'The Sufis' by Idries Shah

Years ago, while living in Cairo, I was invited by some friends to a poor corner of the city to watch a weekly performance of “Sufi musicians”. The no-frills, nighttime shows were set in a dusty, open-air courtyard deep in a maze-like neighbourhood and were frequented mostly by Egyptians.

At that time I held the all-too-conventional notion of the Sufis as the reveler-mystics of Islam. Previously, I'd visited the much-touted (and touristed) "whirling dervishes" across from Khan al-Khalili bazaar who entrance visitors by drumming and spinning their conical skirts about like tilt-a-whirl rides at an amusement park (their Turkish counterparts have achieved global fame with their own version of the same show). I’d also read about other permutations of the sect worldwide defying nature by eating glass, walking on hot coals and piercing their cheeks with shish-kebab skewers. 

These exotic stunts were doable, its performers said, by virtue of sheer faith and the divinely inspired powers, which were its fruits.

As it turned out, the show in the dusty courtyard was in much the same vein as the others, replete with pendular motions, gyrations and rolling eyeballs. Though mildly entertaining (the music was good), it didn’t do much to add to, or dispel from the idea that Sufis were soft religionists expressing their love of God through frenetic personal rapture.

Later that same year, I stumbled across a book which was written, in part, to shatter those prevailing notions and to set the record straight about what Sufism is – and isn’t. 

In the appropriately titled, The Sufis, author Idries Shah argues that the West, lacking information known in the East for centuries, has cultivated an incomplete and distorted picture of Sufism - and of spirituality and mysticism in general. What we tend to call Sufism, he says, are the outdated forms of that movement, or amalgams of those forms, repackaged to appeal to our emotions. 

Genuine Sufis, the booked asserts, are followers of an age-old tradition of experiential knowledge, that is flexible and ever evolving, and which aims to bring its adherents to a true understanding of the nature of reality – which the biological brain, operating in a certain mode, cannot ascertain on its own. Sufis, Shah says, far from necessarily being members of an Islamic sect, have always existed within different faiths and cultures, including those of early antiquity that predated Islam. 

If we find it hard to resist the reflex to associate Sufism with anything other than Islam, it’s because it was in those Muslim regions, during the Middle Ages, that Sufism saw its most rapid flowering. The artistic and intellectual achievements of that period are not only too numerous to catalogue (encompassing every known discipline from chemistry to cartography to psychiatry), but are also difficult to overstate in terms of their importance for humanity. Those high pinnacles of achievement that was Sufi knowledge constituted the very foundations upon which succesive civilizations would rest. Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dante, Troubadours, the Knights Templar and Freemasonry are just a few of the numerous examples of Sufic influence upon the West.

Shah, who was part of a long lineage of savants (he died in 1996), also tried to emphasize in The Sufis that the West still had a great to learn about the process of learning higher things. 

For one thing, many people still tend to confuse emotionalism (feeling) with real spirituality (higher perception). It's partly because of this that people continue to be drawn to the more colourful trappings of traditional eastern religions (and their cultic offshoots), with their chants, costumes, gurus, symbols, and feel-good rituals.  Excessive emotion, like that seen among the Sufi musicians in Cairo, for instance, rather than being a true refining quality as is generally still believed, can instead be a blunting instrument.

There is a real path of inner development, say the Sufis, but it does not appeal to or feed that part of the self that seeks the lower gratifications on offer from cults. Real knowledge is said to come experientially, and in a prescribed fashion. Much of that process involves taming our blinding animal nature – an entity described by the Sufis as “The Commanding Self” - whose fundamental purpose is its own unrelenting aggrandizement and survival.

These, plus many other fascinating revelations abound in The Sufis, helping to propel the book into a classic; one which has been described as “a seminal book of the century.”

Hassan Sabah and the Assassins

Of the many historical tales and anecdotes arising out of the Middle East, few offer the kind of salaciousness and intrigue as that of the story of “the Assassins”. It is a narrative both entertaining and fascinating, but when scrutinized, may reveal something about the way history is made.

As the Middle East of the 12th century buckled under the weight of the invading Crusaders and the ensuing political chaos that followed in their wake, a wave of brazen murders targeting some of the most powerful people in the region began in earnest. 

Representatives of different ruling powers – political, military, bureaucratic and religious – started falling to the daggers and arrows of shadowy murderers who killed with astonishing daring. With no obvious pattern or motive, these killings of mostly Sunni officials were seen as originating from outside the fray of the region’s overlapping conflicts.

Stories soon began to circulate of a strange figure said to be holed-up in an impenetrable mountain fortress in northern Persia with an army of fanatical disciples. This “Old Man of the Mountain” was none other than the formidable personage of Hassan Sabah. A religious leader of the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam, Sabah was the first in a line of politico-religious demagogues believed to be waging a clandestine war against the rulers of the Middle East. 

It was known that Sabah had studied at a religious school in Cairo, and had risen to become an outspoken and controversial figure. After falling out with authorities in Egypt following a failed power grab, he and a handful of disciples made their way to his native Persia. There he moved between principalities until finally settling at a place in the Alborz Mountains known “Alamut”. From a rugged alpine fortress, Sabah went about creating a rigid and messianic cult-like society devoted to attacking and destabilizing the region’s competing empires. 

