A review of the fifth 50 pages

Posted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 10:22 pm Post subject: A review of the fifth 50 pages
In 1210, a Church assembly banned the commentaries on Aristotle which were being taught at the new University of Paris and written earlier by Ibn Rushd or Averroes. Aristotle's ideas were considered contradictory to and too dangerous for the Christian faith. This is in stark contrast to the manner in which the Muslims received Greek philosophy. The works themselves were already translated into Arabic in Baghdad generations before. The Muslims, including Ibn Rushd, and Jews in Muslim lands aimed to "establish a model for the relationship between philosophy, which meant not just speculative thought but rational and scientific thought, on the one hand, and theology, or faith-bound thought, which accepted the teachings of Scripture and its official interpreters, on the other". This dictinction would mark the difference again and again between the approach of the Church towards philosophy and science and that of the scholars in the Muslim World, where new ideas could be interpreted and understood in lign with the teachings of the Qur'an. Scholars, such as Averroes, Maimonides, Algazel and Avicenna, wrote commentaries, understood, debated, many times across time, new and old ideas while all the time finding no issue with keeping a staunch belief in Islam. Only in the middle of the thirteenth century, would Christian scholars, including Thomas Aquinas, start thinking on the same line synthesizing Aristolean and the Church philosohphies.

Alfonso, the 'Learned', during his reign (1252-1284) started a new literary revolution. He encouraged the translation of Arabic literature in Toledo not into Latin but into the Castilian vernacular. This not only forged a new written European language but initiated a new European literary culture. One of the books that were translated was called the 'Book of the Ladder' that described the Prophet's Miraj with details on Heaven and Hell. Brunetto Latini, a prominent Tuscan in Alfonso's court and writer of his time, could have well been exposed to the 'Ladder'. Nevertheless, it is known that he had considerable influence on one of his students who would later wrote a book dealing very closely with the same topic. The student was Dante and the book was Inferno.

In the following century, the new Christian monarchs will continue drawing from the cultural, including architectural, remnants of old Al-Andalusia. Peter of Castile, for example, built in 1364 in Seville, his new palace and called it Alcazar (al-qasr). The palace was visited by Ibn Khaldun, who at the time was acting as emissary of the only remaining Muslim taifa, Granada. Ibn Khaldun, the author contends, could have prayed in the old mosque now a church and must have been surprised to see the very Arabesque styles of the Christian kingdom, which retained and inheritted from a world that he was familiar to.