Hasan A. Yahya, a writer from Palestine
Under the Golden Age of Arab and Islamic Culture Gaston Wiet describes in detail, the civilization aspects of the Abbasid Caliphate . He wrote: "Baghdad, at the confluence of two cultures, Aramaic and Greek, became, in the tenth century, the intellectual center of the world." As capital of the caliphate, Baghdad was also to become the shining cultural capital of the Islamic world.
Our purpose is to show, as briefly as possible, the role that this region played in the transmission of the knowledge of antiquity, in the evolution of religious attitudes, and in the flowering of Arabic literature. We shall not try to find out, any more than did the caliphs of the period, whether the actors were Iranians, Arabs, Moslems, Christians, or Jews. Men of letters and of science had gathered in this city either through cultural affinity or because they had been summoned to the caliph's court for their worth or their competence.
An effort was made to keep the language and the religion at an indispensable cultural level. In reality, there was but a single aim: It was necessary to study the structure and the rules of the language of the Koran in order to have the language respected and understood. We shall not spend too much time on the grammatical work, since we want to follow the more universal tendencies, especially in their influence on medieval Europe. We shall mention only Khalil, the inventor of Arabic prosody, the first author of a dictionary, and especially his pupil Sibawaih, who has the distinction of having codified definitively all the problems of grammar. Later, Mubarrad wrote a work which is not only didactic but a valuable collection of poetic quotations. He also shares with his rival and contemporary, Tha'lab, the honor of having contributed to the philological training of several poets.
Some authors wrote the biography of Mohammed in the broad sense, by including the literature of the hadith, "The Conversations of the Prophet." The names of two of the first authors in this category should be remembered: Muhammad ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham. Two of the founders of the four schools of jurisprudence lived in Baghdad and exerted decisive influence there for a long time. Abu Hanifa is already known to us because of his material participation in the founding of the city. He had the merit of integrating into the formalism of the law a living element, which consisted of both an analogical method and, when necessary, personal common sense. His tomb is still venerated in Baghdad. Opposed to this type of thought stands Ibn Hanbal, whose followers were talked about a great deal during the early centuries of the Mesopotamian city. This austere traditionalist was perhaps the victim of his own work, which is nothing more than a collection of hadith. Indeed, he came to consider tradition, after the Koran, as the only source of law. A fierce enemy of all innovation, Ibn Hanbal created a puritan school within Islam, which still in our day inspires the people of the Saudi kingdom. His tomb was in Baghdad too, but it has disappeared.
The first commentaries on the Koran were written in Baghdad but we shall not spend much time on them. Religious circles were affected by a contemplative movement begun by the Mutazilites, etymologically "those who keep to themselves," as they did during the political quarrels which divided the Moslems the century before. The Mutazilites, preaching essentially that God was a Perfect Being took no attributes other than his unity into account. This conviction led the believers to deny the eternity of God's word; thus, for them, the text of the Koran became a creation of the Divinity. (القرآن مخلوق وليس سرمديا!) This doctrine, with its appeal to reason, is particularly important because three caliphs imposed it officially upon the people in a particularly unpleasant way.
The religious spirit, moreover, was to be undermined by Jahiz and, even more violently, by Razi. It was during this time that the doctor of laws, Ash'ari, sprang up from the Mutazilite ranks. He dominated and definitively unified all the future beliefs of Islam. He is mentioned now because he lived during this period, but his influence will be seen in the discussion of the Seljuk period when his ideas had official approval. (743 words) www.askdryahya.com
Source:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/wiet.html and Islamic History,
Yahya, Hasan A. Brief Islamic History, 2010, Createspace
About the Author:
Professor, Dr. Hasan A. Yahya is an Arab American writer, scholar, and professor of Sociology lives in the United States of America, originally from Palestine. He graduated from Michigan State University with 2 Ph.d degrees. He published 55 books plus (40 Arabic and 15 English), and 250 plus articles on sociology, religion, psychology, politics, poetry, and short stories. Philosophically, his writings concern logic, justice and human rights worldwide. Dr. Yahya is the author of Crescentologism: The Moon Theory, and Islam Finds its Way, on Amazon. He's an expert on Race Relations, Arab and Islamic cultures, he is also, interested in religion, world affairs and global strategic planning for justice and human rights. www.dryahyatv.com