The Ismaili Fatimids of Cairo, the Sunni Abbasids in Baghdad, various Seljuk rulers, and even the Crusaders, were all said to be targets of his army of shadow warriors. Numerous redoubts of this strange new sect had also reportedly sprung up throughout the mountains of Syria. Stories of these interlopers, which grew ever more outlandish over time, circulated in an environment of intermittent warfare where the lines demarcating friend from foe were in constant flux.

During the two centuries in which the Crusades were fought, this obscure sect, led by a succession of rulers, was known by various names, including: 

Heyssessini
Assassini
Ashashin 

They were names that would ultimately morph into the English word “Assassin” – denoting a hired professional murderer who kills by stealth.

The stories depicted these partisans as an elite corps of fanatical religious killers who had infiltrated Middle East society at all levels, awaiting orders to plunge their daggers into the hearts of men of political prominence. “The Old Man of the Mountain” (a name attached to ALL the rulers of Alamut, even after Hassan’s death), was the chief mastermind of this menace, carrying out his plans from an unreachable castle perch.

The famous Venetian traveller and merchant, Marco Polo passed through the environs of Alamut in 1273, some two decades after the Mongols destroyed the Assassin headquarters. While there, Polo collected from the locals information passed down about this erstwhile group. 

Of all the depictions of the Assassins throughout history, Polo’s would be the most memorable – and most often quoted. According to the Venetian, the Old Man of the Mountain gained his adherents, his Ashishin, by some of the dastardliest methods of subterfuge. 

Male recruits were drugged to the point of unconsciousness and relocated inside a beautiful garden where they awoke and partook in all manner of sensual pleasures. This, they were told, was a foretaste of the rewards for those willing to sacrifice themselves to the political cause. The adherents were later drugged again and removed from the gardens. When they regained consciousness they were told that they had been given a sneak preview of paradise. Only through obedience and servitude could they return there again, post-mortem.

Marco Polo asserted that through these, and other manipulative techniques, The Old Man of the Mountain brainwashed his army of fanatical murders. European writers, stupefied by these romantic histories later added to them, suggesting that all the various names for the assassins - “Heyssessini”, “Assassini”, “Ashishin” - were derived for the Arabic word hashish (and its variations describing people who take hashish, i.e. - hashishiyun) – thus lending weight to Polo’s story. 

Different versions of this tale have endured over several centuries, inspiring many written works. Interestingly there is another little known interpretation of events, albeit less dramatic, and which depicts Hassan Sabah and his supposed assassin underlings in a less damning light.

In an article written in 1922 by Sirdar Iqbal Ali Shah entitled “General Principles of Sufism”, Hassan Sabah is portrayed not as a killer, but as a mystic who led an Ismaili reform movement in isolated communities in Iran and Syria. According to Shah, his earlier training in Cairo took place at an esoteric school known as “The House of Wisdom” - an Ismaili version of its famous namesake in Baghdad that was devoted to the acquisition of knowledge. 

Shah suggests that Hassan, a natural luminary who had risen through the ranks of knowledge “saw clearly that the plan of the society of Cairo was in some respects defective.” He likely voiced his opinions and fell foul with the Ismaili religious leadership whose displeasure with his ideas forced him from Egypt. When he retired to Persia, he remodeled the Cairo coursework and set up his own esoteric school to inculcate the knowledge of Reality, which, mystics assert, lies at the heart of all religions.

What we might infer from this version of events is that Hassan and his pupils, operating in relative obscurity, may have unwittingly become the basis of a rumour that sought to explain the mysterious murders - and which then grew out of the control during the early Middle Ages.

“Around the figure of Hassan cluster many legends and traditions, most of which have been highly coloured by the passage of time,” Shah writes.

We will likely never uncover the real facts of that period - a confusing amalgam of power struggles and wars between shifting alliances and groups, both local and foreign; a situation which at times bordered on anarchy. 

But, bearing in mind the confusion of the period, the fact that murder for private and public reasons was common at the time, and that the human proclivity for assumption and imagination can be almost limitless, it seems possible that the story of the Assassins, as it has come down to us, may very well have been a distortion of some other reality. 

The Lebanese-French author Amin Maalouf, in his fictional novel Samarkand, puts forward an idea, which, when looked at closely, may lend credence to Shah’s argument. 

Referring to Assassins, Maalouf writes:

“[...] their contemporaries in the Muslim world would call them hash-ishiyun, 'hashish-smokers'; some orientalists thought that this was the origin of the word 'assassin'...The truth is different. According to texts that have come down to us from Alamut, Hassan-i Sabbah liked to call his disciples Asasiyun, meaning people who are faithful to the Asās, meaning 'foundation' of the faith. This is the word, misunderstood by foreign travelers, that seemed similar to 'hashish'."

Al-Mu'tasim - Mirrors

"He who goes in quest of aid"

Al-Mu'tasim is the name of the eighth Abassid ruler who was victorious in eight battles, produced eight sons and eight daughters, owned eight thousand slaves, and ruled for a period of eight years, eight months and eight days. It's also the name of a character from a Jorge Luis Borges story who has nothing to do with that Abassid ruler. Like many of the Argentinian writer's tales, we enter a world of mirrors and ambiguity, and of sudden discoveries at the most astounding times, and in the most unusual places.

