinion that the travelogue by Swift and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, are both indebted to the Arabian Nights and Hai bin-e-Nafeezan, the Arab philosopher.It is impossible to overlook Muslim's civilisation's debt to seldjuk era, the artistic monuments of which can still be seen today at Kenya and to the Timurid Renaissance in Central Asia in the 15th Century, when the towns of Samardand, Bukhara and Herat were famous centres of learning and letters. It is equally impossible to ignore its debt to the Persian principalities of the Samanidis and the Buyids.The origin of Muslim civilsationWhen Islam made its appearance in the world in the middle of the seventh century, Graeco-Latin civilisation was already on the wane. Byzantrium called upon to continue the tradition of Athens and Rome, had failed in her mission. Not only had she been unable to preserve the cultural treasures which was passed into her, but this 'second Rome'was responsible for the destruction of a large number of scientific works and antistic monuments handed down to her from antiquity.Ignorant Basilei emperor,spurred on the by the fanatism of the orthodox adherents of Byzantium, strove to destory the vestiges of a reputed civilisation. Emperor Theodosius II gained himself a sorry reputation with his large-scale destruction in North Africa. It was on this and not on those of Khalif Omar, to whom a libellous legend has attributed the crime, that the famous library in Alexandria was destroyed.In 489, Emperor Zeno closed the famous school at Edessa, which since the 2nd century, had been a centre for the dissemination of the Syriac language and Greek learning throughout the Orient. Justinian tarnished his reputation by closing the no less reowned Platonic school in Anthens as well as schools in Alexandria.The Nestrorian, Monks of Edessa and Nisibia, and the Athenian and Alexandrian philosophers, persecuated by the Orthodox church and the Byzantine authorities, took refuge in Persia. There, in complete freedom under the tolerant protection of the sassanids, they were able to continue translating the Holy scriptures of the fathers of the church and the philosophical and scientific works of early Greece.It is thanks to the patient work of these refugee scholars that the Arabs, when they conquered Syria and Persia, found an important part of the intellectual heritage of Greece.The Arabs, with their inherent curiosity, were deeply impressed by the world of new ideas and new knowledge opened up to them by this ancient learning. The victors began to study eagerly the arts and sciences of their newly-conquered subjects. They had Arabic translations made first from the Oriental versions of Greek author than of those original works which had not yet been translated into Syriac or Chaldean.However, Islamic civilisation reached its peak during the glorious reigns of Harron ar-Rasheed and Al-Manum about the middle of the 9th century. It is to the Arabs that spain owes its prodigious cultural and material progress between nineth and 12th centures when muslim universities in Andalusia were centres of attraction for the intellectual elite of the whole of the West. During Al-Azhar University's the celebration of thousandth anniverary in 1969, London Times Educational Supplement (9 May, 1969), p 1,489 paid the following tribute.'Al-Azhar's 1,000 years: Older than Oxford or Cambridge, more influential in its heyday than the Sorbonne, more revered even now by its students than any Western University, Al-Azhar, this year, celebrated its thousandth anniversary. It is fitting that tribute should be paid by the West to this centre of Islamic learning in Cairo. Without Al-Azhair's steadfast devotion to scholarship through good times and bad, the torch of the Ancients'learning, guarded by the muslim while Europe was in darkness, might never have survived to spark off the Renaissance.'(To be continued)
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