Indo-Persian culture refers to a cultural synthesis present in the Indian subcontinent. It is characterised by the absorption or integration of Persian aspects into the various cultures of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The earliest introduction of Persian influence and culture to the Indian subcontinent was by Muslim rulers of Turkic and Afghan origin with Persianate societies and Persianised cultures. This socio-cultural synthesis arose steadily through the Delhi Sultanate from the 13th to 16th centuries, and the Mughal Empire from then onwards until the 19th century. Various MuslimTurko-Persian rulers, such as the 11th-century Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi, rapidly pushed for the heavy Persianization of conquered territories in northwestern India (present-day Pakistan), where Islamic influence was also firmly established.
Persian was the official language of most Muslim dynasties in the Indian subcontinent, such as the Delhi Sultanate, the Bengal Sultanate, the Bahmani Sultanate, the Mughal Empire and their successor states, and the Sikh Empire. It was also the dominant cultured language of poetry and literature. Many of the Sultans and nobility in the Sultanate period were Persianised Turks from Central Asia who spoke Turkic languages as their mother tongues. The Mughals were also culturally Persianised Central Asians (of Turko-Mongol origin on their paternal side), but spoke Chagatai Turkic
as their first language at the beginning, before eventually adopting
Persian. Persian became the preferred language of the Muslim elite of
northern India. Muzaffar Alam, a noted scholar of Mughal and Indo-Persian history, suggests that Persian became the official lingua franca of the Mughal Empire under Akbar for various political and social factors due to its non-sectarian and fluid nature. The influence of these languages led to a vernacular called Hindustani that is the direct ancestor language of today's Urdu and Hindi.
The Persianisation of the Indian subcontinent resulted in its incorporation into the cosmopolitan Persianate world of Ajam, known today academically as Greater Iran, which historically gave many inhabitants a secular, Persian identity.
With the presence of Muslim culture in the region in the Ghaznavid period, Lahore and Uch were established as centres of Persian literature. Abu-al-Faraj Runi and Masud Sa'd Salman (d. 1121) were the two earliest major Indo-Persian poets based in Lahore. The earliest of the "great" Indo-Persian poets was Amir Khusrow (d. 1325) of Delhi,
who has since attained iconic status within the Urdu speakers of the
Indian subcontinent as, among other things, the "father" of Urdu
literature.
Indo-Persian culture and to varying degrees also Turkic culture
flourished side-by-side during the period of the Delhi Sultanate
(1206–1526). The invasion of Babur in 1526, the end of the Delhi
Sultanate, and the establishment of what would become the Mughal Empire would usher the golden age of Indo-Persian culture with particular reference to the art and architecture of the Mughal era.
During the Mughal era, Persian persisted as the language of the Mughals up to and including the year 1707 which marked the death of the Emperor Aurangzeb,
generally considered the last of the "Great Mughals". Thereafter, with
the decline of the Mughal empire, the 1739 invasion of Delhi by Nader Shah and the gradual growth initially of the Hindu Marathas and later the European
power within the Indian subcontinent, Persian or Persian culture
commenced a period of decline although it nevertheless enjoyed patronage
and may even have flourished within the many regional empires or
kingdoms of the Indian subcontinent including that of the Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh (r. 1799–1837).
Persian as a language of governance and education was abolished in 1839 by the British East India Company and the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, even if his rule was purely symbolic or ceremonial, was dethroned in 1857 by the British.
Further, C.E. Bosworth writes about the significance of Persian
culture that developed a mark within Muslim sultans in this era that:
"The sultans were generous patrons of the Persian literary traditions of
Khorasan, and latterly fulfilled a valuable role as transmitters of
this heritage to the newly conquered lands of northern India, laying the
foundations for the essentially Persian culture which was to prevail in
Muslim India until the 19th century."
Bengal
The Lattan Mosque in Gaur, which was the first capital of the Persianate Sultanate of Bengal.
Bengal was the easternmost frontier of the Persian cultural sphere.
