Neo-Confucian samurai schools, Buddhist schools, and daimyo schools which
became so widely available around 1800. When the European university was
imported, the pattern repeats: the early generations, when there are only a few
key centers, is the time of greatest creativity in philosophy.Stagnation and Loss of a Center in Islam
In Islam and Christendom, philosophy follows a similar pattern: conditions
for rising creativity are followed by those of stagnation. As we have noted, the
differences between the two regions were matters of degree, although they
would accumulate into differences in substance.
In the earliest period of the Islamic Empire, the principal centers of phi-
losophy were dispersed: Jundishapur in southwestern Persia, where the pagan
school of Athens had moved after being closed down in 529; Antioch, inheritor
of the Alexandrian school after 718, before it moved on around 850 to Harran
in northern Syria, where a school of Sabian star worshippers also existed; and
the Nestorian school at Nisibis in Syria (Nakosteen, 1964: 16–19; Watt, 1985:
37–39; see map in Chapter 8). These preserved the ancient cultural capital but
were not known for innovation. It was only when their scholars became
gathered in Baghdad, at the caliph’s translation project and under other pa-
trons, that the creative network density was achieved. During the great creative
period of Islamic life from 800 to 1000, virtually all the intellectuals were at
Baghdad and at the port city Basra 300 miles down the Euphrates. It was a
close network, with much movement between the two places.
Baghdad and Basra provided the creative combination of a central focus of
attention together with multiple bases of intellectual factions. These bases
included the court as well as other aristocratic patrons supporting groups
engaged in collecting libraries, translating foreign texts, and maintaining chari-
table hospitals where medicine was taught together with related Greek learn-
ing. On the side of the “ancient learning,” there were rival groups of transla-
tors: the Jundishapur lineage exemplified by Hunayn, now at the House of
Wisdom, as well as star worshippers from Harran, such as the family of Thabit
ibn Qurra. Nestorian Christians, Sabians, Zoroastrians, and Hindus crossed
at this center under Muslim sponsorship; the first great Muslim philosophers,
al-Kindi and al-Farabi, were at the center of these networks at Baghdad. Basra
was the initial center of philosophical creativity on the side of the “Islamic
sciences”; its mosque was where the rational theologians, including the MuÀtaz-
ilites and AshÀarites, were formed, and Basra was the home base of the secret
society of the Pure Brethren. These networks also had branches in Baghdad,
in the orbit of Greek falsafa. The early Sufis, too, though they were a dispersed
collection of wanderers, made their greatest impact at Baghdad; this was the
510 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths