Islamic Golden Age - Philosophy and Humanities

[Music] today the religion of Islam boasts almost 2 billion followers still the faith itself comes from humble origins Islam began as a religious movement turned small nation then Empire in the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century then a sprawling multi-ethnic multicultural and even multi-religious country at the crossroads of Eurasian trade and cultural exchange it's no surprise then that the ideas cultures and people moving through the Islamic empire combined with a friendly theology and government led to what's called the Islamic Golden Age this series will discuss the contributions made to humankind in this period a time of massive developments in science philosophy and medicine today we're going to look at the humanities and social sciences as well as explain how this Golden Age came to be but this point you probably have watched everything on your streaming services are bored and are in need of more content the sponsor of this video North VPN as you covered north VPN is not only 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the Islamic empire enjoyed such a blossoming of thought comes from Islam itself somewhat unusually many parts of the Islamic holy texts the Quran and the hadith place value on education and scientific discovery regardless of the informations origin Muslim scholars did not by and large take issue with learning from the works of non-muslims to advance their body of knowledge a Muslim scholar by the name of berhan Alton proclaimed that education should be prescribed for everyone a novel idea for the Middle Ages Muslims would enjoy a high literacy rate due to their emphasis on learning and education as part of a well lived life schools would not only give kids a good grasp of Islamic law and analysis but bring young scholars from different classes and backgrounds together to share ideas in a state as large and diverse as the Islamic empire this led to a lot of cross-pollination of ideas data in the Golden Age this process of Education was formalized by schools known as madrassas they were mosques boarding houses and libraries in a single compound some of these became the first universities to give out degrees additionally the Muslim Empire invested massively in the work of scientists and philosophers the amount the government spent in translation was massive rivaling some of the research budgets of our times the symbol of this period would be the Great House of Wisdom in Baghdad a massive library built by the Islamic Emperor caliph al-mansur the House of Wisdom is so fundamental to the Islamic Golden Age that its construction and obliteration are viewed as the start and end of it it was one of the world's biggest assortments of rare books in Persian and air the engine at the heart of this fast-growing golden age was the translation movement the Islamic empire in most of its domain contains 10% or fewer Muslims and very few spoke Arabic as they expanded into the society and Empire they found a large class of Persian scholars as well as Greek academics who left the Byzantine Empire the Caliphate connected them into a vast network of Trade and information but also added Arabic into the linguistics too much of the information coming into the Empire was in Persian Greek or Arabic but could also be in Latin Chinese or any number of written languages from around Eurasia at the time scientific advancement aside if the Caliphate wanted to function as an empire it needed an army of translators to keep the flow of information running when it made Baghdad its new imperial capital the elites were inspired by Persian and Hellenistic ideas its drove a desire to learn more from the classical Greeks furthermore in the aftermath of the Battle of Talas in 751 the Empire captured several Chinese prisoners of war what might seem like a banal event turned out to be one of the most important breakthroughs as it allowed for the translation movement and possibly the whole Golden Age these prisoners knew how to make paper which could make books easier than vellum or parchment the first significant translation projects included taking Islamic holy texts like the Quran and translating them into various languages to spread Islam around the Empire and the world furthermore the classical works of the ancient Greeks and Persian texts were translated into Arabic which would become a new lingua franca around the empire proficiency in Arabic allowed for a language between coaches one particularly gifted linguist translated well over a hundred works by famous authors like Galan and hippocrates in cases like the work of Aristotle the Arabic translations are how the work even survives to modern day places like the House of Wisdom had extensive translation departments with subject experts ready to work on pieces these experts came from all over the Empire and many were sir assed Rian's and Christians working with Muslims once a work was translated they made several copies for distribution using scribes with especially good handwriting this movement is the work that kept the Western Canon preserved with that established now we can look into these social sciences and the humanities which in the Middle Ages is just philosophy the social sciences were a long way off from being formalized however a man by the name of even khaldun who lived during the Islamic Golden Age is often considered the founder of many social sciences like demography economics historiography and sociology eben Curtin was an upper-class Tunisian scholar due to the status of his family he received a top-tier classical Islamic education this education would include Arabic Quran and hadith studies and lore and jurisprudence study he also successfully underwent the tasks to become a Hafiz which is a torturous process very few Muslims do to memorize the entire Quran on top of this education he learned maths philosophy and classical logic the Tippin Khaldun didn't get into all of his social science work until after he finished a successful career as a politician in particularly unstable times in Tunisia in the last years of his life he penned an autobiography as well as a world history book called the kitab ali bar or the book of lessons to this day the books chapters on the history of north african Berber people are still used as a source in the book he speaks of two different walks of life both common in North Africa of his day that of nomadic and sedentary people's he wrote of the effects of the conquest of the city on its inhabitants those are based on a central concept called a severe or social cohesion it might seem rudimentary but this is considered some of the first works of sociological research as he broke down the concept he spoke of social factors leading to economic political and even psychological differences in cultures this type of work would not see serious scholarly development until the 19th century when discussing economics it appears eben Khaldun is responsible for developing the labor theory of value a central concept of economics even today ideas like economic growth taxation and GDP are centuries ahead of their time if not a millennium lastly he made a strict bifurcation of what he called the non religious sciences and the religious sciences it was an attempt to settle a significant debate between those who wanted to focus on science and philosophy and scholars who promoted a mystic understanding of Islamic theology where the humanities shined however was in philosophy Islamic philosophy in this