But a quick survey of the readily accessible astronomical texts produced after the sixteenth century revealed an interesting phenomenon. Not only do we begin to see a slightly different astronomical production, one more concerned with purely religious astronomy such as mīqāt, or simplified astronomical texts, but also as early as the seventeenth century we begin to notice an incursion of European scientific ideas coming back into the world of Islam. We can even find echoes of things happening in Europe during the sixteenth century beginning to be acknowledged in the Islamic world, and sometimes incorporated. Here I am thinking of one of the later Syro-Egyptian astronomers: Taqī al-Dīn ibn Ma'rūf (d. ca. 1586), whose work included, in his own hand, an acknowledgment of his direct acquaintance with the multi-lingual dictionary of Ambrosio Calepino (1435-1510).[389]
Later works in geography from the seventeenth century reflect knowledge of the various astronomical systems of Copernicus and Tycho Brahe, and also demonstrate how such works began to mention the discovery of the new world. All these echoes come in the context of the translations of such works as the Atlas Maior and Minor, into Turkish.[390]
In sum, I am willing to accept the fact that a thorough investigation of this later period, say from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, will definitely demonstrate an increasing dependence on the scientific results that were produced in European centers of learning. Production that was by then making its way back into the Islamic world. This process apparently continued unchecked during these later centuries until the Islamic world was finally brought to rely completely on European science during the colonial era of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. That dependence has even intensified further in the present time.
The latter part of the twentieth century demonstrates this complete dependence extremely well. For after all, this particular century witnessed the "independence" of most Islamic countries after having already undergone a long period of colonization that was brought to an "end" during that part of the century. And now, most, if not all Muslim countries, depend for all their scientific education on the scientific output of European countries, their colonial centers of yesterday, or say western in order to include the United States of America. This is also the case at almost all universities in the developing world, with the Islamic world planted in its midst. They all depend, in their scientific curricula, on what is produced in the west.
With the end of the twentieth century we can see the pendulum moving all the way to the west. And if we look at the source of science, we would then be in a position to witness the extreme end of the spectrum. But we should also ask: When did this shift take place? That is, when did Europe stop being interested in the scientific production of the Islamic world, and when did it begin to export scientific production to it?
Determining the time of that shift itself may help us determine the onset of the age of decline. But let me be clear on the concept of decline itself. In this context, I wish to define such an age as an age in which a civilization begins to be a consumer of scientific ideas rather than a producer of them.
Going back to the sources, as we have been doing all along, those sources seem to indicate a break that took place sometime around the sixteenth century, and that century seems to contain the seeds of that age of decline, or at least seems to have been the time when such decline may have commenced. And if my reading of those sources is valid, then we must look for the events that surrounded this particular century, i.e. the sixteenth century, in order to determine, if we can ever determine at all, the causes of that decline.
For a better diagnostic look at the age of decline, one must constantly bear in mind the relative nature of that concept, and must appreciate the fact that social processes such as cultural decline or Renaissance and the like are rarely datable to a specific decade or even a century. They usually are indistinguishable at first, but with the passage of time trends begin to consolidate and remarkable differences begin to be noticed. As was already noted by others like Needham, who will be referred to again below, if one were to compare the scientific production in the world of Islam, China and what is now Europe, just about the beginning of the sixteenth century, one would have noticed that all three were almost on equal levels. Two centuries later, say by the beginning of the eighteenth, that comparison begins to weigh more heavily in the direction of Europe.
Those 200 years, say roughly between 1500 and 1700, witnessed the creation of one scientific revolution after another in Europe and marked the definite birth of modern science. And for that same reason, they gave rise to the multiplicity of questions that have been asked ever since, all attempting to explain why did modern science rise in Europe and not in the other two competitive cultures of the time. Many have sought answers in the social make up of the cultures concerned, others looked at the legal, religious, and political conditions. Some have even taken the conditions of modern Muslim societies and projected them, in very essentialist and non- historical terms, back onto the histories of those societies.[391]
And yet the question has persisted for a long time now. And because of its sheer emotional and ideological underpinnings, in a world constantly polarized, it has not become any easier to answer. But if we focus on the big picture, that is a picture drawn over a period of a few centuries where the trends become clearer to observe, and if we widen the scope to the multiplicity of factors that may have caused the lopsidedness of the scientific production that becomes clearer to observe as well, then we stand a better chance at understanding not only the nature of the decline of scientific production in the world of Islam, but may also gain some insight into the social economic context of science itself. By applying the same methodology, which attempted to explain the rise of science in early Islamic times in terms of socio economic conditions, this time the same methodology may yet help us understand why within a period of two centuries or so there arose a remarkable difference between the sciences that were produced in Europe and those that were produced in the rest of the world, and most notably the Islamic world. From that perspective, it would no longer be interesting whether Copernicus knew of the works of his predecessors from the Islamic world or not. Instead the focus would shift to the conditions that led to the works of Copernicus to be incorporated into later, more advanced works, and systems of thought that led to the demise of the old Aristotelian world order. Most importantly, those developments indeed changed the very nature of scientific production itself. Therefore, those two crucial centuries have a lot to teach us about the nature of modern science, its relationship to the cycle of capital investment, and its relationship to the fluctuating political and economic conditions. It is under those conditions that one has to seek the meaning of the age of decline in the Islamic world that has noticeably set in from the sixteenth century on, without necessarily pinning that decline, if one can help it, to a particular cause, a particular event, or a particular train of thought, be it religious or otherwise. So what happened during those two centuries?
389
For a reference to this Italian lexicographer, see the Arabic copy of the
391
The most recent application of this analysis can be seen in the work of Toby Huff,