Sonja Brentjes on the Post-Classical Sciences: Continuity, Patronage, Debate

A Book Review of The Sciences in Islamicate Societies in Context: Patronage, Education, Narratives by Sonja Brentjes

German historian Sonja Brentjes provides a meticulous study on ancient sciences in Islamicate societies between the 13th and 17th centuries which challenge the dominant historiography of earlier Scholarship on the decline of rational and scientific temper after the classical period. Brentjes examines the biographical literature on learned scholars and the patronage they received under the sultanates. Under them, religious orthodoxy is said to have allied itself with the political elite and the Madrasah institution is assumed to have functioned as an orthodox authority with a formal curriculum that separated the rational sciences from the religious. This is said to have caused a decline in the study of science and philosophy, which had previously enjoyed rich patronage in the classical period.

Brentjes builds upon the work of Jonathan Berkey and Michael Chamberlain on the educational landscapes of Mamluk Cairo and Ayyubid Damascus. The Madrasah was neither a strictly formal institution with a uniform curriculum nor the sole centre of learning. Her survey of the biographical work Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya of Qāḍī Ibn Shuhba shows that rational sciences continued to be cultivated alongside religious sciences by the ulema well after the classical period. While admitting that evidence for the teaching of ancient sciences within the Madrasah is limited, Brentjes demonstrates how many leading ulema in the biographical literature of the period are praised for mastering rational sciences in addition to religious ones, and how such additional learning was respected. This integration of rational sciences in the madrasah is therefore shown to have emerged, contrary to dominant assumptions, because rational sciences were integrated into the broader educational landscape. Under this integration disciplines like arithmetic were connected to religious service such as dividing inheritance and astronomical calculations to time-keeping for performing religious obligations within their prescribed times. Using the work of David King, one can see how the post of muwaqqit helped integrate astronomy into religious service under the Mamluks, which in turn led to advances in the subject itself. Even within purely religious subjects like uṣūl al-fiqh, the sciences of dialectics and kalām are shown to have been used by theologians who also served as jurists, while kalām itself incorporated substantial Greek logic and philosophical reasoning.

The distinction between muwaqqit and mu’adhdhin is, according to Brentjes, not as clear-cut as David proposes, since the muwaqqit also functioned as a mudarris in multiple scientific subjects, while the mu’adhdhin occasionally possessed skills in time-keeping, even if such expertise was not utilized by many of them. The study of ʿilm al-mīqāt was not dismissed, as some major religious scholars are said to have studied it, even though particular muwaqqits were criticized for engaging in astrology, since the two fields conceptually overlapped. Despite these criticisms, the elite, in private continued patronizing astrologers.

The highest patronage was received by physicians, whether as personal doctors, court physicians, teachers, or practitioners in hospitals and Madrasa. The fact that several of those in these professions belonged to religious minorities became a notable feature of the period, at times causing unease among orthodox scholars. Alongside philosophy, Brentjes focuses on rulers who are often portrayed as persecutors of certain well-known philosophers under the Ayyubids simultaneously patronized other philosophers, while Ibn Sīnā continued to be studied enthusiastically by the students of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and also in the Madrasah. A key historiographical reassessment on the case of al-Āmidī, regarding the persecution he reportedly faced, is shown to be rooted more in political rivalry than purely religious motives. Mathematical sciences continued to receive commentary and patronage from rulers across regions such as Central Asia, North Africa and Iran, and these sciences maintained a place in the Madrasah, though some apprehension existed regarding extensive involvement. The author traces patronage from the Timurids to the gunpowder empires, less commonly associated with scientific patronage, by locating scholars and their benefactors in the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal domains. By analyzing court libraries, she shows how scientific works formed a significant portion of collections in lesser-known libraries such as those of Tipu Sultan, Aurangzeb, and even Nādir Shāh, whose library contained numerous works in medicine, astronomy, mathematics and philosophy, indicating that elite libraries were not devoid of such sciences.

While the limited manuscript evidence for theoretical geometry is attributed by Brentjes to the oral nature of its transmission rather than its absence, biographical evidence does not support the notion of its disappearance. However, Brentjes acknowledges the growing tendency to associate mathematical sciences with the occult among practitioners and notes the polemics of traditionalist scholars against astrologers, which sometimes also included the muwaqqit, confirming that boundaries between astronomy and astrology were not as sharply defined as later proponents of “pure astronomy” attempted to portray. Challenging Ibn Khaldūn’s assessment of the decline of mathematics and rational sciences in the Maghrib, Brentjes once again presents biographical evidence from al-Sakhāwī demonstrating the presence of Maghribi scholars proficient in these sciences. This and subsequent research of the past forty years, the author argues, leaves little doubt that the history of astronomy, logic and philosophy differed significantly from arithmetic and geometry after the 11th century, and that different regions experienced distinct trajectories of flourishing or decline, rendering grand narratives of homogeneous decline a methodological error.

Although a valuable reassessment of the historiography of science in a period commonly characterized as decadent, if not wholly devoid of scientific and philosophical activity, this work highlights both continuity and overlooked sources. Yet one cannot avoid the feeling that the nuances acknowledged by the author leave the overarching question of “decline” unresolved, raising the issue of whether such a phenomenon can even be measured. But if it can be convincingly shown that in the case of astronomy and philosophy progress reached its peak in the post-classical era, one can expect more such studies on other disciplines, which is yet not the case. The extent to which orthodox scholars’ opposition to the forbidden sciences affected other Sciences that were considered non-problematic in themselves but nevertheless viewed as potential stepping stones towards going astray remains to be seen. The data from the Mughal, Safavid and Ottoman Empires is hence not sufficient to challenge the narrative of decline, as the mere presence of some scientists and scientific books in libraries does not reveal a flourishing of those sciences compared to classical times. That the original contributions are even less documented adds further difficulty to the problem concerning the fate of science in these later empires. Further, resistance to European science from the 16th century onward in the Ottoman world along with the subsequent reforms against such rigidity in adopting the progress of the West indicates that the lack of study of the vast number of unedited manuscripts might itself reflect the limited innovation and diminished popularity of scientific pursuits. However
despite such limitations in tracing decline, this work represents a critical piece of scholarship, which provokes further research to quantify the magnitude of decline with a focus on its qualitative aspects as well.

---

Disclaimer: Material published by Traversing Tradition is meant to foster scholarly inquiry and rich discussion. The views, opinions, beliefs, or strategies represented in published articles and subsequent comments do not necessarily represent the views of Traversing Tradition or any employee thereof.

Photo by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash