Far scarier than evil men … is the idea that, wonderful as my life has been, there might have been more, or less, or different.
Rachel Heffington
(From Rachel to herself: a letter to be read in seventy-seven years)

March, 2015
Isle of Wight, Virginia

Dear (Seasoned, Revered, Etc.) Rachel,

You sit on the pinnacle of a very long life. Happiest of Happy Birthdays to you (us?)! You’re now a centurion. Is that what they call people who have reached one-hundred? It’s not? Pity. It was a good thought, seeing as you’re nearly Roman-ancient now.

I wonder what your life has been. Let’s hear how you found your true love; did you love him first, or did he dog your footsteps and spill coffee on you till you recognized his merits? Or maybe you never found him. Maybe you grew old and beloved by a slew of nieces and nephews instead. Taking things into account as they stand now, that’s highly probable. Standards are wonderful for scaring off men.

But you’ve turned one-hundred, and this is about you, not me. Except, I guess it is.

History always fascinated you. What have you seen? I only know—not quite, almost—a quarter of everything that’s happened, and it’s enough to make me glad this life is only the title-page of the best of Stories. It can be a little frightful, if I’m perfectly honest. Sin doesn’t get nicer with age, opportunity, and technological advancement.

Twenty-five percent of your life is where I stand, if you’re really one hundred, and it isn’t a clever hoax. It’s a nice place, a little winded, and you’ve done it three times! What larks. I don’t want to tire you (is your spirit old, or do you still like letters?), but I have things I want to know: did you keep your hiccupping laugh? Where did your lines fall? I hope you got crow’s feet instead of potato-furrows between your eyebrows, because you always had a fear of looking disagreeable. Do you still wear bright red lipstick? How did it feel to smash that change jar and go to London with Katie? When did you give up high-heels, or do you still wear them? And last of all, because it rather terrifies me: are you losing your mind to the childishness of dementia, or did you get the palsied end of old age? I think sickness would be easier to bear. I would hate to lose my wits and be thought ridiculous and smiled on patronizingly. I hope you still have the sense of humor—it was a good one.

As you can see, I am plenty curious despite being only a quarter of the person you are. If you haven’t outgrown it, you’ll be a piece of work by now. You always enjoyed people like that. Some people suffer from a deplorable lack of curiosity and become boring. Boring’s worse than ridiculous. Do you still think so?

Right now, I’m pretty nearly perfectly happy. As happy as I can be with plagues sweeping one third of the world and militants blowing up another third, and the rest of us trying to live reasonably well in the cramped leftovers. Did that ever let-up, or is that only the wishful thinking of a girl who is only two decades old?

But even if it doesn’t let up—history isn’t too encouraging on this point— I’m only a quarter of the way through my life; I can’t believe I’ll not die from a surfeit of joy-stabs, for even in the awfulness, they do come. There are so many beautiful things I’ve already seen. I know Heaven will be better—and on that note, are you looking forward to it?—but it’s pretty lovely here sometimes, when the sun settles on its belly over the cotton fields and laughs like raspberry lemonade. I hope you’ve not outgrown your love of noticing things. You used to talk about days when the veil between Heaven and Earth had worn thin, and those were your favorite moments. They still are, I’d guess. It’s addicting. I hope it’s the only thing I’m ever addicted to. That’s the plan, anyway, and no sense in changing it.

Small things could always make you toss back your head, crinkle your moon-eyes, and laugh. You found everything wonderful and wrote it all down in your books. I wonder if you ever became famous for your words. I doubt it—it doesn’t seem likely when you only ever wrote to amuse and please yourself and others like you (and were shaky on plot, besides), but one hundred years leaves a lot of room for surprises.

Most of all, I wonder if you like the Rachel you’ve become. If you’re proud of the way you spent your century. If there are moments that give you a pain in your gut because you know you missed it—whatever it was. How many are they, those memories? I hope, for your sake, they are few.

I don’t even know if you’ll be able to read this. Maybe you got banged in the head by someone in a wretched nursing home and woke up unable to speak anything but French, a language you never learned (or did you?). At any rate, if that is the case, please find a translator. Preferably you’ll still be comfortably settled in that lovely country house with the bosomy windows that are always open—the one you wondered if you’d ever get. If you can still hold a pen and still string words like a ticker-tape (I’m obviously in fine fettle regarding this), then please write back.

It’ll probably be the first decent thing the mailman has brought in weeks.

Always Yours (Obviously),

Rachel Heffington

P.S. Please say you never took to ignoring the Oxford Comma.

(From Rachel to herself: a reply to the former, about which she’d forgotten.)

March, 2092

Cockermouth, UK

Dear (Young, Semi-Charming, Etc.) Rachel,

It is your birthday too! What a coincidence. I am still, per the obvious, alive and able to speak English as well as ever. Grammar will slip sometimes, but one grows to care less. I still revere the Oxford comma. I might be alone in this, but here we are.

You ought to know me well enough to know that I never learned a second language thoroughly—bits of languages, yes. I could say The Lord’s Prayer in Latin, recite numbers one through ten in a half dozen languages in a manner quite charming, and always managed to forget which Hawaiian word meant “hello” and which meant “goodbye,” but I was never fluent. Too many English words boxing my ears.

Your letter made me laugh till I got a side-stitch. I had forgotten how poorly you fit into the era in which you were born, and I’d forgotten how absurd (and fond of it) you were. Thank you for the reminder, darling.

You want to know about the love of my life. I feel hesitant to inform you on this point, as it feels rather like cheating. I didn’t know at your age … so you can’t. But I will tell you this: I have never lacked for love. Take that as you will. I’ll say nothing further. And remember, silly duckling, that love comes in so many forms.

“How did it feel to smash that change jar and go to London with Katie?

I actually have learned things in my century, and one is this: delayed gratification lends value to things. I played Mary Poppins for two little girls. Every week I went to the bank and deposited my check and took out a crisp twenty dollar bill. I rescued pennies from the gutter and quarters from the laundry and threw them in. I waited and dreamed and worked. And one day I traded the jar for an airline ticket and good British pounds and joined my best friend for the girlhood dream … and it was just as plummy, rainy, and tea-scented as I’d dared to hope. Besides elation, I felt terror when I bought that ticket and realized I’d given birth to a dream and had to take care of it now that it was outside imagination’s womb. The sort of terror you feel when one’s hair looks perfect and then a guest of wind turned the umbrella inside-out and you know the game’s up.

It was the same with my writing career (which, incidentally, made me famous in its own way. You’ll have to wait to find out how.)

Lots of things in life are this way. The delay, the pause, the long breath-holding till an ache begins under one’s breastbone and the lungs of hope nearly burst. And then it comes, and it comes with a color like September aspens and you realize half the glory is straight relief that the promise wasn’t a sham.

There is hope beyond this world.

There is a Story and an Author at work and if one can just hold on, things happen.

Now, I’m a century old and I still haven’t decided whether all the things that do happen are worth half the trouble they cost, but at least I can promise you that life doesn’t stagnate for the person who curries adventure.

I still wear red lipstick—found how to apply it so it won’t kiss off. My secret.

The high-heels remained till I turned seventy-five and sprained my ankle. I compromised and went in for brighter lipstick and shockingly colorful flats. One must make concessions somewhere, much as you hate to admit it.

The lines fell for me in pleasant places. Potato furrows are awful. I used prayer and coconut oil to ward them off.

I still laugh. Did it hiccup?

You called them moon-eyes. I’d call them sparkles awash in fitful gray-green. He loved them. Whom? I won’t tell. You’ll see.

From my address, you’ll realize I made it to my precious Lake District—which, by the by, you neglected to mention in your letter. I am shocked. It was your fondest, quietest dream. The story is a long and ornate one which I won’t tell now, but you’ll enjoy it.

I am tolerably well in body, my humor is intact, and if I forget certain things certain days, who cares? A century gives one perspective, duck. Dementia is the smallest thing one worries about at my age. I think if we didn’t forget now and then, our brains might implode with the sheer weight of a hundred years’ worth of remembrances. What a mess. My nurse, Erica Clark, would complain. She complained about getting me real paper. “Why won’t you use technology? We’ve come such a long way since email, and now you want paper? You’re retroactive, Miss Rachel.”

I’ll tell you why: postmen might bring boring things, but no mail at all is an atrocity.

And now I will become serious, for contrary to popular belief, I am not all whimsy and wit. Let’s see if I can manage before tea-time:

You asked if my moments of having “missed it” were many. I gather you speak of regrets. Everyone has regrets. I know of several you have at your age, and as you so succinctly stated it, you are only a quarter of the person I am. Perhaps you didn’t realize it was a regret at the time. Again, age gives one perspective on these things.

In hinting that I might be regretless, your hopes fail. Missing even one thing is a weighty sorrow. I’ve missed … well I’ve missed four times what you’ve missed. Ew. I try not to let myself be crippled by the idea, but I am still scared to wonder what might have been. Far scarier than evil men and terrifying plagues and incomprehensible technology that eradicates any notion of privacy, is the idea that, wonderful as my life has been, there might have been more, or less, or different.

I don’t think God means for us to panic over it, but there it is. The veil has yet to grow so thin it disappears and this world is not quite wonderfully safe. It lets you worry.

When I can’t remember, I can’t worry.

That’s what I mean by saying loss of memory is not so terrible. I’ve heard it called a mercy.

You are so young. Don’t waste time fretting over what you’ll be at one hundred. You’ll be me, and I’ve lived with myself for quite some time. I’m not the worst person to have been. I have you to thank for that, because what you said about addictions? You honored to it. Not to quibble, but you forgot to add cheesecake, sourdough toast, and a few random television programs to the list.

You lived what they called “clean.”

You made a thousand mistakes.

You found adventure in the commonplace.

You laughed in the exact wrong moments.

You noticed the raspberry-lemonade sunsets.

You trod on some toes.

You loved almost too freely and you gave yourself out as if there was no end.

But more than this, you pledged your life to the Author of the Story. I’m so glad you did. Shakespeare spoke of his being a charmed life. I wonder if he’d met you, if he’d have turned in his claims and surrendered the title.

Darling, you are only a quarter-me, like a quarter-moon. But the things you fought for have worn well. The colors are bright as ever. I’m still wearing them. Virtues you refused to surrender, convictions you would not deny, honesty you would not withhold…these things have enabled me to sit at the back-end of a century and enjoy the view.

Thank you, and never, ever, ever give up.

You owe it to me.

Always Yours (Obviously),

Rachel

P.S. If you promise to smile at every stranger, I’ll tell you the secret to red lipstick.

P.P.S. It has to do with… I won’t say just yet. First, you have to promise.

Islamic calligraphy isn’t just a gorgeous style of art, but a symbol for how rich and diverse the Islamic world truly is

For all of the artistic forms the Islamic world has produced, calligraphy seems to be the most pre-eminent. It is entwined in the popular consciousness with Islam itself; mosques around the world proudly display the shahada and the bismillah, and these are featured – in calligraphic script – on the flags of many Muslim countries. Calligraphy has travelled across the Muslim world, transliterating many languages and morphing into many different schools of styles; it has even influenced Western styles of illustrated books and penmanship. This article does not focus on calligraphy entirely, but rather will show how the religious, historical, and cultural backgrounds of the different Islamic cultures informed the development of calligraphy – from the way the Qur’an and the Sunnah view art, to the history of the Arabic script and its transmission, to the way calligraphy travelled around the Middle East, and finally to how the actual production of calligraphy and the training of calligraphers influences its style.

Essentially, the ubiquity of calligraphy in the Islamic visual arts can be traced to the fundamental religious concepts of shirk – that it is forbidden to associate any other entity with Allah, thus risking tawhid, or the “oneness of God.” These other entities can be anything – from the “little gods” (ilah) of greed, capriciousness, and atheism, to the polytheistic deities displaced by Islam at its birth – but for the purposes of this essay, shirk is synonymous with idolatry. To humans, God cannot be comprehended with our own senses or mentality; it is only possible to see the results of His work on Earth and infer His qualities from that. Since God is fundamentally beyond the scope of the human, any attempt to reduce Him to a visual representation is heretical. Idols and icons of God detract from tawhid – that is, it places an intermediate entity between the worshipper and God – and “nothing must stand between man and the invisible presence of God” (Burckhardt, 1976 : p.34).

