36 A Short History of the Middle East
European Middle Ages; some bright stars lent their own light; but
moon and stars alike faded at the dawn of a new day—the
Renaissance/1 The Muslim contribution to mathematics and
astronomy is exemplified by the number of Arabic loan-words in
the terminology of these sciences: algebra, azimuth, zenith; and the
names of many stars, such as Algol, Aldebaran, Betelgeuze. In
medicine considerable progress was made, thanks to the numerous
hospitals founded in the principal cities by benevolent rulers: there
were said to be six thousand medical students in eleventh-century
Baghdad. Though Muslim law forbade dissection of the human
body, the course of diseases was carefully and systematically ob-
served and recorded. The knowledge of chemistry and other
natural sciences was advanced, and Muslim cartography and des-
criptive geography greatly influenced medieval European map-
making in the Mediterranean. When all has been justly claimed for
the originality of Muslim science, however, the fact remains that
it was essentially the pupil and continuation of Greek science,
Though it made some important original contributions to learning,
its great service lay in the systematization and preservation of older
learning at a time when Western Europe was ignorant of it and in-
capable of preserving it. The Muslim scholars lacked in general
the scientific imagination and originality of thought of the Greeks:
they found difficulty in passing from the accumulation of practical
data to a theoretical conclusion, and in the unifying of detail into a
harmonious system.2
Muslim thought at its best has had its gaze turned upwards to-
ward the One God; and, entirely absorbed by contemplation of
Him, has not looked about itself at Man. Muslim society has
always tended towards aristocracy; and Muslim science and learn-
ing, as compared with that of the Greeks, has suffered in the ab-
sence of a substantial middle-class, which has given it less vitality to
survive great political upheavals. When all the necessary discount-
ing of the 'democratic' character of the ancient Greek city-state has
been done, the fart remains that Greek culture was genuinely the
property of a considerable urban middle-class, which grew in
importance till it reached its peak in the second century AJX
Islam, on the other hand, lias known periods of intellectual life
only under the protection of isolated princes here and there. It has
1 Max Meyerhof, in The Legacy of Islam, 354. I
2 cf, Edward Atiyah's criticism, in An Arab Tells HisStoryt 1861