For over 600 years (1204-1837), the Persian language was an official
language in Bengal, including during the provincial period of the Delhi
Sultanate; the independent period of the Bengal Sultanate; the dominion period of the Bengal Subah in the Mughal Empire; and the quasi-independent Nawabi period. Bengal was the subcontinent's wealthiest region for centuries, where Persian people, as well as Persianate Turks, settled in the Ganges delta to work as teachers, lawyers, poets, administrators, soldiers and aristocrats.
The Bengali language continues to have a significant amount of Persian
loanwords. A popular literary creole emerged mixing Persian and Bengali
which came to be known as Dobhashi. Several Bengali cities were once centres of Persian prose and poetry. Hafez, one of the masters of Persian poetry, kept a notable correspondence with Sultan Ghiyasuddin Azam Shah and they composed a poem together. The Mughal period saw the zenith of Persian cultural expression in Bengal.
During the Bengali Renaissance, Persian was studied by not only Muslim but even Hindu scholars, including Raja Ram Mohan Roy. From the mid-eighteenth century towards the 19th century, five to six daily magazines were published in Calcutta, most notably the Durbin and the Sultan al-Akhbar.
The use of Persian as an official language was prohibited by Act no. XXIX of 1837 passed by the President of the Council of India in Council on 20 November 1837.
The
Deccan region's integration into the Indo-Persian culture of the north
began in the early 14th century, when the Delhi Sultanate made political
movements towards the south. In the era of the Khalji dynasty,
the Sultanate turned regional kings of the Deccan into tributaries,
casting Delhi's shadow in the region for the first time. This resulted
in the assimilation of certain Persianate regal practices into the
courts of these kings. The Deccan was then brought into the Delhi
Sultanate under the conquests of the Tughluq dynasty.
This led to a more formal introduction of Persianate culture in the
Deccan, extending beyond the realm of the court. Population movements
from the north to the south greatly contributed to the diffusion of this
culture, notable of which is the brief shifting of the Sultanate's
capital from Delhi to Devagiri under Muhammad bin Tughluq in 1327.
Gol Gumbaz, the mausoleum of Mohammed Adil Shah, Sultan of Bijapur.
In the middle of the 14th century, the Delhi Sultanate's hold over
the Deccan broke from revolts, but the Indo-Persian culture it had
brought lived on. The breakaway Bahmani Sultanate
was established in 1347, and its rulers were greatly influenced by
Persian culture. They were well-versed in the language and its
literature, and promoted Persian language education throughout their
empire. The architecture cultivated by them had significant Iranian
influences, even more than that of the Muslims in the north.
The Bahmani Sultans actively recruited Persian or Persianised men in
their administration, and such foreigners were in fact favoured over
Indians. Sultan Firuz Shah (1397-1422) sent ships from his ports in Goa and Chaul to the Persian Gulf to bring back talented men of letters, administrators, jurists, soldiers and artisans. This included the high-born Iranian Mahmud Gawan (1411-1481) who rose to become a powerful minister of that state during the reign of another Bahmani Sultan. The Persianised nature of the court is reflected in the fact that the Bahmanis celebrated festivals like Nowruz.
According to Richard Eaton, even the Hindu Vijayanagara
empire from the same period was highly Persianised in its culture. The
royal quarters of the capital had many Persian architectural elements
such as domes and vaulted arches.
The Bahmani Sultanate disintegrated into five Deccan Sultanates, similar in culture. Hyderabad, built by the Golconda Sultanate in the 16th century, was inspired by Isfahan. The use of Persian as a court language in Hyderabad continued under the Nizams of Hyderabad, and was only replaced by Urdu in 1886.
The court language during the Deccan sultanate period was Persian or Arabic, however, Marathi was widely used during the period especially by the Adil Shahis of Bijapur and the Ahmadnagar Sultanate.
Although the rulers were Muslims, the local feudal landlords and the
revenue collectors were Hindus and so was the majority of the
population. Political expediency made it important for the sultans to
make use of Marathi. Nevertheless, Marathi in official documents from
the era is totally Persianised in its vocabulary.
