Ways for the Islamic World to have kept up technologically?

This thread asks a question that I've had on my mind for quite a while now. Now, I understand that the industrial revolution was so successful in Europe because of the large reserves of coal, and in Britain because the geography just lent itself really well to industrial infrastructure, but there had to have been an intellectual/scientific buildup to that sort of revolution, right? One that, for reasons that still aren't very clear to me, was not echoed or even co-opted by the Islamic World until it was too late.
What I want to know is this- is it possible for the Islamic World to resume the illumination that it had before and that the European sphere had just begun with a POST-renaissance pod? And there doesn't just have to be one thing. Take a kinder reception for the Sephardim press- may not save the whole thing on its own, but maybe in combination with something else; and so on. I know it is possible for them to at least not fall as far behind as they did, especially in North African polities, but I want to know how.

One thing I want to make clear- I am not trying to figure out how to Wank the Islamic World! I do not want to know how crazy good things would be if the Mongols were butterflied or if some super Caliphate conquered Europe. I just want to know how to lessen, maybe even resolve, the gross inequality between one mediterranean civilizational family, and another- in spite of these things, and not just make the initial setbacks disappear.

Any ideas are appreciated. I hope for the input of a few certain scholars...
 
You would probably need to reverse or complete stop the Islamic world's intellectual collapse, which started in the 11th century with folks like Hamid Al-Ghazali and Cherchez Nizam al-Mulk. You would need to see a reinforcement of Neoplatonism or, even more simply, have scholars who see science and mathematics as able to co-exist with Islam.

That's one of a panoply of things that would need to change, but that is one of the most vital.
 
Don't have the Ottomans conquer the middle east. Anatolia is fine (and their heartland anyway), but the Ottomans consistently neglected building any sort of local institutions or economy in Mesopotamia or Egypt. While the Mameluke were hardly great modernizers, they or their successors would be more compelled to keep up with the times (witness Egypt during and after ottoman rule) as independent kingdoms than as vassals of the Turks. On the other side, assuming the Caliphate and playing tribal politics in the middle east made the Ottomans themselves less dynamic.

Crush the Safavids. The combination of Shiism and the position of Iran splits the (sunni) Islamic world in two, making overland trade more difficult at a time where other entities need it less. And again, it helps inflame theological quibbling at a time where Europe was going off such things.

There are others, but this post is pretty long and I want to go to sleep, so I'll leave it at that.
 
Don't have the Ottomans conquer the middle east. Anatolia is fine (and their heartland anyway), but the Ottomans consistently neglected building any sort of local institutions or economy in Mesopotamia or Egypt. While the Mameluke were hardly great modernizers, they or their successors would be more compelled to keep up with the times (witness Egypt during and after ottoman rule) as independent kingdoms than as vassals of the Turks. On the other side, assuming the Caliphate and playing tribal politics in the middle east made the Ottomans themselves less dynamic.

Crush the Safavids. The combination of Shiism and the position of Iran splits the (sunni) Islamic world in two, making overland trade more difficult at a time where other entities need it less. And again, it helps inflame theological quibbling at a time where Europe was going off such things.

There are others, but this post is pretty long and I want to go to sleep, so I'll leave it at that.

The Safavid point is interesting, it is true that it created a barrier between Ottoman spheres with the eventual Mughal state, however a land route is not needed in any form, especially once the Ottomans control Basra. On the theological problems, it is not as if a Sunni state based in Iran would not be the enemy of choice of the Ottomans and an Ottoman attempt at ruling anything east of Kerman is likely to put them way behind. Further, let's not forget improvements that the Safavids made and their own potential, they certainly were technologically better than the various Turkish tribalists warring over Iran and Iraq and the Shaybanids.

I agree on keeping the Burji in control of Egypt, but keeping the Ottomans from the Levant would require either a hyper Burji or Safavid state or weaken the Ottomans immensely making the point mute. Though, I necessarily agree that having the Ottomans not rule the Mid East leads to them developing Anatolia or the Balkans, in a lot of ways I find this argument just an excuse for the Ottomans eventual decline and subjugation.
 
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Disclaimer: I'm an amateur on this topic and everything below is merely my opinion

I wouldn't necessarily cite the Ottomans as the cause of Islamic decline vis a vis Western and Central Europe. As is evidenced by nations such as Spain, Poland, Sweden, or the Italian states, it is quite possible to be located within Europe yet fall behind. Of note, outside of the Low Countries, Britain, and to a degree France, most countries in Europe didn't really innovate technologically with any degree of consistency throughout the Early Modern and Enlightenment periods. The advantage Europe had was the ability to easily import these innovations into their own countries, so long as they had the political capability to do so.

There's two ways to tackle your question, as I see it. One is to have the Islamic world be a consistent part of the European circle of exchange. The other, which I believe is what your question is more tailored to, is to have the Islamic world capable of self-producing the innovations that the Europeans did IOTL. I feel like I can really only address the first option, so:

I'd like to begin by asserting the idea that the reason that nations fall behind technologically is primarily due to political stagnation/resistance against such change. To back up this argument, I'd like to present Spain, Poland, and the Ottoman Empire as examples. The Spanish went from being the dominant state of Europe to being considered a secondary power over the course of a century. While my knowledge of Spain is lacking in the details, I am aware that the Spanish had difficulty with competent leadership in the period, in part due to inbreeding. The Polish are an example of a state where high leadership(the king) was unable to act or reform along innovations presented via other European states due to traditional elements(the Sejm). The Ottoman Empire is an example of a state where one element(the Janissaries) came to dominate the state and enforced governance to their benefit rather than to the health of the state. I know I'm being vague, in part because I don't quite know enough to elaborate more, but I believe the gist of my argument is clear. All of these states were politically deadlocked, all of these states failed to develop a strong bourgeois class with commercial interests, and all of these states could be labeled as decadent, and resting upon past power and with limited success at reforms thanks to political deadlock or in some cases, poor administration at the top level via their respective monarchs.

In contrast, the states that remained most competitive in Europe were the ones with either a) the healthiest mercantile classes or in one specific case, b) Russia. Peter the Great's reforms were certainly not enough to bring Russia to technological parity, but they certainly helped strengthen Russia to comparable degrees of power as other states of the time due to her high potential via base resources available to her. But as a general rule, the most technologically modern states were those that had strong commercial interests driven by profits while maintaining a wide degree of social mobility into this class, meaning that the capital was around for private individuals to prioritize either scholarly pursuits or innovations to increase profits.

Innovations were, generally speaking, adopted via other nearby states over time either through the diffusion of ideas(especially in regions with higher literacy rates) or directly purchased and incoporated, as was the case of most states outside of Europe such as in Latin America which had little homegrown industry or technological innovation.

Now, I believe that some of the problems the Muslim world faced with regards to technology could be countered via an Ottoman Empire that does not remain politically deadlocked and avoids monopolistic trading practices. The strengthening of commercial ties with Europe could only really help the Sublime Porte in the diffusion of ideas, especially if trade isn't dominated by a small group of individuals who are satisfied with their profits and see no need to change the status quo. Another option would be higher literacy rates in the Ottoman Empire and the fostering of innovations by the Sultans; to my limited knowledge this didn't really occur on both accounts but I could always be wrong. Higher literacy rates would allow for greater social mobility and could be how a stronger bourgeois originates, while a stronger innovative tradition in the Ottoman courts be it via the Sultan or by notable individuals seeing their sponsoring as a source of prestige, could lead to a more direct and open rhetoric between intellectuals of the Muslim and European worlds; IMO, the Enlightenment was a missed opportunity albeit not by choice for the Muslim world to catch up had the Ottoman Empire not been politically deadlocked and decadent.