Within the Qur’an itself, there are many verses dealing with proscriptions in producing images of the divine – in particular, the story of Abraham destroying the idols in 20:52-7. As well as this, many hadith tell of the Prophet Muhammad’s disapproval of not only the makers of religious idols, but any visual depiction of animate beings like humans and animals. This again is to do with shirk – humans acting with arrogance and equating their creations with the creations and creatures of God.

Artists were encouraged to draw plants, landscapes, and abstract pictures instead. Historically, this prohibition against animate figures can explain the flowering of abstract design, calligraphy included, across the Islamic world; it also shows why mosques and other Islamic religious centres lack the anthropocentric art that is usual in their Christian counterparts (e.g., Jesus’ crucifixion, icons of the saints, etc.). Visual depictions of humans and animals do exist in the Muslim world on a smaller scale – murals and frescoes were painted in liberal enclaves like al-Andalus and ‘Abbasid Baghdad, and both Persia and Turkey have supported robust traditions of miniature painting and illustrated books since the 13^th century (Eastman, 1933 : p.22-3). However, the common theme underlying all these works is that they were usually small and for private viewing only; murals were not found outside the palace walls, and illustrated books and paintings were hobbies for nobles, and not for mass consumption. Calligraphy, with its abstract, non-representational style, and the general veneration of language and writing in Islamic culture, became the dominant art form within the Muslim world.

To adequately explain the first appearance of Islamic calligraphy, two distinct questions should be asked – what sort of script did the first Muslims write in, and where did it come from? And what is the history of the written, illustrated Qur’an that actually used calligraphy?

Answering the former question, Arabic script evolved from Nabatean, which in turn came from a script termed Proto-Sinaitic. Only a few examples of Proto-Sinaitic have been found, all dated to c.1900 BCE (Man, 2000 : p.189), but it is postulated that Proto-Sinaitic was one of the first alphabetical scripts developed (rather than ideographic or “symbolic” scripts, like Chinese). Since the actual spoken languages across the region all belonged (and for the most part still belong) to the Semitic language family, it was relatively easy for one script to be adapted to many languages; an archaic form of the Arabic script was known to the first Muslims, even if they were for the most part illiterate. The production of copies of the Qur’an was the first step to greater literacy in the Muslim community (the umma).

The first Qur’ans that still survive today were written in a thick, angular, straight style called Kufic, after the city of Kufa in modern day Iraq, a center for book production; most date to the 8^th or 9^th centuries. According to tradition, it was ‘Uthman’s successor, Ali, who first used and popularised this style over others (Schimmel, 1984 : p.3-4). Kufic was not cursive like modern Arabic script is; rather, five-sixths of letters were supposed to be straight against one-sixth of curved. This meant that the angular, thick lines of Kufic were very easy to chisel into metal or stone – the first Islamic coins and tombstones feature inscriptions written in Kufic (Schimmel, 1992 : p.4-7). A slanted subset of Kufic appeared around the same time, in copies of the Qur’an found in and traced back to the cities of Mecca and Medina. This style, called Ma’il, did not seem as popular as Kufic, but represented the first step towards the more recognisable cursive classical calligraphy. As Islam spread across the Middle East, different varieties of cursive script developed. This development was helped by the spread of sophisticated paper-making technology. Though paper had been known of and used since the start of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate in 751 (Coomaraswamy, 1929 : p.50), more durable vellum had been used to create Qur’ans up until the 10^th century. However, with the importation of high-quality Chinese paper, and the creation of royal paper mills in Baghdad, cursive styles began to appear in both the Qur’an and in official documents of the era; the first wholly paper book can be dated back to 870 (Schimmel, 1984 : p.16). The differences between each style of writing were studied and placed into groups: the “six cursive scripts” or al-aqlam al-sittah, as conflated by the master calligrapher and ‘Abbasid vizier, Ibn Muqla (885-940). These six groups were:

1. Nashk – everyday script; the precursor to the modern Arabic used worldwide. It is the most basic cursive hand; at first it was not used much to write Qur’ans or important state documents, but for everyday writing purposes. However, after the 15^th century, nashki underwent a “renaissance” and it appeared in many books across the Islamic world (Schimmel, 1970 : pl.IX).
2. Thuluth – “one-third” (named after the angle of the slant of its letters); the most common decorative script used in Islamic cultures. Ibn Muqla called it “the mother of the cursive scripts.” Thuluth is more extravagant than Nashki writing, with long, flowing lines and elegant curves, and it was often used in medieval times to decorate the veneers of buildings (Coomaraswamy, 1929 : 54).
3. Muhaqqaq – a script derived from thuluth and used by the Mamluk sultans of Egypt in the 13^th century, and Safavid Persia in the 15^th century; most of the sultan’s royal documents were written in this hand. It was considered to be drier than thuluth, with pointed letter endings and very high “tall” letters (Schimmel, 1992 : p.16).
4. Rihan – a less-extravagant version of muhaqqaq; it is distinguishable from thuluth by the pointed ends of its letters. After Ibn Muqla’s time, rihani writing fell out of favour and is not very well attested (Tabbaa, 1991 : p.122).
5. Tawqi’ – the official hand used by the ‘Abbasid caliphate under Yaqut al-Musta’simi, the successor of Ibn Muqla. The letters in tawqi’ are straighter than in other varieties, though it is still very much a decorative style, rather than an everyday one; it was mainly used to write out court documents and royal decrees (Schimmel, 1970 : p.7)
6. Riqa’ – a more informal, less “monumental” version of tawqi’, riqa’ is still used today as a secondary writing style. Like tawqi’, it flattens out elongated curves and high letters for ease of writing; it is known as the “copyist’s hand” (Shimmel, 1984 : p.23-4).

As well as these definitive styles that were used across the Islamic world, there existed regional variations that were used by specific cultures. The most well-known of these include:

1. Maghribi, which arose in North Africa sometime in the 14^th century, and owed more of its stylistic origins to Kufic than the cursive scripts; thick lines and tall, straight letters were emphasised (Schimmel, 1992 : p.32-3).
2. Ta’liq or “hanging,” that was used – from the time of its conquest – to write exclusively in the Persian language. It evolved into Nasta’liq in the 15^th century; Nasta’liq separated the letters far more than other styles did, and often wrote them on differing levels for artistic effect (Schimmel, 1992 : p.34-7). It was the preferred script for writing poems and for accompanying miniature paintings.
3. Diwani – the extremely elaborate calligraphy of the Ottoman Empire; it first appeared around the time of Suleiman in the 16^th century; Suleiman was apparently a master calligrapher himself. Diwani is extremely complex and difficult to learn – its rules were only taught to a select few, but exponents of the art could create images out of calligraphy (Coomaraswamy, 1929 : 58).

The basic method of production for all of these hands is essentially the same – the calligrapher uses a reed stylus/pen called a qalam, a supply of ink (hibr), and usually an inkpot as well (dawaat). The ink was collected from “lampblack”; that is, the remnants of oil found in burnt oil-lamps, though other methods existed, like burning tar or pitch (Schimmel, 1984 : p.40). At first, in the early days of Islam’s expansion, only black or brown ink was used; however, it is common to find manuscripts in which a later scribe has gone over their predecessors’ work with coloured inks, especially since not all the early Qur’ans used the same spelling. By the turn of the millennium, though, calligraphers could choose to write in many different dyes and inks, and color their books with such luxuries as lapis lazuli and gold leaf (Schimmel, 1970 : pl.XXII). The form of the calligraphy was also dictated by the material the words were written on; because only parchment was used to create the earliest books, cursive scripts would be too hard to write effectively on them.

The invention of paper directly led to the explosion of cursive styles. To prepare the paper for calligraphy, the artist had to first apply ahar, a conditioning mixture that consisted of rice powder, egg white, and starch, to make the paper smooth. Any further unevenness was smoothed out by a stone, traditionally an agate. Once the page was complete, sand was thrown over it, both to soak up the excess ink and as a blessing (Schimmel, 1984 : p.41-2).

The actual training of a professional calligrapher (khattat) was another matter entirely; though most Muslims of education knew how to write the basics of the nashki or riqa’ styles, the future khattat must seek the patronage of a master teacher (sheik). This idea of seeking guidance through a teacher comes directly from the influence of Sufism –  in fact, almost all master calligraphers were Sufis as well. Students had to train constantly, using a mashq (practice slate); on a given day, they would study only the permutations of one letter, though of course the style of training varied from teacher to teacher (Schimmel, 1984 : p.48). Most commonly the rules of form laid down by Ibn Muqla were the most studied. If the students were successful enough in their endeavors, the teacher would award them an ijaza (lit.,  “permission”), a certificate that showed that their sheik considered them adept enough to be a khattat. These ijaza were vital in showing the different lineages of styles across the Islamic world. One final, surprising feature of the calligraphers and their students was that so many of them were women – calligraphy was seen as a pious career for both sexes; many Ottoman princesses were considered master calligraphers in their own right (Schimmel, 1970 : 47).

In conclusion, Islamic calligraphy inherently shows the growth and development of Islam itself, through its aniconic styles of art, to the growth in usage of the Arabic script, and to the blossoming of distinct local variants of Islamic culture. Through all this, it is possible to trace the respect and awe Muslims held for writing, and calligraphy in particular, linking it with the heart of religion. An old Arabic saying puts it best by saying, “Purity of writing is the purity of the soul” (Schimmel, 1992 : p.1).

References

• Burckhardt, Titus (1976) Art of Islam: Language and Meaning, trans. French by Peter Hobson, London : Islamic Festival Trust.
• Al-Bukhari, Muhammad ibn Ismail (c.846) Sahih al-Bukhari, trans. Arabic by Muhammed Muhsin Khan, University of California (database) http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/
• Eastman, Alvan C. (1933) Islamic Miniature Painting, Parnassus, vol.5 no.7, New York : College Art Association.
• Gruber, Christiane (2009) Representations of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamic painting, Muqarnas,  Necipoglu, Gulru & Leal, Karen (eds.), vol.26, Cambridge : Harvard University Press.
• Man, John (2000) Alphabeta, London : Random House.
• O’Connor, M. (1986) The Arabic Loanwords in Nabatean Aramaic, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol.45 no.3, Chicago : Chicago University Press.
• Denny, Frederick Mathewson (1989) Qur’an Recitation: A Tradition of Oral Performance and Transmission, Oral Tradition http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/4i-ii/2_Denny.pdf
• Akram, A.I. (1970) The Sword of Allah: Khalid bin al-Waleed, His Life and Campaigns, Rawalpindi : National Publishing House (database)
• http://web.archive.org/web/20020224232028/http://www.swordofallah.com/html/bookhome.htm
• Schimmel, Annemarie (1984) Calligraphy and Islamic Culture, New York : New York University Press.
• Schimmel, Annemarie (1992) Islamic Calligraphy, London : Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Coomaraswamy,Ananda (1929) Arabic and Turkish Calligraphy, Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, vol.27 no.162, Boston : Museum of Fine Arts.
• Schimmel, Annemarie (1970) Islamic Calligraphy, Leiden : E.J. Brill.
• Tabbaa, Yasser (1991) The Transformation of Arabic Writing: Part I, Qur’anic Calligraphy, Ars Orientalis, vol.21, Michigan : Smithsonian Institution and Department of the History of Art.

How can we then speak of absolute justice when there are so many innocents oppressed, murdered, and their rights confiscated at the hands of tyrants? “Is God just” Dr. Horkuc asks in this issue when He creates people in their respective particular places and under particular conditions and expect the same scores from both? Horkuc writes in this issue that the cup analogy of Bediuzzaman offers a solution to this dilemma.