A law student in Bombay renounces his Islamic faith, and finds himself in a battle between Hindus and Muslims during a Moharram procession. An anonymous figure is stabbed and dies; our lawyer enters the ensuing battle, and kills a Hindu. He runs, escapes a "lean and evil mob of moon-coloured hounds" and finds refuge in a circular tower. There, he climbs an iron ladder and meets a filthy old man complaining about Gujarati horse thieves. He flees further, engaging the zoo of humanity.

According to Borges, so begins the tale¨The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim¨, a fantasy story of this lawyer´s descent into iniquity, and from there into realization. He dives deep into confusion, fornicating in the Machua bazaar in Calcutta, and narrating the death of a blind astrologer in Benares, before hitting bottom. 

Finally, back home in Bombay, he suddenly sees in another abominable man, the reflection of a friend of a friend of a friend: Al-Mu'tasim, a figure of shining brightness and clarity. The lawyer suddenly realizes that we all have some aspect, a varying grade, of that ultimate incarnation.  He then begins his ascent in a devoted search for that bright light of humanity, mirrored in all that he meets.

Like the character of Jesus and his readiness to consort with the poor and the leprous, and like many Borges characters, the main protagonist in Al Mu'tasim realizes the presence of the divinity in the abominable. But, according to Borges, not only are all reflections, dim or strong, of that divine light, but the search is not limited to the lawyer from Bombay, or any one of us: ¨the Almighty is also in search of Someone, and that Someone, in search of a superior...Someone, and so on, to the End...of Time.¨  

As the lawyer´s ascent proceeds, his search takes him from one meeting to another, until he meets a saint who precedes a Persian bookseller, who in turn precedes Al-Mu'tasim himself, a glowing light recognized only by his voice (at which point the novel ends).

*

Who knows what is fiction, fact or fantasy in the world of Borges? He uses the Middle East and Islamic world, its grand history and its attractive confusions, to cast a fun shadow on reality. 

In one chapter of this story, there are hints that the Persian bookseller's words to Al-Mu'tasim are, in fact, the lawyer´s. In another, the indication is that Al-Mu'tasim is the Hindu that the law student may have murdered. After the quest ends, and before it began, it seems the seeker and the sought may after all be one. Borges's specialty, in one story after another, is to take us to that reality. 

Adelard of Bath

“In my judgment certainly, nothing at all dies in this sensible world... for if any part of it is released from one conjunction, it does not perish but passes over to another association.”

- Adelard of Bath, On the Use of the Astrolabe

While he was a young man studying at the famed French cathedral school of Tours, Adelard of Bath, an 12th century Englishman of noble lineage, underwent a life changing experience. Following a lesson about star constellations given by a wise man at the academy, Adelard, smitten by what had become a huge love of learning, went for a walk in the forest on the edge of town to process his knowledge. 

While in nature’s bosom, Adelard experienced a profound mystical vision. He recounts being approached by two women: one holding out wealth and fame, and the other offering knowledge. He says that despite a moment of material temptation, he accepted the latter. The episode would not only consolidate the scholar’s personal trajectory, but also that of the civilization to which he belonged.

Adelard of Bath went on to become an early conduit and pioneer of Arab wisdom and learning, bringing the wonders of ancient science to a medieval West that was starved of knowledge. Although talented, privileged and driven by enough curiosity to make the kind of difficult cross-continental journey that few people in his day would think of doing on their own, the main impetus for Adelard’s travels to the Middle East was an inner need that stirred within him and its connection to the wider destiny of humanity.

Europe in the 12th century was in a state of disarray. Poverty, violence, material backwardness and social instability were rife. The classical knowledge of ancient Greece had been lost to the West because few people could read Greek, as the ancient Romans once did. The handful of schools which existed offered low-level learning compared to what had for centuries been on offer in Arab and Islamic lands. The earliest trickling of that knowledge was just starting to reach Europe, but much of it was still too difficult to decipher. 

Adelard, who had a propensity for learning, was cognizant of the sad state of Western knowledge; so much so that he came to disdain European learning, becoming transfixed upon the wisdom available in other lands. A journey to southern Italy and Sicily (areas adjacent to the Middle East) confirmed for him that he was intellectually confined in northern Europe. He decided once and for all to break free and fling himself into the high cultural firmament – and political turmoil - of the Middle East.

Adelard left for the Arab lands in 1109, in the early years of the Crusades. Apart from a few key details which he later provides, we know little about his time in the Middle East. Adelard spent roughly seven years abroad, basing himself in Antioch on the Mediterranean coast of Syria, then ruled by the city state of Pisa and the crusaders who had recently arrived. There he found a huge treasure trove of Arabic translations of ancient Greek texts produced by the House of Wisdom – among them, works on geometry, astronomy, and chemistry. Adelard learned Arabic on his travels and mingled with Islamic scholars and wise men that aided him in his quest.

When he returned to Europe, Adelard became a respected luminary and inspiration to successive generations of adventurer-scholar-translators, producing about a dozen books in Latin packed with crucial learning. 

Among them was his works on Euclidean geometry, which became the cornerstone of the west’s sciences for hundreds of years. All subsequent scientific thinking, including logical deduction and work in architecture and astronomy in Europe was revitalized by his translation of Euclid’s Elements.