age subscribes to one of two major currents the first was Kalam which focused more on questions to do with theology this featured discussions about freewill and rationality one sect which took a rigorous adherence to rationality as the proper way to understand questions of theology were the Matassa lights they in turn debated with any other schools such as mater IDIA which did not see the hadith as reliable texts at odds with reason and largely believed in free will another major theological school was the ashari whose concepts of free will were limited to choosing possibilities outlined for you by an all-knowing God much of the logic and discussions these currents had with each other spoke of heavy influence from Greek philosophers one medieval theologian even Tamiya even described many of these discussions as Greek solutions to Greek problems which should never have concerned Muslims in the first eben Tamia's criticism speaks to another significant theological divergence in Islamic philosophy all of these schools use reasoned approaches to Islam and as such rejected literalist interpretations this did not go unopposed by some in the clergy who worried that this kind of thinking challenged their status in society however the remnants of Calem scholars still have a significant presence in the Islam of today Kalam is now merely the word for theology and Islamic theology is still very academic the second major school of philosophy is what we might more easily recognize as philosophy today even at the time they borrowed the word philosophy from Greek and called this school felt safer these were the scholars who discussed and built upon the works of Aristotle Pythagoras and Plato publishing massive commentaries and philosophical texts some of these scholars were responsible for introducing their ideas as well as those of the Greeks and Hindus into Western Christian thought this transfer of knowledge is one of the main reasons Aristotle went on to play such a significant role in Christian theology one philosopher eben sinner broke ground in the realm of metaphysics metaphysics is the area of philosophy which attempts to understand the fundamentals of reality the study of objects properties and existence itself one major schism when it comes to the prominent Greek philosophers of Aristotle and Plato was a debate about forms the form or essence of something is what makes an object fundamentally that sort of thing its shape highlights and so forth a triangle is a triangle because it has three sides as a basic example Plato believed that all things even abstract things existed in a world of forms where the perfect idea of a thing exists what we see are mere shadows of that thing Aristotle rejected this idea opting to believe that an object's form existed in this world and that all objects were made of both object and for eben sinner wanted to marry these two ideas in an exploration of the soul and also to prove the soul exists he did so with a thought experiment it's a famous one from philosophical history the floating man in this he wants to imagine a man falling freely in the air with no ability to see other things in reference to oneself a person could still experience their presence and consciousness they been sinner believed this to be evidence that there is a soul which is immaterial within showing both external properties but also of another plane attempting to marry the two concepts this idea is very similar to the famous starting point for decart whose centuries later which become famous for his line cogito ergo sum I think therefore I am in the realm of epistemology the philosophical work of understanding knowledge learning and understanding philosophers works to understand the human mind for the sake of this video let's discuss one back and forth in the realm of the story of self-education also known as autodidact ism Arab philosopher a banal novice to explore the idea of how one might learn without any other humans wrote a philosophical novel called theologian autodidact as' this novel was a first on many fronts founding many literary mainstays it was one of the first Arabic language novels ever made it had a coming-of-age story long before that was to become a popular theme it took place on a desert island of which it may have been one of the first examples it even had elements of the Apocalypse and explaining the afterlife with astronomy biology and theology which have led some historians to consider it a very early inkling of what would become science fiction the novel itself is about a boy who spontaneously came to life on a desert island and meets castaways who wind up on his home I banal novice wrote the main character Camille to be a complete human blank slate in which to observe the world it's about how an uninitiated person comes to find the necessity of God Islam and rationality the character then explores the sciences and philosophy it's not a page-turner but it acted as an essay to explore many different ideas about the world I banal novice knew about as a polymath it was a response to a desert island book called heyy bunny actin which itself was a response to the incoherence of the philosophers they were interested in which aspects of rational thought and belief came innately from the human mind and which had been learned theologian autodidact hearse and hay eben yak tan both featured feral children who explored their various ideas on it these philosophers would have massive impacts on philosophers throughout the centuries eben Sinha mentioned earlier is often called in the West Avicenna and is one of the Great's avaroa saw eben rushed as well as Al Farabi al-ghazali and al Kindi are all some of the most revered philosophers in the history of ideas their work influenced how Western Christians came to conceive of God the ways they argued his existence and conceptions of the soul the translation projects brought the greco-roman philosophical works to the west where they otherwise might not have been preserved it's tough to conceive of Western civilization without the contributions of the Muslim philosophers of the Islamic Golden Age and we are just scratching the surface with philosophy over the next videos in this series we'll look at other places where the Islamic Golden Age changed the world next time we'll look at the sciences as well as mathematics then medicine and healthcare then inventions and engineers of the Islamic Golden Age and the multitude of technological innovations so make sure you are subscribed to our Channel and have pressed the bell button we would like to express our gratitude to our patreon supporters and channel members who make the creation of our videos possible now you can also support us by buying our merchandise by the link in the description this is the kings and Generals channel and we catch you on the next one

Channel: Kings and Generals

Views: 750,602

Rating: 4.8340616 out of 5

Keywords: golden age, islamic golden age, golden age of islam, science in a golden age, history of islam, philosophy, humanities, middle east, house of wisdom, kings and generals, king and generals, full documentary, decisive battles, military history, documentary film, history documentary, history lesson, world history, history channel, animated historical documentary, animated documentary, ancient rome, roman empire, yarmouk, al qadisiyyah, byzantine empire, ancient greece

Id: 9M5wyH4kNZE

Length: 16min 57sec (1017 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/_AlgerianBoy03_]

I'm not crying, you are !