Could Christianity Have flourished without islam?

[Constantinople]

I was reading a few of AHP's old posts in the lost causes thread, and several times he mentions that without Islam breathing new light into Europe, it would stay a backwater and we would basically be speaking Chinese? How do you all feel.
Feel free to explain.

 

[Midgard]

I was reading a few of AHP's old posts in the lost causes thread, and several times he mentions that without Islam breathing new light into Europe, it would stay a backwater and we would basically be speaking Chinese? How do you all feel.
Feel free to explain.

Europe had dozens, if not hundreds of warring states, which, IMO, promotes development and diversity - not all of these had common heritage either, to where many of them did not try to take on the "Roman Mandate" (as opposed to China, where most of the states considered themselves heirs to the "Mandate of Heaven", AFAIK). Besides, Magyars, Norse, and Slavs would have still given Europe that "kick in the ass" it needed to develop into superpower - something that China, despite being threatened with the Manchus and the Mongols, never quite had until the more recent times.

 

[Flocculencio]

I don't see the connection between the thread title and it's content. There were Christians outside Europe too, remember?

A more accurate thread title might be "Could Europe have flourished without Islam?"

And I say yes. Without Islam you might well see the rivalry between the Western and Eastern church become much more intense. Perhaps in TTL Catholic explorers will try to round Africa to get around the exorbitant taxes the Byzantines place on Catholic traders.

 

[arctic warrior]

Depends on your perception of Christianity - if seen as the faith itself yes I think it would still flourish as it had the strength to turn the Germans into catholic's after their arian "heresy". But that had a lot to do with their want of the Roman empire and this leads on to the other perception of christianity, as a culture. This I also think would have flourished even if we had not had the inspiration of the Islam cultural re-discovery of ancient texts leading things like invention and medicine a great leap forward. We could have gotten some of this from the Chinese but is was a long journey. But ideas would of course seep through and Chinese might just, as OTL arabic, become a fashionable language in Middle Age Europe, but fashionable! The european diversity in itself would ensure development, but probably at a slower pace.

 

[Redbeard]

I simply fail to see how Islam in any way promoted European development. There of course were some "inventions" like arab numbers and a flourishing scientific tradition in the first centuries after Mohammed, but that wasn't Islam - that was science.

The same can be said about the ancient Greek science surviving in Middle East scripts.

Then I also understand than there is an argument about the pressure from Islam hardening European resilience which was handy when the Mongols arrived. Again, that wasn't pressure from Islam, but from armies whose commanders were Muslims, that is quite another matter - unless you make Islam the same as conquering with weapon in hand. Next, if the European could adapt to defeat the threat from the middle east, which they did and even went to the offensive, why shouldn't they do likelwise with the Mongols?

The Mongols proved militarily much more dangerous than anything the Europeans had met before but with only a strong military tradition and a smart leader, you in the end are just a collossus on clay feet.

That brings me on to what IMHO brought Europe forward - the mind liberating effect of Christianity! Apart from a few strange sects you really can't hide behind a set of strict rules and let God do the rest, but are expacted to take responsibility yourself. This element is of course present in all places and times, but in Europe it seriously developed when the Reformation and Counterreformation reinforced this already strong element in Christianity.

Today this is firmly rooted in all western cultures, but the link back to Christianity is rather obscure to most. And anyway, it wasn't inspired from Islam, you may say on the contrary, as Islam of the main relgions in these aspects is in the oppostite fatalistic corner.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

 

[Constantinople]

Sorry I ment Europe, mixed those up, Im a bit tired...

 

[Wozza]

I was reading a few of AHP's old posts in the lost causes thread, and several times he mentions that without Islam breathing new light into Europe, it would stay a backwater and we would basically be speaking Chinese? How do you all feel.
Feel free to explain.

Islamic aggression cut off Europe from some of the richest areas of its civilization in the Mediterranean, and was thus the prime cause of backwater status during the Dark Ages.
Ongoing Islamic aggression further impeded the economic development of war-torn areas such as Asia Minor and South Italy.
the impact of this can be seen quite clearly through archaeology and the drain of gold to the middle east during the dark ages.

 

[Max Sinister]

Theoretically, everything was there they needed to develop. However, Islam really was for quite some time ahead of Europe - the translations of classic authors the Arabs had were better than the crude translations the Europeans had. Since China tended somehow to stagnate, Europe wouldn't be threatened that way - but it might them take longer to invent everything again.

 

[carlton_bach]

Without Islam, Christianity would most likely have thrived beyond our wildest dreams. Europe, however, would most likely not have come into being at all. There is a more-than-even chance that a cultural faultline like the one that today runs through the Mediterranean, the Balkans and the Bosporus would be found along the Danube, the Alps and the Seine.