Occupied with extreme work load, a great majority of us in modern times are bent double and exhausted in most cases to the point of total collapse. Is it only the amount of unnecessary work load or that we do not know how to deal with the present conditions that underlies this exhaustion? Ihsan Kose argues for a “minimum work principle” in the universe. From gravity to routes ants pursue on their tracks, to electrical circuit boards, the path light moves and all phenomena in the universe apparently manifest themselves with one common thing: lowest energy consumption. The article is prescriptive in the sense that whatever we may be busy with, we can and we should find the most efficient formula for best outcome in return for minimum amount of energy, so that we can make best of our stamina reserves.

Computer games are approached with suspicion, yet the number of people engaging with games and the amount of hours and even days we spend for them are increasing. “Gamification,” however, Ahmet Tugra argues, has become a trendy word. “It aims at transforming real life context in a manner that adopts game thinking in online platforms. From this perspective, it proposes to increase motivation, engagement, sense of enjoyment, and the positive attitudes of people towards work.” Games enhance cognitive development in children, and a balanced adaptation of games into real life contexts may help us generate more convenient work and family environment for adults.

New developments in scientific thought and hypotheses testing are changing the ways we think about truth and certainty.

Not only do scientific decisions rely heavily on tools and procedures of quantitative analysis, but also on social life and daily decisions. I want to start with a story from the judiciary system about the misuse of an important quantitative tool of the scientific community, Hypothesis Testing. It’s about the overturned Amanda Knox case in Italy. In 2007, she was accused of killing her roommate and sent to jail. The odds of DNA matching in the case of accidental death were reported as incredibly rare by a forensic data analyst, who examined data with regard to incidents of crime, concluding that the accident is not statistically an accident. The judges then made their decision based on this rareness, a single value, named p-value. Later, this was overturned (New York Times, March 27, 2013), because of a misinterpretation by the judges and lawyers, of the rare probability. What factors forced the judiciary system to make this decision based on a single value alone? Honestly, this is the story of the century and a story of Hypothesis Testing. This article introduces the logic behind their decision, draws attention to the misuse of data, and mentions alternative logics to this traditional approach on the matter (in March 2013, Italy’s Supreme Court ordered a retrial and found the two suspects guilty on January 30, 2014).

What is Hypothesis Testing?

We live in a data-driven world. Statistical inference is the process of drawing conclusions or decisions from data. The Hypothesis Testing procedure in the Neyman-Pearson paradigm is one of the procedures of this process, widely used in the scientific community for over a century. In this mindset, two complementary hypotheses are first defined: one is the conventional thesis (the null hypothesis) accepted to be true by default; the other is the alternative thesis (the alternative hypothesis) that needs evidence from data to falsify the null hypothesis. It results in a single value, called p-value, which is calculated from the data using theoretical model assumptions. A p-value is a measure – in probability sense, ranging from 0% to 100% – of how much evidence you have against the null hypothesis. The smaller the p-value, the more evidence you have against the null hypothesis. One may combine the p-value with the significance level to make decisions on a given hypothesis. This is also called significance testing. It has an accept-reject mindset (dichotomous decision or binary logic); in such a case, if the p-value is less than some threshold (usually .05) then the null hypothesis is rejected. Basically, it is a black or white decision, without considering the contrasts between them. This interpretation has been widely accepted in the twentieth century of scientific research, and many scientific journals routinely publish papers using this interpretation for the results of hypothesis tests, even though there are current tendencies not to use this. Let’s take a look at the history of this black-white logic.

History

The history of the process of hypothesis testing starts with Fisher (1890-1962), around the early twentieth century. Later, the contributions of Pearson (1857-1936) and Neyman (1894-1981), who were early fathers of statistics, about the interpretation of the hypothesis tests were integrated into present-day applications. Fisher’s approach focuses on inductive inference about a single hypothesis, whereas the Neyman-Pearson approach informs future behavior based on a test using two complementary hypotheses (Newman 2007).

These approaches are strongly influenced by Popper’s logic of falsification. Falsification can be defined as the act of disproving a proposition, hypothesis, or theory. This logic asserts that sufficiently improbable events can be considered impossible. A p-value suggests whether a null hypothesis is sufficiently improbable to be considered practically falsified in the sense of a logical refutation (Newman 2007). When we come back to the Amanda Knox case, the decision the judges made and justified is followed from this falsification logic in hypothesis testing. Another criticism with this mindset is: how fair it is to rely on a single value that yields a rare result? Are we going to generalize one lucky drawing of raffle tickets to believe all tickets are winners?

Logics and proofs

We use logical flaws and biases in our daily life. Finding the logical flaw in scientific papers is something most readers aren’t interested in. Instead, the results are believed as a fact. One of the widely used flaws/biases is in seeking or interpreting evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs or a hypothesis in hand (Mercie and Sperber, 2011). We tend to prove or show the accessibility or superiority of arguments by bringing evidence. Failure to prove that a treatment – say, a low fat diet – is effective is not the same as proving it is ineffective.

Let me give another example to clarify this: The New York Times editorial news reported on February 9, 2006, “Millions of Americans have tried to reduce the fat in their diets, and the food industry has obligingly served up low-fat products. Yet now comes strong evidence that the war against all fats was mostly in vain.” Actually, in the hypothesis testing mindset, the evidence collected from research should either reject the null hypothesis which is “diet is ineffective,” or fail to reject it. The mindset in testing is not about finding evidence to support the null statement. It is also not about proving the alternative hypothesis, “diet is effective.” Rather, it is basically looking for evidences to falsify the null statement. In the report, the “evidence” the reporter meant should be against the null hypothesis, not against the alternative hypothesis. Data is collected to falsify the null hypothesis, not to prove its truthiness, because the null is already accepted to be true unless convincing evidence is collected against it.

Let me give another example of this paradigm. As Newfoundland (2013) described, a person is innocent until proven guilty by bringing convincing evidence. The jury can’t say “he is innocent,” instead, the jury uses evidence that produces reasonable doubt to reject his innocence.

Developments in inferential paradigms

The accept-reject paradigm in inference represents a conventional wisdom. There are other, or currently developing, paradigms in inference, too. One of the dominating paradigms is the Bayesian-likelihood approach. After enjoying much wider acceptance in social and natural sciences, the Bayesian method suggests different views of hypothesis testing. The Bayesian approach is a method of data analysis in which subjectivity, conditionality, or past information is used to update the hypothesis as additional evidence is acquired. This approach in hypothesis testing offers a dynamic structure in probability calculation so hypotheses, and decisions, are not seen as a static truth; instead, they are updated with current data and the decision is stated in the sense of likelihood.

In our court room example, the Bayesian inference is applied to all evidence presented, with the past information being combined with the current evidence. The benefit of a Bayesian approach is that it gives all historical information so the decision is unbiased all along as the past data (prior knowledge) is used correctly. This paradigm changes the way statistics are calculated and how the result and inference are interpreted. Currently it is widely appreciated in quantitative data analysis, especially after convenient software exists for its implementation. However, the criticism to this approach, made by many, is found in its subjectivity. Objectivity and handling prior knowledge is a concern here so that different people, having different opinions, may arrive at different results.

Another developing paradigm: Fuzzy Logic

Fuzzy logic is another method in quantitative decision making. In contrast to binary logic (yes-no, or accept-reject), fuzzy logic can be thought of as gray logic, which allows a way to express in-between data values. It emerged in the development of the theory of fuzzy sets, by Lotfi Zadeh (1965). Fuzzy logic is mostly seen as a branch of artificial intelligence that deals with reasoning algorithms used to emulate human thinking and decision making. It handles the concept of partial truth using linguistic variables, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely false. The concept of partial truth would be subjective and would depend on the observer. For example, for the temperature of the weather, we want to determine when to say cold, warm, and hot. The meaning of each of these concepts can be represented by a certain membership (called a fuzzy set). The concept of each would be subjective. One might consider cold for all values up to 40 0F. In Figure 1, the meanings of the expressions cold, warm, and hot are represented by functions mapping a temperature scale to “truth values” ranging from 0 to 1. A point on that scale has three truth degrees, one for each of the three functions (expressions). The vertical line in the figure represents a particular temperature that the truth values (see three arrows) are measured. Since the red arrow points to zero, this temperature may be interpreted as “not hot.” The orange arrow (pointing at 0.2) may describe it as “slightly warm,” and the blue arrow (pointing at 0.8) “fairly cold” (Fuzzy Logic, 2013, para. 6). A rule could then be adopted, like for example, if “slightly warm” then stop the fan.

Picture was obtained from

Fuzzy logic uses truth degrees as a mathematical model of the vagueness phenomenon, and it summarizes data analysis in facts with truth degrees, and leaves the decision to the observer. Its advantage is its ability to deal with vague situations with respect to linguistic variables. While the significance testing for a hypothesis declares one accept or reject, fuzzy logic allows for degrees of acceptance or rejection. However, in fuzzy logic, the notion of truth doesn’t fall by the wayside, but it is expressed in degrees and offers possibilities for different situations. Regarding inference, fuzzy logic uses the mindset ‘everything is a matter of degree and open to interpretation,’ and this mindset is also adopted to machine learning, which is considered a more suitable mindset with human reasoning instead of binary logic. The constraints in fuzzy logic are found in its tools and interpretations when complex inputs are considered.

The developments of paradigms in statistical inference have similar fates as in the developments of mathematics, geometry, and physics. According to the Euclidean parallel postulate, in space, there exist no two parallel lines that intersect each other. However, after Non-Euclidean geometry was developed in the nineteenth century, a wider geometrical and mathematical reasoning stemmed from it; accordingly, the geometry of the physical universe and particles came to be understood better. The development of Riemannian geometry, offering that distance properties might vary, resulted in the synthesis of diverse results concerning the geometry of higher dimensional surfaces and the behavior of geodesics on them. It also made Einstein’s theory of general relativity justifiable. Likewise, as time passes, we witness wider paradigms or logics that abandon or correct former approaches in scientific decision making tools. This is a good reason why teachers and professors should update their current teachings as to be consistent with convincing trends, as well as to train students to be ready for wider paradigms in the future.

Conclusion

In today’s scientific community, the way decisions are made and fallacies proved, are changing as new paradigms emerge. In order to make better decisions or to validate claims, many aspects and methodologies should be considered. One way to avoid mistakes as much as we can would be to expect fallacy points to exist in human mental processing during decision making, and improving and seeking better alternatives with well-established wisdoms.

(Thanks Ugur Sahin for reviewing the preliminary copy of this article.)

References

• Fuzzy Logic. In Wikipedia. Retrieved August 1, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic
• Kass, Robert E. 2011. Statistical Inference: The Big Picture 1. Statistical Science, 2011, Vol. 26, No. 1, 1-9, DOI: 10.1214/10-STS337, Institute of Mathematical Statistics.
• Mercier, Hugo, Dan Sperber. 2011. “Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 34, 57-111.
• Newfoundland, Jason. 2013. “The Cell Phone-Brain Cancer Controversy.” The Fountain Magazine, Jan-Feb, Issue 91.
• Newman, Michael C. 2008. “‘What exactly are you inferring?’ A closer look at hypothesis testing.” Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Vol. 27, No. 5, pp. 1013-1019, 2008.

What I would like to say in this paper is from a glocal perspective even though the case study I will offer at the end is local. That does not mean that I believe that Ireland is the centre of the universe, though for three decades at the end of the twentieth century we had that tragic privilege. An introverted narrative is negative, be it Irish, British, American, Canadian or wherever. My Irish case study is informed and underpinned by global perspective and is therefore, I hope, a glocal story. I would also like to explore two key components of peacebuilding which education can address, indeed I believe, must address, if humanity is to live at peace on the planet as well as with the planet.

PEACEBUILDING THROUGH EDUCATION

In June of this year Aung San Sui Kyi visited Europe. She is a woman who has suffered greatly, remains committed to non-violence, and is a champion for democracy in her own Burma. She reminds us that peacebuilding is about building democracy, which is essential to sustainable peace.

Just over two decades ago many of us sat glued to the television screen. The image is indelible, that of Nelson Mandela finally emerging from his Robben Island prison compound. He walked to freedom to lead, with others, the transformation of apartheid South Africa into a Rainbow Nation. It’s still a work in progress. Mandela has reminded us that peace building is the creation of a pluralist, participative democracy. Peace building is pro-democracy and it is about actively creating rainbow nations and societies, pluralist, participative democracies – at least! Education has a crucial role to play in all of this.

