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irrigation, then fatwas can apply to many other – if not all – elements in the environmentalcrises which now face the Middle East.

© M.R. Brett-Crowther, 2010

Science & Islam: A History, by Ehsan Masood, Icon Books Ltd, London, ISBN 978 184831040 7, xvi +240 pages, £14.99.

Masood says that the Muslim world was an empire of which the last caliphate ended in 1923with the fall of the Ottoman Empire (p. xiv). He suggests that science pervaded this worlduntil 1923. Masood also suggests that the process of verifying the hadith is ‘a kind of earlypeer-review system’ (p. xiv). Current attempts to deepen this process in Turkey would bebetter served if more discussed by educated Muslims. They might then remark the curiousfact that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, their Prime Minister, has referred to Chinese attacks onUighurs in Xinjiang (11 July 2009) as ‘a kind of genocide’ but insists that there was nogenocide of the Armenians in 1915. Masood notes that the Muslim scholars he is about todiscuss were polymaths, and suggests that ibn-Sena and Hassan ibn al-Haitham should beparalleled today (pp. xv f.).

Masood begins (p. 1) with some words of Prince Charles deploring the West’s misunder-standing of Islam, but ‘the strait-jacket of history’ includes also the West’s ignoring Byzantium,which Islam took piece by piece as it expanded from Arabia. It is fair to note the names ofpioneers and inventions which have been forgotten, but the explanation may be less than useful.For example, Masood introduces Petrarch (p. 6) and blames him for the idea of the dark ages.This shows a feeble idea of the Renascence. Petrarch as the first mountaineer in Europe (ascentof Mt Ventoux, 26 April 1336) would be a more apt reference; or some understanding of thedifference between what Masood thinks is the Enlightenment (imperial expansion in Asia andAfrica) and what it actually is (Aufklarung, Encyclopaedists, Age of Revolutions). In fact,Masood says that the achievements of early Islam and the continued life of Byzantium haveboth been neglected (p. 7). That is wholly true.

Yet Masood attacks Petrarch (p. 181) as ‘the medical writer’ (an absurd appellation forhim) for describing ibn-Sena’s work as ‘Arab lies’. In fact, Petrarch attacked those whodepended uncritically on Muslim commentators on Aristotle and on ibn-Sena, whose workcould be misinterpreted in its Latin version (cf. Cassirer et al., 1948).

Masood’s list of Muslim gifts to the West (pp. 12–14) is fair enough, but the origins ofhospitals are with St Basil of Caesarea and before him the Christian hospitals of Egypt.Masood mentions when he comes to the Fatmids in Cairo that ‘Hospitals existed beforeIslam, of course’ (p. 87), but he makes no comment on the fact that Cairo’s Qalawun hospi-tal (founded in 1284) ‘was of a cruciform shape’. Although function may appear in that,rather than symbol, Masood often appears to have difficulty with the issue of history andderivation.

Masood is in some difficulty with the account he gives, like any other faithful Muslim, ofthe faith’s origins; because all that he can say is the non peer-reviewed statements about, forexample, the origins of Mecca as a place for worship built by Abraham and the ancient wellof Zamzam (p. 21) or the night journey (p. 31). If Muslims were introduced in schools anduniversities to a comparative religious approach, or were invited to scrutinise their texts inrelation to the Old and New Testament, one might be more confident that today’s science hadpervaded their community. One might indeed object that the rise of Islam cannot be told

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without some attention to the internal problems of the Byzantine Empire, but Masood simplyignores those in dealing with the battle of Yarmuk (p. 27).

Some may also object to the idea that the Christians subordinated to the caliphates had ingeneral a good life. It is notable that the Copts have experienced severe persecution in rela-tion to early Islam as well as contemporary Egypt; but remarking (p. 31) that there wasdiscrimination which prevented Christians from standing for the highest office and that theywere denied free healthcare in some places, omits a vast deal of much worse discriminationthan those points. The same issue arises in discussing the alleged wonders of ‘convivial’living in Cordoba. Masood notes the persecuting ways of the Almohads (p. 79), but does notquote al-Ghazali on the actual discrimination, which caused Maimonides to flee to Fez andthen Cairo. Nor (p. 80) when Masood notes the reconquista and the beginning of the SpanishInquisition does he reflect on the pre-existing patterns of persecution as practised byMuslims. Nor does Masood appear to find it strange that al-Ghazali could be so savage. Yet itis the Christian-derived mysticism of Sufis, exemplified by Rabi’a’s faith, which al-Ghazalihimself manifested.

Masood makes a gigantic claim very easily: ‘Absorbing the best of other civilisations andthen modifying and innovating with new ideas is the hallmark of science. It is also one ofthe characteristics of Islam’ (p. 32). But Masood then asserts ‘The introduction of thefamous ancient water tunnels or qanats from Iran was just one of (the early Muslims’)successes with irrigation’ (p. 34). Persia must have derived this system from China beforePersia established qanats in Oman, but Masood – like many others – is unconcerned withsuch questions.

Masood also makes some highly disputable statements (p. 34). What ‘property rights forsmall farmers’? How were the ‘Islamic empires … not feudal states’? De Planhol (1959)thoroughly shows that Islam gave no incentive to improve land and that state landholding isthe deep reason for Islam’s economic decadence. Masood is more open to the causes foracceptance of Greek learning (p. 42f). There is an expansion of interest in existing knowl-edge by the time Baghdad becomes the centre, supplanting Damascus. These pages show,incidentally, a child-focused approach. They are relatively story-like, and the chessboardproblem (p. 49) and Al-Kindi’s views on cryptography (p. 51f) should be able to engrosseven the least attentive of pupils. An interesting exercise in multicultural Britain would befor Muslims and Christians to debate matters at length using al-Mamun’s dream of Aristotle(p. 56f). If the will of the people is the supreme good, as the dream says, does English lawmake that case whole and entire to Muslims, or do they seek the interpolation of shariah?And if they do, are they scientific?