Adelard’s translation of al-Khwarizmi’s astronomical star tables, the Zinj al-Sindhind - which contained values for trigonometrical sines and tangents - had an equally profound impact, laying the foundation for the work of Copernicus later in the 16th century.

But he also made other, more philosophical contributions. In a number of works, including his Questions on Natural Science, Adelard employs his favorite literary device – an imaginary dialogue on controversial issues with an unnamed nephew who symbolizes rigid, linear, and traditional Christian thinking symbolic of the old order of knowledge which Adelard sought to overturn.

According to Ernest Scott in his book The People of the Secret, Adelard was also instrumental in one more key injection of knowledge into the West. While in Spain, the Englishman translated a text known as the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Sincerity – a compendium of knowledge produced in Basra 150 years earlier by a group of illuminates. Concerned with human development, Scott says one of the book’s original purposes may have been “to provide raw material on which natural science could develop in Europe” – implying prescience and specific intent on the part of its authors.

Adelard, the world’s first Arabist, had a profound grasp of Islamic learning and its utility for cultural renewal that would offer in place of Europe’s traditions of blind acceptance and submission to authority, the Arab learning techniques of experimentation, rational thought and personal experience. 

He helped the western world grasp and absorb pagan Greek and Hermetic cosmological knowledge - learning that would illuminate a line of spiritual and scientific geniuses that would in turn propel human civilization forward. That, plus the fact that he also lived in a time of cross-cultural conflict - not unlike our own - has done little to reverse his almost total obscurity in the cultures and lands which he so masterfully bridged.

Al Muqanna - The Veiled One

"All colour is abominable"

The following is the first in a series of posts highlighting the writing of the great 20th century Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges, who had a fascination with the Islamic world. He wrote about a great diversity of subjects, from Mayan priests to gauchos, but he had a special inclination for unusual individuals and esoteric ideas from the East.

The first is a tale from the book 'A Universal History of Infamy', and it is called 'Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv', a city as dry as the dust of the desert around it. In his usual thrifty way, Borges recounts in three pages the story of the man who later became known as Al Muqanna, or the Veiled or Masked One in Arabic. 

One day, Hakim disappeared from Merv, in what is now Turkmenistan, leaving behind only broken vats of dye, a shattered brass mirror, and a scimitar from Shiraz. He was not to be seen again until he reappeared to a desert party, masked, accompanied by followers who were blind because "they had looked upon his face". 

Fired by revelation, Hakim had become a masked prophet, leading masses in a jihad against the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad. Al Muqanna claimed that the Angel Gabriel had given him an ancient message of wisdom that burned one's mouth if spoken, and made his face so magnificent that no mortal eyes could look upon him - thus the mask (later exchanged for a mere veil).




He gained several military victories over the Caliph, and spread a message of a Manichaean world of light and dark, and of a god without a name or face. This divinity had nine shadows manifested as 999 descending heavens, each a paler echo of its predecessor. The descent led from angels to the demiurge who rules our world whose "fraction of divinity tends to zero". Our earth is but a murky reflection of that first nameless, faceless Divinity, a kind of hell in contrast with the original Paradise that we could aspire to, or even ascend towards. The Veiled One suggested that the misery we live in is best dealt with through a total immersion in vice, or extreme abstinence.

It is believed by some that his ideas are derived from the Persian Khurramiyyah movement, a mixture of Shiism and Zoroastrianism, that was in turn influenced by Mazdak, an Iranian reformer sometimes described as a 'proto-socialist'. The cosmogeny of ascent and descent of the universe that Al Muqanna propagated is also explained in more modern and scientific terms in the excellent book 'Godhead - The Brain's Big Bang'. John Zada, of this blog, recently published an interview with its authors, Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell.

In the fifth year of Al Muqanna's reign, the Caliph's army finally surrounded the prophet's castle. In the panic that ensued, a member of his harem screamed that the Veiled One's hands were disfigured and missing fingers. Two captains of the guard rushed to remove the great one's facial cover to reveal a leprous monstrosity, a face with a "flat and inhuman nose" and lips eaten away by disease. 

As he was revealed, Hakim stuck to his lifetime chorus, shouting that the sinful were forbidden to look upon his face. The plea did not save him; instead, he was "riddled with spears" and disappeared into the Universal History of Infamy - or so the great Argentinian writer (below) tells us.

Hasan of Basra (Hasan al-Basri)

“A Zen master remarked: ‘Renunciation is not giving up the things of the world, it is accepting that they go away.’ The result of such acceptance is fulfillment, not deprivation.”

- Dr. Arthur Deikman, in The Observing Self

Hasan of Basra was an early Muslim savant and mystic born in the city of Medina in 642 AD. The son of a slave, he grew up to be a theologian and established a school of religious thought in Basra (modern day Iraq), which taught several generations of students. He was considered by many to be the most accomplished luminary of his time. Today, after over 1,000 years, he is still revered as one of the greatest saints in early Islam.

At a certain point in his life, Hasan became distressed by the corruption and material excess of his nascent society. In order to oppose and mitigate the effects of these developments, he increasingly threw himself into a life of piety and self-denial. Like many Islamic mystics who lived in the period immediately after the prophet’s death, Hasan began his journey towards self-knowledge as an ascetic.

