formerly Byzantine lands that they now ruled they began to absorb Greek
science. Some Greek learning also came from Persia, whose rulers had
welcomed Greek scholars before the rise of Islam, when the Neoplatonic
Academy was closed by the Emperor Justinian. Christendom’s loss
became Islam’s gain.”^20
The Golden Age of Islam began with the overthrow of the Umayyad
dynasty by the Abbasid caliphate in 750 C.E. A new town, Baghdad, was
built on the Tigris River by the Abbasid rulers and became the largest city
in the world. The initial assimilation project by the Abbasids was the
incorporation of Persian culture, and the Persians at the time revered
Greek culture. As the Abbasid Muslims warmed to Greek philosophy,
medicine, and science (if not poetry and drama), they eventually embraced
ancient wisdom from other areas as well, including Egypt, China, and
India. A flourishing and sophisticated society resulted, with educational
and scientific advances across their empire that would serve as the
intermediary from the Greek philosophers to the revolutionaries of the
early Renaissance.
Al-Mamun (caliph from 813–833 C.E.) sent a delegation to
Constantinople to acquire Greek manuscripts, and thus began one of the
greatest intellectual transfers in world history; a tradition of translators,
beginning with the physician Hunayn ibn Ishaq, and later his son and
nephew, translated into Arabic the works of Plato and Aristotle, Galen,
Hippocrates, and the mathematical works of Euclid, Ptolemy, and others.
Historian Philip Hitti, comparing the staggering growth of wisdom among
the Muslim savants to stagnant Europe, has said, “For while in the East al-
Rashid and al-Mamun were delving into Greek and Persian philosophy,
their contemporaries in the West, Charlemagne and his lords, were
dabbling in the art of writing their names.”^21
The Golden Age of Arabic learning spanned the 8th to the 13th
centuries C.E., and for the first time since Alexander the Great, the vast
region was united politically and economically, and the “removal of
political barriers that previously divided the region meant that scholars
from different regions and ethnic backgrounds could travel and interact
with each other.”^22 The rise of Arabic science coincides with the spread of
Islam from the Pyrenees to Pakistan, and the lingua franca of the day was
Arabic, whether the writers were African, Spanish, Persian, or Arabic.