Neither Northern Europe nor Rome will not get to define what constitutes 'Christendom' or militarily establish it if there is still an orthodox church ready to live up to that name. The cities of the Rhineland and Northern Italy will never acquire their preeminence if Southern France and Central Italy are not ravaged by constant raid and counter-raid. Bologna, Salerno or Montpellier, Monte Cassino or St Gall will never attain great standing as centres of learning if a man from Lombardy or the Ile de France might as well study the law at Berytus, medicine at Constantinople, theology at Carthage or philosophy at Alexandria. The bishops of Rome will never need to look for a new protector, and the Pippinid dynasty may never get off the ground (and even if it does, it will amount to little more than barbarian warlords). After the victory of Heraclius, Persia is finished for a generation or two. Christian Armenia and Christianising Arabia now enter the picture. Central Asia comes to Jesus, maybe?

 

[HelloLegend]

Christianity made it to the Vikings without any help from Islam.

 

[Max Sinister]

@HelloLegend: It's not about whether Christianity can spread to other countries if there's no Islam. Without another (even more aggressive) proselytizing religion, it would spread even faster. The question is: Would science (and social progress) have been as fast as IOTL, or not? (This also includes that people become more sceptical of religion.)

 

[carlton_bach]

@HelloLegend: It's not about whether Christianity can spread to other countries if there's no Islam. Without another (even more aggressive) proselytizing religion, it would spread even faster. The question is: Would science (and social progress) have been as fast as IOTL, or not? (This also includes that people become more sceptical of religion.)

That is an *entirely* different question, really. In fact it could be argued that modern Europe has been the worst thing to happen to Christianity as she defined herself before the event. Think about it: Europewan civilisation has not only brought forth the tools to challwenge and ultimately all-but-destroyx traditional Christianity, its policies and ideological developments have also made Islam the most successful missionary religion in recent history, closely followed by Communism and Capitalism.

 

[NapoleonXIV]

Absolutely not. Europe would remain the semi-barbarian ass end of Asia. The long-forgotten Greco-Roman era it's only moment of glory.

With the exception of a comparatively tiny part that was preserved in Ireland practically all of our knowledge of Ancient Greek or Roman thought comes from either Spain or the Middle East via Islamic scholars. The 12thc flourishing of western Scholasticism is largely a response to the European monk's rediscovery of Plato and Aristotle from Spain and Jerusalem, just as the Renaissance was stimulated by Byzantine copies of Islamic copies of Aristarchus and Ptolemy, looted from Constantinople by the 4th Crusade.

And Islam did more than just preserve, she improved and invented. Algebra and zero, (zero actually Indian, but first reliably symbolized in arabic). Advances in engineering, warfare, medicine, optics, the works of Averroe, the poetry of Omar Khayyam and the Chronicle of Ibn Battuta among many more, the list is endless.

Chivalry itself, the very idea of fair play is largely a response to the civilized and merciful style of warfare the cannibalistic First Crusaders ran into in Palestine, which so shamed them they adopted it as their own.

All this came from Islam's central precept, which places noone between a man and his god, and in allowing him this freedom to worship as he will encourages free action and inquiry in all other parts of his life as well. A stark contrast to the hidebound priestly class so beloved of all Christianity, whose corrupt and petrified hand held Europe in a stultified straitjacket of tradition and superstition for well over a thousand years.

 

[carlton_bach]

Absolutely not. Europe would remain the semi-barbarian ass end of Asia. The long-forgotten Greco-Roman era it's only moment of glory.

With the exception of a comparatively tiny part that was preserved in Ireland practically all of our knowledge of Ancient Greek or Roman thought comes from either Spain or the Middle East via Islamic scholars.

But - Napoleon, if islam doesn't happen, that would mean the Roman Empire continues. All these books and all that urban civilisation that the Islamic world was such a careful and successful steeward to doesn't just disappear. It's just that instead of adopting them carefully, through its own filters, and having to define its own intellectual identity, Europe would be getting them from fellow Christians and adopt large chunks of their culture knowingly.

 

[Max Sinister]

The Byzantine Empire (for me, that's something different than the old Roman Empire). The Western Roman empire was brought down earlier already.

And I'm not sure whether the Byzantine Empire alone could've spawned a renaissance. I'm no expert about the history of Byzantine science, can you help me? What besides the Greek Fire did they invent / discover?

 

[Wozza]

Absolutely not. Europe would remain the semi-barbarian ass end of Asia. The long-forgotten Greco-Roman era it's only moment of glory.