The Persian influence continues to this day with many Persian derived
words used in every day speech such as bāg (Garden), kārkhānā (factory),
shahar (city), bāzār (market), dukān (shop), hushār (clever), kāgad
(paper), khurchi (chair), zamīn (land), zāhirāt (advertisement), and
hazār (thousand).
During the British colonial era
Given
that the Mughals had historically symbolised Indo-Persian culture to
one degree or another, the dethroning of Bahadur Shah Zafar and the
institution of the direct control of the British Crown in 1858 may be considered as marking the end of the Indo-Persian era, even if, after the Indian Rebellion, Persian would still retain an audience and even produce commendable literature such as the philosophical poetry of Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938). The British would absorb elements of the culture's architectural style into the buildings of the Raj, producing Indo-Saracenic architecture.
The Indo-Persian synthesis led to the development of cuisine that
combined indigenous foods and ingredients, with the tastes and methods
of the Turko-Persians. This was especially under the Mughals, who
invited cooks (bawarchis) from various parts of the Islamic world. This resultant cuisine is referred to as Mughlai cuisine,
and has left a great impact on the regional eating habits of South
Asia. It was further developed in the kitchens of regional Islamic
powers, leading to distinctive styles such as the Awadhi and Hyderabadi cuisines.
Due to this synthesis, the Indian subcontinent shares with Central and West Asia foods such as naan and kebab, but has also become home to unique dishes such as biryani.
The Indian subcontinent's Islamic period produced architecture that
drew stylistically from Persianate culture, using features such as
domes, iwans, minars, and baghs. Early Islamic rulers tended to use spolia from Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain
buildings, resulting in an Indianised style which would be refined by
later kingdoms. Hence monuments came to feature uniquely Indian
architectural elements, such as corbelled arches and jali.
The main buildings produced were mosques, forts, and tombs. These still
stand today and are well-represented in the architecture of cities such
as Lahore, Delhi, and Hyderabad, to name a few.
Indo-Persian architecture was not exclusive to Islamic power, as
the members and rulers of other religions incorporated it in their
monuments. Sikh architecture is a notable example of this. The Hindu Vijayanagara Empire used Indo-Persian architecture in courtly monuments.
Golkonda 1660-1670. Musician plays a form of rubab. Related instruments include the medieval Iranian rubab, the rubab of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India, the Indian sarod, sursingar and kamaica, the Nepali-Tibetan-Bhutanese tungana, the Pamiri rubab and the Uyghur rawap. The family of instruments blended Persian and Indian cultures, and has been played by Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims.
Prior to Islamic conquest, the Indian subcontinent had a history of
musical practice that drew from Sanskritic culture. The subsequent
Indo-Persian synthesis resulted in an influx of Iranian musical
elements, leading to further developments in the region's musical
culture through the patronage of new Persianate rulers. This appears to
have been the impetus for divergence in indigenous music, leading to Hindustani classical music. Some of the main instruments used in this style, such as the sitar and sarod, are thought to have close historical ties with Persian instruments (for an example, see setar). Musical genres such as khyal and tarana, and the musical performance of ghazals, are examples of the Indo-Persian musical confluence. Notably, the Sufi devotional music of qawwali bears evident impact from Persian influence, such as the frequent usage of Persian poems.
The creation of many of these practices is credited to 13th-century poet, scholar, and musician Amir Khusrau.
Europe and the Islamic lands had multiple points of contact during
the Middle Ages. The main points of transmission of Islamic knowledge to
Europe lay in Sicily and in Spain, particularly in Toledo (with Gerard of Cremone, 1114–1187, following the conquest of the city by Spanish Christians in 1085). In Sicily, following the Islamic conquest of the island in 965 and its reconquest by the Normans in 1091, a syncretistic Norman–Arab–Byzantine culture developed, exemplified by rulers such as King Roger II, who had Islamic soldiers, poets and scientists at his court. The MoroccanMuhammad al-Idrisi wrote The Book of Pleasant Journeys into Faraway Lands or Tabula Rogeriana, one of the greatest geographical treatises of the Middle Ages, for Roger.
