Not only does the classical narrative fail to solve the problems I have been discussing so far, which are connected with the beginnings of scientific activities in Islamic civilization; it also fails to account for the questions raised during the later centuries. In particular, the decline of Islamic science, which was supposed to have been caused by the religious environment that was generated by Ghazālī's attack on the philosophers or by his introduction of the "instrumentalist" vision, does not seem to have taken place in reality. On the contrary, if we only look at the surviving scientific documents, we can clearly delineate a very flourishing activity in almost every scientific discipline in the centuries following Ghazālī. Whether it was in mechanics, with the works of Jazarī (1205)[53]; or in logic, mathematics, and astronomy, with the works of Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī (c. 1240),[54] Mu'ayyad al-Dīn al-'Urḍī (d. 1266),[55] Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 1274),[56] Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 1311),[57] Ibn al-Shāṭir (d. 13 75),[58] al-Qushjī (d. 1474),[59] and Shams al-Dīn al-Khafrī (d. 1550)[60]; or in optics, with the works of Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī (d. 1320)[61]; or in Pharmacology, with the works of Ibn al-Baiṭār (d. 1248)[62]; or in medicine, with the works of Ibn al-Nafīs (d. 1288),[63] every one of those fields witnessed a genuine original and revolutionary production that took place well after the death of Ghazālī and his attack on the philosophers, and at times well inside the religious institutions.
It is not only that the classical narrative could not actually account for this prolific scientific production, at a time when the whole Islamic world was supposed to have been gripped by religious fervor, as the classical narrative dictates. Its failure went even further. It warped the production of those scientists when it deemed their results insignificant, and when it noted that those results were not translated into Latin during the medieval period, and thus concluded that the European Renaissance was achieved independently of what was taking place in these later centuries of the Islamic world. The works of this world that fell in between European medieval times and the time of the Renaissance could not be included in the general kind of history of science that the classical narrative could assimilate. As a result, the schism between what was happening in the Islamic world and what happened in the Latin West between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance grew deeper and deeper with the application of the classical narrative to the history of science. At the end the chasm was so deep that the relationship between those two worlds could no longer be understood, if its study was ever attempted.
With the European renaissance perceived as an independent European enterprise, and with the trajectory of scientific developments focusing on what took place in renaissance Europe, we also lost sight of the very exciting activities that took place at the borders between the Islamic and Byzantine civilizations. With the classical narrative emphasizing the importance of Arabic sources, only in as much as those sources could lead to the recovery of classical Greek antiquity—itself the object of the Renaissance as is commonly held—the outflow of scientific ideas from the lands of Islam to the Byzantine territories through the translations that went back from Arabic into Greek (Byzantine Greek at this time), starting at least as early as the tenth century and continuing till the fall of the Byzantine empire in the fifteenth century, still have not been accounted for. As a result, a whole chapter of scientific activities migrating across cultures remains almost completely lost to this day. Had it not been for the few maverick efforts of Neugebauer,[64] Pingree,[65] Tihon,[66] and their colleagues, and most recently Mavroudi,[67] no one would have known that there was such a rich chapter of scientific exchanges between Islam and Byzantium in a completely unexpected direction. This exchange, as it is becoming more and more apparent may have played a very important role in transmitting scientific ideas from Islamic civilization to the European renaissance, and thus must change the very image of the renaissance itself when it is fully accounted for.
Of the problems associated with the classical narrative, we must note that the insistence on the independence of the European renaissance from outside influences also keeps us from appreciating the role of such distinguished Renaissance scientists as Guillaume Postel (1510-1581), whose handwritten annotations on Arabic astronomical texts, still preserved in European libraries, must raise the question about the very nature of the astronomical activities of the European renaissance. When we look at some of the Arabic astronomical manuscripts that were owned by Postel and were annotated in his own hand, and remember that Postel may have very well used those same manuscripts to deliver his lectures in Latin at the institution that later became the Collège de France, we are then forced to ask "Whose science was Arabic science in Renaissance Europe?"[68] All these problems must be resolved, not only in order to understand the extent to which Islamic science was integral to the science of the Renaissance, but also in order to understand the very nature of the Renaissance science itself.