With the exception of a comparatively tiny part that was preserved in Ireland practically all of our knowledge of Ancient Greek or Roman thought comes from either Spain or the Middle East via Islamic scholars. The 12thc flourishing of western Scholasticism is largely a response to the European monk's rediscovery of Plato and Aristotle from Spain and Jerusalem, just as the Renaissance was stimulated by Byzantine copies of Islamic copies of Aristarchus and Ptolemy, looted from Constantinople by the 4th Crusade..

80% of Latin texts come via the Carolingians.
The Islamic world took over European, or European ruled (ie in the Byzantine Empire) cities containing this knowledge, which would otherwise have been available knowledge. The best analogy is that the Muslim world made available what it had stolen.
The Byzantine texts were, of course, not copies of Muslim texts.

Chivalry itself, the very idea of fair play is largely a response to the civilized and merciful style of warfare the cannibalistic First Crusaders ran into in Palestine, which so shamed them they adopted it as their own.

I am intrigued by these tales of First Crusader Cannibalism.
By and large chivalry is a hom-grown concept for Europe following the 11th century revival of civilizaion- the Gregorian reforms, Peace of God, Truce of God and so on.

All this came from Islam's central precept, which places noone between a man and his god, and in allowing him this freedom to worship as he will encourages free action and inquiry in all other parts of his life as well. A stark contrast to the hidebound priestly class so beloved of all Christianity, whose corrupt and petrified hand held Europe in a stultified straitjacket of tradition and superstition for well over a thousand years.

No-one except the people who wrote the Koran, then destroyed alternate versions and then spend twelve years studying to become Koranic "scholars."

Man and his god, ah well shame about the women.

There are of course plenty of incidents of captured Crusaders being given the conversion or death choice, still, it's a form of choice I grant you.

Is this the same hidebound priestly class who did all the writing and inventing? Remind me was it a monk who discovered the explosive properties of gunpowder? You will also find it was monks who led in the development of market and civil instiutions on which Europe's massive commercial prosperiry was built.

 

[Max Sinister]

80% of Latin texts come via the Carolingians.

AFAIK most of the texts available before the Renaissance were either badly translated from Greek or Arab and in addition filtered by the church which didn't want everyone to read everything. The pre-Renaissance education (parodied by Rabelais in Gargantua) was infamous for being boring to hell, so to speak.

 

[Midgard]

Absolutely not. Europe would remain the semi-barbarian ass end of Asia. The long-forgotten Greco-Roman era it's only moment of glory.

With the exception of a comparatively tiny part that was preserved in Ireland practically all of our knowledge of Ancient Greek or Roman thought comes from either Spain or the Middle East via Islamic scholars. The 12thc flourishing of western Scholasticism is largely a response to the European monk's rediscovery of Plato and Aristotle from Spain and Jerusalem, just as the Renaissance was stimulated by Byzantine copies of Islamic copies of Aristarchus and Ptolemy, looted from Constantinople by the 4th Crusade.

And Islam did more than just preserve, she improved and invented. Algebra and zero, (zero actually Indian, but first reliably symbolized in arabic). Advances in engineering, warfare, medicine, optics, the works of Averroe, the poetry of Omar Khayyam and the Chronicle of Ibn Battuta among many more, the list is endless.

Chivalry itself, the very idea of fair play is largely a response to the civilized and merciful style of warfare the cannibalistic First Crusaders ran into in Palestine, which so shamed them they adopted it as their own.

All this came from Islam's central precept, which places noone between a man and his god, and in allowing him this freedom to worship as he will encourages free action and inquiry in all other parts of his life as well. A stark contrast to the hidebound priestly class so beloved of all Christianity, whose corrupt and petrified hand held Europe in a stultified straitjacket of tradition and superstition for well over a thousand years.

Islam has quite a few boundaries built into it that were a large reason why Islamic science, thinking, and development stagnated roughly around the Crusades - the Ottomans notwithstanding, and they, through their expansion into previously Christian territories and adoption of European military tactics, technology, etc, are an exception that proves the overall rule.

Note that Islamic world has not developed many, if any truly original concepts - all the Islamic scholars did was improve on the existing concepts. The concept of zero was first known in Greece - Vth century B.C. (ever heard of Zeno? Not the later Emperor - but a mathematician of the same name); while Avicenna and Omar Khayyam were extremely talented individuals in their own right, they were not unmatched by individuals in the non-Muslim world - and even then, both were considered somewhat of apostates in their day, kept around because they were rather valuable to their patrons rather than because of their religious devotion.

