Monday, February 25, 2013

Adelard of Bath

“In my judgment certainly, nothing at all dies in this sensible world... for if any part of it is released from one conjunction, it does not perish but passes over to another association.”

- Adelard of Bath, On the Use of the Astrolabe

While he was a young man studying at the famed French cathedral school of Tours, Adelard of Bath, an 12th century Englishman of noble lineage, underwent a life changing experience. Following a lesson about star constellations given by a wise man at the academy, Adelard, smitten by what had become a huge love of learning, went for a walk in the forest on the edge of town to process his knowledge. 

While in nature’s bosom, Adelard experienced a profound mystical vision. He recounts being approached by two women: one holding out wealth and fame, and the other offering knowledge. He says that despite a moment of material temptation, he accepted the latter. The episode would not only consolidate the scholar’s personal trajectory, but also that of the civilization to which he belonged.

Adelard of Bath went on to become an early conduit and pioneer of Arab wisdom and learning, bringing the wonders of ancient science to a medieval West that was starved of knowledge. Although talented, privileged and driven by enough curiosity to make the kind of difficult cross-continental journey that few people in his day would think of doing on their own, the main impetus for Adelard’s travels to the Middle East was an inner need that stirred within him and its connection to the wider destiny of humanity.
Europe in the 12th century was in a state of disarray. Poverty, violence, material backwardness and social instability were rife. The classical knowledge of ancient Greece had been lost to the West because few people could read Greek, as the ancient Romans once did. The handful of schools which existed offered low-level learning compared to what had for centuries been on offer in Arab and Islamic lands. The earliest trickling of that knowledge was just starting to reach Europe, but much of it was still too difficult to decipher. 

Adelard, who had a propensity for learning, was cognizant of the sad state of Western knowledge; so much so that he came to disdain European learning, becoming transfixed upon the wisdom available in other lands. A journey to southern Italy and Sicily (areas adjacent to the Middle East) confirmed for him that he was intellectually confined in northern Europe. He decided once and for all to break free and fling himself into the high cultural firmament – and political turmoil - of the Middle East.

Adelard left for the Arab lands in 1109, in the early years of the Crusades. Apart from a few key details which he later provides, we know little about his time in the Middle East. Adelard spent roughly seven years abroad, basing himself in Antioch on the Mediterranean coast of Syria, then ruled by the city state of Pisa and the crusaders who had recently arrived. There he found a huge treasure trove of Arabic translations of ancient Greek texts produced by the House of Wisdom – among them, works on geometry, astronomy, and chemistry. Adelard learned Arabic on his travels and mingled with Islamic scholars and wise men that aided him in his quest.

When he returned to Europe, Adelard became a respected luminary and inspiration to successive generations of adventurer-scholar-translators, producing about a dozen books in Latin packed with crucial learning. 

Among them was his works on Euclidean geometry, which became the cornerstone of the west’s sciences for hundreds of years. All subsequent scientific thinking, including logical deduction and work in architecture and astronomy in Europe was revitalized by his translation of Euclid’s Elements.

Adelard’s translation of al-Khwarizmi’s astronomical star tables, the Zinj al-Sindhind - which contained values for trigonometrical sines and tangents - had an equally profound impact, laying the foundation for the work of Copernicus later in the 16th century.

But he also made other, more philosophical contributions. In a number of works, including his Questions on Natural Science, Adelard employs his favorite literary device – an imaginary dialogue on controversial issues with an unnamed nephew who symbolizes rigid, linear, and traditional Christian thinking symbolic of the old order of knowledge which Adelard sought to overturn.

According to Ernest Scott in his book The People of the Secret, Adelard was also instrumental in one more key injection of knowledge into the West. While in Spain, the Englishman translated a text known as the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Sincerity – a compendium of knowledge produced in Basra 150 years earlier by a group of illuminates. Concerned with human development, Scott says one of the book’s original purposes may have been “to provide raw material on which natural science could develop in Europe” – implying prescience and specific intent on the part of its authors.

Adelard, the world’s first Arabist, had a profound grasp of Islamic learning and its utility for cultural renewal that would offer in place of Europe’s traditions of blind acceptance and submission to authority, the Arab learning techniques of experimentation, rational thought and personal experience. 