Feel free to point out any holes in this, as I'm not much of a student of the hows and whys of the innovations of OTL, just the whens.
 
The more puzzling question here isn't why they failed to keep up with Western Europe, but why they failed to keep up with Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and even the post-Ottoman Balkans. These areas after all were either uninvolved or bit players in imperialism. Was it the result of favouritism towards fellow white Christians from governments and private entities in Western Europe? Take Turkey, for example: according to the HDI listings it lags behind almost all of the other Eastern European nations. Despite having being isolated from all the worst parts of East European history since WW1.
 
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You would probably need to reverse or complete stop the Islamic world's intellectual collapse, which started in the 11th century with folks like Hamid Al-Ghazali and Cherchez Nizam al-Mulk. You would need to see a reinforcement of Neoplatonism or, even more simply, have scholars who see science and mathematics as able to co-exist with Islam.

That's one of a panoply of things that would need to change, but that is one of the most vital.

Ghazali is overrated as the anti-intellectual islamic boogeyman. The History of Philosophy podcast does a good job of going into a decent amount of detail on him.

I'd say, in general, the systems that worked so well for W. Europe would work just fine for the Middle East. That, and no Mongols. Can't stress that one enough.
 
Ghazali is overrated as the anti-intellectual islamic boogeyman. The History of Philosophy podcast does a good job of going into a decent amount of detail on him.

I'd say, in general, the systems that worked so well for W. Europe would work just fine for the Middle East. That, and no Mongols. Can't stress that one enough.

I would agree with you on that, but Al-Ghazali is just a name amongst many who helped chip away at the foundations, it is the mindset rather than the individual I was looking at overall. But yeah, no Mongols helps.
 

Pomphis

Banned
Two other points I read about:

Historical sharia does not have corporations. The largest business unit is a partnership that automatically dissolves when a partner dies. This makes it much more difficult (almost impossible) to form longlasting and large enterprises. As islam didn´t have the split between religious and secular power the west developed very early (pope vs. emperor) it did not develop secular law to deal with such issues the religious law basically ignored.

The industrial revolution really took of when and where human labor became so expensive that for example steam machines made economic sense. They were technologically possible earlier, but nobody will buy an expensive machine as long as human labor is cheaper.
 
Ghazali is overrated as the anti-intellectual islamic boogeyman. The History of Philosophy podcast does a good job of going into a decent amount of detail on him.

I'd say, in general, the systems that worked so well for W. Europe would work just fine for the Middle East. That, and no Mongols. Can't stress that one enough.


Mongols did what? Destroyed the hyper oppressive Abbasid state that literally was cut into pieces in the 9th century due to its oppressive and divisive policies?The Mamluk dynasties survived and improved on the innovations before then and saw the height of Islamic culture surpassing the Abbasid in near every manner and especially culture and refined tastes and Cairo surpassed Baghdad. The reasons for decline are far deeper than that, the argument of insular movements following the Mongols is weak and not based on fact but only western conjecture and Arab myths. Even the Ilkhans improved the lives of Iranians and contributed innovations. In reality, the Timurid invasion was likely the real problem, but then again the Ottomans recovered from it and the Timurid's did much innovating in Samarqand, so this is an extremely deep question.
 
Mongols did what? Destroyed the hyper oppressive Abbasid state that literally was cut into pieces in the 9th century due to its oppressive and divisive policies?The Mamluk dynasties survived and improved on the innovations before then and saw the height of Islamic culture surpassing the Abbasid in near every manner and especially culture and refined tastes and Cairo surpassed Baghdad. The reasons for decline are far deeper than that, the argument of insular movements following the Mongols is weak and not based on fact but only western conjecture and Arab myths. Even the Ilkhans improved the lives of Iranians and contributed innovations. In reality, the Timurid invasion was likely the real problem, but then again the Ottomans recovered from it and the Timurid's did much innovating in Samarqand, so this is an extremely deep question.