Education for pluralist democracy

Democracy is developing. There is no finished product and there is no one model to be imposed universally irrespective of contexts and cultures. It is not a flawless system either. Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst of political systems, except for all the others.” Democracy is about freedom. What the promise of freedom and potential for democracy does induce is an almost universal abhorrence of tyranny. Dictatorships, totalitarian regimes and fascist states do not last and do not satisfy the deepest longings and needs for freedom and participative belonging. Whatever past history, newly liberated nations usually move towards democracy. In 1918 when Czechoslovakia was born, its President said, “Our whole history inclines us towards the democratic Powers.” That was repeated in 1989-91 by leaders of all the countries of the ex-Soviet bloc (Norman 1997, 131).

Education for pluralist democracy as part of peace building needs to engage history. Democracy has a lineage, a family tree and young people and adults should be aware of it.

The Greeks invented politics and it began with our city states. The polis needed governance and there was a recognition of a public good, a shared public interest and common concerns, and over these issues there could be argument, debate, discussion, decision and policy making. The assembly of citizens was known as the ecclesia, though it was far from being fully participative. It was only for wealthy males, people of power, excluded women and certainly had no place for slaves and lower classes. Athenian democracy lasted for 185 years. It had limited participation and Plato even thought that democracy meant the rule of the incompetent. Democracy was forgotten for a millennium.

European democracy owes more perhaps to the democratic practices of the Viking world. Popular assemblies enter European history in the 9th century in Sweden and Denmark. Iceland’s national assembly came into being in 930 CE. Long before England had such a democratic assembly, it existed in the Manx assembly, the Isle of Man, a small island between Britain and Ireland with a Viking history. The Manx Tynwald or assembly is also 9th century. Wherever the Vikings went, Nordic democracy went with them.

In the modern era the two great shapers of democracy were the French Revolution and the American Revolution. Any education in pluralist democracy needs to be aware of these seismic events. The history of the 18th-19th century Europe was a history of wars and conflict, and absolutist monarchies and imperial powers. The first political revolution of a new time in European history happened outside of Europe and it led to the dissolution of the first British Empire. It began in 1773 with the Boston Tea Party and a decade later at the Paris Peace Conference American Independence was recognised. Now the people of North America “could work out their problems virtually untroubled by foreign intervention, a blessing to much that was to follow” (Roberts 1997, 347). Popular sovereignty was embodied in the opening words of the Constitution, “We the People.” All governments derive their just powers from the assent of the governed. The American Revolution was a landmark in world history.

Then followed the French Revolution and by 1789, notwithstanding the Terror, great reforms were achieved.

The formal abolition of feudalism, legal privilege and theocratic absolutism, and the organisation of society on individualist and secular foundations were the heart of the principles of ’89 distilled in a Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen… legal equality and legal protection of individual rights, the separation of Church and State and religious toleration were their institutional expression. The derivation of authority from popular sovereignty acting through a unified National Assembly, before whose legislation no privilege of locality or group could stand… (Roberts 1997, 353-354).

Modern democracy is born and by 1900 the principle of democracy was an idea, albeit still resented in some parts of Europe, whose time had come. An education process needs to engage with the historical development of democracy. We may have little consensus about its essence and it remains flawed in practice. “We the People” may even be impossible, strictly speaking, in practice. But democracy as a theory of governance and the ordering of the public good has promoted “all the virtues, from freedom, justice and equality to the rule of law, the respect for human rights, and the promotion of political pluralism and of civil society” (Davies 1997, 131).

Democracy is not amoral. It implies a need to be underpinned by a value system. Values and ethics are the foundation of democracy at work. Peace building is an ethical task, it needs democracy and the values and ethics that underpin democracy. Democracy involves pluralism and freedom, it also requires tolerance or respect. The education process needs to draw the distinction between passive tolerance and active tolerance. The former is the tolerance of indifference. The latter is “The attitude of one who positively co-lives with the other because one respects the other and accepts the multi-faceted richness of reality” (Boff 2011, 8-9). At the heart of any education for democracy is justice, especially justice as distributive and restorative. Democracy is for human, social flourishing. And distributive and restorative justice are core to peace building.

Education for global citizenship

Yale historian, Jay Winter, believes that a new kind of vision emerged at the end of the dark 20th century after the momentous events of the late 1980s and early ’90s. It is a vision set in the framework of globalisation which aims to create a new kind of politics called the “politics of global citizenship.” It has also been described as “globalisation – from – below.”

Global citizens are emerging out of an array of transnational social forces animated by environmental concerns, human rights, hostility to patriarchy, and the vision of humane community based on the unity of diverse cultures seeking an end to poverty, oppression, humiliation, and collective violence. (Winter 2006, 169-170)

A new kind of political consciousness is developing which is transnational and is flowing across national borders. It is a glocal movement holding together the local and global. “Global citizenship is a political project helping people to imagine a different kind of world.” Citizenship is not tied to the state, it is “participation in a transnational set of struggles for dignity and justice” (Winter 2006, 170). The nation state is no longer primary. We are no longer just Irish, American, Turkish or Indian citizens but global citizens, in a different and larger solidarity on environmental rights, women’s rights and human rights. Transnational citizenship is about all of these glocal justice issues none of which is limited by national boundaries. Community now is in the local and the global.

Perhaps this began for many of us as children when we put our name and address on the inside page of a school text book. Name, street, town/city, Ireland, Europe, The World, The Universe! It is now the reality in a globalised world. Transnationalism and global citizenship may still have an unmapped future, but like modern democracy at the beginning of the 20th century this new local – global reality is and will shape who we are in the 21st century. It will be a peace building project stretching us well beyond any introverted narrative. Citizenship education now needs to be global for all ages, and it is not only an alternative to introverted narratives, but also to economic globalisation as the sole determinative factor for human and environmental life on the planet.

A GLOCAL CASE STUDY

I currently work on an initiative called Ethical and Shared Remembering. It is an initiative which will respond to the centenaries of events that occurred in Ireland between 1912-1922 and shaped the rest of the 20th century for the people in Ireland. It was a decade of enormous political change ending with the partition of Ireland, and it was also a decade of brutal violence.

How the centenaries will be handled between 1912-1922 will shape the decades ahead for better or worse. Ethical remembering is an approach that is critical in relation to the militarisation of politics and the violence that was so deeply embedded in culture and practice. Shared remembering is an approach that encourages the protagonists in all their complexity to engage with each other as human beings and to understand better each other’s perspectives on this crucial Irish decade and its legacy. The legacy has left many issues unresolved which have been re-played in the more recen phase of violence and conflict in Ireland. Some of these issues are; nationalism, nation-state, faith and politics, faith and violence, class and labour relations, feminism and equality issues, trauma and peace building. These constitute for any educational programme a generational peace building agenda which needs to be set in a global or glocal context.

There are multiple Irish narratives from this decade. Not only will this initiative try to recover them, especially the alternative, repressed or forgotten narratives, but the events of 100 years ago will be carefully set in the larger global, at least European context of that time. The memory of the Irish narrative(s) has often been introverted, but this community education initiative will seek to provide a larger and more critical perspective on a century ago by placing the events in a more global context. Early 20th century imperialism and the catastrophe of the Great War, provide a larger and rather different perspective.

The framework for an educational exploration will not only include global contextualisation but also narrative hospitality. This is about generosity of spirit and openness to engage with multiple narratives, especially those of one’s sectarian tradition or narrative perspective. Narrative hospitality will also include narrative pluralism and narrative flexibility. These latter two approaches will encourage an openness to recognise that there are multiple histories and diversities of interpretation of historical events and never a fixed or final norm. It is openness to realise that history is a plethora of interpretations, little of which may be about what actually happened even if ever that can be fully known.

Another educational framework will be integrative complexity. This is also getting beyond mono-narrative or mono-truth, simplism or fundamentalist politics or religion. Integrative complexity (IC) is a way of seeing history, culture, politics, faith, the world in all their diversity and complexity and integrating or weaving together the complexities of personal, communal and historical existence, and to see this complexity in the other.

Key to this project will be the development of critical thinking skills in a community where there has been, through the dynamics of violence and conflict, a culture which is unquestioning. The latter has often been understood as being disloyal or unpatriotic. Few people have thought for themselves and this educational methodology will engage with critical reflection on matters of history, politics, religion and cultural identity without reducing their complexity.

Essential to the educational exploration of the past will be future visioning. This is not just about a 2030 vision for Ireland. It is about transcending local nationalist politics of whatever shade and visioning a common good. It will also be about global citizenship, a transnational vision that will require the imaginative creation of a larger identity myth, beyond introversion, and glocal in perspective and complexity. Not only will the initiative encourage the development of an ethical vision for future society but will also unpack the need for ethical leadership in a society where the moral authority of the major institutions has collapsed. The initiative is being delivered through community education programmes, dialogue events, training resources and materials and a series of in-depth publications, and also the use of the arts. The community of ethical and shared remembering will include people from the community development and community relations sector, education, youth, the faith sector, politicians, ex-prisoners, commemorative groups and institutions. This is an initiative which we hope will make a positive contribution through education to peace building as a glocal task.

References

1. Davies, Norman. 1997. Europe: A History, London: Pimlico.
2. Roberts, J.M. 1997. The Penguin History of Europe, London: Penguin Books.
3. Boff, Leonardo. 2011. Virtues: For Another Possible World, Oregon: Cascade Books.
4. Winter, Jay 2006. Dreams of Peace and Freedom: Utopian Moments in the 20th Century, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. The extended quotation is from Richard Falk.

It is also important to comprehend benefits brought by perpetuation of this institution, since the waqf system could successfully survive for centuries. Some preventive measures to ensure longevity were finding new sources of income, establishing new auxiliary endowments, deploying tax exemptions, protection of property from natural deterioration, and establishing a skillful management.3 Even when the governments suffered from crisis, these critical installments have served to lighten fiscal burden on the government and operated without an interruption in their service to community, as a result of being funded by endowments. For example, since the beginning of Islam, the madrasahs functioned depending on the income of the estates assigned, and hence the central government hardly spared any budget for education.5 More outstandingly, as an independent source of finance, waqf provided a class of religious notables and scholars with an economic base independent of political authorities, enabling them to take positions unreservedly.3

Agricultural revenues were channeled into urban services through awqaf which also played a role in activating economic growth, expansion, diversification, and development. For instance, housing units, service facilities and/or shops bequeathed onto a school, a hospital or a comprehensive mosque around which they were established; the core project progressively became a nucleus for a commercial center, even gradually growing into a town center. Added to all these kinds of direct participation, there are other indirect kinds of contributions of awqaf in the economic growth6 as they have helped reduce government expenditure and consequently paving the way for growth.7

“As an institutionalization of Islamic values, waqf system presents good lessons in dealing with poverty and income inequality.”8 Having taken the Prophetic saying “One who sleeps while his/her neighbor is hungry is not one of us” and many other hadith in the similar context as a reference point, Ottoman society presented exemplary behavior in interpersonal relationships.9 In addition to the strong family bonds, this compassionate approach is among one of the main factors that prevented homelessness, a major contemporary social problem in the West, to appear in Ottoman society. Without any personal interest, people founded thousands of institutions allocating some or all of their private properties such as farms, houses, enterprises, and savings as revenue sources to these institutions to ensure their continuity in the service of public.10

According to Islam, everything besides God is transitory and perishable.11 Stemming from the belief that any charitable action does not expire, awqaf have functioned as nongovernmental institutions throughout the Islamic world in various fields. In the 11th century, every Islamic city had at least several hospitals funded by awqaf for various expenses, including the wages of doctors, ophthalmologists, surgeons, chemists, pharmacists, domestics and all other staff; the purchase of foods and medicines; hospital equipment such as beds, mattresses, bowls and perfumes; and repairs to buildings. Awqaf funded medical schools and their libraries as well, and their revenues covered various expenses such as maintenance, wages of teachers, and stipends of students.12 In the Bayezid complex in Edirne, for instance, there were 21 doctors and other officers to look after only 50 patients who were cured through performances of 10 musicians, carried out three days a week.13

