Building a House of Wisdom: The foundations for Islamic appropriation of Hellenistic Thought

Martyn Oliver - Boston University

It is increasingly acknowledged that the West owes a substantial debt of gratitude to the Islamic world for its preservation of, expansion upon, and retransmission of the Hellenistic sciences, including philosophy, astronomy, medicine, logic, and mathematics. Little understood, and rarely discussed, however, are the seismic transformations that took place within the Islamic world-view and made possible the acceptance and assimilation of Greek thought. With the establishment of the 'Abbasid empire in the early 8th century, and the relocation of the caliphate and capital from Damascus to Baghdad, Muslim rulers and thinkers began what was to become an extraordinary feat of translation and appropriation of the great texts of ancient and classical learning.

The simplistic and pervasive explanation of this event suggests that the Islamic world's openness to foreign learning was a direct result of the evolution of the religious community's self-definition. Under 'Abbasid rule, the concept of who qualified as a true Muslim expanded to include any convert regardless of national originÑthat is, it was no longer considered imperative that one be of Arab descent in order to be considered fully Muslim. This redefinition is credited with everything from the success of Islam's expansion across North Africa and into Spain, as well as eastward into China, to the development of Islamic art. While the decision to grant Persians and Africans, among others, full Islamic citizenship obviously revolutionized the Muslim community, this decision does not fully account for the cultural transformations that took place.

My project is to tell the story of the Islamic appropriation of Greek philosophy. It asks the question of how a new religious tradition, grounded in the particularities of Arabia and the Arabic language, grew into a cosmopolitan community eager to assimilate non-indigenous knowledge. What is surprising here is that this story has not yet been adequately told. While much scholarly work has been done regarding the development of philosophy within the Islamic tradition, scant attention has been paid to the theological, political, and cultural milieu that laid the groundwork for the cross-pollination of Hellenistic and Islamic thinking.

This paper will explore the various events that occurring within Islam from 650-800 CE that made this event possible, arguing that, rather than a coping mechanism to contend with the influx of non-Arab cultures, the absorption of Greek thought was a natural extension of the Islamic faith. That is, the readiness to translate Ptolemy and Aristotle resulted from an application of certain Islamic precepts and was not, therefore, a case of Islam changing in response to outside forces. Islam's development was not reactionary, but organic.