Transcript Abbasid Culture

Abbasid Culture
743 – Civil War amongst Umayyads
• Non-Arab Muslims (in Persia) feel egalitarian promises are
unfulfilled?
• Sunni and Shia divisions manifest
• 750, Umayyads deposed
• Caliph Abu'l Abbas
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Early followers of Mohammed
Took few risks
Shiite support for 'salvationist' promise
Return to holier Islam
Abbasid
• Move capital from Damascus
• Splendor of Baghdad
• 30 miles from Persian capital
of Ctesiphon
• Persianisation of the
Caliphate
• Orients Caliphate, locus of
authority to the east
Unites empires, cultures
• India, Persia, Rome
• Doesn't break from Umayyad tradition as thought,
metropolitan empire, less Mediterranean emphasis
• Begins as Shia victory, monarchy stamps out egalitarianism
• No more great conquests
• 717, Siege of Constantinople broken
• 733, Tours and Charles Martel
Spanish Umayyad
• Umayyad massacre and the leather tablecloth
• Abdar Raman to Spain following banquet
• First Islamic ruler to defy Caliph
• Independent Islamic Province, Emir
• 929, Córdova
Al Andalus
• Umayyad dynasty in Córdova
• Almohad Dynasty, Berbers
• Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212
• Critical Victory in the Reconquista
• 722, Battle of Covadonga
• Nasrid Dynasty and construction of Granada
Abbasid Administration
• Wealth from taxation, central army
• Nobility not local potentates or warlords
• Complex administration with civilian bureaucracy
• Taxes still assess at double rates for non-Muslims
• Baghdad wealthiest and most important city in the world
• Governorship entrusted to bureaucrats
Cultural Programme
• Planned and centrally funded
• Translations of science, geography, math, philosophy and
medicine from Greek and Persian
• 830, House of Wisdom
• Conducted research
• Greek scientific works
• Treaty with Constantinople, lend Ptolemy Almagest
Classical Science, Philosophy
• Persian and Arabian poetic tradition
• Interest in Euclid, Dioscourides
• Aristotle, all of it…and he wrote on everything
• Comprehensive understanding of encyclopedic philosophy,
understanding of material world/nature
• Rationality – all things can be understood…even God – prime
mover theory. Root of deists.
• Influence to Islam, Judaism, and Christianity
• Averroes, Maimonides, Aquinas – all Aristotelian
• Arabic translated into Latin for Aquinas
Assimilation of Conquered
Cultures
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Great success in Abbasid Caliphate
Expansion of science, too
Quick conquest and painless
Not religious war
Elimination of old frontiers – Persian and Greek astronomy,
Arabic numerals (which are from India). Chess, from India
also.
• Elimination of linguistic boundaries – Arabic the language of
science (Maimonides and Mozarabic Spain)
• Attitude of conquerors and conquered
• 'Garden protected by our spears'
• Confidence in Islam, no need to convert people, also to accept
new ideas
• Islamic conquest seemed beneficial to locals. Martyrs of Córdoba
Mathematics
• Arabic numbers (India) and the concept of 0
• Trigonometry and sine function (India)
• All the others developed by Arabs
• House of Wisdom, The Book of Addition and
Subtraction According to the Hindu Calculation
• Decimals, square roots, pi, algebra (al jabr balance), star tables, time and navigation.
• Omar Kyayaam – non-Euclidian geometry, poetry,
astronomy, medicine.
Geography
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Fascination for travel, navigation, anthropologies
Circumference of the world, interest in the scope of water
Ptolmey's Almagest highly valued
Al-Idrisi, Geography for the King of Sicily
Ibn Khaldun 1332-1406
• Tunis to Indonesia and China
Medicine
• Primary authority is Galen
• Transmission of the four humors
• Four essential fluids to determine health and
attitude
• Correspond to the four elements, climates
• Earth, air, fire, water
• Bile yellow – fire, blood – air, phlegm – water,
black bile - earth
• Sickness comes when something out of whack
• Avicenna 980-1037, Persian physician Cannon
• Based on observation