The proposal arises from al-Mamun’s ‘rationalist inquisition’ – as Masood’s words haveit. Al-Mamun wanted the Qur’an to be seen as created, not spoken by God (p. 61). Masoodnotes that ‘many Muslims now see al-Mamun not as the champion of reason and the initia-tor of Islam’s Golden Age of Science but as an irreligious dictator who curtailed freespeech’ (p. 62). Masood does not uphold al-Mamun’s rationalism against the Hanbalitelegists. This seems an unfortunate lapse. Nor does the frequent blood-letting in the powerstruggles of Islam draw any reproving comment. By contrast, Christians generally deplorethe Spanish inquisition and the burnings at the stake of the Albigensian crusade and theReformation.

The glory of Andalusia certainly includes Cordoba’s mesquita – destructively modifiedby the capella mayor, which Charles V denounced; but no less important is ibn-Firnas’demonstration of flight, al-Zarqali’s astrolabe and water clock, and his calculation of move-ment in the aphelion. Copernicus relied on al-Zaqarli.

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But what is the bequest of ibn-Arabi, whose idea of the unity of existence and of creationwith the Creator, like that of ibn-Rushd, countered the repressive views of al-Ghazali? Is itpossible that – as Byzantium nears its end – St Gregory Palamas in Thessalonica distinguishesthe energies from the essence of God as a result of colliding with something like ibn-Arabi’sthought mediated through south Italy by the monk Barlaam?

The Mongols’ expansion and its terrifying consequences included the destruction of theqanats (p. 91). This could be paralleled by, say, the French Revolution’s madness in behead-ing Lavoisier, because the revolution ‘has no need of scientists’ – but such examples have tobe generally inferred from this book.

In discussing health and medicine, Masood acknowledges the Greek substrate of Islam’scontribution, but rightly notes that al-Razi’s work on smallpox and measles continued to beinfluential into the nineteenth century. The fruitful work of ibn-Sina included identifyingheat, light and kinetic energy, and suggesting superposition. But whether this is significantdepends on a context. Although Lyell’s geology may have prevented him from reachingDarwin’s standpoint, it allowed him to accept historical development (geological time).

The point is not that ibn-Sina is ‘limited’ whereas al-Zahrawi is ‘contemporary’. It isnecessary to understand that al-Zahrawi’s surgery like Sir Archibald McIndoe’s had acontext. As for ibn al-Nafis, whether he preceded Harvey’s discovery of circulation ofblood (and he probably did not), the question, again, is context: what affected or causedthe discovery of pulmonary transit, and what followed from it. As for the possible authen-ticity (Masood’s point, p. 115) of the hadith on plague, what is more notable is Masood’sviews that the Muslim tradition of healthcare ‘holds important lessons for how newknowledge is absorbed in Islamic countries in the present day’. Is this true? If it were, onewould expect to see much more open discussion of problems of heritable diseases viaconsanguineous marriages; or a commitment from the Kuwait Fund to dealing with drugaddiction in several Muslim states; or an admission by some of those states, for example,Egypt, that such a problem was indeed a social problem – that it actually existed amongMuslims.

Astronomy, mathematics and chemistry have all been marked by rich interventions andadditions from Muslim scholars. But Masood does not ask why with all these achievements,further development did not take place; why with the ‘ingenious devices’ he describes, therewas no technological effort comparable to that of Watt and Newcomen, Abraham Darby andArkwright. Masood suggests that ‘the scientists and engineers of the Islamic world couldwell have played a part’ in the Industrial Revolution (p. 165). That is not saying much.

Nor is it saying much more to quote Sir Muhammad Iqbal (p. 184f), since Iqbal’s mainwork is The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1934), which is published in Paki-stan without the original publication date, as if Iqbal (d. 1938) were living now. Much as heunderstood the modernising power of the West (which he experienced particularly inGermany), Iqbal misunderstood, for example, Christianity (which he wrongly described as amonastic order when it arose), and did not seem any better in his understanding of Jung. Thepoint is that Iqbal says that ‘The modern world stands in need of biological renewal.’ Masoodappears not to be aware of this point.

His discussion of plague control in India (pp. 202–204) is not enlightening. One wouldsuppose from what Masood says that the views of hakims on the aetiology of plague weretenable. This is a needless weakening of a book which could have relied more on al-Mamunand extrapolated from him against the more primitive understandings of many others.

Nor is Masood much more adept with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. It appears that for Masood,the attack on the British Empire is more important than an attack on the question why South

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Waziristan inhibits girls from learning to read or why the warlords of Afghanistan and Osamabin Laden can make a kind of common cause. A passing reference to Jinnah (p. 200) is triv-ial. Yet Jinnah’s demand resonates still: ‘Let light not be denied’. And throughout Pakistanand many other places which believe themselves to combine Islam and modernity, womenand girls are denied opportunity, repressed economically and abused in daily fact.

The real question is how Islam can apply ijtihad and thus regain the disposition to recon-struct faith and life, as Iqbal proposed.

© M.R. Brett-Crowther, 2010