A History of Mathematics From Mesopotamia to Modernity

Islam,Neglect andDiscovery 123

the obvious high culture of his milieu, one would like more information on what preceded it and

what followed; and one wonders how far the sometimes obsessive accuracy of his calculations is

motivated by the demands of practice, by competition, or by a pleasure in the activity of calculating

itself.

Exercise 8.(a) Look at the table for al-Samaw’al’s polynomial division, and try to follow through the

progressof thedivision, (b)showthattheresultof thedivisionis 10 x^3 +x^2 + 4 x+ 10 +( 8 /x^2 )+( 2 /x^3 ).

8. The uses of religion

Islam provides a whole set of fundamental values. Among these values one finds the uniqueness of truth, the lack

of contradiction between revelation and reason...These values, among others, have without the least doubt pushed

forth research and have fostered the creation of open scientific communities. (Rashed 2003, p. 153)

Allah is the ideal merchant. All is counted, everything reckoned...A more simply mathematical ‘body of religion’

than this is difficult to imagine. (C. C. Torrey, cited in Rodinson 1974, p. 81)

Earlier in this chapter it was suggested that the argument for the importance of Islamic mathem-

atics, indeed its centrality in a tradition which links Babylonians, Greeks, and ‘Moderns’, is now

established beyond argument. The idea that Islam itself played some role in the rapid development

of the Abbasid period seems also undeniable; the question is, what was it? The argument (recycled

in one of the quotes which opens this chapter) that many or even most ‘Muslim’ scientists were

not Muslim at all is easily dismissed. Although a substantial number of important early figures

belonged to tolerated non-Muslim religions, this had ceased to be true by about 1000ce, and

many leading mathematicians did more than simply conform, actively working in Islamic law or

philosophy. If the Christians, Jews, and star-worshippers of the Fertile Crescent had it in them to

create a mathematical revolution, one might ask, why did they have to await the advent of a new

religion and social organization to do so? We could simply accept a sociological explanation (a new

empire required scientific organization on a large scale—supposing that to be true); but this does

not explain the specific value put on learning—which led to the Greek and Indian inputs—or the

ways in which it was put to use.

We are unfortunately at some distance from ninth-century Islam, which was in many ways still

in a state of flux. Either Rashed’s characterization of Islam as promoting reason, or Torrey’s more

materialistic view of it as a kind of accountancy have germs of truth, and both were argued in the

early conflicts of schools. Was there no conflict between the Qur’an and pagan learning or ‘philo-

sophy’ (falsafah)? Had God decided everything and measured it from the beginning? Theologians

discussed such points and competed for the favour of the khalifs.

For example, is what can be known in Arabic—the language of the Islamic revelation—different from Greek science

and philosophy in part because of its linguistic home? Or does there exist a universal logic of thought that transcends

(and is therefore superior to) particular expressions in use in a given culture? The h.ad ̄ith, as yet one more category,

already contain numerous admonitions about the value of knowledge, its reward and the duty to seek it, to gather and

preserve it, to journey abroad in search of it. (McAuliffe (2001–), III, p. 101)

The general question of the relation of Islam to pagan and/or practical knowledge is a large
one, and we have neither the space nor the ability to deal with it adequately. However, two points