Estimates show existence of some 26 thousand awqaf in the Ottoman State.14 In 1527, 12% of the whole Ottoman state revenues were controlled by waqf administrations, while at the end of the eighteenth century the combined income of the Ottoman awqaf reached to one-third of the state’s total revenue, including the yield from tax farms in the Balkans, Turkey, and the Arab world. Although these estimates rest on arguable assumptions, there is no disagreement over the orders of magnitude. As a measure of their rights and status in the society, nearly 40% of awqaf were established by women by means of their own wealth.10 Founded in 1552 by the wife of Suleyman the Magnificent, Jerusalem’s Haseki Hurrem Sultan charitable complex possessed 26 entire villages, several shops, a covered bazaar, 2 soap plants, 11 flour mills, and 2 bathhouses, all in Palestine and Lebanon. For centuries, the revenues produced by these assets were used to operate a huge soup kitchen, along with a mosque and two hostels for pilgrims and wayfarers.15

There is abundant evidence to show the massive economic significance of the waqf system that even a single waqf could carry great economic value. Another waqf established in Halep (Aleppo) in the eighteenth century included 10 houses, 67 shops, 4 inns, 2 storerooms, several dyeing plants and baths, 3 bakeries, 8 orchards, and 3 gardens, among various other assets, including agricultural land. By the end of the eighteenth century, in Istanbul, whose estimated population of 700,000 made it the largest city in Europe, up to 30,000 people a day were being fed by charitable complexes established under the waqf system. At the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, three-quarters of the country’s arable land belonged to awqaf.10

A closer look at the Ottoman practice

Throughout the Ottoman realms, the waqf was without any doubt, the primary philanthropic institution which had long served as a major instrument for delivering public goods. For six centuries, the Ottomans largely succeeded to eradicate poverty through awqaf via a voluntary transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor and the latter were fed and taken care of in a decentralized manner. More importantly, health and educational services, essential conditions for the development of human capital, were provided via this institution.16 Waqf was instrumental to the spread of the Ottomans whose policy of settlement relied heavily on the establishment of awqaf in support of Sufi centers that were planted along the frontiers of the expanding state, on its strategic trade routes and traffic arteries, amidst its political rivals and enemies, or in other strategic locations, thus contributing to the spread of Islam as well.3

Alternatively, waqf was extensively used for the development of public and commercial institutions leading to the economic revitalization of major cities, and also as perhaps the major tool to bring about cultural integration for conveying Ottoman culture and services to the regions being settled. The participation of centrally appointed officials and local notables in awqaf helped bridge gaps between these two groups and produced a homogeneous urban elite throughout the vast empire.3

The Ottoman state contributed to awqaf in two ways. First, either by directly establishing waqf17 or by granting land to those who wanted to found a waqf. In this way, the vacant lands had been brought into cultivation, creating extra revenues for the state. Second, the state contributed by supervising, controlling, and recording the revenues and expenditures in order to secure their well-functioning. The control and the supervision of the waqf system can be attributed to the importance of the land in Ottoman politics.8

Granting these privileges, the state sacrificed from large amounts of tax revenue, yet also kept an eye on the activities of awqaf to ensure quality of service.18 The revenues and expenditures of the awqaf had been recorded very carefully. In terms of production of statistical records, systematization in record-keeping, there are not too many states in history to rival the Ottomans.19 Many of these records have been carefully archived,20 and are still available as primary sources to researchers. 21

Awqaf in daily life

The Ottoman state was mainly responsible for security, justice, and border protection. Almost all other social tasks were being performed individuals. The belief that “Charity pleases God and brings God’s blessings” determined Muslim behavior in many fundamental acts of economic importance and the Ottomans were particularly zealous in that regard.22 People set up and administered awqaf for benevolent purposes, which followed the principle, “there always is a necessity to service wherever living things exist.”23

The beneficiaries were not limited to the poor and needy. Awqaf have served the public for a variety of purposes that outline an endless list: protecting the unfortunate, meeting the need of wayfarers and pilgrims, raising orphans, providing scholarships to students, employing the unemployed, educating apprentice artisans toward mastery, helping the bankrupt or those with excessive debt, covering marriage expenses for needy couples, sheltering animals, taking care of widows, hungry and the destitute, sick and the disabled, running health care, sports and educational programs, producing candles for mosques, taking care of the environment, paving roads, enlightening streets, paying a neighborhood’s taxes, supporting retired sailors, organizing picnics for a designated guild, subsidizing the cultivation of rare roses, operating commuter ships, lending to small businesses, helping prisoners, and providing toys to children of poor families. These were among hundreds of other purposes of varying social significance. Also, there have been many applications to launch, construct, manage, and preserve public institutions and infrastructure like military establishments, pavements, lighthouses, malls, cemeteries, hospitals, public baths, drinking fountains, mosques, schools, dormitories, inns, caravanserais, dervish hospices, bridges, roads, aqueducts, libraries and so on.

Some basic ethics of charity in Islam are anonymity, avoiding pretension, preserving purity of intention, and protecting assisted people from any possible psychological effects.24 A thoughtful application of these principles came into life in the “Charity Stones.” In this Ottoman practice, charitable people would leave some money (generally in the dark of the night) to these two-meter-high marble columns with a hole on top, which were commonly located at the unobserved corners of mosques, madrasahs, cemeteries, mausoleums, and neighborhoods. Needy people, later on, would take money from there, astonishingly, no more than they needed. The rest would be left back with decency for someone else, which shows the achieved level of the brotherhood and solidarity in the society.25 These stones were used to prevent a form of mendicancy in the society and at the same time, not to offend needy people.

The Turkish waqf spirit which cares for all living beings has extended its reach to birds as well, when from the fifteenth century on, kiosks for birds were started to be built. Some of these “bird houses,” also called “bird palaces,” resembled mosques with their minarets, high-hopped towers and signs in the form of a crescent, and displayed an extraordinary workmanship. Having observed such bird houses with great interest, the Austrian ambassador Busbecq wrote in 1550s that “in Turkey everything has become humanized and every rigid thing has been softened; even the animals.”10 Many examples of awqaf have served for protection and enhancement of the environment as well.26 In “Ottoman land,” Comte de Bonneval stated, “it is possible to see Turks passionate enough to dedicate money for men to water unfruitful trees, in order to protect them from drought due to hot weather.”27 According to D’Ohsson, this caring motivation is rooted in Islam: “Qur’an has transformed Turks into the best philanthropists of the world.”28

There were awqaf established for each aspect of life. One can talk about the excess supply of public goods rather than their scarcity thanks to extensive waqf services, so much so that Ottoman cities did not need to implement actual municipality organizations to deliver urban services in a centralized and coordinated manner before 1856.29 “Thanks to the awqaf flourished during the Ottoman Empire, a person would have borne into a waqf house, slept in a waqf cradle, ate and drunk from waqf properties, read waqf books, taught in a waqf school, received his salary from a waqf administration, and when he died, put into a waqf coffin and buried in a waqf cemetery.”30 Had the awqaf gained corporate powers, “they would have acquired the ability to transform themselves into organizations akin to municipalities.”31

By means of the awqaf founded in different spheres of social life, privately accumulated capital was voluntarily endowed to finance all sorts of social, cultural, religious, and economical services alongside with health and transportation, all of which were free of charge and open to everyone, without discrimination. As a result, the awqaf played a very eminent role in setting up a sound integration, cooperation, and mutual confidence between the society and the state. Aqwaf, in other words, became the medium for financing Islam as a society,32 and have served as the primary mechanism for a better distribution of income.

Awqaf’s services were provided through decentralized decision-making, i.e., not by a central authority but by philanthropists determined to address social and economic issues in their neighborhood.17 The multiplicity of waqf founders, together with the generally uncoordinated character of their choices, furnished abundant opportunities for learning from failures and successes. Such associations that individuals create, operate, and transform essentially on their own, without direct guidance from the state, also contributed to a strong civil society.31

The notion that wasting or misusing properties of awqaf, the state, or orphans is a severe violation of the rights of others, thus will be punished in the Hereafter, provided an extreme sense of self-discipline in individuals and immunity to those properties. Traditionally, waqf deeds even contained imprecations to discourage any possible abuse and orisons to encourage compliance with the deed.33

The centralization policy, promoted partly by the Western powers and partly by the Ottoman reformers in the late nineteenth century, undermined the role of awqaf and transformed these traditional institutions to European-inspired municipalities for providing public services with a central manner.34 Most countries now directly or indirectly administer waqf lands in separate Ministries, leading to the demise of its nongovernmental identity. Moreover, as a usual practice in the Europe, North America, and Australia, Muslim communities establish nonprofit organizations which in turn own the waqf property. Despite the reduction in its influence in the social spheres, and despite the considerable cutback in the size of its properties and revenues due to the colonial experience and the emergence of modern nation states, waqf remains as an institution of substantial wealth and potential, and it still holds some of the historical flexibility that qualifies it to play a major role in contemporary societies.35

Senkaya has a Master’s Degree in Nonprofit Leadership. He can be contacted at senkayao@seattleu.edu.

Notes

1The word waqf, and its plural form awqaf, were derived from the Arabic root verb waqafa, which means “to cause a thing to stop and stand still.” Heffening defines waqf as: a pious endowment established when an owner of a property surrenders her/his disposal rights, without transferring them to some other party (Heffening, W. “Waqf.” Vol. 4. In Encyclopedia of Islam, 1096-1103. 1934).

2 Toraman, Cengiz. “Cash Awqaf in the Ottomans as Philanthropic Foundations and Their Accounting Practices” Paper presented at the fifth Accounting History International Conference. Canada: Edward School of Business, University of Saskatchewan, August 9-12, 2007. http://www.commerce.usask.ca/special/5ahic/papers/5AHIC-37%20FINAL%20Paper.pdf

3 Dallal, Ahmad. “The Islamic Institution of Waqf: A Historical Overview.” In Islam and Social Policy, Stephen P. Heyneman, 13-43. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004.

4 Othman, Muhammad Z. “Institution of Waqf.” Islamic Culture 58, no. 1 (1984): 55-62.

5 Canan, ?brahim. Kütüb-i Sitte Tercüme ve ?erhi. Vol. 16, 275-281. Ankara: Akça? Yay?nlar?, 2004.

6 Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. “Islamic Waqf Endowment.” http://www.isesco.org.ma/english/publications/WAQF/Chap6.php

7 Çizakça, Murat. A History of Philanthropic Foundations: The Islamic World from the Seventh Century to the Present. Istanbul: Bogazici University Press, 2000.

8 Ba?kan, Birol. Paper presented at 17th Middle East History And Theory Conference, May 10-11. Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Chicago. 2002, “Waqf System as a Redistribution Mechanism in Ottoman Empire.” http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/mehat/past_conferences/Baskan.pdf

9 Ar?, Saim. “Osmanl? Mahallesinde Sosyal Dayan??ma Örne?i: Avar?z Vak?flar?.” Sizinti 24, no. 287 (2002) http://www.sizinti.com.tr/konular.php?KONUID=210

10 Yediy?ld?z, Bahaeddin. Place of the Waqf in Turkish Cultural System. Translated by R Acun and M Oz. Istanbul: Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), 1996. http://www.history.hacettepe.edu.tr/archive/waqfkultur.html

11 Qur’an, 55:26-27.

12 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waqf

13 Maksudo?lu, Mehmet E. “Osmanl? Vak?f Uygulamas?ndan Baz? Örnekler” Diyanet Ilmi Dergi, 2003 http://www.diyanet.gov.tr/turkish/DIYANET/ilmi_dergi/ilmi_39_3/main.asp?makno=6

14 According to the findings of Ekrem Hakk? Ayverdi (in The Ottoman Architectural Artifacts in Europe), there were 3339 Turkish waqf buildings in Bulgaria in 1982. Of these 2356 were small and large mosques, 142 universities, 273 bridges, 16 caravanseraies and the rest consisting of baths (hamam), tombs, fortresses, public fountains, libraries etc. (Yediy?ld?z).

