The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades

How Allah Killed Science

Christian Huneyn ibn Ishaq (809-873 ) translated many works by Aristotle, Galen,

Plato, and Hippocrates into Syriac, which his son then translatedin to Ar abi c. ' Th e

Ja co bi te (S yri an ) Chri st ia n Ya hya ib n 'Ad i( 89 3—974) also translated works of

philosophy into Arabic and wrote his own;his trea tiseThe Refo rmat ion of Mora ls

has occa sion ally been erro neously attributed to several of his Muslim contemporaries.

His student, aChristi an namedAbu 'Ail 'Isaibn Zur'a (943-1008], also made Arabic

translations of Aristotle and other Creek writers from Syriac. The firstArabic-langua ge

medica l treatis e was writte n by a Christi an priest andtranslatedinto Arabi c by a

Jewis h docto r in 683. The first hospi tal inBaghdad during the heyday of the Abbasid

caliphate was built by a Nestorian Christian, Jabrail ibn Bakhtishu.' Assyrian

Christians foundeda pioneering medical school at Gundeshapur in Persia. The world's

first university may not have beenthe Muslims' Al-Azhar in Cairo, asis often med, but

the Assyrian School of Nisibis.

There is no shame in any of this. No culture exists in a vacuum. Every

culture builds on the achievements of other cultures and borrows from those

with which it is in contact. But the historical record simply doesn't support the idea

that Islaminspired a culture that outstripped others.

There was a time when Islamic culture was more advanced than that of

Europeans. but that superiority corresponds exactly to the period when Muslims

were able to draw on and advance the achievements of Byzantine and oth er

civ ili zat ion s. Aft er all , the sev ent h-cen tur y Mus lim inva der s of Pers iawere

so unci vili zed, rela tive to thos e they had conquered, that they exchanged gold

(which they had never seen) for silver'which they had) and used camphor , a

substa nce entire ly new to them, in cooking.' Are we to believe that these rough

men entered their new surroundings with daring new artisticandarchitectural plans

tuckedunder their arms?

But when they had taken what they could from Byzantium and Persia, and

sufficient numbers of Jews and Christians hail been converted to