Yalman, Suzan. Based on original work by Linda Komaroff. Visiting The Met? Capital in the "Beveled Style". Pair of Doors Carved in the 'Beveled Style'. Folio from a Qur'an Manuscript. Bowl depicting a Man holding a Cup and a Flowering Branch. Tiraz Fragment. Citation Yalman, Suzan. Anatolia and the Caucasus, — A.
Arabian Peninsula, — A. In the eastern territories, local governors decreased their ties to the central Abbasid rule. The Saffarids of Herat and the Samanids of Bukhara seceded in the s to cultivate a more Persian culture and rule.
The Tulinid dynasty managed Palestine, the Hijaz, and parts of Egypt. The Fatimid caliphs initially controlled Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, and they expanded for the next years, taking Egypt and Palestine.
The Abbasid dynasty finally challenged Fatimid rule, limiting them to Egypt. At this point, the Abbasid dynasty had fragmented into several governorships that were mostly autonomous, although they official recognized caliphal authority from Baghdad. The Fatimid Caliphate at its height, c. Outside Iraq, all the autonomous provinces slowly became states with hereditary rulers, armies, and revenues.
They operated under only nominal caliph authority, with emirs ruling their own provinces from their own capitals. Though lacking in political power, the dynasty continued to claim authority in religious matters until after the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in Privacy Policy. Abbasid leadership cultivated intellectual, cultural, and scientific developments in the Islamic Golden Age. The Islamic Golden Age refers to a period in the history of Islam, traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 13th century, during which much of the historically Islamic world was ruled by various caliphates and science, economic development, and cultural works flourished.
The government heavily patronized scholars, and the best scholars and notable translators, such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq, had salaries estimated to be the equivalent of those of professional athletes today. The School of Nisibis and later the School of Edessa became centers of learning and transmission of classical wisdom. The House of Wisdom was a library, translation institute, and academy, and the Library of Alexandria and the Imperial Library of Constantinople housed new works of literature.
Nestorian Christians played an important role in the formation of Arab culture, with the Jundishapur hospital and medical academy prominent in the late Sassanid, Umayyad, and early Abbasid periods. Notably, eight generations of the Nestorian Bukhtishu family served as private doctors to caliphs and sultans between the 8th and 11th centuries. With the introduction of paper, information was democratized and it became possible to make a living from simply writing and selling books.
The use of paper spread from China into Muslim regions in the 8th century, and then to Spain and then the rest of Europe in the 10th century. Paper was easier to manufacture than parchment and less likely to crack than papyrus, and could absorb ink, making it difficult to erase and ideal for keeping records.
Islamic paper makers devised assembly-line methods of hand-copying manuscripts to turn out editions far larger than any available in Europe for centuries.
The best known fiction from the Islamic world is The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , which took form in the 10th century and reached its final form by the 14th century, although the number and type of tales vary.
Arab scholars also saved classic works of antiquity by translating them into various languages. Christians particularly Nestorian Christians contributed to the Arab Islamic civilization during the Ummayad and the Abbasid periods by translating works of Greek philosophers to Syriac and then to Arabic. During the 4th through the 7th centuries, scholarly work in the Syriac and Greek languages was either newly initiated or carried on from the Hellenistic period.
Many classic works of antiquity might have been lost if Arab scholars had not translated them into Arabic and Persian and later into Turkish, Hebrew, and Latin. Islamic scholars also absorbed ideas from China and India, and in turn Arabic philosophic literature contributed to the development of modern European philosophy. Both Ibn Rushd and the scholar Ibn Sina played a major role in saving the works of Aristotle, whose ideas came to dominate the non-religious thought of the Christian and Muslim worlds.
According to him, there is no conflict between religion and philosophy; rather they are different ways of reaching the same truth. He believed in the eternity of the universe. Ibn Ruhd also held that the soul is divided into two parts, one individual and one divine; while the individual soul is not eternal, all humans at the basic level share one and the same divine soul.
The Arabs assimilated the scientific knowledge of the civilizations they had conquered, including the ancient Greek, Roman, Persian, Chinese, Indian, Egyptian, and Phoenician civilizations. Scientists recovered the Alexandrian mathematical, geometric, and astronomical knowledge, such as that of Euclid and Claudius Ptolemy. In calculus, the scholar Alhazen discovered the sum formula for the fourth power, using a method readily generalizable to determine the sum for any integral power. He used this to find the volume of a paraboloid.
Medicine was a central part of medieval Islamic culture. Responding to circumstances of time and place, Islamic physicians and scholars developed a large and complex medical literature exploring and synthesizing the theory and practice of medicine.
