Factors Behind the Decline of Islamic Science – Part – 3

The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire

Coping with Overextension, Sustained Crusade and the Cultural Barrier

When the Ottomans were on the rise, they were always keen to encourage economic activities in the new areas which were added to their empire. In the new cities, all the trades and crafts were established as an important support for the military effort.[35] During the sixteenth century, the Ottomans were the superior military power. Their artillery and armaments were unchallenged.[36] The Ottoman and Islamic civilization in general developed unaided until it reached the point where it could not develop any longer without a great new advance or a revolution in science and technology. The Ottomans were a great power as long as their gunpowder technology was superior. Gunpowder technology was developed by the Islamic civilization from the thirteenth century until the end of the sixteenth, Nothing of significance in this technology was borrowed from the West. We can even safely say that, in general, Islamic technology in the sixteenth century represented the best that was known in that age. This is illustrated in the mechanical engineering books of Taqì al- Din, who flourished at the end of the sixteenth century in Istanbul, and who established also the advanced Istanbul observatory which was the last one in Islam. In that same age, an English traveller in Syria was studying why people in England were under the impression that the Turks were superior to people in the West.[37]

How can we explain then the decline which followed, and why the West overtook and then surpassed the Ottomans after the sixteenth century? We have given above various factors which led to the decline of the Islamic lands including the Ottoman Empire, notably the capitulations.

The Ottomans lost their advantage in military technology after the six­teenth century, and their economy and their science and technology did not advance beyond medieval standards. In Europe, things began to change dra­matically. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the emergence of a European economy on a large scale. The geographical discoveries brought to Europe great riches from the New World and from the newly discovered trade routes with India and the Far East. Other internal factors were behind the economic progress of local trade and industry. The fertility of the land in Europe and the growth of population were among the factors behind this economic growth.

By about the middle of the nineteenth century, the population of the Ottoman Empire was barely 17 million.[38] This included more than 5 million in the European part which was more of a liability, 6 million in Anatolia and Istanbul, 2-3 million in Egypt, about 1 million in each of Syria and Iraq, and 2-3 million in North Africa. The population of Western Europe in this same period was about 190 million which is more than 11 times the population of the Ottoman Empire.[39] And with Russia and Eastern Europe the total was 274 million or more than 16 times the size of the Ottoman Empire. Each of the following West European countries was larger than the Ottoman Empire in population: Great Britain (28.9 million), France (36.5), Spain and Portugal (19.7), Italy (23.9), Germany (31.7), and Austro-Hungary (31.3).

In face of this growing prosperity and power of Europe, the Ottoman Empire was to falter, and to turn inward. The Ottoman army, however well administered, became increasingly unable to maintain the lengthy frontiers without enormous cost in men and money; and the Ottoman Empire, unlike that of the Spanish, Dutch, and the British later, did not bring much in the way of economic benefit. By the second half of the sixteenth century, the empire was showing signs of strategic over-extension,[40] with a large army stationed in central Europe, an expensive navy operation in the Mediterranean, troops engaged against Persia, in North Africa, the Aegean, Cyprus, and the Red Sea, and reinforcements needed to hold the Crimea against a rising Russian power.

An important element in the decline was the cultural barrier which ex­isted between Christian Europe and the Ottomans and which isolated the empire from the revolutions which took place in science and technology. This resulted also in a hostile relationship with Europe, which was considered as a continuation of the Crusades and which sapped the energy of the empire.

The gap between the levels of development continued to increase, and when the Ottomans realized in the nineteenth century the need to modernize, it was not as much the forces of reaction which delayed the reforms, but the obstacles which were created by the Western powers.

The Future of Islamic Science

After the Second World War, most Islamic lands became independent once again, but the scars of long colonial rule remained. These are evident in the further fragmentation of Islamic and Arabic countries into smaller states, in the injustice and oppression inflicted against the Palestinians, in the destructive invasion of Iraq, in the renewed activities to strengthen the cultural barrier between the West and Islam and to distort the image of Islam, in the current sectarian and ethnic feuds and devastating civil wars within some countries. in the economic and political dominance of foreign powers, and in the cultural domination exemplified in the use of foreign rather than national languages in higher education.