The influence of nearby religions (notably Christianity and Hinduism) as well as certain interpretations of the Koran, helped to popularize asceticism as an approach among the spiritually minded. Because most religious traditions (including Islam) espoused a certain degree of abstemiousness and renunciation as a means to freeing mental capacity for greater learning, and because some individuals always confuse a means for an end, renunciation was embraced by some in the extreme.

Ascetics often went to great lengths to pursue their objectives. The practice of celibacy, of placing one’s trust in the divine for physical sustenance, and a firm rejection of family and material life were all hallmarks of a difficult regimen of self-denial. These activities a times included cumbersome mortifications and self-imposed hardships that were very painful.

Whatever his exact motives, or where he may have fallen on this spectrum, Hasan’s experience as an ascetic led him to a key psychological insight that was to become one of his better known contributions to the field of spiritual development:  the idea that privations meant to weaken desire and the Self could have an opposite effect; and that asceticism can be a masochistic and self-indulgent desire that may feed the very ego which the aspirant is trying to reduce and contain.

Hasan would eventually state as much publicly, echoing statements made by the prophet who discouraged extreme self-denial in Islam. According to esoteric streams within Islam, the developmental work of humankind necessitates being in close proximity to the world and to society - and not living permanently as a recluse outside of it.

By virtue of his life and teaching, Hasan struck a balance between those revelling in the materialism born of the success that came with the consolidation of a new empire, and the extreme reactionaries who sought to deny themselves those same fruits: two groups who constituted two sides of the same coin.

Hasan’s comments about asceticism were also, in themselves, advances in the field of human psychology – a discipline at the crux of all real spiritual systems, which the Arabs were to develop and master long before the appearance of either the likes of Sigmund Freud, or Carl Jung.

Even those iconic fathers of modern psychology - in spite of the praise and worship heaped upon them - scarcely touched upon the profound understandings which people like Hasan of Basra, and other Sufi luminaries, were to develop and refine over several centuries.

Saadi of Shiraz

Most people in the West have heard of the poets Omar Khayyam and Jalaludin Rumi. Khayyam came to Western fame through a (poor) 19th century translation of his now-famous Rubaiyat, and Rumi is today a rock star of new age spirituality and mystical literature. Fewer people have heard of Hafez or Saadi, two Persian poets from Shiraz who are more well-known in Iran than the aforementioned pair. 

The more interesting and comprehensive outlook is to see all these writers as one stream of excellence extending from the 11th to 14th century, and bringing to the planet some of the most intelligent and insightful texts the world has known. The Persian poets are as seminal to world literature as the ancient Greek playwrights, Shakespeare, or 19th century Russian literature, but they are less well known in the West. They are part of an unstated 'global canon' of overlapping universal themes that recur in all cultures: aids for greater learning.

Saadi lived in an era of incredible violence and upheaval. European Crusaders had invaded the Levant, and the Mongols were devastating the lands further east. In 1226, Saadi left his home to tour the world. As you might expect, it was not without adventure. While criss-crossing North Africa and the Middle East, he married twice, apparently in Aleppo and Yemen, and was enslaved for awhile by the Crusaders. 

He left us with two great works among many others, the Bustan (The Orchard), and the very famous Gulistan (The Rose Garden), two works of travel, keen observations, and commentary, set in poetic style. Both works are deeper repositories of knowledge, of the human travels to deeper consciousness, and of our larger purpose. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American poet and essayist of the 19th century, understood the power of Saadi, and wrote a great poem about him, his character, and his outlook on life. Emerson also wrote an introduction to a translation of Gulistan, in which he wrote:

"The word Saadi means fortunate. In him the trait is no result of levity, much less of convivial habit, but first of a happy nature... easily shedding mishaps... and with resources against pain. But it also results from the habitual perception of beneficent laws that control the world, he inspires in the reader a good hope."

After thirty years on the road, Saadi returned to his native Shiraz. One year later, Halagu Khan and the Mongol horde sacked Baghdad annihilating the Abbasid empire. Saadi died in Shiraz at the age of 83, and his words live on to this day. One of his most famous verses is often quoted in speeches and is also found in the Hall of the United Nations in New York.

Human beings are members of a whole

In creation of one essence and soul

If one member is afflicted with pain

Other members uneasy will remain

If you have no sympathy for human pain

The name of human you cannot retain.

The House of Wisdom and the Perfect Storm of Knowledge

Western civilization will often point to the intellectual advances of the ancient Greeks and Romans as the cornerstone of its own scientific achievements. But what remains under-acknowledged, if often unknown, is the pivotal role played by Islamic civilization in collating, developing and transmitting ancient learning to the West. 

Over a thousand years ago, the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad undertook one of the greatest initiatives to consolidate knowledge ever known. Those efforts focused around “Bayt al-Hikma” or the “House of Wisdom” - a centre for research, translation, and astronomical observation founded by the iconic Caliph Haroun al-Rashid in the 8th century A.D. His son and heir, the Caliph al-Ma’amun put the House of Wisdom’s operations into even higher gear. He gathered scholars from across the empire and charged them with the task of collecting every observation and shred of insight belonging all cultures within Baghdad’s reach.  

