How valid is Al-Jāḥiẓ's and Al-Masʿūdī's appraisal of the Byzantines?

Al-Jāḥiẓ (776-868), ninth-century Arab writer, says of the Byzantines (or "Romans," as he calls them):

Had the common people but known that the Christians and the Romans have neither wisdom nor clarity of mind nor depth of thought but are simply clever with their hands in wood-turning, carpentry, plastic arts, and weaving of silk brocade, they would have removed them from the ranks of the literati and dropped them from the roster of philosophers and sages because works like the Organon, On Generation and Corruption, and Meteorology were written by Aristotle, and he is neither Roman nor Christian; the Almagest was written by Ptolemy, and he is neither Roman nor Christian; the Elements was written by Euclid, and he is neither Roman nor Christian; medical books were written by Galen, who was neither Roman nor Christian; and similarly with the books by Democritus, Hippocrates, Plato, and on and on.

All these are individuals of one nation; they have perished but the traces of their minds live on; they are the Ionians [i.e. Ancient Greeks]. Their religion was different from the religion of the Romans, and their culture was different from the culture of the Romans. They were scientists, while the Romans are artisans who appropriated the books of the Ionians on account of their geographic proximity.
Al-Masʿūdī (896-956), tenth-century Arab geographer, says similarly:

Both in their spoken and written language the Romans follow in the footsteps of the Ionians, though they never reached their level either in the essential purity or the absolute eloquence of the language. The language of the Romans is inferior in comparison with that of the Ionians and its syntax, in the way in which it is expressed and in the customary manner of address, is weaker...

During the time of the ancient Ionians, and for a little while during the Roman Empire, the philosophical sciences kept on growing and developing, and scholars and philosophers were respected and honored. They developed their theories on natural science -- on the body, the intellect, and the soul -- and on the quadrivium, i.e. on arithmetike, the science of numbers, on geometrike, the science of surfaces and geometry, on astronomika, the science of the stars, and on musike, the science of the harmonious composition of melodies.

The sciences continued to be in great demand and intensely cultivated until the religion of Christianity appeared among the Romans; then they effaced the signs of philosophy, eliminated its traces, destroyed its paths, and they changed and corrupted what the ancient Ionians had set forth in clear expositions.​

And what would have been proof of this distinction between medieval Romans and ancient Ionians for Al-Jāḥiẓ and Al-Masʿūdī?
 
I am surprised how similar this view is to the "traditional" way Bizantium was seen in the west, until quite recently (at least in popular cuu
lture). I do not know where or when that view started, but at school (in Argentina, in the 90ies) I remember our teacher taught us that Byzantium limited itself to preserve some of the Ancient Greek works, but that its culture was not innovative at all. She added that even in this roll of conservation of ancient text the were not that great, since many works survived not in Byzntium, but in the Arab world.

Also, the view that the Ancient Greeks were great thinkers, artists and philosophers whereas the ancient Romans had mere practical abilities but not philosophical depht, and had adopted Greek culture without innovating much (at least in fields like philosophy or science) is also a "classic" one. I did not know it was common in the Arab world more than 1000 years ago.
 
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Seems a bit hypocritical, not sure from which exact position those 2 people argue from but their own religious and cultural situation stems a lot from the Christian late Roman empire or from Rome in general.

Also it's interesting how one could draw parallels between their thinking and the thinking of Gibbons, it shows it's a widespread idea to this day even.
 
The Byzantines were everyone’s punching bag. Little surprise that foreign documentation portrays them in bad light all the time, just as Byzantine documenation describes these peoples as well.

It also doesn’t help that few of the Byzantine philosophers achieved prominence outside their borders. For instance, Theodore II Laskaris was a political philosopher who crafted Machiavellian thought three hundred years before Machiavelli, but nobody cares because nobody read him. Our perception of Byzantine innovation is limited by our small perception of their civilization.
 
There is a kernel of truth in the assertion that, in comparison to the Classical Greeks, Byzantium was keener to preserve knowledge than to expand it, but that is hardly a fair comparison. Most pre-industrial societies would fail that test, and what was uncommon about the Byzantines compared with their contemporaries was that they actually cared about the knowledge they ha dinherited and tried to maintain it. It is also true that what we know about Byzantine "science" is minimal, because most of it was lost.

Let's remember that Arab philosophy and science only got started in the 9th century as part of the translation movement, and did not really hit its stride until the 10th/11th centuries. So there is definitely a polemic element to he Arab writers' argument: apart from the Byzantines being the typical "other", the ancient and hereditary enemy, of early Islam, there is the need to argue that the "true" heirs of these brilliant Greeks resided not in Constantinople, but in Baghdad.

This is (part of) the same reasoning whereby the Byzantines were named "Byzantines" in later times, or that led Gibbon to suggest that Byzantium was the "decline" phase of the Roman Empire (a thousand years of decline...) "The sciences continued to be in great demand and intensely cultivated until the religion of Christianity appeared among the Romans" could easily be a Gibbon quote.

PS, on Mas'udi specifically, see this: https://deremilitari.org/2018/04/al-masudi-on-the-byzantines/
 
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