He helped the western world grasp and absorb pagan Greek and Hermetic cosmological knowledge - learning that would illuminate a line of spiritual and scientific geniuses that would in turn propel human civilization forward. That, plus the fact that he also lived in a time of cross-cultural conflict - not unlike our own - has done little to reverse his almost total obscurity in the cultures and lands which he so masterfully bridged.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

The Cylinder of Cyrus

We don't often refer to specific articles; however, a recent one by Roger Cohen in the New York Times is very much in the spirit of this blog, and a very successful mix of cultural, political and psychological understanding. 

It is about an ancient clay cylinder with Babylonian cuneiform script that was found in Iraq in the 19th century. The text is a series of edicts calling for religious and ethnic tolerance and freedoms by the Persian King Cyrus (or Kurush in his native language). The artifact has had a long history that Roger Cohen describes:

"What is it? A Babylonian artifact written by a Babylonian scribe about a Persian conqueror; prized by Iranians as an emblem of their civilization; valued by many Jews whose Bible gives credit for Cyrus’s acts not to a Babylonian God but to Jehovah; found in modern Iraq by British-sponsored archaeologists who acquired it from the Ottomans; exploited by the shah to underwrite his megalomania; a pre-Islamic text adopted by the Islamic Republic during the Iran-Iraq War as a symbol of past victories; a declaration compared to the U.S. Constitution because of what it says about peoples worshiping freely in a single state..."

The ancient cylinder is a reminder of our constant struggle for tolerance and greater understanding between peoples. The full article can be found here: Find the Missing Word

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Humanity on a Tightrope - The Middle East Falling off One

We have added a new section to the sidebar of this blog, titled 'Books on Human Development'. It's a list of a dozen works that we feel are useful in increasing understanding of human behaviour, thus permitting any human development process to be that much easier. The list is obviously far from exhaustive, and each book will certainly suggest many other equally worthwhile tomes.

One of those works listed is "Humanity on a Tightrope", by Paul Ehrlich and Robert Ornstein, two scientists whom we've mentioned in an earlier post called "Old World New Mind". This more recent book is about the need for humans to develop a wider definition of kin and family in an era where our old instincts to protect a smaller circle of blood relatives (or tribe or nation) may be both archaic and the direct cause of chaos and conflict. 

As we see every day now, the Middle East is in turmoil. Countries are fragmenting, political parties are at each others' throats, and ethnic and religious groups live in suspicion of each other, if not outright hostility. As Ehrlich and Ornstein explain, one of the reasons for these problems is that our empathy is strictly reserved for those we view as "family" - and family here can also be the "pseudo kin" of tribe or nation. If someone is not seen as kin, biological or otherwise, then this "other" is not seen to be in the same boat as us - with many consequences for how treat them. 

This may seem a banal observation. But the authors make the case that our current attitudes will sink us given the imperative for broader-than-family cooperation if we are to successfully deal with global problems such as resource depletion or climate change. If we stick to kin-competition, we are likely doomed. 

In the Middle East, the unquestioned traditional respect for family or tribe means high levels of empathy for those like us - and severe distrust of all outsiders. Wars between ethnic or religious groups, and fruitless high-emotion political fights are some of the results of this inability to empathize with someone outside one's group: a deadly aspect of being human today, and especially in the Middle East.

The authors make the case that we must now learn to expand our traditional empathic circle to the global level. Whether through the media, education, or the better use of international institutions, this should become a critical objective. And there are signs of movement in this direction. 

If such a shift can take place regionally in the Middle East, it will be enough to help. The potential practical mechanisms for doing so are many, from economic cooperation to cultural connections. The Middle East can build on its tradition of merchant excellence and a profound heritage to gain greater empathetic ground. Indeed, in this process, lingering habits of superiority of one group over another will also have to go by the wayside as well.

This book was given its title for its obvious meaning, but also because of the automatic empathy we all feel for a tightrope walker performing his or her dangerous feat. We can feel his risk and the threat to his life. Everyone who has visited the Middle East has felt the warmth and hospitality of its peoples, yet the reality is that family and group identity often trump this generosity of spirit, and the region is littered with battles between groups. 

If that sense of strong empathy for one's kin can be transported onto the "outsider", if Sunni and Shiite, Israeli and Palestinian, Muslim Brother and liberal can empathize more for each other, as we can with the tightrope walker, then the region may not fall off its tightrope after all.

To read a thorough review of Humanity on a Tightrope, click here.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

An Indian Perspective on the Middle East

(Mughal miniature circa 1600)

"If you want to understand this region, just take out a map from the Ganges to the Nile and remove the British lines. It takes you back to the true undercurrents of history that have long ruled the Middle East, and to interests defined by people and tribes and not just governments.” (1)
- M.J. Akbar, Indian journalist and author. 

