THE BACKGROUND TO THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW DISCOURSE

Most general accounts of the Islamic scientific tradition as well as those dealing with the relationship between Islam and science focuses on Bagh- dad, or the “City of Peace,” as the round city of Caliph al-Mansur was officially called. This is not without reason; after all, the fabled city, estab- lished by the victorious Abbasid Caliph on the site of an ancient village, planned by four eminent architects, and built by 100,000 workers and craftsmen over a period of four years (762 to 766) was the intellectual capital of the world for five centuries. With the unconditional surrender of Caliph al-Mustasim to H ¨uleg ¨u to the Mongol warlord on February 10, 1258, Baghdad lost its glory. The Mongol victory was accompanied by the indiscriminate killing of an estimated 800,000 to two million inhabitants, the destruction of all major public buildings, including shrines, mosques, madrassas, and palaces, and an uprooting of intellectual life. By the end of that century of destruction and decay, however, Islamic scientific tradition had already found a new home in other lands of Islam, such as present- day Turkey, Syria, Egypt, and Iran. By the middle of the next century, two major branches of Mongols—the Golden Horde and the Chagatays of Transoxania—had themselves converted to Islam, providing patron- age to scientists and scholars in their own newly built madrassas and observatories.

The reconfiguration of the Muslim world in the post-Mongol era would eventually give rise to three powerful empires: the Safavi (1135–1722), the Indian Timuri (1274–1857), and the Ottoman (1343–1924). These empires

extended over a vast area and were extremely rich and resourceful. They patronized the arts and sciences and vied against each other to attract the best minds of the time. In addition, several other smaller states and dy- nasties supported science. Yet, none of these empires was able to compete with the developments in science that were taking place after the fifteenth century in Europe. When they did realize the enormous military and eco- nomic benefits Europeans had reaped with their science and technology, it was already too late; better-trained European armies, equipped with superior weapons, were already knocking at their doors.

The rapidity with which the situation changed for Muslims is evident from the fact that at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the entire Middle East, a large part of Africa, the whole middle belt of Asia, and the Malayan archipelago were under Muslim control, but by the end of that fateful century, a large part of this territory had come under Russian, British, French, Portuguese, and Dutch influence or direct control; by the middle of the nineteenth century, there was nothing left of the power, might, and splendor of the old Muslim world. It is against this background that the new Islam and science discourse must be viewed.

In addition to the developments within the Muslim world, the new Islam and science discourse was influenced by the enormous changes that took place in Europe through the application of newly discovered scientific knowledge. The work of Isaac Newton (1642–1727) made a tremendous impact. Two centuries of European science found a new synthesis: the natural world began to lose its qualitative aspect. Instead of form and matter, the four qualities, and the four elements, equations and numbers now started to gain centerstage. The Newtonian Revolution transformed the nature of science.

Newton had shown in the 1680s that the orbits of the planets are the result of an attractive force between the sun and each planet, thus bringing into science a revolutionary concept: gravity. Conceived as a force that worked in a universal manner, whether the bodies on which it operated were heavenly or not, gravity was one of the main concepts of Newtonian physics. His Principia, first published in Latin in 1687, firmly established the mechanical model in which bodies were endowed with mass and subjected to external forces such as gravitational attraction.

Ironically, the Islam and science discourse in the centuries following Newton was influenced not so much by the science of Newton and those who came after him but by technologies developed on the basis of their sci- ence. The steam engine invented by James Watt (1736–1819), the hydraulic press invented in 1795 by Joseph Bramah (1748–1814), certain technologies used in the extraction of coal and the purification of metals, and military technologies would be looked upon by Muslims as “wonders of European science.”

Islam and Modern Science: The Colonial Era (1800–1950) 133

This whole process of change, which had been taking place in Europe for over two centuries, was brought home for Muslims when Napoleon arrived in Egypt in 1798. His army had superior weapons, better training, and was accompanied by scientists specializing in diverse branches of science and several new technologies. Muslims ascribed their military subjugation to a lack of science and technology, and their leaders told them that their lost glory would be restored as soon as they caught up with Europe in science and technology. Religious scholars used their influence to support this call for the acquisition of science. They could easily produce evidence from Islam’s primary sources in support of their rallying cry, as both the Qur’an and the Sunnah are replete with exhortations to believers to acquire knowledge. The Arabic word for knowledge, ilm, was now used for European science.