The Crusades also intensified exchanges between Europe and the Levant, with the Italian maritime republics taking a major role in these exchanges. In the Levant, in such cities as Antioch, Arab and Latin cultures intermixed intensively.
During the 11th and 12th centuries, many Christian scholars
traveled to Muslim lands to learn sciences. Notable examples include Leonardo Fibonacci (c. 1170 –c. 1250), Adelard of Bath (c. 1080–c. 1152) and Constantine the African
(1017–1087). From the 11th to the 14th centuries, numerous European
students attended Muslim centers of higher learning (which the author
calls "universities") to study medicine, philosophy, mathematics, cosmography and other subjects.
A medieval Arabic representation of Aristotle teaching a student.
In the Middle East, many classical Greek texts, especially the works of Aristotle, were translated into Syriac during the 6th and 7th centuries by Nestorian, Melkite or Jacobite monks living in Palestine, or by Greek exiles from Athens or Edessa
who visited Islamic centres of higher learning. The Islamic world then
kept, translated, and developed many of these texts, especially in
centers of learning such as Baghdad, where a "House of Wisdom" with thousands of manuscripts existed as early as 832. These texts were in turn translated into Latin by scholars such as Michael Scot (who made translations of Historia Animalium and On the Soul as well as of Averroes's commentaries) during the Middle Ages. Eastern Christians played an important role in exploiting this knowledge, especially through the Christian Aristotelian School of Baghdad in the 11th and 12th centuries.
Later Latin translations of these texts originated in multiple places. Toledo, Spain (with Gerard of Cremona's Almagest) and Sicily became the main points of transmission of knowledge from the Islamic world to Europe. Burgundio of Pisa (died 1193) discovered lost texts of Aristotle in Antioch and translated them into Latin.
From Islamic Spain, the Arabic philosophical literature was translated into Hebrew, Latin, and Ladino. The Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides, Muslim sociologist-historian Ibn Khaldun, Carthage
citizen Constantine the African who translated Greek medical texts, and
Al-Khwarizmi's collation of mathematical techniques were important
figures of the Golden Age.
Avicennism and Averroism are terms for the revival of the Peripatetic school
in medieval Europe due to the influence of Avicenna and Averroes,
respectively. Avicenna was an important commentator on the works of Aristotle, modifying it with his own original thinking in some areas, notably logic.
The main significance of Latin Avicennism lies in the interpretation of
Avicennian doctrines such as the nature of the soul and his existence-essence distinction, along with the debates and censure that they raised in scholastic Europe. This was particularly the case in Paris, where so-called Arabic culture was proscribed in 1210, though the influence of his psychology and theory of knowledge upon William of Auvergne and Albertus Magnus have been noted.
The effects of Avicennism were later submerged by the much more influential Averroism, the Aristotelianism of Averroes, one of the most influential Muslim philosophers in the West.
Averroes disagreed with Avicenna's interpretations of Aristotle in
areas such as the unity of the intellect, and it was his interpretation
of Aristotle which had the most influence in medieval Europe. Dante Aligheri argues along Averroist lines for a secularist theory of the state in De Monarchia. Averroes also developed the concept of "existence precedes essence".
Imaginary debate between Averroes and Porphyry. Monfredo de Monte Imperiali Liber de herbis, 14th century.
Al-Ghazali also had an important influence on medieval Christian philosophy along with Jewish thinkers like Maimonides.
George Makdisi (1989) has suggested that two particular aspects of Renaissance humanism have their roots in the medieval Islamic world, the "art of dictation, called in Latin, ars dictaminis," and "the humanist attitude toward classical language".
He notes that dictation was a necessary part of Arabic scholarship
(where the vowel sounds need to be added correctly based on the spoken
word), and argues that the medieval Italian use of the term "ars
dictaminis" makes best sense in this context. He also believes that the
medieval humanist favouring of classical Latin over medieval Latin makes
most sense in the context of a reaction to Arabic scholarship, with its
study of the classical Arabic of the Koran in preference to medieval
Arabic.
Stefan of Pise translated into Latin around 1127 an Arab manual of medical theory. The method of algorism for performing arithmetic with the Hindu–Arabic numeral system was developed by the Persianal-Khwarizmi in the 9th century, and introduced in Europe by Leonardo Fibonacci (1170–1250). A translation by Robert of Chester of the Algebra by al-Kharizmi is known as early as 1145. Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen, 980–1037) compiled treatises on optical sciences, which were used as references by Newton and Descartes.
Medical sciences were also highly developed in Islam as testified by
the Crusaders, who relied on Arab doctors on numerous occasions. Joinville reports he was saved in 1250 by a “Saracen” doctor.
Contributing to the growth of European science was the major search
by European scholars such as Gerard of Cremona for new learning. These
scholars were interested in ancient Greek philosophical and scientific
texts (notably the Almagest)
which were not obtainable in Latin in Western Europe, but which had
survived and been translated into Arabic in the Muslim world. Gerard was
said to have made his way to Toledo in Spain and learnt Arabic
specifically because of his "love of the Almagest". While there he took advantage of the "abundance of books in Arabic on every subject". Islamic Spain
and Sicily were particularly productive areas because of the proximity
of multi-lingual scholars. These scholars translated many scientific and
philosophical texts from Arabic into Latin. Gerard personally translated 87 books from Arabic into Latin, including the Almagest, and also Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī's On Algebra and Almucabala, Jabir ibn Aflah's Elementa astronomica, al-Kindi's On Optics, Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Kathīr al-Farghānī's On Elements of Astronomy on the Celestial Motions, al-Farabi's On the Classification of the Sciences, the chemical and medical works of Rhazes, the works of Thabit ibn Qurra and Hunayn ibn Ishaq, and the works of Arzachel, Jabir ibn Aflah, the Banū Mūsā, Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam, Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis), and Ibn al-Haytham (including the Book of Optics).
Western alchemy was directly dependent upon Arabic sources. The Latin alchemical
works of "Geber" (Jābir ibn Hayyān) were standard texts for European
alchemists. The exact attribution of these works remains a matter of
some controversy. Some are undoubtedly translations from Arabic from
works attributed to Jābir ibn Hayyān, including the Kitab al-Kimya (titled Book of the Composition of Alchemy in Europe), translated by Robert of Chester (1144); and the Book of Seventy, translated by Gerard of Cremona (before 1187).
Whether these were actually written by one man (or whether indeed Jābir
was a real historical figure) is disputed, but there is no doubting the
influence on medieval European alchemy of the translated Arabic works. The alchemical works of Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (Rhazes) were translated into Latin around the 12th century. Several technical Arabic words from Arabic alchemical works, such as alkali, found their way into European languages and became part of scientific vocabulary.
The translation of Al-Khwarizmi's
work greatly influenced mathematics in Europe. As Professor Victor J.
Katz writes: "Most early algebra works in Europe in fact recognized that
the first algebra works in that continent were translations of the work
of al-Khwärizmï and other Islamic authors. There was also some
awareness that much of plane and spherical trigonometry could be
attributed to Islamic authors". The words algorithm, deriving from Al-Khwarizmi's Latinized name Algorismi, and algebra, deriving from the title of his AD 820 book Hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala, Kitab al-Jabr wa-l-Muqabala are themselves Arabic loanwords. This and other Arabic astronomical and mathematical works, such as those by al-Battani and Muhammad al-Fazari's Great Sindhind (based on the Surya Siddhanta and the works of Brahmagupta). were translated into Latin during the 12th century.
A European and an Arab practicing geometry together. 15th-century manuscript
Al-Jayyani's The book of unknown arcs of a sphere (a treatise on spherical trigonometry) had a "strong influence on European mathematics". Regiomantus' On Triangles
(c. 1463) certainly took his material on spherical trigonometry
(without acknowledgment) from Arab sources. Much of the material was
taken from the 12th-century work of Jabir ibn Aflah, as noted in the
16th century by Gerolamo Cardano.
