Oct. 23 Islamic world  and 10th century crisis

 

Thursday: Al-Andalusi, Categories of Nations (web; better to use the shortened version that I emailed out or that is on Course Connect site)

Islamic house (hand-out)

 

Bulliet, Ch. 13 (336-338); Ch. 7 (188, for "Arabic" numerals); Ch. 8 (210 - 218), and Ch. 15 (370-386), for spread of Islam into Africa and Indian Ocean)

 

•I. Islamic world in 8th-11th centuries CE

–A. Intellectual life

–B. Trading network

 

•II. Disintegration of Carolingian Empire

 

 

I. Islamic Caliphate

(MAP OF MOSLEM WORLD)

Comparisons with Western Europe

 

State of Islamic world: 9th century CE

            Abbasid Caliphates rule in most of Middle East (except Spain)

            Spain ruled by Umayyads (previous dynasty)

 

A. Islamic intellectual life

 

In the medieval period, Moslems made many advances in logic, natural sciences, physics.

With respect to mathematics: 

            5th – 7th centuries CE: “Arabic” numerals and zero invented in India

            Spread to Middle East, SE Asia, East Asia by 7th century

            Moslem scholars adopted Hindu numerical notation - Arabic numerals

            (not to Europe until 12th – 13th centuries)

            The use of zero as a place holder allowed more sophisticated mathematics than Greeks or Romans had been capable of

            Algebra (from Arabic - al-jabre "reunification")

 

With respect to the natural sciences and physics, they built on work of classical Greeks.

(Remember how the ancient Greeks were first people to think things like illness, nasty weather, and so on were brought about by physical factors - not the gods)

            Hippocratic medicine (balance of four humors determining health) continues in Islamic world

            Greek dialectic and logic, especially as transmitted by Aristotle

            The Greek philosopher Aristotle n 4th c BC had formalized this Greek science and philosophy.

            Aristotle had formalized the scientific method - combining observation with logical deduction.

            He had believed scholars observe nature -  animal, plants, man himself.

            And then explain what they observe,

               Using logical argument and causation 

                        Aristotle's four categories of explanation - form (defining characteristic); matter (constituent elements), origin of movement ("cause"), telos (aim or goal) - still lie at the base of our own use of logic.

 

Moslem scientists also made new discoveries in the Middle Ages

Chemistry - distillation

Optics:

–    prisms;  white light consists of rays of colored light

–    eyeglasses

Mathematics

–    algebra

–    trigonometry (sine, cosine and tangent all from Arabic)

–    negative numbers

 

 

Reasons for intellectual sophistication of Islamic world

1. High literacy rate:  In Islamic world, learning was not confined to the religious elite.

 

2. The Islamic world was intellectual hotbed of Middle Ages, because it maintained more contact with a variety intellectual traditions:

            (Humans advance best when they build on learning of others

            Moslems also had contact with China, India (“Arabic” numerals), Africa

 

3. Classical texts - like Aristotle - had been lost to the Latin world with the fall of the Roman empire, but preserved in the Moslem world.

           

4. Religious reasons:

            high literacy rate because study of Koran encouraged for all believers (no priesthood to intercede between God and believer)

           

            Islam not a dualistic religion – material world not at war with spiritual war.

            This shown in positive attitude towards marriage (no celibate priesthood; Sufis not required to be celibate; Prophet himself married)

            Moslems regarded themselves as God’s stewards of the world; their goal was not to separate themselves from it – but to order it in a just and Godly way.

            The ability to understand the physical world “truth stands clear of error” 

            This positive attitude towards physical world led to greater openness towards science than in early medieval Europe.  (Europeans – carrying on a late antique dualistic tradition – were suspicious of “secular” science; our own notion of “science” as separate from religion is an inheritance of this))

                                                                                                                                             

Moslems had schools of higher learning -  the madrasa  - ancestors of our universities

            The madrasa was a school with resident students.

            They were supported by an endowment (rather like our own private universities), and usually were located in major towns.

            Students would meet with teachers and study Islamic theology and law (fiqh), as well as subsidiary subjets like history, grammar.

            The method of teaching was for teachers to read out passages of text and then have students interpret them.

            They would get a certificate for each course they had taken.

             After madrasa for several years, students could get a job - as merchants, administrators, and so one.

            They would study the madrasa longer if they wanted to become judges (qadis), professors of law, or muftis (religious jurisconsults) -

 

at this higher level, students would carry out formal logical disputations

               stating thesis, counterthesis, conducting dialogue of objections and answers.

 

B. Islamic trading network – stretching from Mediterranean to se Asia to Africa

Africa was the new addition to this trading network:

geographical diversity had prevented much contact with sub-Saharan Africa in ancient world

            (desert; semi arid steppes of Sahel; tropical savanna; tropical rain forest of lower Niger and Zaire Basin; rain forest and Sahara esp. difficult to travel through)

 

city-states on fringe of Sahara – converted to Islam – began first significant trade with sub-Saharan Afirca in 9th century (Bulliet 215) (Berber population – camel using – like Arabs themselves)

GOLD  - from deposits along Niger and other W African rivers – exported to north and east.

Desert nomads traded salt (from desert) for gold

Ghana: first mentioned in Arabic text of late 8th century :  “land of gold”  (archaeology shows dates back to 6th century)

11th c geographer describes cities of Ghana  – with dozen “mosques” and many scholars

 polytheism dominant religion

not much use of force in spreading Islam to Africa

mostly peaceful conversion and commerce

 

Further south, tropical Africa remained out of contact (climate made it almost impossible for medieval traders from the north to visit)

Here the first millennium CE was period of expansion by Bantu speaking peoples (from Nigeria, Cameroon)

Bantus – farmers (of yams and grains), and fishermen, living in villages on edges of rain forest; domesticated goats and dogs; manufactured pottery and cloth

            great military and agricultural advantage was iron – which they spread to other parts of sub-Saharan Africa (iron axes and hoes esp. useful for clearing forests)

Bantu had become dominant language family in central Africa by 8th century CE

 

commonalities in African civilization:

            kingship (ritual isolation of king)

            for agriculture, hoe and digging stick common techniques

            **music – emphasis on rhythm; important in social rituals –

 

So partly because of African gold and other goods, the Islamic world became much richer than western Europe in the early Middle Ages

 

Dependence of  Carolingian Empire on indirect wealth from Islamic world

            Venetians and Scandinavians served as middle – men (huge numbers of Arabic coins found in 8th and early 9th century Scandinavia)

            slaves were major export from Europe to Islamic world 

                                                                                                                                              h

 

II.  COLLAPSE OF CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE AND problem of the knights 

Background to this lies in the Middle East:  the Abbasid Caliphate fell into disorder in mid 9th century CE

Almost immediately, the coin finds of Arabic coins in Scandinavia decrease, and trading ports of the Carolingian Empire (like Dorestadt) are abandoned.

So economic crisis is occurring – hitting the Scandinavians particularly hard.

They turn from trading to raiding – and their particular targets are Carolingian Empire and Britain, which were not in a good state to defend themselves.

 

A. Disintegration of Carolingian Empire

Carolingian Empire from north and east -  the Vikings and the Magyars.

 

Invaders of the 9th century:

MAGYARS

 

The Magyars were pagan nomads from central Asia who invaded eastern Europe ninth century.

They attacked the eastern Carolingian Empire - eastern Germany, Hungary, and so on.

Modern Hungarians partially descended from them.

Their great military advantage was their ability to fight on horseback - great cavalry warriors.

 

VIKINGS

 

At about the same time, the people of Scandinavia began to raid the coastal regions of western Europe.

Who were the Vikings?  - peoples of northern Europe - the Scandinavians – speaking Germanic languages.

 

Beginning in the 9th century, the Scandinavians - called Vikings - began to sail up the rivers of Europe, raiding monasteries esp.

These Vikings were still pagans.

They had no complex political system – no coinage, no literature (only runes), no cities.

(and by the way, no helmets with horns like Hagar the Horrible)

What they had was an amazing skill with  boats.

Peoples like the Franks fought only on land; they had no navy.

The Vikings had invented a new sort of boat called the longboat – with both oars and sails –

            (about 65 feet long, carrying 40 to 60 men; Carolingians had no navy)

These longboats could travel both on the ocean (the Scandinavians made it to America), and on European rivers.

Armed Vikings would row these boats, and leap out to attack a monastery or village, before any military  response could be made.

The Franks could usually defeat the Vikings if it came to a pitched battle – but it rarely came to a battle.

In the 2nd half of the 9th century, such Viking raiding parties appeared all over Europe – in the heartland of the Carolingian empire, in Anglo-Saxon England.

At first the Vikings raided, and left.

Then they began to look for places to settle permanently – some went to Iceland and Greenland on the Atlantic.

Iceland today still has a government which was set up by 10th century Vikings – one of the oldest continuous governments on earth.

Vinland was the name for Scandinavian settlements in North America.

Archaeologists had discovered their remains – mostly in eastern Canada , perhaps into New England - ;  they did not last long.

In addition to these settlements in the Atlantic, the Vikings began to settle in Europe itself – esp. Britain and Ireland, but also in western France.

 The Scandinavians eventually founded a new state in western Europe itself – Normandy in 911.

 The Normans kept the warlike tendencies of the Vikings while adopting the French language.

Normandy is important for us – because the Normans will conquer England in the next century – 1066, leading to the creation of our language – modern English – among other things.

 

- Vikings in Russia began as slave traders ("slave" from "Slav"); began Kievan principality by early 10th cnetury

 

So to sum up the Vikings –

pagans from Scandinavia, with a new technology – the longboat – and the skill to use it.

They became raiders in 9th century of the Carolingian empire and Britain.

By the 10th century, they began to colonize places  – Iceland, North America, Normandy in France.

 

Around 1000 AD, a near total break down in royal authority in much of Europe..

 

With the weakening of kingship by the late 10th century - local aristocrats ("lords") rule

            Dukes, counts, and even lesser nobles began to act like mini-kings in the areas of influence ("counties") -

            They collected the taxes, they decided to wage war - usually against their neighbors; they judged legal disputes and crimes

            (so we have gone from democracy, oligarchy, monarch - to aristocracy)