The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr
...“If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there
is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilisation owe to
the Islamic world. It is a failure which stems, I think, from the straitjacket
of history which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from Central
Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of
learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of
the West, as an alien culture, society and system of belief, we have tended to
ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history.
"For example, we have underestimated the importance of 800 years of Islamic society
and culture in Spain between the 8th and 15th centuries. The contribution of
Muslim Spain to the preservation of classical learning during the Dark Ages,
and to the first flowerings of the Renaissance, has long been recognised. But
Islamic Spain was much more than a mere larder where Hellenistic knowledge was
kept for later consumption by the emerging modern Western world. Not only did
Muslim Spain gather and preserve the intellectual content of ancient Greek and
Roman civilisation, it also interpreted and expanded upon that civilisation,
and made a vital contribution of its own in so many fields of human endeavour -
in science, astronomy, mathematics, algebra (itself an Arabic word), law,
history, medicine, pharmacology, optics, agriculture, architecture, theology,
music. Averroes and Avenzoor, like their counterparts Avicenna
and Rhazes in the East, contributed to the study and practice of medicine in ways from which
Europe benefited for centuries afterwards.
"Islam nurtured and preserved the quest for learning. In the words of the tradition,
'the ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the
martyr' 1. Cordoba
in the 10th century was by far the most civilised city of Europe. We know of
lending libraries in Spain at the time King Alfred was making terrible blunders
with the culinary arts in this country. It is said that the 400,000 volumes in
its ruler's library amounted to more books than all the libraries of the rest
of Europe put together. That was made possible because the Muslim world
acquired from China the skill of making paper more than 400 years before the rest
of non-Muslim Europe. Many of the traits on which modern Europe prides itself
came to it from Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free trade, open borders, the
techniques of academic research, of anthropology, etiquette, fashion, various
types of medicine, hospitals, all came from this great city of cities."
Prince Charles, Islam and the West
A Visit to the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies
The Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, October 27, 1993
© Copyright St James's Palace and the Press Association Ltd 1998.
1 Attributed to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)