A short verse used by Fulbert of Chartres
(952-970 –1028) to help remember some of the brightest stars in the sky
gives us the earliest known use of Arabic loanwords in a Latin text: "Aldebaran stands out in Taurus, Menke and Rigel in Gemini, and Frons and bright Calbalazet in Leo. Scorpio, you have Galbalagrab; and you, Capricorn, Deneb. You, Batanalhaut, are alone enough for Pisces."
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) wrote the Book of Optics (1021), in which he developed a theory of vision and light which built on the work of the Roman writer Ptolemy (but which rejected Ptolemy's theory that light was emitted by the eye, insisting instead that light rays entered the eye), and was the most significant advance in this field until Kepler. The Book of Optics was an important stepping stone in the history of the scientific method and history of optics. The Latin translation of the Book of Optics influenced the works of many later European scientists, including Roger Bacon and Johannes Kepler. The book also influenced other aspects of European culture. In religion, for example, John Wycliffe, the intellectual progenitor of the Protestant Reformation, referred to Alhazen in discussing the seven deadly sins in terms of the distortions in the seven types of mirrors analyzed in De aspectibus. In literature, Alhazen's Book of Optics is praised in Guillaume de Lorris' Roman de la Rose. In art, the Book of Optics laid the foundations for the linear perspective technique and may have influenced the use of optical aids in Renaissance art (see Hockney-Falco thesis). These same techniques were later employed in the maps made by European cartographers such as Paolo Toscanelli during the Age of Exploration.
European depiction of the Persian doctor al-Razi, in Gerard of Cremona's Receuil des traités de médecine (1250–1260). Gerard de Cremona translated numerous works by Muslim scholars, such as al-Razi and Ibn Sina.
One of the most important medical works to be translated was Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine
(1025), which was translated into Latin and then disseminated in
manuscript and printed form throughout Europe. It remained a standard
medical textbook in Europe until the early modern period, and during the
15th and 16th centuries alone, The Canon of Medicine was published more than thirty-five times. Avicenna noted the contagious nature of some infectious diseases (which he attributed to "traces" left in the air by a sick person), and discussed how to effectively test new medicines. He also wrote The Book of Healing,
a more general encyclopedia of science and philosophy, which became
another popular textbook in Europe. Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi wrote the
Comprehensive Book of Medicine, with its careful description of and distinction between measles and smallpox, which was also influential in Europe. Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi wrote Kitab al-Tasrif,
an encyclopedia of medicine which was particularly famed for its
section on surgery. It included descriptions and diagrams of over 200
surgical instruments, many of which he developed. The surgery section
was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the 12th century, and
used in European medical schools for centuries, still being reprinted in the 1770s.
Facade of a meeting between a Muslim scholar and a Frankish lord
Other medical Arabic works translated into Latin during the medieval period include the works of Razi and Avicenna (including The Book of Healing and The Canon of Medicine), and Ali ibn Abbas al-Majusi's medical encyclopedia, The Complete Book of the Medical Art.
Mark of Toledo in the early 13th century translated the Qur'an as well as various medical works.
Technology and culture
19th-century depiction of La Zisa, Palermo, showing Arab-Norman art and architecture combining Occidental features (such as the Classical pillars and friezes) with Islamic decorations and calligraphy.
Islamic decorative arts
were highly valued imports to Europe throughout the Middle Ages.
Largely because of accidents of survival, most surviving examples are
those that were in the possession of the church. In the early period
textiles were especially important, used for church vestments, shrouds,
hangings and clothing for the elite. Islamic pottery of everyday quality
was still preferred to European wares. Because decoration was mostly
ornamental, or small hunting scenes and the like, and inscriptions were
not understood, Islamic objects did not offend Christian sensibilities.
Medieval art in Sicily is interesting stylistically because of the
mixture of Norman, Arab and Byzantine influences in areas such as mosaics and metal inlays, sculpture, and bronze-working.
The ArabicKufic
script was often imitated for decorative effect in the West during the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance, to produce what is known as pseudo-Kufic:
"Imitations of Arabic in European art are often described as
pseudo-Kufic, borrowing the term for an Arabic script that emphasizes
straight and angular strokes, and is most commonly used in Islamic
architectural decoration".