15 Peri, Oded. “Waqf and Ottoman Welfare Policy. The Poor Kitchen of Hasseki Sultan in Eighteenth-Century Jerusalem.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 35, no. 2 (1992): 167-186.

16 Çizakça, Murat (interviewed by Dr. Shariq Nasir). “Combining Islamic History with Islamic Institutional Economics.” Islamic Business and Finance, March 2006 http://www.cpifinancial.net/v2/Magazine.aspx?v=1&aid=392&cat=IBF&in=5

17 Named as state waqf, this type of awqaf are legally different from private charitable awqaf. Because the Sultan established the waqf from the treasury of the State, these awqaf were called, waqfi gayri sahih (Ba?kan).

18 Emino?lu, Kamil. “Osmanl?lar’da Vak?f Anlay???.” Sizinti 8, no. 90 (1996) http://www.sizinti.com.tr/konular.php?KONUID=2411

19 Crecelius, Daniel. “Introduction.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 38, no. 3 (1995): 249.

20 http://www.vgm.gov.tr/01_VakifKayitlariArsivi/001_VakfiyeArsivi/vakfiye.cfm.

21 For more information regarding superintendence mechanisms readers may consult to Akgunduz. Akgündüz, Ahmet. “?slâm Hukukunda ve Osmanl? Tatbikat?nda Vak?f Müesseseleri”, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Bas?mevi, 1988.

22 ?nalc?k, Halil. “The Economic Mind.” In An economic and social history of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914, Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

23 A?manvermez, Ahmet. “Bir Vak?f Medeniyeti Olarak Osmanl?.” http://www.kalemguzeli.net/bir-vakif-medeniyeti-olarak-osmanli.html

24 Qur’an, 2:261-274.

25 Ünver, Süheyl. “Sadaka Ta?lar?.” Hayat Tarih 11, 1967.

26 Seker, Mehmet. “Osmanl? Vakfiyelerinde Çevre Bilinci.” Ekoloji 1, no.4 (1992): 26-30.

27 Hilal, Ziyaeddin. “Yabancilarin Gözüyle Osmanli’da Vakif Hizmetleri.” Sizinti 29, no. 338 (2007) http://www.sizinti.com.tr/konular.php?KONUID=3139

28 D’Ohsson, Moradjea. Tableau General del Empire Otoman.

29 Bayyigit, Mehmet. “Sosyal Yard?mla?ma ve Dayan??ma Kurumu Olarak Vak?flar.” 59-66. 1999.

30 Arsebük, Esat. Medeni Hukuk, Ba?lang?ç ve ?ah?s Hukuku. Vol. 1, 298. 1938.

31 Kuran, Timur. “The provision of public goods under Islamic law: Origins, impact, and limitations of the waqf…” Law & Society Review 35, no. 4 (2001): 841-897.

32 Hoexter, Miriam. “The Waqf and the Public Sphere.” In The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies, Miriam Hoexter Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, and Nehemia Levtzion, 119-138. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2002.

33 Gözübenli, Be?ir. “?slam Toplumunda Vak?f Kültürünün Do?u?u.” Yeni Ümit 15, no.60 (2003) http://www.yeniumit.com.tr/konular.php?sayi_id=60&konu_id=54&yumit=bolum2

34 Kilicalp, Sevinc S. “Centralization of the Ottoman State and Modernization of the Waqf System.” 4th ed. In Master in International Studies in Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship, 1-28. Bologna: University of Bologna, February 2008. http://www.misp.it/2008/images/stories/documenti/KilicalpPaper.pdf

35 (Habitat II)

Art, on its quest for refinement, is the expression of the ethos and values of society. It serves to remind us that life must be permeated with physical, spiritual and emotional beauty. The objects in these Met Galleries are the memoirs of civilization, yet they are not cast in the amber of the past. They pulse with life. They help us to understand how the cultures touched by Islam were built and evolved through the present day. A balanced display of objects of all types and techniques leads the visitor on a rich ride through the artistic, cultural and religious contexts of regional spheres stretching from Rabat to Ulan Bator, from Trabzon to Jakarta.

A paradise of artistic delight

Selecting these outstanding pieces must have been an emotional and challenging experience for the curators. How to choose only 1200 pieces from the Museum’s vast collections of 12,000 objects to tell the story of the interlinking themes across centuries and continents? The galleries explore the richness of Islamic art in objects big and small: from monumental bronze salvers of princely palaces to humble ceramic bowls, from stylish illuminated manuscripts to Qur’an pages filled with graceful calligraphy, from steel sabers to gardens of textile delights.

Some of the stunning artifacts on exhibit include miniatures from the most famous series of paintings in Islamic art, the celebrated 16th century Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp, ornamental doors from the 9th century royal residence at Samarra in Iraq, a monumental 12th century Seljuk feline incense burner from Iran, a 12th century astrolabe from Yemen, and carved stucco panels from a 10th century house in Nishapur, Iran. Turkish and Mamluk carpets are presented in a room under a newly-assembled wooden ceiling from a 15th century Spanish monastery crafted by Muslim artisans, offering visitors a constellation of stars above and below.

Architecture, one of the most visible and unifying manifestations of the Islamic heritage, has a place here as well. Peeking into the Damascus Room, an intact 18th century reception room from an upper-class Syrian Ottoman house, gives insight onto the daily life of the era. The 11-foot high turquoise tiled prayer niche from a 14th century theological school in Isfahan has been moved to a more prominent place in the galleries (and respectfully reset to its correct kibla orientation), which allows visitors to feel its architectural impact. One of the most popular attractions is the Moroccan Courtyard – a room built from scratch to resemble a 14th century home interior, with intricately carved niches and a bubbling fountain. This graceful gem was created by craftsmen from Fez brought in especially for the project.

Innovative objectives

A desire to rethink the presentation of the galleries prompted the museum to close them for renovation in 2003, two years after the events of 9/11. The curatorial staff set out to sensitively join the galaxy of cultures touched by Islam, and to make its appreciation more accessible by the general public through a judicious intermingling of art objects. The curators chose three major strategies to achieve this monumental task.

Firstly, the official name change from the former reductive “Islamic Galleries” was a bold one. The new name is indeed a mouthful, but it removes the stigma of Islam as opposed to the West and alien, as well as the stereotype of an art produced only in relationship to religion. It effectively dismantles the notion that Islamic art is a single, uniform production.

Secondly, intelligent architecture, using an open plan, created more square footage and brightened the former dim and mysterious rooms into a light and positive space. Lattice screens made in Egypt point the way and provide awareness of the mutual visibility of the cultures. The floors are paved in a different stone for each section, ranging from Egyptian marble inlaid with stars to soft Indian sandstone. Created as well are two new galleries, one linking Spain and North Africa, and the second for the South Asian sphere. The circular path though the galleries encourages visitors to make intuitive cultural interconnections as they rove.

Lastly, and most importantly, the curatorial approach is groundbreaking. The galleries are arranged not in a chronological order, but attempt a more geographical transverse. Particular attention is paid to display objects that emphasize the exchange of artistic influences with surrounding cultures. One gallery is devoted to depicting the imprint of the late Roman, Sassanid and Coptic traditions on the formation of this art. Objects from the Byzantine Empire, China, and Europe are skillfully sprinkled in the cases to highlight the interplay of cultures. Particularly intriguing is portrayal of the hybrid Buddhist-Jain-Hindu-Muslim-Colonial context of the Indian subcontinent. Effort was also paid to present objects which highlight secular and cosmopolitan aspects, not just those exclusively linked to liturgical needs.

In this fashion, the Met galleries help us break with the idea of art compartmentalized solely in reference to a single religious or cultural tradition. Our eyes are lifted towards a more universal vision. The voyage through trans-regional history presented in these Galleries opens new lines of conversation and leads us to contemplate the artistic and historical traditions of our own practices in relation to those of a different civilization.

A reinterpretation of misconceptions

Interpretation of Islamic art in the past by the Western world has often dismissively focused on the visual differences of this art: Islamic art “bans human representation,” Islamic artists “did not understand perspective” in their miniature painting, Islamic art is limited only to the “flat surface” and to the production of the “minor arts,” and “uses only geometry and calligraphy” to express the aesthetic, and so forth. The current presentation allows visitors to see the contrary, persuading them to make up their own mind about how these artists sought to depict the divine and mundane in ways different, yet just as powerful, as those in Western art: flowing calligraphy soars off Qur’an pages as high as the arches of Gothic cathedrals, glass mosque lamps sparkle with the intensity of a king’s gold treasure, colossal wall tiles shine forth with the same inspiration as stained glass windows, and carpets sing as brightly as a Cezanne or Klee painting.

The revised perspective of these galleries, filled with a respectful, reconciliatory motivation, allows visitors to appreciate the distinctive themes and the monumentality of this production, as well as the complexity and diversity of artistic expression. By providing objects illustrating the universal human aspiration towards beauty and refinement in society, we are led to reassess our present relations to these cultures accordingly.

Many examples here illustrate universal human aspirations and the interconnection of the peoples of the earth. Through excellence in craft, these objects poignantly illustrate the hope-filled quest of the honored verse of the Qur’an: “We created you nations and tribes that ye may know one another.” (49:13). The first piece visitors view upon entering the galleries is a large, 10th century white ceramic bowl from Nishapur in Iran, inscribed in a boldly powerful black calligraphy. It sets the tone for harmony, for the potter and the calligrapher needed to work closely hand in hand to produce such a masterpiece. On an Iznik plate from 16th century Ottoman Turkey, the artist has depicted 4 types of flowers – a rose, a hyacinth, a honeysuckle sprig and a tulip – all gracefully springing from the same clump of roots. A special grouping of manuscripts side by side explores the triple traditions of Judaism, Islam and Christianity that lived together harmoniously in medieval Spain. A folio illustrating the preparation of medicine from honey, copied in Baghdad 1224 from the Greek medical manuscript De Materia Medica by Discorides, illustrates the respectful heritage of scientific thought from one culture to the next. A judiciously-situated doorway pulls visitors out of the Egypt/Syria gallery into the room containing the Met’s 19th century “Orientalism” collection. These paintings depict the Middle East as seen through the eyes of European painters. Pausing to look at these colorful and often fanciful interpretations forces us to ask ourselves how we view these cultures today.

A Courtyard of Hope

The mainstream portrayal of Islam is not always kind, and does not usually deal with transcendent beauty, refined ornamentation, or intricate arabesques. Yet one of the most famous hadith, or sayings of the Prophet declares: “God is beautiful and He loves beauty.” Should it thus come as a surprise that this culture has led to the creation of so many great works of art? Perhaps the art at the new Met Galleries will close some chasms and conflicts that plague Muslim-West relations, especially over the last 10 years. Instead of blaring headlines on a newspaper article, perhaps scrutiny of the elegant calligraphy of a Qur’an page will offer grounds for reflection of the other face of the story and provide hope for well-needed harmony. The spiral of galleries ends in the serene Moroccan courtyard. Visitors are invited to linger there a moment and take home with them its restorative light and spirit of tranquility.

A new game

One of the most engaging pieces on display is a 12th century chess set from Iran, one of the earliest to come down to us. Crafted from glazed clay, the modern-looking pieces challenge us to a game. Yet, we cannot play because one piece is missing. Somewhere along the march of time, through earthquakes, Mongol invasions, wars and strife, one pawn has gone missing from this stunning set.

Looking at this chessboard, one cannot help but reflect on the still-charged game of misunderstandings which pits East and West on opposing sides. Does the loss of this representative of castles and conflicts auger a more peaceful society? Perhaps this missing foot soldier can presage the beginning of a new game, one where we are all on the same side of the chessboard; a game without confronting pieces and with reconciliation as the victor.

May the art in these Met Galleries inspire us to write the rules for this new Game of Peace.

Katharine Branning is the author of a series of essays on Turkey, “Yes I would love another glass of tea” and the curator of the exhibit “Song of Stones” dedicated to Seljuk art held at the Turkish Cultural Center in New York in the fall of 2011.

However, a recent book, Islamic Science and Making of the European Renaissance, by George Saliba calls these arguments into question. This book prompted me to think more critically about this long, accepted argument. Can this prominent scholar of Islam or his famous book, Tahafut al-Falasifah, be held responsible, single handedly, for causing an age of decline in the scientific activities in the Muslim World?

Many orientalists argue that Ghazali’s Tahafut is responsible for the age of decline in science in the Muslim World. This is their key thesis as they attempt to explain the scientific and intellectual history of the Islamic world. It seems to be the most widely accepted view on the matter not only in the Western world but in the Muslim world as well. George Saliba, a Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science at Columbia University who specializes in the development of astronomy within Islamic civilization, calls this view the “classical narrative” (Saliba, 2007). However, interesting discoveries in the second half of the twentieth century by historians of science challenged many of the assertions of this classical narrative. An example of such discoveries is the strong connections between Ibn al-Shatir, a famous Damascene astronomer of the fourteenth century, and the Renaissance astronomer Copernicus (Roberts, 1957). If Ghazali had killed science in Islam in the twelfth century, then al-Shatir’s work from the fourteenth century could not have been so influential on Copernicus’s work. Saliba challenges almost all of the major tenets of the classical narrative on the basis of (1) a critical examination of historical evidence, some of which is quite recent, and (2) the results of his own long-term research in Islamic astronomy.

Saliba’s response to the question

In making his argument, Saliba first notes that most of the orientalists operate under the assumption that there must be a sharp conflict between religion and science. This paradigm is probably based on their European experience. To them, al-Ghazali represents the orthodox tradition in Islam and with Tahafut, written in the late eleventh century (between 1091 and 1095), they assume that orthodox religious thought won a decisive victory over rational, scientific thought. From that point on they assume that science in Islam declined, and the Islamic world did not produce anything significant in terms of scientific advancements.

Saliba argues that both of these assumptions are false. First, the European paradigm of conflict between religion and science does not really apply to the Islamic world. The religion of Islam encourages rational and scientific inquiry. Therefore, Muslims see no insurmountable contradictions between their faith and natural laws. Hence, studying religion and studying natural sciences does not create a conflict for Muslims.

Secondly, many of the scientists in the Islamic world were also religious authorities at the same time. A few examples among such scholars are Ibn al-Nafis, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi ,and Ibn al-Shatir who lived in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and made important contributions to such diverse scientific disciplines as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics and philosophy. In fact, these scholars were regarded primarily as religious figures by the general public with side interests in sciences. Early Muslim scholars did not hesitate to acquire scientific knowledge wherever they could find it, whether it be in Indian civilization, in Greek civilization, or in Persian civilization. Not only did they acquire these sciences through translation, but they also critically examined them in a comprehensive way. Making corrections and improvements and even introducing new disciplines, they showed a high degree of ownership and maturity. This led to a remarkable period of creativity and rapid advancements in many scientific disciplines in the Islamic world beginning as early as the eighth century (Saliba, 2007).

Contrary to the classical narrative, scientific advancements in the Islamic world did not stop or even slow down after Ghazali. Saliba gives many examples of sophisticated scientific achievements in the Islamic world well after Ghazali. Based on his life-long research in the area, he concludes that the golden age of Islamic astronomy was in the post-Ghazali period from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. Discoveries by Western historians of science in the second half of the twentieth century show that there are surprisingly strong connections between Copernicus (sixteenth century) and Muslim astronomers from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such as Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and Ibn al-Shatir (Roberts, 1957; Saliba, 2007). These discoveries were shocking to many in the scholarly community who did not expect to find any transfer of knowledge from the Islamic civilization to Europe in the post-Ghazali period. Unfortunately, this new information has not been sufficiently digested by today’s scholars and does not yet generally appear in secondary sources.

Saliba also provides examples from other disciplines, such as medicine, that show that a high level of scientific production took place in more than one discipline in the Islamic world in the post-Ghazali period. How is it that such important scientific materials could have been overlooked by the experts? According to Saliba a major reason for modern historians of science to have missed the large amount of scientific production in Islamic world in the post-Ghazali period is the damage caused by the classical narrative. Most historians simply weren’t looking for it because the classic narrative stipulated that science in Islam was dead after Ghazali. Even though some new discoveries have been made, there are still many scientific works waiting to be studied from that period. As an example of these omissions, Berggren, the author of Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam, says that he used this title for his book as opposed to The History of Mathematics in Medieval Islam simply because “Such a book could not be written yet, for so much material remains unstudied that we do not know enough of the whole story” (Berggren, 1986).

The Content and the Method of the Tahafut

Even though Saliba’s arguments and evidence are quite convincing to doubt or reject the common narrative, I wanted to go straight to the source-the Tahafut-and have a closer look to see if it might be a book that can be held responsible for killing the science or scientific thought in Islamic civilization.

In Tahafut, Ghazali refutes twenty philosophical doctrines. Using a scientific, or in this context philosophical, method, he first explains those philosophical doctrines before criticizing them. His explanations were so comprehensive and so clear that he made them accessible to non-philosophers, and thus, his ideas became generally better known in the Islamic world. Next, he gave arguments to refute those doctrines. In doing so, he used the very same logical and philosophical principles and arguments that philosophers used in the first place to support their claims. Ghazali mainly argues that the philosophers who proposed the doctrines that conflict with religious principles failed to provide valid and rigorous proofs for their propositions. Hence, he attacked their methodologies using their own tools and principles.

An important point Ghazali makes in Tahafut is that he has no problems with the philosophers’ mathematics, astronomical sciences, or logic. He says (Marmura 2000, p. 11):

Regarding mathematical sciences, there is no sense in denying them or disagreeing with them. For these reduce in the final analysis to arithmetic and geometry. As regards to logical sciences, these are concerned with examining the instrument of thought in intelligible things. There is no significant disagreement encountered in these.

Therefore, it is clear that his views could not be used to justify a position against the study of mathematical sciences.

To give the reader a sense of what kinds of philosophical doctrines the Tahafut is concerned with and aims to refute, a selected few out of the twenty are listed below (Marmura 2000, p. 10, 11). The list shows that the questions discussed in Tahafut concern some of the most fundamental issues in theology, particularly in the Islamic theology.

The first problem: On refuting their doctrine of the world’s pre-eternity.

The sixth: On refuting their doctrine denying the divine attributes.

The tenth: On showing that upholding a materialist doctrine and the denial of the Maker is a necessary consequence [of what they hold].

The twentieth: On refuting their denial of bodily resurrection and the accompanying bodily pleasures and pains in paradise and hell.

Concluding Remarks

When I discuss the question given in the title of this article with my colleagues, and I argue that it would be unfair to hold Ghazali or Tahafut responsible for the decline of science in Islam, I sometimes hear the objection that “perhaps the content or the method of Tahafut may not justify this conclusion, but this is not how people understood it.” But then, one must consider the evidence given by Saliba that there is a large amount of sophisticated scientific production in the Islamic world well after Ghazali, and there is still much more to be discovered. Considering the content of Tahafut and the scientific advances in post-Ghazali period, I have a hard time convincing myself that the classical narrative is the ultimate truth on the matter. This position is supported by the fact that it is usually not realistic to try to explain most major social and historical transformations in terms of a single person, a book, an event, or the like. According to Saliba, the decline in Islamic science was the result of a combination of many internal and external reasons that took place several centuries after Ghazali.

Finally, one may wonder why this question is important or relevant. After all, these things happened a long time ago, and we have to deal with the current realities. One answer would be that there are many lessons to be learned from the history. And of course if the correct version of the history is not available, conclusions will be flawed. If anybody is interested in reviving science and scientific activities in a society, there is much that can be learned from the early Islamic period when there was a remarkable rapid and widespread rise in science, as well as lessons from the later periods of Islamic history when the Islamic world fell behind in scientific production. Some researchers are beginning to realize how much damage the classical narrative has caused in understanding the general history and the development of the modern science. It is always useful to have a critical mind to question and reevaluate assumptions when they do not conform to the evidence.

References

• Berggren, J. L. 1986. Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam, New York: Springer-Verlag.
• Marmura, Michael E. (translator). 2000. Al-Ghazali The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-Falasifah) Provo: Brigham Young University Press.
• Roberts, Victor . 1957. “The Solar and Lunar Theory of Ibn al-Shatir: A pre-Copernican Copernican Model,” Isis 48:428-432.
• Saliba, George. 2007. Islamic Science and Making of the European Renaissance, Cambridge: MIT Press.

Original Article: Morewedge C.K. et al., Science 330, 1530 (2010).

If you’ve had a chance to visit the Fatih district in Istanbul, then you have probably seen the famous mosque called “As If I Ate” (Sanki Yedim Camii). The history of the mosque is at least as interesting as its name: Kececi Hayrettin Efendi, who lived in Istanbul in the eighteenth century, led a frugal life and used to save the money he could have used for pleasures like good food. Each time he went into a restaurant, he self-suggested “as if I ate” and assumed himself full. Years go by, and one day Kececi Hayrettin Efendi decides to count the money he saved this way. Surprisingly, he realized that he had saved enough money to build a mosque. Research conducted by Carnegie Mellon University behavioral scientists has shown that Kececi Hayrettin Efendi’s “as if I ate” approach might also be a useful way to curb one’s appetite. During the study, a group of volunteers was asked to imagine eating lots of sweets repetitively before eating as many M&Ms as they like, while a second group was asked to imagine inserting coins into a laundry machine. It turned out that the group that imagined eating sweets ended up eating significantly fewer M&Ms compared to the second group. The researchers performed the same experiment with variety of foods and showed that individuals who continually imagined eating a food many times actually ate less of the imagined food than did individuals who imagined eating that food fewer times, imagined eating a different food, or did not imagine eating any food, showing the effectiveness of the “as if I ate” approach.

2- The Brain Confirms: Learning to read knows no age limit

Original article: Dehaene S. et al., Science 330, 1359 (2010).

In this age of science and technology, education affects everyone drastically. Besides getting a better job or a higher social status, knowing how to read has important beneficial impacts on brain functions. In a new study, cognitive neuroscientists identified active regions of the brain in the event of reading. Three groups (illiterate, literate who learned reading at adulthood and literate who learned at childhood) were compared for their brain activities using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The study has not only helped to illustrate the complex neural circuitry of the brain, but has also demonstrated superior brain functions in literate groups, such as responses to visual and spoken stimuli. The real surprise of the study was that people who learned reading in their adulthood had similar brain activities compared to those who learned reading in their childhood. This suggests that literacy can impact the brain at any age. It has always been assumed that the brain becomes less flexible in aging people. Pointing out these new findings, Brian Wandell, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, emphasizes the ability of the brain to adapt and change upon acquiring the ability to read. He says, “Showing that this area is responsive to learning throughout life is a real contribution.”

3- Culturomics: Measuring culture through books

Original article: Michel J.B. et al., Science 331, 176 (2011).

A team of researchers from Harvard University and Google Books Team opened a new quantitative venue for social sciences which they named “Culturomics.” They used a gigantic data set, which was generated by digitizing over 15 million books (published between 1800 and 2008, ~12% of books ever published) in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese, and Hebrew. The dataset includes over 500 billion words, and by using a new online tool (http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/) one can easily find out how many times a word was used throughout the last two centuries. The study elegantly demonstrates how human kind has changed in the twentieth century. For example, technological advances in the twentieth century became part of the culture almost three times faster than it used to be in the nineteenth century. On average, people became famous and lost their fame two times faster than in the nineteenth century, and the authors claim that the trend for becoming famous and losing fame will be even faster in the future, at which time “everyone will be famous for 7.5 minutes” on average. The researchers also spotted censorship in Nazi Germany by comparing books published in German and English by comparing the popularity of famous Jewish scientists and authors. It is yet too early to assume that this new approach will entirely change the way social scientists approach their problems, but it will certainly provide an unprecedented perspective into the humanities.

4- The search for extra dimensions is not pseudo-science after all

Original article: Bin-Nun A.Y. et al., Physical Review D 82, 064009 (2010).