In the same vein, if we ignore, as the classical narrative urges us to do, the theoretical contacts between the land of Islam and Renaissance Europe, such as the transmission of mathematical theorems used in astronomical theories, then the sudden appearance of those theorems in Latin Renaissance texts will also remain unaccounted for and incomprehensible. We already know that astronomers of the Islamic world had used those very theorems for a few centuries. We shall have occasion to return to this very fertile area of research when we consider the relationship between Copernicus's mathematical astronomy and his Islamic predecessors.
The case of the discipline of astronomy in particular is very relevant here for yet another reason. For it was this discipline in specific that seems to have suffered the most as a result of the popularity and the hegemony of the classical narrative. On the one hand, we note a remarkable activity, of the highest order of mathematical and technical rigor, that kept on flourishing in the Islamic world after the death of Ghazālī, so much so that I have dubbed this post-Ghazālī period as the golden age of Islamic astronomy, and yet none of those results that were reached during that period had a chance of being considered by the proponents of the classical narrative as being worthy of attention, let alone consider their influence on Renaissance Europe. In fact, as we shall see later, some of the results achieved in this period were so badly understood by the very few orientalists who ventured to study them, that their significance was not understood properly, both to the disadvantage of the historian of Islamic science as well as the historian of Renaissance science.
For example, when the great orientalist Baron Carra De Vaux attempted to understand the most important chapter in the astronomical work of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, al-tadhkira (book II, chapter 11), in order to make the results of this chapter available to Paul Tannery for his classic Recherches sur I'histoire de I'astronomie ancienne,[69] De Vaux had this to say: "Le chapitre dont nous allons donner la traduction suffira peut-être à faire sentir ce que la science musulmane avait de faiblesse, de mesquinerie, quand elle voulait être originale."[70] He continued: "La portée de ce chapitre n'est donc pas très grande; il mérite neanmoins d'etre lu à titre de curiosité."[71] This was said of the chapter that was most relevant to the astronomy of Copernicus, who himself used the results that were already established in it by Ṭūsī to construct a very essential component of his own astronomy of the De Revolutionibus. As a result of the frame of mind that was generated by the classical narrative, the real significance of this chapter to the revolution against Ptolemaic astronomy, and to the work of Copernicus that was yet to come, is completely lost to the historian who insisted that no new results could have been produced after Ghazālī's attack on the philosophers.
53
Jazarī's major work
55
For the works of this astronomer see the critical edition of his major work and the various bibliographical references to his other works in G. Saliba,
56
Ṭūsī's major astronomical work
57
The prolific production of this astronomer is manifest, with his three major astronomical works, each exceeding 200 folios in the various copies of the extant manuscripts. That extensive production itself may have made the critical editions of his works a prohibitive task. But enough of his novel ideas have been extracted and published in several publications. See, for example, E. S. Kennedy, "Late Medieval Planetary Theory",
58
Although much about the works of this astronomer is known, his major theoretical work on planetary astronomy,
59
One of the major theoretical astronomical works of this astronomer has been published by the present writer in G. Saliba, "Al-Qushjī's Reform of the Ptolemaic Model for Mercury",
60
The fecundity of this astronomer is similar to that of Shīrāzī, and like him many of his works remain unpublished. The present author has devoted a series of articles to him in an attempt to make some of his ideas at least known. The most important of those articles are the following: G. Saliba, "A Sixteenth-Century Arabic Critique of Ptolemaic Astronomy: The Work of Shams al-Dīn al-Khafrī",
63
Although this physician's work is still relatively understudied, much can now be gathered from the article devoted to him in the
64
O. Neugebauer, "Studies in Byzantine Astronomical Terminology",
65
David Pingree,
66
A. Tihon, "L'astronomie byzantine (du Ve au XVe siècle)",
67
Maria Mavroudi,
68
Because of the prohibitive costs of publishing the inordinate amount of illustrations which I needed for that article I decided to publish it on the World Wide Web at http://www.columbia.edu, where I also provided links to some of the manuscripts that were annotated by Postel and others.