Al-Andalus, which means, “to become green at the end of the summer” is referred to the territory occupied by the Muslim empire in Southern Spain, which refer to the cities of Almeria, Malaga, Cadiz, Huelva, Seville, Cordoba, Jaen and Granada. This civilization spanned the eighth to the fifteenth century. In 711, Arabs crossed the Straight of Gibraltar (derived from ‘Gabal Al-Tariq’: ‘Mountain of Tariq’) and established control over much of the Iberian Peninsula. Of the Arab conquest, Muslims called the area of the Iberian Peninsula they occupied, “Al-Andalus.” This land called Al-Andalus, hence often called “Andalusia” had at one point included Portugal, Southern France, and the Balearic Islands. Within 3 years, in 714, Muslims had occupied almost all the peninsula. Muslims crossed to Sicily and established control there for 130 years, until Muslim rule fell in 1091 to the Normans. Muslims also established rule in parts of France, but they were soon defeated by Charles Martel in 756, in which remains today one of the greatest victories for Christian Europe for bringing a halt to Islam’s expansion.
The Islamic Golden Age is traditionally dated from the mid-7th century to the mid-13th century at which Muslim rulers established one of the largest empires in history. During this period, artists, engineers, scholars, poets, philosophers, geographers and traders in the Islamic world contributed to agriculture, the arts, economics, industry, law, literature, navigation, philosophy, sciences, sociology, and technology, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding inventions and innovations of their own. Also, at that time the Muslim world became a major intellectual center for science, philosophy, medicine and education.
Islamic culture was pre-eminently a culture of the book. The introduction of paper from China in 751 gave an impetus to learning and an excitement about ideas which the world had never before known. Books became more available than they had been even in Rome, and incomparably cheaper than they were in the Latin West, where they continued to be written on expensive parchment. In the 12th century, a man sold 120 acres of land in order to buy a single Book of Hours. In the ninth century, the library of the monastery of St. Gall was the largest in Europe, boasting 36 volumes. At the same time, that of Córdoba contained 500,000. The cultural lag between East and West in the Middle Ages can be attributed partly to the fact that the Arabs had paper, while the Latin West did not.
It goes without say though that it took much more than paper to create an intellectual and scientific culture like that of Islamic Spain. Islam, with its tolerance and encouragement of both secular and religious learning, created the necessary climate for the exchange of ideas. The court of Córdoba, like that of Baghdad, was open to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike, and one prominent bishop complained that young Christian men were devoting themselves to the study of Arabic, rather than Latin, a reflection of the fact that Arabic, in a surprisingly short time, had become the international language of science, just as English is today.
In a courtly society, the tastes and predilections of the ruler set the tone for society at large, and ‘Abd al-Rahman II, passionately interested in both the religious and the secular sciences, was determined to show the world that his court was in no way inferior to the court of the caliphs at Baghdad. To this end, he actively recruited scholars by offering handsome inducements to overcome their initial reluctance to live in what many in the lands of the East considered the provinces. As a result, many scholars, poets, philosophers, historians and musicians migrated to Al-Andalus, and established the basis of the intellectual tradition and educational system, which made Spain so outstanding for the next 400 years.
Interest in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine was always lively, however, because of their obvious utility: mathematics for commercial purposes, computation of the rather complicated Islamic laws of inheritance, and as a basis for measuring distances. Astronomy was useful for determining the times of prayer and adjusting the calendar, and the study of medicine needed no reason as it was the essence of life. The introduction of the new Aristotelian ideas, however, even in Arab dress, aroused a certain amount of suspicion in the conservative West, and it was some time before public opinion would accept that Aristotelian logic did not conflict with the revelation of Islam.
The influence of these astronomical works was immense. Today, for example, the constellations still bear the names given them by Muslim astronomers—Acrab (from ‘aqrab, “scorpion”), Altair (from al-ta’ir, “the flyer”), Deneb (from dhanb, “tail”), Pherkard (from farqad, “calf”)—and words such as zenith, nadir and azimuth, all still in use today, recall the works of the Muslim scholars of Al-Andalus.