It was an undertaking made possible by a fortuitous confluence of developments. By the middle of the 7th century, conquering Muslim armies had fanned out from Arabia to some of the furthest corners of the known world – including India, Afghanistan, China, North Africa and Spain. The scientific and cultural knowledge of a patchwork of ethnic and religious communities were suddenly brought under one political umbrella. Jewish, Byzantine, Persian, Indian, and Egyptian traditions became simultaneously accessible, and started cross-fertilizing.

The availability of new paper technology from China made for the fast and efficient creation of books (in Europe, documents were still being written on parchment). It was only a matter of time before libraries came into being and knowledge began to spread.

This represented a golden opportunity for the forward-thinking minds of the Islamic empire. When Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, was constructed in 765, the decision was made to turn its domains into a scientific superpower. The House of Wisdom was duly born.

Following the example of the Library of Alexandria several centuries prior, the House of Wisdom placed an emphasis on collecting – and translating into Arabic – as many old manuscripts as it could get its hands on. A gargantuan effort comprising an army of scholars churned out new Arabic translations from old Hindu, Persian, Greek, Syriac and Roman works.

The agents of this operation went to extraordinary lengths to get their hands on any text that would add to the empire’s storehouse of knowledge. One account has it that a copy of Ptolemy’s astronomical masterpiece, Almagest, was one of the conditions of peace dictated by the Arabs to the Byzantines.

By the middle of the 11th century, the Arabs translated all major Greek works available in the areas of science and philosophy – as well as a great many others. 

The impact of this translation effort was manifold. First, the availability in Arabic of certain works - some of which had been “forgotten” or “lost” - allowed original Arab thinkers to make quantum leaps within their respective fields. Disciplines such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry, philosophy and psychology were advanced by scholars who had access to an unprecedented pool of information. 

Methodologies also evolved. The first universities emerged. Personal observation and experience became the hallmarks of medieval Arab science. And Arabic replaced Greek as the language of scientific inquiry.

This consolidated learning also provided the bedrock on which the most enlightened of all savants developed what was then known as the “Science of Man” – the knowledge and methods, passed along from teacher to pupil, on how to refine human consciousness and to connect up with ever-higher relationship patterns all the way up to experience of the Absolute. 

This entire storehouse of knowledge was deliberately transferred cross-culturally - westwards and north into Andalusia and Europe, paving the way for the Renaissance and those developments beyond.  

The passing of the civilizational baton came just in time. The House of Wisdom’s perfect storm of knowledge drew to an abrupt close when its libraries were destroyed by the Mongol armies who sacked Baghdad in 1258. It is said that for months the waters of the Tigris River were darkened by ink from all the library books that were thrown into the river. 

The Kasidah

The Kasidah is a poem written by the 19th century British adventurer and writer, Richard Francis Burton, under the pseudonym Haji Abdu El-Yezdi. The title comes from a pre-Islamic form of Arabic lyrical poetry called 'Qasidah'. The word means 'intention' or 'testament' and traditionally recounts stories about travel or caravans, as Burton's does. The poems usually have three parts, a retrospective opening, a travel-transition during which transformations occur, and a final message.

Although we are not well trained to read this kind of poetry any more, a slow intake of the words can begin an appreciation of this underrated form of expression. Here is a short passage from 'The Kasidah' (the full poem can be found at "The Kasidah"):

'Believe in all things; none believe;

judge not nor warp by "Facts" the thought;

See clear, hear clear, tho' life may seem

Maya and Mirage, Dream and Naught.

Abjure the Why and seek the How:

the God and gods enthroned on high,

are silent all, are silent still;

nor hear they voice, nor deign reply.

Cease, Abdu, cease! Thy song is sung,

nor think the gain the singer's prize;

Till men hold Ignor'ance deadly sin

till man deserves his title "Wise".

In Days to come, Days slow to dawn,

when Wisdom deigns to dwell with men,

These echoes of a voice long stilled

haply shall wake responsive strain:

Wend now thy way with brow serene,

fear not thy humble tale to tell:

The whispers of the Desert-wind;

the tinkling of the camel's bell.'

(second image is a lithograph print of the Island of Graia in the Gulf of Aqaba by David Roberts, the famous 19th century illustrator of the Middle East)

St. Francis and the East

St. Francis (1181-1226) is one of the most well-known figures in Christian history. He is most renowned for his love of animals and nature, and for having founded the Franciscan Order of Monks. Like St. Augustine before him, he was caught up in a wild and worldly life before coming to religion, and he is revered for the kindness and devotion that he demonstrated thereafter. What is less known about him is his relationship with the Eastern and the Muslim world which, at that time, represented a great rival to Christendom.
The story of St. Francis is yet another example of the interweaving of eastern and western currents during the Middle Ages, especially those moving from a vibrant Islamic civilization to a burgeoning Europe. This mixing and fertilization was especially evident in Italy and Spain, which directly abutted the Muslim world. Among these currents on the southern shore of the Mediterranean were the Sufi schools of human development.

St. Francis's connections with the East may have begun early in life. He was very interested in the Troubadours of Provence during his youth and may have been influenced by their way of life. They, in turn, were likely derived from Islamic culture (the etymology of the word 'troubadour' is disputed, but it is unusually close to the Arabic word 'tarab', which means a kind of transcendence through music). Later, he exhibited a keen interest in travelling to the Muslim world. He attempted to go east to Syria, but managed only to get to the Dalmatian coast of what is now Albania. He then tried to go west to Morocco, but ended up in Spain.
In 1219, St. Francis did finally succeed in an eastern journey when he reached the city of Damietta in Egypt, which was then besieged by Crusaders. St. Francis crossed from the Crusader to the Saracen side of the Nile to meet with the Sultan Malik el-Kamil. The traditional explanation is that he did so in order to convert him to Christianity, but failed in his effort. There are indications however that his purpose was different.

He was well received by the Sultan and permitted to preach in his lands. Upon returning to the Christian armies, St. Francis did his utmost to dissuade the Western knights from attacking the Muslims. He was ignored and the result was a Crusader defeat at the walls of Damietta. Since the fall of the Crusader kingdoms in the Middle East, only the Franciscans have been permitted to be the "Custodians of the Holy Land" on behalf of Christianity.

In subtle ways, he (and many others in his time) may have symbolized a broader current of human development than either the outward forms of Christianity and Islam can convey. He and the Sufi poet Rumi, for example, were contemporaries and share strong similarities in their poetry.

St. Francis even more closely paralleled the Sufi Najmuddin Kubra, the founder of an order called the 'Greater Brothers' (the Franciscans were also known as the 'Minor Brothers'). Sixty years before St. Francis's birth, Najmuddin was known for his love of animals, and for having tamed a fierce dog - as the Christian saint was later to do with a wolf.

Indeed, one of St. Francis's major contributions was to infuse a more democratic and "grass roots" movement into a very hierarchical church. He refused to become a priest, and returned the faith closer to the people, and away from institutions and authorities - a characteristic that has defined the Franciscans ever since.

Among his other many achievements, St. Francis, with his love for nature as the mirror of God and for animals as his "brothers and sisters", created the idea of the manger or nativity scene for Christmas, a symbol still very much alive today.

Like many other saints, St. Francis has been depicted in a variety of ways throughout history.

Muhammed al-Idrisi

Muhammed “al-Sharif” al-Idrisi (c. 1100-1165) was a major Muslim scholar, geographer and mapmaker of the medieval Islamic period. He was born in the town of Ceuta, in Morocco, and was descended from a line of nobleman who traced their lineage to the Prophet Mohammed.

Al-Idrisi took an interest in foreign lands and travel early in life. Starting in his teenage years, and continuing into adulthood, he made extensive voyages through Spain, North Africa, the Middle East and Europe, deliberately gathering geographical data along the way.

After completing university in Cordoba, Spain, he relocated to Sicily where the Normans had recently overthrown its Arab rulers. Opportunities were rife in Sicily for people like al-Idrisi since, as Ibn Jubayr, another Arab traveler-savant wrote, “the Normans tolerated and patronized a few Arab families in exchange for knowledge.”

Sicily’s new ruler, Roger II, invited al-Idrisi to join his court at Palermo. His education, travels, and his extensive political connections made him a valuable addition to the King’s court. Being a patron of the arts and sciences, and having huge interest geography, Roger commissioned al-Idrisi to produce a new map of the world that would rival no other. It was task that would consume a large portion of the mapmaker’s life.

Al-Idrisi combined his personal knowledge and experience with information from older maps, particularly Roman and Ptolemaic charts. He and his team also collected reports from seafaring Muslim merchants, Norman voyagers, and Christian scholars, and used that information to assemble what would be the most accurate map of its time.

In 1154, after 18 years of toil, al-Idrisi produced his magnum opus, a map which came to be called the “Tabula Rogeriana”, or the “Book of Roger”. It was a chart of the known world comprising Europe, Asia, and North Africa and the Horn of Africa – and extending all the way to Southeast Asia. Al-Idrisi is said to have presented the map to Roger on a disc of solid silver two metres in diameter. The map was also made into manuscript form, a few of which survive today.

In keeping with Islamic tradition, al-Idrisi’s map is oriented with the south appearing at top, and north at the bottom (the maps here are turned right-side up for viewing). Though lacking images of people, animals, or plants, it contains stylized portrayals of mountains and rivers. It is also one of the first maps of its kind to depict the Indian Ocean as an open body of water connecting to the Pacific – details which were perhaps provided by Arab and Chinese mariners.

For three centuries, geographers used al-Idrisi’s unaltered maps. His works inspired some of the world’s greatest explorers, scholars and cartographers including Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun, Piri Re’is, Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama. The above circular map is a simplified reproduction, made in Cairo in 1456, of al-Idrisi’s masterwork, the “Tabula Rogeriana”, seen below.

'The Baptized Sultan'

Most people are aware of the impact of Islamic Spain on the European history. The role of Andalusian philosophers, mystics, and translators on the development of the West cannot be underestimated. What is less known is the positive effects of Islam on Italy, and its role in the blossoming of the Renaissance there. Over the coming months, we'll examine some of the key examples of this influence, among other cross-cultural learning.

In these days of globalization and the confusion that comes with it, it may be useful to examine some past examples where cultural mixing and tolerance by leaders led to positive and unexpected developments. In the late 11th century in Sicily, Norman kings developed a royal dynasty. One of its first kings, Roger II, had a court that combined East and West, Christianity and Islam, merging the traditions of civilizations from all shores of the Mediterranean. His son, Frederick II, who was a polymath, went on to become an even greater cultural and political innovator, as well as Holy Roman Emperor.

Frederick's string of achievements were unusual: he established a written constitution that protected the rights of his subjects and founded the first secular university in Europe at Naples (Thomas Aquinas later studied there before going on to theological greatness in Paris). He also set up a refuge for Troubadours fleeing from southern France, and a Sicilian school of poetry which directly influenced the poetry of Dante.

Like the great Italian poet, Frederick's court used the local dialect for literature, rather than the traditional Latin. And despite Germanic and Norman roots, Frederick spoke Arabic fluently. His court scholars in Palermo translated the great works of Ibn Rushd and Aristotle, and it is even claimed that Arabic numerals came to Europe through his efforts. Frederick was so Arabized that he was referred to by some as "The Baptized Sultan".

This fantastic cross-mingling that he permitted helped re-awaken European culture. Significantly, Frederick II disbelieved anything that could not be proved by reason. Like Akhenaton, the great pharaoh, he insisted on shutting down charlatanism among physicians, and banned useless cures. He was also a profound religious iconoclast, and is said to have denounced Moses, Jesus and Mohammed as deceivers and fakes. For this and his closeness to Muslims in general, he earned himself a place in the sixth level of Dante's inferno - a heretic to forever burn in his tomb.

Frederick was also excommunicated four times, once by Pope Gregory IX for refusing to join the Crusades. When he finally travelled to the East, he managed to rapidly parlay access for Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land in his discussions with the Sultan of Egypt. Indeed, he viewed the peoples of Islam as a rich and honorable society to be respected and learned from - possibly one of the secrets of his success, earning him the title 'The Wonder of the World' in his time.

The Emperor was described by the Damascene chronicler, Sibt Ibn Al Jawzi as having "eyes green like .. a serpent. He was covered with red hair… bald and myopic. Had he been a slave, he would not have fetched 200 dirhams at the market."

Frederick II is an example of the constructive coexistence of cultures at a time of great intolerance. His achievements speak to the possibility of success even as cultures blend and mix under duress. Through his eccentricities, his liberalism and healthy linkages with the Muslim world, he became a key door for the knowledge of the East to enter Europe and begin the process that we know as the Renaissance.

Ibn Maimoun (Maimonides) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes)

In the tenth century, the city of Cordoba was the New York and Paris of its time, the centre of cultural activity, with over seventy libraries and even more centres of translation and learning. It was also known for its pervasive street lamps, and well-lit and paved streets – a stark contrast to the mud and darkness of its northern counterparts, like medieval London. This Andalusian city was the centre of learning and intellectual effervescence in Europe.

By the mid-twelth century, however, a new Islamic and Berber dynasty, the Almohad (or, more tellingly in Arabic, ‘Al-Muwahiddun’ or ‘unitarians’ or ‘unifiers’) had taken over the Andalus, imposing a stricter and less tolerant interpretation of Islam than previous rulers.

It was in this more difficult and darker environment, that these two men, Musa Ibn Maimoun (Maimonides) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes), a Jew and a Muslim, were born in Cordoba, nine years apart. They grew to leave a lasting legacy on both Islam and Judaism and to become known, in later times, as the ‘Second Moses’ and the ‘Second Aristotle’, respectively. Through their later impact on an Italian studying in Paris, they also changed the future of Christianity, and the cultural development of Europe.


The two men were both the sons of jurists, and became in their own way, intellectual revolutionaries. They brought the logic of reason into a world whirling often with blind faith, testing and questioning many long-held premises in their societies, and gaining much opprobrium from the religious powers of their time.

Both men were profoundly influenced by Aristotle and saw no contradiction between believing in a greater universal faith and utilizing reason to the utmost of an individual’s capacities – as the great Greek philosopher had so clearly demonstrated in his texts.

Oddly, their lives also paralleled each other. Both men lived out difficult worldly versions of their intellectual daring. The two men were cast out of Cordoba and both lived in exile in Fez for a time - neither able to return home again. Both also became authorities in their respective religious traditions, as well as court physicians: Ibn Rushd, originally, to the ruler of Cordoba, and Ibn Maimoun to Salaheddine in Egypt.

Ibn Mainoun wrote that “the truth should be pursued from whatever source that it proceeds,” and both men died as they lived. Ibn Rushd lost his life in Marrakesh, under suspicious circumstances, likely while under house arrest by the Almohads for his philosophy. Ibn Maimoun died in Egypt or Tiberias from ill-health brought on from a maniacal work routine of writing, medical healing and community service.

Their brilliance arose out of a marked humility regarding the place of the human in the larger scheme. As Ibn Maimoun wrote:

“Now consider the enormous dimensions and the large number of these material beings. If the whole earth is infinitely small in comparison with the sphere of the stars, what is man compared with all these created beings! How, then, could any one of us imagine that these things exist for his sake and benefit, and that they are his tools! This is the result of an examination of the corporeal beings: how much more so will this be the result of an examination into the nature of the Intelligences!"

Despite their tribulations, their legacies ultimately lived on in a man called Thomas Aquinus - an Italian studying at the University of Paris, who absorbed their works and, through his own thinking, changed forever the philosophy behind the Roman Catholic church. Aquinus brought the power of reason into the intellectual infrastructure of the church, and from there into the development of knowledge and education of Europe and the West as we now know it.