ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A History of Muslim Philosophy Volume 2, Book 6 Chapter 68: Influence of Muslim Thought on the West Western Thinkers On Islam In General Muslim philosophy influenced Western thought in several ways.

It (1) initiated in the West the humanistic movement; (2) introduced the historical sciences and (3) the scientific method; (4) helped the Western scholastics in harmonizing philosophy with faith; (5) stimulated Western mysticism; (6) laid the foundations of Italian Renaissance and, to a degree, molded the modem European thought down to the time of Immanuel Kant, in certain directions even later.[^1] The Muslims were the first humanists and they gave a humanist bend to the Western mind.

They were the first to reveal to the West that outside the prevailing Catholic Church it was not all darkness and barbarism but untold wealth of knowledge. They captured and further developed all the intellectual achievements of Greece and transmitted them to the West before any direct contact between the Greek intellect and the Western mind was established.

It was through their influence that ancient and contemporary men outside the Christian West also began to be looked upon as human and even possessed of higher civilizations.

^2 Nothing can prove their own humanism better than the fact that within eight years of the establishment of Baghdad they were in possession of the greater parts of the works of Aristotle (including the spurious Mineralogy, Mechanics, and Theology, the last of which was actually an abridged paraphrases of the last three books of Plotinus' Enneads), some of the works of Plato and the Neo-Platonists, the important works of Hippocrates, Galen, Euclid, Ptolemy, and subsequent writers and commentators, and several Per­sian and Indian writings on mathematics, astronomy, and ethics.

All this was taking place in the Muslim world when Greek thought was almost un­known in the West. While in the East “al-Rashid and al-Maman were delving into Greek and Persian philosophy their contemporaries in the West, Charle­magne and his lords, were reportedly dabbling in the art of writing their names.”[^3] Humanism spread to Western Europe through contact between the Muslims and the non-Muslims in Spain; to Italy by a similar contact in Sicily; and throughout Europe by the impress of a higher culture received by the Crusaders in Syria and Asia Minor.