Numerous cases of pseudo-Kufic are known from European art from around
the 10th to the 15th century; usually the characters are meaningless,
though sometimes a text has been copied. Pseudo-Kufic would be used as
writing or as decorative elements in textiles, religious halos or frames. Many are visible in the paintings of Giotto.
The exact reason for the incorporation of pseudo-Kufic in early
Renaissance painting is unclear. It seems that Westerners mistakenly
associated 13th- and 14th-century Middle-Eastern scripts as being
identical with the scripts current during Jesus's time, and thus found natural to represent early Christians in association with them: "In Renaissance art, pseudo-Kufic script was used to decorate the costumes of Old Testament heroes like David".
Another reason might be that artist wished to express a cultural
universality for the Christian faith, by blending together various
written languages, at a time when the church had strong international
ambitions.
The Somerset House Conference (1604) artist unknown, shows English and Spanish diplomats gathered around a table covered by an Oriental carpet.
Carpets of Middle-Eastern origin, either from the Ottoman Empire, the Levant or the Mamluk state of Egypt or Northern Africa,
were a significant sign of wealth and luxury in Europe, as demonstrated
by their frequent occurrence as important decorative features in paintings
from the 13th century and continuing into the Baroque period. Such
carpets, together with Pseudo-Kufic script offer an interesting example
of the integration of Eastern elements into European painting, most
particularly those depicting religious subjects.
A number of musical instruments used in European music were influenced by Arabic musical instruments, including the rebec (an ancestor of the violin) from the rebab and the naker from naqareh The oud is cited as one of several precursors to the modern guitar.
Some scholars believe that the troubadors may have had Arabian origins, with Magda Bogin stating that the Arab poetic and musical tradition was one of several influences on European "courtly love poetry". Évariste Lévi-Provençal and other scholars stated that three lines of a poem by William IX of Aquitaine
were in some form of Arabic, indicating a potential Andalusian origin
for his works. The scholars attempted to translate the lines in question
and produced various different translations; the medievalist Istvan
Frank contended that the lines were not Arabic at all, but instead the
result of the rewriting of the original by a later scribe.
The theory that the troubadour tradition was created by William after his experiences with Moorish arts while fighting with the Reconquista in Spain has been championed by Ramón Menéndez Pidal and Idries Shah,
though George T. Beech states that there is only one documented battle
that William fought in Spain, and it occurred towards the end of his
life. However, Beech adds that William and his father did have Spanish
individuals within their extended family, and that while there is no
evidence he himself knew Arabic, he may have been friendly with some
European Christians who could speak the language.
Others state that the notion that William created the concept of
troubadours is itself incorrect, and that his "songs represent not the
beginnings of a tradition but summits of achievement in that tradition."
A number of technologies in the Islamic world were adopted in European medieval technology. These included various crops; various astronomical instruments, including the Greek astrolabe which Arab astronomers developed and refined into such instruments as the Quadrans Vetus, a universal horary quadrant which could be used for any latitude, and the Saphaea, a universal astrolabe invented by Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī; the astronomical sextant; various surgical instruments, including refinements on older forms and completely new inventions; and advanced gearing in waterclocks and automata. Distillation was known to the Greeks and Romans, but was rediscovered in medieval Europe through the Arabs. The word alcohol (to describe the liquid produced by distillation) comes from Arabic al-kuhl. The word alembic (via the Greek Ambix) comes from Arabic al-anbiq.
Islamic examples of complex water clocks and automata are believed to
have strongly influenced the European craftsmen who produced the first
mechanical clocks in the 13th century.
The importation of both the ancient and new technology from the Middle East and the Orient to Renaissance Europe represented “one of the largest technology transfers in world history.”
In an influential 1974 paper, historian Andrew Watson suggested that there had been an Arab Agricultural Revolution between 700 and 1100, which had diffused a large number of crops
and technologies from Spain into medieval Europe, where farming was
mostly restricted to wheat strains obtained much earlier via central
Asia. Watson listed eighteen crops, including sorghum from Africa,
citrus fruits from China, and numerous crops from India such as mangos,
rice, cotton and sugar cane, which were distributed throughout Islamic
lands that, according to Watson, had previously not grown them. Watson
argued that these introductions, along with an increased mechanization
of agriculture, led to major changes in economy, population
distribution, vegetation cover, agricultural production and income,
population levels, urban growth, the distribution of the labour force,
linked industries, cooking, diet and clothing in the Islamic world. Also
transmitted via Muslim influence, a silk industry flourished, flax was
cultivated and linen exported, and esparto grass, which grew wild in the more arid parts, was collected and turned into various articles.
However Michael Decker has challenged significant parts of Watson's
thesis, including whether all these crops were introduced to Europe
during this period. Decker used literary and archaeological evidence to
suggest that four of the listed crops (i.e. durum wheat, Asiatic rice,
sorghum and cotton) were common centuries before the Islamic period,
that the crops which were new were not as important as Watson had
suggested, and generally arguing that Islamic agricultural practices in
areas such as irrigation were more of an evolution from those of the
ancient world than the revolution suggested by Watson.
The production of sugar from sugar cane, water clocks, pulp and paper, silk, and various advances in making perfume, were transferred from the Islamic world to medieval Europe. Fulling mills and advances in mill technology may have also been transmitted from the Islamic world to medieval Europe, along with the large-scale use of inventions like the suctionpump, noria and chain pumps
for irrigation purposes. According to Watson, "The Islamic contribution
was less in the invention of new devices than in the application on a
much wider scale of devices which in pre-Islamic times had been used
only over limited areas and to a limited extent."
These innovations made it possible for some industrial operations that
were previously served by manual labour or draught animals to be driven
by machinery in medieval Europe.
The spinning wheel
was invented in the Islamic world by 1030. It later spread to China by
1090, and then spread from the Islamic world to Europe and India by the
13th century. The spinning wheel was fundamental to the cotton textile industry prior to the Industrial Revolution. It was a precursor to the spinning jenny, which was widely used during the Industrial Revolution. The spinning jenny was essentially an adaptation of the spinning wheel.
While the earliest coins were minted and widely circulated in Europe, and Ancient Rome, Islamic coinage had some influence on Medieval European minting. The 8th-century English king Offa of Mercia minted a near-copy of Abbasid dinars struck in 774 by Caliph Al-Mansur with "Offa Rex" centered on the reverse. The moneyer visibly had little understanding of Arabic, as the Arabic text contains a number of errors.
In Sicily, Malta and Southern Italy from about 913 tarì gold coins of Islamic origin were minted in great number by the Normans, Hohenstaufens and the early Angevins rulers. When the Normans invaded Sicily in the 12th century, they issued tarì coins bearing legends in Arabic and Latin. The tarìs were so widespread that imitations were made in southern Italy (Amalfi and Salerno) which only used illegible "pseudo-Kufic" imitations of Arabic.
The preferred specie for international transactions
before the 13th century, in Europe as well as the Middle East and even
India, were the gold coins struck by Byzantium and then Egypt. It was not until after the 13th century that some Italian cities (Florence and Genoa)
began to mint their own gold coins, but these were used to supplement
rather than supplant the Middle Eastern coins already in circulation.
It was first suggested by Miguel Asín Palacios in 1919 that Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, considered the greatest epic of Italian literature, derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter directly or indirectly from Arabic works on Islamic eschatology, such as the Hadith and the spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi. The Kitab al-Miraj, concerning Muhammad's ascension to Heaven, was translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before as Liber Scale Machometi,
"The Book of Muhammad's Ladder". Dante was certainly aware of Muslim
philosophy, naming Avicenna and Averroes last in his list of
non-Christian philosophers in Limbo, alongside the great Greek and Latin
philosophers. How strong the similarities are to Kitab al-Miraj remains a matter of scholarly debate however, with no clear evidence that Dante was in fact influenced.
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