The Ottomans were perhaps the first among Muslims to realize their poverty in technological knowledge. This came about through military defeats. The peace treaty signed on January 26, 1699, at Carlowitz was the end of a long chapter in their history and a fateful beginning to a new century. The loss of a large portion of their empire was not the only factor in this defeat; the entire equation between them and Europe had changed, as became clear in 1718, when they were compelled to sign the treaty of Passarovitz, losing Belgrade. The Ottomans were now convinced of the need for reform. This realization evolved into an entirely different era, the famous “Tulip Age,” during which the high culture of Ottoman society developed a craze for European civilization, resulting in the abandonment of traditional patterns of design, architecture, music, painting, poetry, and furniture in favor of European styles. This new sensibility was an early sign of what was to follow. And although Belgrade was regained from the Austrians in 1739, this was a short-lived victory. The imperial center could no longer hold its parts; by 1774 the Ottomans had lost control of the Black Sea to the Russians; in 1783, they annexed the large territory around the Sea of Azov. As a result of these setbacks, Salim III undertook far- reaching military and political reforms in 1792. The acquisition of science and technology were the main features of this reform.

In India, the fatal battles of Plassey (1757) and Buxar (1764) consolidated the British hold over Bengal and paved the way for further conquests in Bihar and Orissa. When the British won the battle against Tipu Sultan, the visionary ruler of Mysore, in the closing year of the eighteenth century, the fate of India was sealed, for Tipu’s army was the last real resistance against the colonization of India. In 1813 the British government decided to increase its direct control over the East India Company (EIC) through a new charter, ending the monopoly of the EIC and thus paving the way for the full colonial structure. It was then that modern European science arrived in India, and along with it came a new Islam and science discourse.

This new discourse was contemporaneous with a violent transforma- tion of the Muslim world. Yet, on the eve of this violent transformation, there seemed to be no awareness in the Muslim world of what was just around the corner. In fact, the political leadership of all of Dar al-Islam (the land of Islam) and its great population seemed like an ocean sleep- ing before a storm: only a small segment of the Muslim intelligentsia was aware of what was happening. Their awareness produced a series of reform–renewal movements throughout the traditional Muslim lands, which attempted to reconstruct Islamic thought and Muslim societies. These movements were first and foremost religious in nature, but their aim was also to revive Islam’s formidable tradition of learning and strengthen society. These reform–renewal movements included the movement led by Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti (ca. 1750–1811) in the Sahara and the two West African movements of Uthman Dan Fodio and Shaykh Ahmad of Massina. In the Indian subcontinent, the eighteenth century witnessed a major reform–renewal movement led by Shah Wali Allah al-Dihlawi (1702–1762). This internal process of reform and renewal was, however, cut short by the invasion and colonization of these societies by the Euro- pean powers.

These movements were ineffectual as far as the general decay was con- cerned. Of course,

in the fifty some generations of Muslim history, three or four generations hardly suffice to indicate any long-term trend. Yet the depression of Islamic social and cultural life in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries does stand out in retrospect. This is so chiefly in the light of what followed. With the nineteenth century came the utter collapse of the strong Muslim posture in the world: that nothing was done in the eighteenth century to forestall this smacks of inexplicable weakness or folly. But the sense that there was a depression also reflects the actualities of the Muslim lands in the eighteenth century itself. (Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 134)

What actually happened in the three powerful empires (the Safavi, the Indian Timuri, and the Ottoman) that emerged after the great realignment of the Muslim world in the post-Mongol era is akin to the slow growth of a cancer that remains undiagnosed until it has spread throughout the body. When the rot was detected, it was already too late.

What was decisive in Muslim lands at this time was especially one feature: the West’s tremendous expansion of commercial power. . . by the latter half of the [eighteenth] century, decay was becoming rout in the Ottoman, Safavi, and Indo- Timuri domains. . . by the end of the century, the accumulated strains in the social structure of Islamdom called for radical new adjustments, which did supervene

Islam and Modern Science: The Colonial Era (1800–1950) 135

then with the forthright establishment of Western world hegemony. (Hodgson 1974, vol. 3, 137)

One of the most important changes to take place in the colonized Muslim world at this time is related to the status of the Arabic language. During the previous millennium, Arabic had remained the main language of in- tellectual discourse, encompassing religion as well as the sciences. Even in lands where it was not the common vernacular, all major works were writ- ten in Arabic. This shared language of discourse had preserved an internal link with the traditional knowledge of religion. It also served as a link for social and economic transactions. An Indian Muslim could go to Cairo, Baghdad, or Makkah and freely communicate with scholars there in a lan- guage not foreign to either of them. This allowed the sharing of traditional terminology, metaphors, and parables, as well as ancestral wisdom and teachings. The colonial rulers replaced Arabic with their own languages in occupied lands. In the Ottoman empire, Arabic was replaced by the Turks themselves as part of a modernization drive. Thus, within a short span of time, where Arabic was not the usual spoken language it became a foreign language. This not only destroyed the means of communication among Muslim scholars but in those countries where Arabic was not commonly spoken, it made the Qur’an and the vast corpus of traditional knowledge inaccessible even to the educated classes. This had an enormous impact on the making of the new Islam and science discourse.