Page 233 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

of India, including the use of the zero. In Europe, it became known as the Arabic system. Al-Khwarizmi (al- KHWAR-iz-mee), a ninth-century Iranian mathemati- cian, developed the mathematical discipline of algebra. In astronomy, the Muslims were aware that the earth was round, and they set up an observatory at Baghdad to study the stars, many of which they named. They also perfected the astrolabe, an instrument used by sai- lors to determine their location by observing the posi- tions of heavenly bodies. It was the astrolabe that made it possible for Europeans to sail to the Americas.
Muslim scholars also made discoveries in chemistry and developed medicine as a field of scientific study. Especially renowned was Ibn Sina (ib-un SEE-nuh) (980–1037), known as Avicenna (av-i-SENN-uh) in the West, who wrote a medical encyclopedia that, among other things, stressed the contagious nature of certain diseases and showed how they could be spread by con- taminated water supplies. Avicenna was but one of many Arabic scholars whose work was translated into Latin and helped the development of intellectual life in Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Chapter Summary
At the end of the eighth century, a new kingdom—the Carolin- gian Empire—came to control much of western and central Europe, especially during the reign of Charlemagne. The corona- tion of Charlemagne, descendant of a Germanic tribe converted to Christianity, as emperor of the Romans in 800 symbolized the fusion of the three chief components of a new European civ- ilization: the German tribes, the classical tradition, and Christi-
anity. In the long run, the creation of a Western empire fostered the idea of a distinct European identity and marked a shift of power from the south to the north. Italy and the Med- iterranean had been the center of the Roman Empire. The lands north of the Alps now became the political center of Europe, and increasingly, Europe emerged as the focus and center of Western civilization.
The Carolingian Empire was well governed but was held to- gether primarily by personal loyalty to a strong king. The econ- omy of the eighth and ninth centuries was based almost entirely on farming, which proved inadequate to maintain a large mo- narchical system. As a result, a new political and military order, known as fief-holding, evolved to become an integral part of the political world of the Middle Ages. Fief-holding was char- acterized by a decentralization of political power, in which lords exercised legal, administrative, and military power. This transferred public power into many private hands and seemed
to provide the security sorely lacking in a time of weak central government and invasions by Muslims, Magyars, and Vikings. In eastern Europe, the Slavic kingdoms of Poland and Bohe- mia were established; their peoples were converted to Christianity by Cath- olic missionaries, while the eastern and southern Slavs adopted Orthodox Christianity.
While Europe struggled, the Byzantine and Islamic worlds continued to prosper and flourish. The tenth century was the golden age of Byzantine civilization. Under the Macedonian dynasty, trade flourished, the Bulgars were defeated, Muslim armies were repelled, and Byzantine territory was increased.
The Umayyad Dynasty of caliphs had established Damascus as the center of an Islamic empire created by Arab expansion in the seventh and eighth centuries. In the eighth century, the new Abbasid Dynasty moved the capital east to Baghdad, where Per- sian influence was more pronounced. Greek and Persian scien- tific and philosophical writings were translated into Arabic, and the Muslims created a brilliant urban culture.
The brilliance of the urban cultures of both the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world stood in marked contrast to the underdeveloped rural world of Europe. By 1000, however, that rural world had not only recovered but was beginning to expand in ways undreamed of by previous generations. Europe stood poised for a giant leap.
Chapter Summary • 195
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