ISLAMIC THOUGHT IN THE MIDDLE AGES

When Emperor Justinian closed the schools in Athens in 529, many of the teachers moved east to Syria, taking their books with them. There the works of Aristotle and many of the Neoplatonists were translated into Syriac and, later, into Arabic. These works were to return to Western Europe centuries later in the hands of Islamic thinkers.

The Ka'ba at Mecca during the Hajj.

The religion of Islam began with Muhammad (571-632), an Arab from the town of Mecca. Repelled by the polytheism of his day and believing himself to be called as a prophet, Muhammad taught that there is no God but Allah. According to Islam, over a period of twenty-three years Muhammad received messages from Allah, which he wrote down in the Qur'an (or Koran). These sacred writings taught an uncomplicated message of submission (which is what the word "Islam" means) to the will of Allah, expressed in a life of obedience and in deeds such as prayer, alms-giving, periods of fasting, and a once-in-a-lifetime Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca. Through the work of Muhammad and his immediate successors, Islam spread quickly throughout the Arabian peninsula. Within a century Islam was the dominant religion in the Middle East, Northern Africa, and even European Spain. Throughout this expansion, Islam was relatively tolerant of Christianity and Judaism, holding that the adherents of these monotheistic religions were also "people of the Book."

ISLAMIC THOUGHT IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The Islamic culture of this period was very sophisticated and cosmopolitan--especially when compared to that of Western Europe. When Western Europe was largely illiterate, the Muslims (adherents of Islam) were making advances in astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. There was also a group of Muslim thinkers known as falyasufs ("philosophers") who studied and applied the manuscripts of Aristotle and the Neoplatonists that had come through Syria. As Islamic thinkers worked with these texts, they encountered the problems their colleagues in the West knew well: how to reconcile philosophy with sacred texts; how to combine reason and faith. The falyasufs were centered in two different regions and times. An early group, around Baghdad, included al-Kindi (ca. 800-870), al-Farabi (870-950), al-Ghazali (1058-1111) and, most prominently, Ibn- Sina (or Avicenna, his Latin name, 980-1037). A later group in Spain included Ibn Bajjah (d. 1138), Ibn Tufayl (ca. 1100-1185), and, most prominently, Ibn Rushd (or Averroes, 1126-1198).

It was through Islamic philosophers that Aristotle was reintroduced to the West, an event that radically changed the course of medieval philosophy.