(1) New York Times, Opinion column, by Thomas Friedman, February 9, 2013

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Al Muqanna - The Veiled One

"All colour is abominable"

The following is the first in a series of posts highlighting the writing of the great 20th century Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges, who had a fascination with the Islamic world. He wrote about a great diversity of subjects, from Mayan priests to gauchos, but he had a special inclination for unusual individuals and esoteric ideas from the East.

The first is a tale from the book 'A Universal History of Infamy', and it is called 'Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv', a city as dry as the dust of the desert around it. In his usual thrifty way, Borges recounts in three pages the story of the man who later became known as Al Muqanna, or the Veiled or Masked One in Arabic. 

One day, Hakim disappeared from Merv, in what is now Turkmenistan, leaving behind only broken vats of dye, a shattered brass mirror, and a scimitar from Shiraz. He was not to be seen again until he reappeared to a desert party, masked, accompanied by followers who were blind because "they had looked upon his face". 

Fired by revelation, Hakim had become a masked prophet, leading masses in a jihad against the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad. Al Muqanna claimed that the Angel Gabriel had given him an ancient message of wisdom that burned one's mouth if spoken, and made his face so magnificent that no mortal eyes could look upon him - thus the mask (later exchanged for a mere veil).

He gained several military victories over the Caliph, and spread a message of a Manichaean world of light and dark, and of a god without a name or face. This divinity had nine shadows manifested as 999 descending heavens, each a paler echo of its predecessor. The descent led from angels to the demiurge who rules our world whose "fraction of divinity tends to zero". Our earth is but a murky reflection of that first nameless, faceless Divinity, a kind of hell in contrast with the original Paradise that we could aspire to, or even ascend towards. The Veiled One suggested that the misery we live in is best dealt with through a total immersion in vice, or extreme abstinence.

It is believed by some that his ideas are derived from the Persian Khurramiyyah movement, a mixture of Shiism and Zoroastrianism, that was in turn influenced by Mazdak, an Iranian reformer sometimes described as a 'proto-socialist'. The cosmogeny of ascent and descent of the universe that Al Muqanna propagated is also explained in more modern and scientific terms in the excellent book 'Godhead - The Brain's Big Bang'. John Zada, of this blog, recently published an interview with its authors, Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell.

In the fifth year of Al Muqanna's reign, the Caliph's army finally surrounded the prophet's castle. In the panic that ensued, a member of his harem screamed that the Veiled One's hands were disfigured and missing fingers. Two captains of the guard rushed to remove the great one's facial cover to reveal a leprous monstrosity, a face with a "flat and inhuman nose" and lips eaten away by disease. 

As he was revealed, Hakim stuck to his lifetime chorus, shouting that the sinful were forbidden to look upon his face. The plea did not save him; instead, he was "riddled with spears" and disappeared into the Universal History of Infamy - or so the great Argentinian writer (below) tells us.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Studio Kerop

Several years ago, while doing research for a project on 20th century Egyptian photographers, I paid a visit to Studio Kerop - the last of the old portrait studios of downtown Cairo. The venue, located on Emad al-Din Street, was established by Hagop Keropian, one of a number of Armenians who together dominated the profession of photography in Egypt starting in the early 20th century.

At the time of my visit, the studio, with its ancient large format camera and slightly morose air of decay, was still being run by an aging Nubar Keropian, Hagop's son. The place was more of a monument and nostalgic throwback to a lost era than a functioning studio. Nubar admitted as much. But he was still very much in his element and quite happy to entertain visitors. 

I bought some old prints of Cairo taken by the elder Keropian in the 1940s and 1950s. The above shot shows the bar in the old Shepheard's Hotel - a popular haunt for foreigners and the Egyptian elite until the hotel's destruction by fire in 1952. 

Since my last visit to Cairo a few years ago, I've been wondering what happened to Kerop and his studio, as well as some other familiar venues located along the protest-battered avenues that branch out from Tahrir Square like the tentacles of an octopus.

Nubar, it seems, is still around. 

An American photographer who shot the recent protests to mark the 2nd anniversary of Hosni Mubarak's ouster, captured an image of Nubar standing in the fray with his camera (the photo is the first of the series). 

It's probably hard to appreciate how surreal the events of recent years must be for a man whose life and work are tied to images and memories of Cairo which are so far removed from today.