I was hoping you would say this. I'm pretty sure that the Abbassid state had already become insular and conservative by the time that the Mongols arrived, and that, while they killed an atrocious amount of people, the apologists are right in this case about them being historical arsonists.
 
Historical sharia does not have corporations. The largest business unit is a partnership that automatically dissolves when a partner dies. This makes it much more difficult (almost impossible) to form longlasting and large enterprises. As islam didn´t have the split between religious and secular power the west developed very early (pope vs. emperor) it did not develop secular law to deal with such issues the religious law basically ignored.

The First Industrial Revolution took place without the serious presence of manufacturing or even kind of financial corporations (except for the Bank of England itself). They aren't really a necessity.

AFAIK, the Middle East just isn't as productive on a land level. Western Europe is lush and well watered by comparison. Huge stretches of the Middle East as dominated by essentially unproductive desert. It's an environmental factor, rather than a human or political one.
 
What's meant when we mean by keeping up with technology? Didn't the Ottoman's and Mughals develop and use gunpowder and other technology? Unless we are talking wholesale westernization a la Peter the Great, which I'd say wasn't all that necessary.

Second what do we mean by the Islamic World, the whole thing or the Middle East with North Africa and Persia? Wouldn't that make this pretty hard if not impossible considering the sheer diversity of locations and societies?
 
One thing I would like to point out is that many of the Middle East rulers did see the need or at least the use for industrialization. The problem was that by then the Europeans were powerful enough to stamp out most nascent industrial states or threaten them to the point where they had to invest so much in their military (in contrast to Meji Japan, which was literally a world away) and that most of the attempts were transplanting technology and techniques from an industrial setting directly into a pre-industrial setting. What OTL post and pre WWII developing nations showed was that a lot of the successful industrializers took the concepts behind western industrial tech but also adapted it to local conditions. That is to say have an existing internal environment that is capable of adapting and innovating with foreign ideas for local use. It's like the green revolution; fertilizers and farm machinery are great and extremely productive, but not cost-effective for countries lacking industrial infrastructure, capital, with lots of cheap labor
 
o with no or lesser Mongol presence in Middle-East, less because of its destructive outcome.

As John7755 يوحنا rightly pointed out, the roots of the problems are to be found elsewhere : for instance, the desagregation of Iraqi irrigation system was a recurrent feature during Abassid decline.
It doesn't fully explain why the broader Arabo-Islamic world went trough several issues, including regions as Ifriqiya or Egypt that didn't really knew this disruptive presence.

But, in the other hand, the Mongol Empire created an economical continuum that allowed Europeans to accelerate their presence in Asia. It's really telling that , while Europeans had a fair idea about Yuan Dynasty in the XIIIth century, they lost both presence and updated knowledge about China after the establishment of Ming.

No Pax Mongolica would likely make Middle-Eastern states and economies more of an mandatory intermediary for European merchants, if they can even go in significant numbers further than Persia.

Now, you'd have to deal with problems propers to Arabo-Islamic world, including a tendency to structural instability when it comes to polities. Political stability isn't all, but you need some strong political base to harbor a societal change : it doesn't mean a peaceful political evolution (XVIth history of France or England alone would prove the contrary) but you'd need a political and institutional stability.

That said, don't expect an Industrial revolution comparable to what happened in XVIIIth Britain to happen : while the agricultural production can evolve to levels that existed in Britain to fuel industrial structures, Arabo-Islamic world lacked coal resources (there's few important coal deposits, except from various qualities in Iran and Morocco).
You could bolster an equivalent using oil, but that alone would point to a different technological development than IOTL.