But despite all the adversities and obstacles facing the Islamic lands, the future holds hope and promise. These lands have been the cradle of some of the richest civilizations ever known. Science appeared in the Nile Valley, Syria and Mesopotamia. It continued uninterrupted over thousands of years, reaching its peak during the Islamic period. It flowed on incessantly, and the wide gap of today started only since the Industrial Revolution, less than 200 years ago. Thus there is a solid substratum to the civilization of the Muslim world, which has indigenous and inherent cultural traditions and customs, deeply rooted in the peoples of the area. In addition, there are the crafts and industrial skills inherited over thousands of years. These inherited skills proved their importance in the wake of independence and after the Second World War, when some Islamic countries started to industrialize and thousands of work­shops and industrial plants were established in all Muslim cities. Craftsmen in even the smallest machine shops were able to manufacture the most delicate modern machinery, in no way inferior to imported or imitated versions.

In approaching modern science and technology, we must remind our­selves of those lessons of history that help us to look to the future. For history shows that there is nothing in the content of any part of science, or indeed of technologies high or low, that cannot be nurtured and developed by any people of any type of culture. Almost no society or set of cultural conditions is hostile: on the contrary, almost all the great groups of mankind have throughout the ages made significant contributions to the common heritage of knowledge and techniques. Among the foremost of them are the peoples of Islam.

Once we realize that the content of science and technology finds no cultural barriers, we arrive at another lesson of history. It has been established that in the past, as now, science and scientists flourish in large communities and linguistic groups rather than small, in affluent areas better than in poor. During historic times, science has indeed flourished only when an empire or a nation became mighty and rich, because it depends on the infrastructure provided by the existence of affluence. This is amply demonstrated through­out Islamic history.

The Islamic world is rich in human resources, and some areas are rich in petroleum and other natural resources. This is fortunate because the future of science in Islamic countries depends upon the successful utilization of a combination of these two ingredients. Development in all fields within a community depends significantly on the scientific size, which is itself propor­tional to the size of the population and the gross national product.

Individually, most of the oil-rich countries are small in size. Each cannot by itself create an effective science and technology, or an independent in­dustrial economy. Similarly, those Muslim countries which are endowed with human resources lack the capital essential for the development of science and technology and, indeed, for their general development.

Though most individual Islamic states now realize the importance of science and technology for their future development, and though some have achieved considerable success along this road, future progress in all Muslim countries, rich or poor, depends on the extent of economic co-operation and integration among them on a regional basis.

[1] This paper is a revised version of the Epilogue to Science and Technology in Islam, Part II, UNESCO, 2001, edited by Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, with Maqbul Ahmad and Albert Zaki Iskandar as co-editors. A first version was published in Islam and the Challenge of Modernity, edited by Sharifa Shifa Al-Attas, Kuala Lumpur, 1996, pp. 351-389. Related papers by the author on this general theme are the following: ‘Science and the Islamic World ” in Sience and the Factors of Inequality, edited by Charles Moraze, UNESCO, 1979, pp. 214-225; ‘Science and Technology in Islam’ in Cultures, vol. VII, No. 4, UNESCO, 1980, pp. 89-89;  “Some Obstacles Hindering the Advance of Science and Technology in the Arab Countries,’ in The Islamic World and Japan, Tokyo, 1981; “L’Islam et la science”, La Recherche, Paris, 1982,  and in the Epilogue to Islamic Technology, an illustrated history, by Ahmad Y. al-Hassan and Donald Hill, UNESCO and CUP, 1986.

[2] Notably in Science and Technology in Islam,. Parts I and II, being Volume IV of The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture, edited by Ahmad Y. al-Hassan and Maqbul Ahmad and Albert Zaki Iskander as co-editors, UNESCO, 2001.

[3] Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima, fifth offset reproduction, Beirut, 1984

(Arabic edition).

[4] Ibn Khaldūn, ibid., p. 403.

