Ismail al-Jazari – the medieval 'Father of Robotics'

in my family there has been a simple question being raised for as many years i can remember but there has never been a satisfactory answer yet. "if early muslims had all the science, mathematics, geography, philosophy and all fields of science including hundreds of scientists who laid down the foundations of modern science with their works, what happened 800 years ago that all that science just vanished?"

Then years ago i read "origin" by "Dan brown" where an interesting line caught my attention

“By the end of the eleventh century,” Edmond said, “the greatest intellectual exploration and discovery on earth was taking place in and around Baghdad. Then, almost overnight, that changed. A brilliant scholar named Hamid al-Ghazali—now considered one of the most influential Muslims in history—wrote a series of persuasive texts questioning the logic of Plato and Aristotle and declaring mathematics to be ‘the philosophy of the devil.’ This began a confluence of events that undermined scientific thinking. The study of theology was made compulsory, and eventually the entire Islamic scientific movement collapsed.”

Since reading this, i've been trying to understand 2 things. 1, is this just fiction on the part of author and in that case, isnt it slander, spreading false information about a scholar who many hold to high regards and 2, if this is true, then this fucking asshole is responsible for causing immeasurable harm to "science" as a human idea on the whole.

While i think just one person "might not" be responsible for single-handedly causing such a travesty on his own, there is no doubt "something" happened that caused this change. This author says it was this ghazali guy, maybe there were others also. I don't know but i surely would want to know

This is an oft repeated piece of idle scholarship that atheists and orientalists use to "explain" the decline of the so called "Islamic Golden Age". I've seen Steven Weinberg mention this as well as Neil Tyson.

The factors were complex. There were economic and socio-political events that affected the stability and life in these societies. Several other reasons contributed to this downfall and it finally happened. To pin all the blame on a single scholar is disingenuous. Al Ghazzali's "Incoherence of the philosophers" was a warning against some of the techniques philosophers used especially in the context of interpreting the primary texts of Islam to come up with religious rulings. There were also philosophical arguments against scientific (read material) explanations precluding the hand of God in material affairs but this wasn't one killing blow against centuries of scientific scholarship.

Here are a few articles that discuss this from a traditional Muslim point of view if you're interested. https://mohamedghilan.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/an-illusion-o... https://traversingtradition.com/2020/11/19/science-history-a.... I had something that addressed it more directly but can't find it right now.

> what happened 800 years ago that all that science just vanished?

A big part of the answer is the Sack of Baghdad in 1258 by the Mongol armies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)#Destru...

>Contemporary accounts state Mongol soldiers looted and then destroyed mosques, palaces, libraries, and hospitals. Priceless books from Baghdad's thirty-six public libraries were torn apart, the looters using their leather covers as sandals.[36] Grand buildings that had been the work of generations were burned to the ground. The House of Wisdom (the Grand Library of Baghdad), containing countless precious historical documents and books on subjects ranging from medicine to astronomy, was destroyed. Claims have been made that the Tigris ran red from the blood of the scientists and philosophers killed.[37][38] Tales of the destruction of books - tossed into the Tigris such that the water turned black from the ink - seem to originate from the 14th century.[39][40]

Baghdad at the time was the religious, political, and intellectual center of Islam. You could think of it as the combined New York, Washington DC, and Silicon Valley of the Islamic world. Think what would happen to American culture if all of a sudden, those 3 were suddenly destroyed. How would that shift the balance of culture? Something very similar happened to Islam in 1258, and I would say, we are probably still seeing the fallout of that to this day.

This happened to China as well yet it recovered better.

There is a book you should read, Lost Enlightenment: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691165851/lo...

The flourishing of Islamic science took place not in Baghdad, but in Central Asia, and it was already in steep decline when al-Ghazali wrote his polemics. The reasons for both the rise and decline of the Central Asian enlightenment are fascinating and complex.

The tl;dr is that these cities (most now ruins) relied on very complicated irrigation systems that required a high degree of technical skill to maintain, and were also quite cosmopolitan places culturally, since they were never Arabized and lay on major trade routes, guaranteeing them exposure to ideas and scholarly texts from India (although interestingly, not so much from China).

Anyway, it's a great book and will put the rise and decline of this period in context for you.