Islamic medicine was built on tradition, chiefly the theoretical and practical knowledge developed in India, Greece, Persia, and Rome.
Islamic scholars translated their writings from Syriac, Greek, and Sanskrit into Arabic and then produced new medical knowledge based on those texts. In order to make the Greek tradition more accessible, understandable, and teachable, Islamic scholars organized the Greco-Roman medical knowledge into encyclopedias.
The eye, according to Hunain ibn Ishaq: Scholars developed large encyclopedias of medical knowledge during the Islamic Golden Age, such as this one from a manuscript dated circa Ceramics, glass, metalwork, textiles, illuminated manuscripts, and woodwork flourished during the Islamic Golden Age. Manuscript illumination became an important and greatly respected art, and portrait miniature painting flourished in Persia.
Calligraphy, an essential aspect of written Arabic, developed in manuscripts and architectural decoration. Typically, though not entirely, Islamic art depicts nature patterns and Arabic calligraphy, rather than figures, because many Muslims feared that the depiction of the human form is idolatry and thereby a sin against God, forbidden in the Quran. There are repeating elements in Islamic art, such as the use of geometrical floral or vegetal designs in a repetition known as the arabesque.
The arabesque in Islamic art is often used to symbolize the transcendent, indivisible, and infinite nature of God. Mistakes in repetitions may be intentionally introduced as a show of humility by artists who believe only God can produce perfection, although this theory is disputed.
Detail of arabesque decoration at the Alhambra in Spain: Arabesque in Islamic art is often used to symbolize the transcendent, indivisible, and infinite nature of God. The traditional instrument of the Arabic calligrapher is the qalam, a pen made of dried reed or bamboo. Qalam ink is often in color, and chosen such that its intensity can vary greatly, so that the greater strokes of the compositions can be very dynamic in their effect.
Islamic calligraphy is applied on a wide range of decorative mediums other than paper, such as tiles, vessels, carpets, and inscriptions. Before the advent of paper, papyrus and parchment were used for writing. Coins were another support for calligraphy. Beginning in , the Islamic caliphate reformed the coinage of the Near East by replacing visual depiction with words.
This was especially true for dinars, or gold coins of high value, which were inscribed with quotes from the Quran. By the 10th century, the Persians, who had converted to Islam, began weaving inscriptions on elaborately patterned silks.
These calligraphic-inscribed textiles were so precious that Crusaders brought them to Europe as prized possessions. A notable example is the Suaire de Saint-Josse, used to wrap the bones of St. Josse in the abbey of St. Josse-sur-Mer near Caen in northwestern France. There were many advances in architectural construction, and mosques, tombs, palaces, and forts were inspired by Persian and Byzantine architecture.
Islamic mosaic art anticipated principles of quasicrystalline geometry, which would not be discovered for more years. This art used symmetric polygonal shapes to create patterns that can continue indefinitely without repeating. These patterns have even helped modern scientists understand quasicrystals at the atomic levels. The Abbasid Caliphate was the third of the Islamic caliphates to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammad in CE, and ruled over a large, flourishing empire for three centuries.
The Abbasids distinguished themselves from the Umayyads by attacking their moral character and administration. In particular, they appealed to non-Arab Muslims, known as mawali, who remained outside the kinship-based society of the Arabs and were perceived as a lower class within the Umayyad empire.
The Abbasids had depended heavily on the support of Persians in their overthrow of the Umayyads, and the geographic power shift appeased the Persian mawali support base. While this helped integrate Arab and Persian cultures, it alienated the Arabs who had supported the Abbasids in their battles against the Umayyads. The Abbasids established the new position of vizier to delegate central authority, and delegated even greater authority to local emirs.
As the viziers exerted greater influence, many Abbasid caliphs were relegated to a more ceremonial role as Persian bureaucracy slowly replaced the old Arab aristocracy. The Abbasids, who ruled from Baghdad, had an unbroken line of caliphs for over three centuries, consolidating Islamic rule and cultivating great intellectual and cultural developments in the Middle East in the Golden Age of Islam.
By CE, however, the power of the caliphate under the Abbasids began waning as non-Arabs gained influence and the various subordinate sultans and emirs became increasingly independent.
Map of the Abbasid Caliphate at its greatest extent, c. The Abbasid leadership worked to overcome the political challenges of a large empire with limited communication in the last half of the 8th century — CE. Local governors had begun to exert greater autonomy, using their increasing power to make their positions hereditary.
0コメント