In truth, it could be said that Islam's development heavily depended on its conquest of other people, and absorption of those other people's concepts and ideas - note that the height of the Islamic civilization directly followed its greatest territorial extent. Same goes for the Ottomans, whose development began to stagnate almost as soon as the conquests ceased. With conquest comes absorption of the other ideas, and Islam was REALLY good at taking ideas of others, incorporating it into its own image, and passing them around as its own.

No Islam would mean different development patterns in Europe though. Without it, Byzantium would be much better off, and center of European civilization remains on the Bosphorus, instead of Byzantium providing a bulwark against the Muslim raiders and invaders so that for the most part, Western European states could develop without a true "outside" threat to their existence (you could say whatever you want about the Norse, but they managed to begin assimilating within a century - and two centuries since their arrival, they were fully incorporated into the Western European elite, religiously, culturally, and militarily).

 

[Leo Caesius]

Note that Islamic world has not developed many, if any truly original concepts - all the Islamic scholars did was improve on the existing concepts.

Ironically, the concept of religious tolerance - by which I mean the idea that another religion might be divinely inspired and just as valid, if perhaps not as perfect, as your own - originated in Islam, even if it was debated hotly from the very start. There is a clear mandate for it in several places throughout the Qur'an. Similar views would not arise elsewhere among monotheists until the Enlightenment.

Islam was very much a successor culture to the cultures originating in the Middle East, in every sense. It did not start with a tabula rasa. Nor did it somehow "steal" or otherwise appropriate the ideas of other peoples; the most one could say is that it coopted them, and many of these ideas came freely with converts. During the translation project in Baghdad, many if not most of the translators were non-Muslims - Jews, Christians, Sabians - and they weren't being forced to translate Aristotle at gunpoint. They were an integral part of society at that time, even though they were not Muslims - Marshall Hodgson calls such societies "Islamicate." Thus, the only word that will suffice to describe the Islamic acquisition of this knowledge was that they inherited it from those whom they succeeded.

It was the act of translating these works that saved them. Arguably, no comparable intellectual endeavor had taken place since the days of the Ptolemies, and would not again until the invention of the printing press. Books aren't saved merely by being collected; they need to be used, and the only way to ensure that they will be used is by translating them into modern idioms. Otherwise they languish in dusty archives, like most of the Ottoman material (which has yet to be catalogued, let alone made available to the scholarly public). It was for this reason that Arabic acquired the same status as Latin and Greek among scholars in medieval Europe, particularly among doctors. Medical knowledge among the Arabs was light years ahead of that in Europe.

 

[NapoleonXIV]

80% of Latin texts come via the Carolingians.
The Islamic world took over European, or European ruled (ie in the Byzantine Empire) cities containing this knowledge, which would otherwise have been available knowledge. The best analogy is that the Muslim world made available what it had stolen.
The Byzantine texts were, of course, not copies of Muslim texts.


I am intrigued by these tales of First Crusader Cannibalism.
By and large chivalry is a hom-grown concept for Europe following the 11th century revival of civilizaion- the Gregorian reforms, Peace of God, Truce of God and so on.



No-one except the people who wrote the Koran, then destroyed alternate versions and then spend twelve years studying to become Koranic "scholars."

Man and his god, ah well shame about the women.

There are of course plenty of incidents of captured Crusaders being given the conversion or death choice, still, it's a form of choice I grant you.

Is this the same hidebound priestly class who did all the writing and inventing? Remind me was it a monk who discovered the explosive properties of gunpowder? You will also find it was monks who led in the development of market and civil instiutions on which Europe's massive commercial prosperiry was built.

Islam didn't steal the knowledge, it saved it from Christian fires.

The Byzantine texts certainly were copies of Arab texts, unless you are suggesting that Byzantium had somehow preserved the originals for 1200 years.

Chivalry is a home-grown response to Arabs who treated captives well, sent fresh fruit to a sick Richard Lionheart and did not invent the phrase 'kill em all, let god sort them out later' when they retook Jerusalem.

Much like the Emperor Honorius, who gave us most of our present Bible by burning all copies of the rest

At least they were given the choice.

Early Islam allowed a woman to divorce and own property, more than Chrisitianity did.

Besides the admittedly amazing Friar Bacon I cannot think of too many medieval monks who were prominent as inventors or in the sciences. I praised the works of the Scholastics and praise again the work of the Irish preservers and their later students. There are, however, few historians who will argue that the Medieval Church actively encouraged innovation and free thought.

These market pioneers you speak of, are they the Knights Templar? While admitting them clergy I will argue they were a special case as members of the priestly class.