Does France have a short memory ?
Many cultural and political tensions are linked in France to the place of the Arab people within it. The media criticize China for its treatment of minorities, but it seems that part of France does not respect people of immigrant background. France and even Europeans have short memories? The great Arab travelers, traders, intellectuals seem to have been at the base of the intellectual life of the Middle Ages and above all, with the Chinese, they brought the instruments of the birth of the European Renaissance.
Ancient Greek knowledge – philosophy, medicine, mathematics, astronomy -, after having completely disappeared from Europe, found refuge in the Muslim world, which translated it into Arabic, welcomed and extended it, before ultimately transmit to the West, thus allowing its rebirth and then the sudden expansion of European culture.
But according to Sylvain Gouguenheim and other French intellectuals, this vulgate is only a tissue of errors, distorted truths, partial or partial data…Strange atmosphere in France lately.
But how did Greek philosophy spread to Muslim and Christian lands during the medieval period? A great historian, Alain de Libera, sets the record straight.
The so-called “medieval” philosophy is foreign and traveler. A foreigner, because that is what the Jews and Muslims called her, who saw her as an “outside science”, foreign to the community “us”. She is also a traveler, because the closure of the Neoplatonic school in Athens by Justinian (529) launched her on the roads of exile, from Byzantium to Baghdad, then from Ifrîqîya (present-day Tunisia). in Andalus, from Sepharad (Spain in the Hebrew tradition) to Provence, and from Toledo to Paris.
The works of Aristotle and Plato have been preserved and returned to us thanks to the translations of Arabs, Christians and Jews settled in the Arab-Muslim world.
Without a doubt, says de Libera but « with nuances »: thanks to the Christians of the land of Islam, during the great Abbasid translator movement; then thanks to Jews and Christians, in 12th-century Christian Spain. It was in the reconquered Toledo (1085) that the rediscovery of philosophy by the… Christians took place. It is also there that one translated the principal oriental philosopher, Ibn Sinâ (Avicenna), and the mass of the writings of Aristotle or pseudo-Aristotelian which provided part of the philosophical corpus of the university of Paris, founded in 1200. Andalusia played no role there. Another nuance: many medieval Latin translations were made directly from Greek in Constantinople, Sicily and elsewhere.
The great scientist and philosopher Francis Bacon on the Significance of 3 Chinese Inventions: Printing, Gunpowder and the Compass.
Chinese inventions of printing, gunpowder, and the mariner’s compass were brought to Europe by Arab traders during the Renaissance and Reformation. Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a leading philosopher, politician, and adviser to King James I of England, was unaware of the origins of these inventions but deeply impressed by their significance when he wrote:
“It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequence of discoveries. These are to be seen nowhere more clearly than those three which were unknown to the ancients [the Greeks], and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely printing, gunpowder, and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole face and stage of things throughout the world, the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes; insomuch that no empire, no sect, no star, seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these three mechanical discoveries.”
Didn’t know he was talking about the great Chinese inventors of Tang ( or even early ) and Song dynasties ?
Relations between Chinese and Arabs in the Middle Ages
Before the Song, it was with the Great Tang Dynasty that the Arabs came into diplomatic and economic contact.
During the Tang dynasty, when relations with Arabs were first established, the Chinese called the Arabs 大食, Dayi.
The Caliphate was called « Da Yi Guo ».
The Arab Islamic Caliph Uthman Ibn Affan (r. 644–656) sent an embassy to the Tang court at Chang’an.
The Arab Umayyad Caliphate in 715 AD deposed Ikhshid, the king the Fergana Valley, and installed a new king Alutar on the throne. The deposed king fled to Kucha (seat of Anxi Protectorate), and sought Chinese intervention. The Chinese sent 10,000 troops under Zhang Xiaosong to Fergana. He defeated Alutar and the Arab occupation force at Namangan and reinstalled Ikhshid on the throne.
Chinese General Tang Jiahui led the Chinese to defeat the following Arab-Tibetan attack in the Battle of Aksu (717).
Although the Tang Dynasty and the Abbasid Caliphate had fought at Talas, on June 11, 758, an Abbasid embassy arrived at Chang’an simultaneously with the Uyghur Khaganate envoys in order to pay tribute.
A Chinese captured at Talas, Du Huan, was brought to Baghdad and toured throughout the caliphate. He observed that in Merv, Khurasan, Arabs and Persians lived in mixed concentrations. He gave an account of the Arab people in the Tongdian in 801 which he wrote when he returned to China.
There was a controversy between the Arab ambassadors and Uyghur Khaganate Ambassadors over who should go first into the Chinese court, they were then guided by the Master of Ceremonies into two different entrances. Three Da shi ambassadors arrived at the Tang court in 198 A.D. A war which was raging between the Arabs and Tibetans from 785 to 804 benefited the Chinese.
Products were traded by sea routes between China and Arabs.
According to Professor Samy S. Swayd Fatimid missionaries made their Dawah in China during the reign of al-‘Aziz bi-Allah.
In 756, over 4,000 Arab mercenaries joined the Chinese against An Lushan. After the war, they remained in China. Arab Caliph Harun al-Rashid established an alliance with China.
The Abbasid caliph Abu Ja’far Abdallah ibn Muhammad al-Mansur (Abu Giafar) was the one who sent the mercenaries. Several embassies from the Abbaside Caliphs to the Chinese Court are recorded in the T’ang Annals, the most important of these being those of Abul Abbas, the founder of the new dynasty, that of Abu Giafar, the builder of Bagdad, of whom more must be said immediately; and that of (A-lun) Harun al Raschid, best known, perhaps, in modern days through the popular work, Arabian Nights. The Abbasides or ” Black Flags,” as they were commonly called, are known in Chinese history as the Heh-i Ta-shih, ” The Black-robed Arabs ».
In Islamic times Muslims from Arabia traded with China. For instance, China imported frankincense from southern Arabia via Srivijaya.
Why do few books speak of this history of Europe? We Europeans would have more respect for the peoples who have contributed to our development.