The plausibility of co-existing dimensions beyond our 4 dimensional space (3 spatial + 1 time dimension) is nothing new. The attempt to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity led to the development of string theory in the late ’60s. M-Theory is a special extension of the superstring theory which predicts that there are 11 dimensions. It is posited that all elementary sub-atomic particles such as electrons and quarks are not 0-dimensional objects, but rather 1-dimensional vibrating “lines” or “strings.” These strings curl in specific patterns to form the subatomic particles, which then combine via nuclear forces to make up atoms and matter as we know it. Although the mathematical basis has long been established for string theory, it has hitherto not been tested due to the lack of observational signatures. A recent study suggests that it may be possible to observe the effects of extra dimensions after all by using supermassive black holes. Black holes, due to their immensely concentrated gravity, curve the space around them. This curvature affects even the light that passes through them. A star directly behind such a black hole may be observed as a warped or brightened astronomical source. It may even be possible to create so called “Einstein rings,” where the background star appears as a ring of light instead. The recent study argues that, if extra dimensions are not as tightly packed, the light that passes through curved space-time may exhibit anomalies which, in principle, can be detectable with very sensitive telescopes.

There are seven chapters in the book. The first chapter summarizes the basic tenets of the classical narrative, then criticizes it listing many questions which the classical narrative cannot satisfactorily answer. Islamic civilization’s contribution to the development of modern science is so immense that it is impossible to completely ignore this part of the history in any serious discussion of the general history of science or civilization. The problem arises in assessing the importance and the nature of Islamic science. Generally accepted views of the classical narrative go something along these lines: Islamic civilization was a desert civilization and began to develop scientific thought only when it came in contact with more advanced civilizations (Persian, Indian and Greek and most importantly Greek). A vital component of the rise of science in Islamic civilization was the remarkable translation movement that took place during the early period of Abbasid times (750–900 CE), in which many important scientific books of other civilizations, particularly those of ancient Greeks, were translated into Arabic. The classical narrative says by learning Greek science through this translation activity, Islamic science reached its golden age while Greek science was neglected under Byzantine rule. Adherents of the classical narrative generally assume that Islamic civilization did not go much beyond translation, did not make original contributions to scientific knowledge or produced any new science of its own. They also assume this period of the golden age did not last long and came to an end with Ghazali’s “attack” on philosophers in his major work Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of Philosophers). They assume that Islamic science began to decline with Ghazali while there was an awaking in Europe, sometimes called the Renaissance of the twelfth century, when Europeans began to translate major Arabic philosophical and scientific texts into Latin. Some of these texts had already been translated from much earlier Greek and Sanskrit texts into Arabic. So, they reconnected with their Greco-Roman legacy. The classical narrative says from that point on Europe had no need for Islamic science, hence the role of Islamic civilization was to simply translate and preserve the ancient Greek science and make it available to Europeans later. Thus, according to this view all the roots of modern science were European. The classical theory also attempts to explain the process by which the acquisition of Greek science by the Muslim world occurred. There are a few versions of this proposal which are called “contact theory,” “pocket transmission theory,” and “translation through Syriac medium first.”

In this first chapter of the book, Saliba argues that the classical narrative is an oversimplification of what actually happened in reality and fails to answer many fundamental questions. The first problem is about origins. He argues none of the proposed methods of translation is convincing to explain the reasons why, how, and when Muslims acquired Greek science. In terms of the nature and quality of translations, Saliba gives examples of sophistication and maturity exhibited by the Muslim scientists that is well beyond what would be expected from an early generation of translators who are struggling to understand a foreign science. Moreover, already in the early period of the translation movement Muslim scientists produced original new science such as algebra by al-Khwarizmi (830 CE), remarkable advances by Habash a-Hasib (850 CE) in the field of trigonometry and mathematical projections that go far beyond what was known from Indian and Greek sources, and developed decimal fractions. He argues such advances could not happen suddenly. There must be a longer tradition of scientific activity in the Islamic world and real motivations for the rise of science which cannot be explained by the classical narrative.

Not only does the classical narrative fail to explain beginnings but also more recent developments as well. Saliba gives many examples from various scientific disciplines to show that the Islamic science did not decline after Ghazali. Astronomy is a perfect counterexample to this thesis of the classical narrative, and it is not the only one. In fact, there were so many advances in astronomy in the Islamic world after Ghazali that Saliba calls the post-Ghazali period as the golden age of Islamic astronomy. Recent research in the second half of the twentieth century shows that astronomy has particularly interesting connections to the European Renaissance. Saliba comments that post-Ghazali works by the Muslim scientists were not sufficiently considered by the adherents of the classical narrative because of their pre-supposition that no significant science of any interest could have been produced in this period. This caused unfortunate damage in terms of understanding the post-Ghazali period in the Islamic world as well as the European Renaissance itself.

In the second chapter, Saliba proposes an alternative thesis/narrative to the classical narrative in terms of the beginnings of the rise of scientific activities in the Islamic world. His thesis is based on the writings of Al-Nadim (full name Abu al-Faraj Muhammad b. Abi Ya’qub Ishaq al-Nadim) who wrote about intellectual history of the early Islamic period. Saliba also supports his thesis with well known historical facts. In summary, the alternative narrative proposes that there was already a significant amount of interest and activity in the nascent Islamic civilization before the translation movement began. Rather than learning science from others (Greeks) just because they came into contact with them, the Islamic world actively sought those sciences because of a keen interest to advance their own scientific knowledge. Unlike the classical narrative, the alternative thesis argues that Muslim scientists already had a high level of knowledge and maturity when the translation activities began. This is evidenced by the high quality of translations of highly technical materials, and corrections of errors in the original sources. The main societal factors for the rise of science in the new civilization are listed as a) the need for people (bureaucrats) with a high level of scientific knowledge in administrations, and b) competition between those people to acquire higher levels of scientific knowledge to be able to advance in the ranks of governments.

In the next chapter, Saliba gives detailed examples, mostly from astronomy, to show how critically Muslim scientists received and reacted to the Greek science. They noticed observational errors and internal inconsistencies in Greek texts. They also pointed out more philosophical and foundational errors and contradictions. Muslim scientists showed a high level of sophistication, maturity and critical spirit. They had a comprehensive look at the Greek texts they translated and studied them in relation to one another. Saliba argues that it is not possible to explain these phenomena with the classical narrative. Moreover, Muslim scholars went beyond just criticizing these errors and made many novel contributions to exact sciences. In the process, they realized the proper place of mathematics in the natural sciences. Saliba also comments that Muslim scientists continued to make original contributions to astronomy and other mathematical sciences long after Ghazali, when the classical narrative would preach the death of Islamic science.

In chapter four, Saliba gives examples of critical innovations by Muslim astronomers. He remarks that the interest of the Islamic society in astronomy was very strong due to many religious requirements that need to be answered by astronomy, such as visibility of the moon, daily prayer times, and qibla (direction of worship) etc. Such problems were not considered by Greeks before. Muslim astronomers could not ignore absurdities in Ptolemaic astronomy where mathematical models in Almagest violated the fundamental cosmological assumptions in Planetary Hypotheses. Although Ptolemy’s mathematical models usually made good predictions computationally, it was not satisfactory for the scientists in the new civilization to allow those models to violate the physical properties of the celestial bodies. They took it upon themselves to propose alternative mathematical models that satisfied both requirements. They were highly successful in that quest. The solution of this problem required some new mathematical theorems. Two of the most important of such theorems were Urdi’s Lemma and Tusi couple invented by Urdi and Nasir al-Din al-Tusi in the thirteenth century. Both of these were fecund and fundamental theorems that were used repeatedly by many astronomers who followed them for a long time. Renaissance astronomer Copernicus was among those who made use of these theorems. Also noted in this chapter is Shams al-Din al-Khafri’s understanding of the role of mathematics in describing the physical phenomena.

The title of chapter five is “Science between Philosophy and Religion: the Case of Astronomy,” wherein Saliba considers the relationship between the religion of Islam and scientific developments in astronomy. He explains that religious motivations led to the creation of new disciplines such as ilm al-hay’a (science of configuration) and advances in trigonometry. He states that astronomy and trigonometry are the best examples which demonstrate the intersecting interest between the practice of a religion and scientific thinking that need to be developed as a result of that practice. Many important scientists in medieval Islam were at the same time religious authorities. A few examples among such scholars are Ibn al-Nafis, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi and Ibn al-Shatir. Saliba also notes that the European paradigm of conflict between science and religion does not exist in the Islamic world.

“Islamic Science and Renaissance Europe: The Copernican Connections” is the title of chapter six. Researchers in the second half of twentieth century first realized that many of the astronomical models of Copernicus were identical to that of Ibn al-Shatir from three centuries earlier. This surprising discovery, which contradicted the view that Renaissance science was a European self-contained creation, opened the door for further investigations which revealed more surprising outcomes. The mathematical theorem called the Tusi couple that is mentioned above plays an important role in Copernicus’s model. Copernicus stated the theorem and proved it in 1543 without mentioning that he invented a new theorem or saw it in any other source. The theorem was first invented and proved by Tusi in the middle of the thirteenth century. By comparing the two proofs, W. Hartner noticed in 1973 that Copernicus’s proof was identical to Tusi’s. He even used the same letters for essential geometric points. That is where Tusi used the Arabic letters “alif,” “ba” etc. Copernicus used the corresponding Latin letters “A,” “B” etc. This discovery makes it pretty certain that Copernicus knew about Tusi’s work.

Saliba shows Copernicus’s case is not an isolated instance and gives more evidence in this chapter of the phenomenon that “there are much too many coincidences of ideas appearing first in Arabic texts usually written between the 12th and 15th centuries, which reappear, without much explanation, in Latin sources of the 16th and 17th centuries.” Saliba’s explanation of this phenomenon is that by the Renaissance time men of science themselves learned Arabic and no longer needed translations. There are many examples that show European reliance on Arabic sciences in the post-Copernicus period when the whole worldview was supposed to have been changed by him. Renaissance men of science had a high regard for the Islamic sciences and were looking to the Islamic world for the latest in scientific activities rather than the classical Greek sources.

In the last chapter Saliba discusses the age of decline in Islamic science. He starts by rejecting the two main reasons proposed by the advocates of the classical narrative and argues that it did not start after Ghazali (eleventh century) or the destruction of Baghdad by Mongols in 1258. Saliba says that those who believe the first reason look at the Islamic civilization as a source of religious thought only and operate under the assumption that the European paradigm of conflict between religion and science applies to Islamic world as well. Saliba argues that this assumption is not true for the Islamic world and that scientific activities did not decline after Ghazali. Those who think the main reason was the destruction of Baghdad by Mongols saw the Islamic civilization mostly in political terms and paid little attention to its intellectual history. Saliba gives many examples of high quality and sophisticated scientific production in the Islamic world, mostly in astronomy but in other areas as well, well after both of these events. He says those examples were ignored or not properly read by the adherents of the classical view who did not expect to find any important scientific production in the Islamic world after the thirteenth century.

There still remains the problem and timing of decline of science in the Islamic world. When did it happen? Saliba notes that decline is a relative concept. What actually happened was the European science advanced more rapidly than the rest of the world after the sixteenth century. Hence it looked like science declined elsewhere, including the Islamic world. According to Saliba the main reason for these rapid developments in science in Europe was related to the discovery of the “new world.” He argues that the wealth and resources obtained by Europeans as a result of discovery of new lands helped them fund scientific activities. Europe witnessed the rise of royal and scientific academies where most educated men of the time were assembled and engaged in scientific research without having to worry about financial needs. Healthy competition among these institutions led to new scientific discoveries. Western superiority in science continues to this day and the constant brain drain that feeds the West at the expense of the developing and third worlds does not help to change the balance.

In summary, this book presents fundamental challenges to many of the commonly held views about the intellectual and scientific history of the Islamic world and proposes alternative explanations. The science of astronomy is used as a template to test and justify these claims. The author invites researchers to subject his proposals to the test of historical data in other disciplines as well. This book is highly recommended to all interested in the general history of science, and that of the Islamic world and the Renaissance period in particular.

Nuh Aydin is an associate professor of Mathematics at Kenyon College, Ohio, USA.