The great contribution of the Arabs was to put the study of medicine on a scientific footing and eliminate superstition and harmful folk- practices. Medicine was considered a highly technical calling, and one which required long study and training. Elaborate codes were formulated to regulate the professional conduct of doctors. It was not enough to have a mastery of one’s subject in order to practice medicine. Certain moral qualities were mandatory. Ibn Hazm said that a doctor should be kind, understanding, friendly, good, able to endure insults and adverse criticism; he must keep his hair short, and his fingernails as well; he must wear clean, white clothes and behave with dignity.
Before doctors could practice, they had to pass an examination, and if they passed they had to take the Hippocratic oath, which, if neglected, could lead to dismissal.
Hospitals were similarly organized. The large one built in Córdoba was provided with running water and baths, and had different sections for the treatment of various diseases, each of which was headed by a specialist. Hospitals were required to be open 24 hours a day to handle emergency cases, and could not turn any patient away.
Muslim physicians made many important additions to the body of medical knowledge which they inherited from the Greeks. Ibn al-Nafis, for example, discovered the lesser circulation of the blood hundreds of years before Harvey, and ideas of quarantine sprang from an empirical notion of contagion.
Another example is Ibn Juljul, who was born in Córdoba in 943, and became a leading physician by the age of 24 (he began his studies of medicine at the tender age of 14), and compiled a commentary on the De Materia Medica of Dioscorides and a special treatise on drugs found in Al-Andalus. In his Categories of Physicians, composed at the request of one of the Umayyad princes, he also presents a history of the medical profession from the time of Aesculapius to his own day.
Ibn Shuhaid, also known as a popular doctor, wrote a fundamental work on the use of drugs. He, like many of his contemporaries, recommended drugs only if the patient did not respond to dietary treatment, and said that if they must be used, simple drugs should be employed in all cases but the most serious.
Al-Zahrawi, who died in 1013, was the most famous surgeon of the Middle Ages. He was court physician of al-Hakam II, and his great work, The Tasrif, was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona and became a leading medical text in European universities in the later Middle Ages. The section on surgery contains a number of illustrations of surgical instruments of elegant, functional design and great precision. It describes lithotrites, amputations, ophthalmic and dental surgery and the treatment of wounds and fractures.
Ibn Zuhr, known as Avenzoar, who died in 1162, was born in Seville and earned a great reputation throughout North Africa and Spain. He described abscesses and mediastinal tumors for the first time, and made original experiments in therapeutics. One of his works, The Taysir, was translated into Latin in 1280 and became a standard work.
An outgrowth of the interest in medicine was the study of botany. The most famous Andalusian botanist was Ibn Baitar, who wrote a famous book called Collection of Simple Drugs and Food. It is an alphabetically arranged compendium of medicinal plants of all sorts, most of which were native to Spain and North Africa, which he had spent a lifetime gathering. Where possible, he gives the Berber, Arabic, and sometimes Romance names of the plant, so that for linguists his work is of special interest. In each article, he gives information about the preparation of the drug and its administration, purpose and dosage.
Another field that interested the scholars of Al-Andalus was geography, and many of the finest Muslim works in this field were produced there. Economic and political considerations played some part in the development of this field of study, but it was above all their all-consuming curiosity about the world and its inhabitants that motivated the scholars who devoted themselves to the description of the earth and its inhabitants. The first steps had been taken in the East, when “books of routes,” as they were called, were compiled for the use of the postmasters of the early Abbasid caliphs. Soon, reports on faraway lands, their commercial products and major physical features were compiled for the information of the caliph and his ministers. Advances in astronomy and mathematics made the plotting of this information on maps feasible, and soon cartography became an important discipline in its own right.
Throughout the classical period of Islam, intellectual activity in every field was vigorous, first in Baghdad, later in Cairo and the regional capitals of Anatolia, Iran and, still later, in India. The Arabs accepted the classical heritage, fertilized it with the thought of India and the East and elaborated, criticized and corrected it; they then passed it on to the West where it formed the basis for the great technological achievements that have since transformed the world.
