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Originally Posted by Amergain
At the time of Muhammad's preaching, was he not a member of a Noble Arabian Family? I would think that he received an education even if oral from such a family. Also, I read that there were Jews living in Mecca and Medina during the time of Muhammad. As a member of a commercial family, he and his family would have dealt with Jews and the Christian minority in Arabia. The Polytheistic Arabs only contributed some cultural aspects to Islam.
But Muhammad may have had extensive discussions with Jews and learned of the prophets from Abraham to Jesus. Were not the Muslims of the Arab World very tolerant and protective of Jews as "people of the Book" until the recent European induces antagonism following the war of 1914-1919? The Arabs had been neglected by the Turks during the long years of Ottoman rule.
The Arab Caliphate and other Islamic Countries up to and including the Ottoman Sultanate were famous for possibly saving the Jews from extermination during the Christian Dark Ages in Europe when they were expelled from France, Spain, and Italy. During the Spanish Inquisition Jews were expelled and accepted by the North African Emirates and the Ottoman Empire. Many converted to Islam. They and other Islamic scholars established the great centre of Academic studies in Cordoba during the Caliphate there. From there knowledge spread up into backward and superstitious Europe. Europeans went down to Cordoba to study the science of the Ancient Greeks. The great centre of science, art, and philosophy in Asia of the 14-17th centuries was the Islamic City of Samarqand in what was once the Timurid Emirate.
Europe owes what culture it had in the Renaissance and Enlightenment to the great Islamic Universities in many cities from Cordoba to Samarqand. What destroyed North African Culture was the invasion of the Qarmations, a bunch of savage nomads who destroyed the irrigation systems and cities of Morocco, Algeria, and Libya. Then it was the European Industrial revolution that led to military superiority of European armies. European armies had technological advantage over Arab, African, and Central Asian civilisations.
I think that Islamic countries having been overcome time and again by western armies led to a decline of civilisation perhaps like the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries. With defeat after defeat of the Roman Army by a mobile German cavalry, caused people to move away from the lands or to seek the strongest German War Chief and become serfs for protection. The great urban civilisation of 2nd Century Rome declined to the pre-Feudal civilisation of the Empire when it died. But when the Western Empire died in 476 CE it was a long overdue death of a shadow of the once great Roman Empire. It was dying in 406 CE when the northern defences collapsed, and troops withdrew to Italy. Hordes of Germans crossed the Rhine devastating France, Spain, and even crossing over to take North Africa for the Vandal Kingdom.
There is debate over whether Christianity caused the decline of Rome. Edward Gibbons wrote about this in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Flavius Valerius Constantinus legalised Christianity and picked the most Paganised and Militaristic side branch, Athanasianism as official. He did that to unify the many dissenting groups in the Empire. He merged Athanasian Trinity Christianity which had deified Jesus to Zoroastrian Mithraism, Greek Paganism, and Celtic Paganism each of which had a Sun God. Jesus became the latest Pagan Sun God. It did unify the Empire for while.
But by 400 CE, the Christian hostility to science, philosophy, and the ancient Greek knowledge, did lead to a steep cultural decline. Multi-religious and Science friendly Rome of 250 CE sank into the beginning of the Intellectual Dark Ages starting with the sack of the Great Library of Alexandria in 393 CE by Christian monks to eradicate Greek heresies: Spherical Earth that revolved around the Sun, matter made of tine bits called atoms, evolution of life from simple forms to humans. The Church wanted a Flat Earth either as a disk or a rectangle supported on 4 pillars at the centre of the cosmos. Stars were wee lanterns in a crystal spherical dome over the Earth. In one century Rome sank from being on the edge of the 17th Century Age of Science, back to the Stone Age Mythology of the ancient Hebrews. In that oppressive superstitious culture, technological decline followed. Aqueducts were no longer maintained. Even the money economy almost disappeared.
This Dark Age was to last over a full millennium from 400 to 1500 CE. And it was the Arabs in Spain, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Turks in Istanbul and Samarqand who saved us.
Amergin
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12-06-2005, 01:28 PM
Truth
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