Eventually, I'm not too sure about the absence of Ottomans : granted, you didn't have a real technological gap before the XVIIth century and some part of it can be explained trough Ottoman hegemony but, for what matter Islamic Africa at least, the decline of Maghrebi, Ifriqiyan and Egyptian entities is significant by the XVIth century, being hugely challenged by European powers, especially Castille and Aragon that not only kicked what remained of Muslim Iberia out, but as well had a strong coastal presence on Africa (up to quasi-vassalising Hafsids)

I think European monopoly on colonialism, meaning an ridiculously huge amount of resources, productive and financial, fueling their society.
That probably did more for European domination than Ottomans (For instance, Mughal Empire did good until its final crisis.) and you'd have either to limit it, or having Arabo-Islamic world pulling something similar.

Of course, don't expect Arabo-Muslims to simply act like European power did : maritime expedition from China points that different cultures have different focuses (as an example, the really present and documented defiance western Arabo-Islamic world had on seafare). But an alt-colonialism, not unlike Oman did in Africa after putting Portugese out, may be a good lead.

Eventually, I think we're talking less of an original Arabo-Islamic decline leading to an European takeover, than the reverse : you'd have at least as much changes to provide for Europe than for Middle East, Africa or Northern India.
 
Mongols did what? Destroyed the hyper oppressive Abbasid state that literally was cut into pieces in the 9th century due to its oppressive and divisive policies?The Mamluk dynasties survived and improved on the innovations before then and saw the height of Islamic culture surpassing the Abbasid in near every manner and especially culture and refined tastes and Cairo surpassed Baghdad. The reasons for decline are far deeper than that, the argument of insular movements following the Mongols is weak and not based on fact but only western conjecture and Arab myths. Even the Ilkhans improved the lives of Iranians and contributed innovations. In reality, the Timurid invasion was likely the real problem, but then again the Ottomans recovered from it and the Timurid's did much innovating in Samarqand, so this is an extremely deep question.

They also destroyed medieval Baghdad. Pretty horribly so.
 

Pomphis

Banned
AFAIK, the Middle East just isn't as productive on a land level. Western Europe is lush and well watered by comparison. Huge stretches of the Middle East as dominated by essentially unproductive desert. It's an environmental factor, rather than a human or political one.

OTOH egypt and mesopotamia are extremely productive if well administered. There are reasons that civilization started there.
 
They also destroyed medieval Baghdad. Pretty horribly so.

Baghdad was already declining, and the problem wasn't much infrastructures Mongols destroyed, and it lacked resources you could put in rebuilding them as these resources came directly from this wealth, of course made was maybe half of the pre-war population being outright killed.

But salination of water was an ongoing process already, asking for long-term efforts Abassid Caliphate wasn't able to fournish, neither there or about repair or maintain of agricultural infrastructures.

Mongol destruction probably hastened, no matter how horribly so, an already existing decline. A comparison with the Sack of Constantinople, in spite of the differences, may be interesting.

Bagdad could remain an Islamic center, but probably secondary as other would take over, and that the city would know the fate of its ancient counterparts in Mesopotamia : partial abandon and desertification.
 
Mongols did what? Destroyed the hyper oppressive Abbasid state that literally was cut into pieces in the 9th century due to its oppressive and divisive policies?The Mamluk dynasties survived and improved on the innovations before then and saw the height of Islamic culture surpassing the Abbasid in near every manner and especially culture and refined tastes and Cairo surpassed Baghdad. The reasons for decline are far deeper than that, the argument of insular movements following the Mongols is weak and not based on fact but only western conjecture and Arab myths. Even the Ilkhans improved the lives of Iranians and contributed innovations. In reality, the Timurid invasion was likely the real problem, but then again the Ottomans recovered from it and the Timurid's did much innovating in Samarqand, so this is an extremely deep question.

Personally, I lump the Mongols and Timurids together. After all, thats how the Timurids saw it. And, majnly, I'm thinking the immense loss of life and destruction of property/infrastructure that they all left in their wake.

As for the Abassids, lets not forget that they were not a continent-spanning empire by the time the Mongols arrived, but just a rump state in Mesopotamia.
 
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