[5] Ibn Khaldun, ibid., p. 403.

[6] Ibn Khaldūn, ibid., p. 434.

[7]  Ibn Khaldun, op. cit., p. 481.

[8] J. D. Bernal, Science in History, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1969, I, p. 47.

[9] Aydin Sayili, The Observatory in Islam, New York, Arno Press, 1981, p.410.

[10] Sayili, The Observatory…, op. cit., p.408.

[11] E. G. Browne, Literary History of Persia, 1, 1908, p. 286; see G. Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, New York, Krieger, 1975, I, p. 626.

[12] G. Sarton, Introduction…, op. cit., I, pp. 28-29.

[13] De Lacy O’Leary, How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980, pp. 168-169.

[14] Sayili, The Observatory…, op. cit., pp.414-415.

[15] George Makdisi,`On the Origin and Development of the College’, in Islam and the West, Articles in Islam and the Medieval West, ed. by Khalil I. Semaan, New York, 1980, pp. 26-49.

[16] Nikki R. Keddie, `Socioeconomic Change in the Middle East since 1800: A Comparative Analysis’, Chapter 24 in The Islamic Middle East, ed. by A. L. Udovitch, Princeton, The Darwin Press, 1981, p.762.

[17] E. Ashtor, A Social and Economic History of the Near East in the Middle Ages, London, 1976.

[18] Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Fontana Press, London, 1988, p, 21.

[19] Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History, London, 1977, p. 150.

[20) Jacques Bernard, `Trade and Finance in the Middle Ages 900-1500′, article 7 in The Fontana Economic History of Europe — The Middle Ages, edited by Carlo Cipolla, Collins/Fontana, London, 1977, pp. 274-275.

[21] Jacques Bernard, ibid., p.292.

[22] Bernard Lewis, The Arabs…, op. cit., p. 153.

[23] Ibn Kathir, al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya, Beirut, 1982, Arabic edition, XIII, p.200.

[24] Abd al-`Aziz al-Duri, ‘Baghdad’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, I, p.902.

[25] The recent invasion of Iraq and its destruction is reminiscent of the Mongol invasion of the 13^th century, but with more disastrous results

[26] Ashtor, A Social and Economic History…, op. dt., p.253.

[27] Al-Qazwīnī, Hamd Allah. The geographical part of Nuzhat al Qnlub, composed

in AD 1340, was published in two volumes: 1. Text ed. by Guy le Strange. 2. English translation by le Strange, Leiden, Brill, 1915, p.34.

[28] Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 267-275.

[29]  William McNeil, The Rise of the West, Chicago, 1963, p.614.

[30] P. Mansfield, A Histoy of the Middle East, London, Viking, 1991, p. 57.

[31] B.S. Turner,Weber and Islam, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, p. 133.

[32] This paper was written several years before the recent tragic invasion of Iraq. History is repeating itself. The thesis of the author in this respect is thus firmly established.

[33] C. Brockelmann, History of the Islamic Peoples, English translation, London, Roudedge & Kegan Paul, 1980, p. 347.

[34] A good account of the achievements of Muhammad Ali is given by W. R. Polk, The Arab World Today, Harvard, 1991, pp. 73-81. The European coalition against Muhammad Ali is cited in most histories including Polk, op. cit., Brockelmann, History…, op. cit., and Mansfield, A History…, op. cit.

[35] Halil Inalcik, `The Ottoman Economic Mind and Aspects of the Ottoman Economy’, in Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East, ed. by M. A. Cook, Oxford, 1970, pp. 207-218.

[36] John Francis Guilmartin Jr., Gunpowder and Galleys, Cambridge, 1974, p. 255.

[37] Henry Maundrell, A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, Beirut, Khayat, 1963, p.196.

[38] Charles Issawi, `The Area and Population of the Arab Empire’, in The Islamic Middle East, ed. A. L. Udovitch, op. dt., pp. 389-390.

[39] Elias Tuma, European Economic History, Palo Alto, 1971, p.202.

[40] Paul Kennedy, The Rise…, op. dt., p. 13.

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