Arabia and the West: Two Paths to Modernity

Mohammad Khokhar responded to last week's article on Saudi history, Arabia: Land of Mystery, by asking what transpired in the centuries preceding the 1937 discovery of “black gold” at Dammam. We offer here a general response to his question, placing our answer within the context of Arabia’s long history. Intermittently from the dawn of civilization in the region, waves of foreign conquerors have occupied parts of the Arabian Peninsula for varying periods of time, in some cases for centuries. Among them were the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans and the Byzantines. A few times, Semitic invaders rose out of Arabia to subjugate foreign lands, most notably the Akkadians who took power in Mesopotamia and the Hyksos who accomplished the same in Egypt. In subduing the Nile Valley, the Hyksos employed two powerful, never-before-seen-there weapons whose adoption by the defeated Egyptians transformed the Pharaoh’s armies: the composite bow and the chariot. Within Arabia, internecine struggles between an inchoate mass of indigenous tribes shaped life on the local level. On a larger scale, a succession of Arab kingdoms struggled for hegemony, their trajectories testified to today by the magnificent ruins of palaces and fortresses and places of worship they left behind. The intricate pattern of human endeavor woven by these many events served as an extended prelude to the rise of Islam. The Rise of Islam

Page from the Oldest Surviving Islamic Book Printed on Paper Dating from the Early 8th Century CE

Of the three great monotheistic Abrahamic religions originating in Arabia, Islam has been paramount in its influence on Saudi history. Only by taking into account its contributions can one understand the history of the Kingdom and, as well, the history of the modern world. In the Qur’an it is written, “Let there be no compulsion in religion: truth stands out clear from error.” Islamic caliphs are said to have showed noteworthy tolerance toward the religious beliefs of Christians and Jews living under their rule. Adherents to those faiths are known to have held important public posts. All Muslims were expected to learn Arabic so they could understand the Qur’an. This sharing of a common language helped unite diverse ethnic groups encompassed by the sprawling Islamic empire. It made possible the fruitful exchange of knowledge and ideas, with profound, lasting, widespread results.

The Area in Green Illustrates the Reach of the Islamic Conquests at Their Greatest Height

Through an extended series of conquests over an array of cultures, the caliphs created a vast empire lacking internal political boundaries and largely free from external attack up to the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in the mid-13th century. Internally, until that tragedy, life in the Islamic world for centuries was peaceful and secure compared with much of the world. Commercial and intellectual and cultural exchanges flowed freely throughout the Islamic sphere, bringing together the knowledge and wisdom of India and China, ancient Greece and Rome, Persia and Egypt. Rulers in the main left their new conquests administratively and intellectually intact, preserving, not destroying, the best of those civilizations. The Roman Empire at its height at the time of Christ enjoyed what historians have labeled the “Pax Romana”—the Roman Peace; similarly, the Muslim Empire at its height from the 8th until the mid-13th century enjoyed what some historians have labeled the “Pax Islamica”—the Islamic Peace.

Islamic civilization at its medieval height embraced belief in the paramount importance of knowledge. In the mid-9th century CE, the Muslim world, stretching from east of Arabia across the southern shore of the Mediterranean into Spain, entered a period of astonishing economic, cultural and scientific achievement lasting some 400 years—an era known as the Golden Age of Islam. Muhammad mandated public education for Muslims, giving a boost to the pursuit of knowledge. Paper-making technology was introduced from China, leading to the replacement of expensive parchment and papyrus with inexpensive paper. There followed an explosion of printed works, accompanied by the rapid expansion of knowledge in diverse fields. Extensive libraries, public and private, sprang up throughout the Muslim world.

Arabs built the world’s first astronomical observatory, and their scientists speculated on the rotation of the planets around the sun at a time when many in pre-Copernican Europe believed the earth was the center of the universe. Scholars used their knowledge to calculate the circumference of the earth to within a few thousand feet. Arab cartographers applied their extensive knowledge of the world beyond their immediate borders to produce the finest maps the world would know for centuries to come. Arab scholars translated classical Greek works into Arabic, including the writings of Aristotle and Plato, preserving vital texts fundamental to the development of modern civilization that otherwise might have been lost.

Arab mathematicians developed and refined algebra and geometry and spread the use of Arabic numerals—originally introduced from India—in place of cumbersome, unwieldy, severely-limiting Roman numerals. They also introduced the concept of zero. Their innovations opened a new world of rational, quantifiable scientific inquiry that would have been impossible to enter otherwise. Other innovations introduced included the astrolabe for navigation, advances in health care and medicine, new methods in agriculture, livestock breeding and water distribution and fresh approaches to understanding history and philosophy. Over a period lasting a millennium, the culture and civilization of Arab lands shined like beacons in the night. When Europe entered the era known as the Renaissance, Arab contributions to that reawakening were prodigious. Worlds Diverge, Then Converge Euro-centric historians have long dated the “birth” of the modern world to the Renaissance, an epoch stretching across the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries in Europe. Much ink has been spilled chronicling the Scientific Revolution that succeeded it and the Industrial Revolution that followed that. The designation, definition and delineation of historical periods are always subject to debate, and scholars have argued endlessly about the interrelationships between these three eras. Consensus holds, however, that the Arab and Western worlds followed widely-divergent paths from the Renaissance into the modern age. The essence of Mohammad Khokhar’s question relates to that span of years. Going into greater detail than this will have to await another essay. Neither the Renaissance nor the Scientific Revolution could have unfolded the way they did without the contributions of Arab science and scholarship, While the Industrial Revolution took hold in Europe and beyond in the 18th and 19th centuries, for more than a hundred years the Arabian Peninsula experienced nothing comparable for a complex set of reasons. The salient point is, with the discovery of commercial quantities of “black gold” in the 1930s, Saudi Arabia finally enjoyed the resources necessary to modernize. Since then, the economy of the Kingdom has advanced at warp speed into the new millennium. In a greatly-compressed time frame, Saudi Arabia has undergone economic and social change Europe and America had centuries to master. Aramcons like Mohammad Khokhar have had front row seats to one of the most compelling stories in modern history.