THE QUESTION OF CONTINUITYSuch value judgments are embedded in explanations of the early
formation of Islamic civilization that have tended to take one of two
forms. One explanation is put in terms of the external "influence"
exerted by some other, older cultural tradition through conscious,
intentional cultural "borrowing" by Muslims (heterogenetic). This
approach often reflects the interests of those who use it. One of the
earliest examples is the way in which culturally conscious Persians in
the eighth and ninth centuries tended to ascribe everything to a pre-
Islamic, Sasanian origin. More recently "Roman" and western "Chris-
tian" explanations have been used by European orientalists who de-
fined civilization in Greco-Roman terms, or whose knowledge of west-
ern Asia stopped at the eastern border of the Roman empire, and who
compared Islam to Catholic or Calvinist forms of Christianity. Some
of them obfuscated the issue by using value-loaded east-west termi-
nology and by putting the matter in terms of the fate of Hellenism in
the face of creeping orientalization. Partly to offset the negative im-
plications of such an approach, others presented the matter in terms
of clJ-ltural inheritance, especially the inheritance by Muslims of Hel-
lenistic philosophy and science and of Jewish or Christian religious
values and doctrines. Since the argument was often philological in
nature and rested on the cultural value of loan words from other
languages in Arabic, it tended to suggest that Muslims possessed a
"borrowed" culture. It is no accident that this approach coincided
with the height of European imperialism in Islamic countries in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, since the use of Judaeo-Chris-
tian and Hellenistic explanations served to make Islamic civilization
more "respectable" in European terms.
The second approach explains Islamic civilization as internally self-
generated (orthogenetic). It traces all significant aspects of Islamic
civilization to the religious requirements of Islam (which were probably
more important for providing sanctions). This approach tends to be
semiapologetic and nationalistic, and its popularity understandably
coincides with the growing national independence of Muslims in the
latter part of the twentieth century because it makes Islamic civilization
more respectable in indigenous terms.
Heterogenetic explanations undermine Islamic originality, and or-
thogenetic expfanations minimize historical continuity. Both ap-
proaches are often monist in nature; that is, they give one-dimensional
explanations by preferring a "Roman," "Iranian," "Arab," "Chris-
tian," or "Jewish," origin for Islamic civilization in order to take