Posts Tagged ‘Ptolemy’
Damascus saved the ancient Greek culture
Posted by: adonis49 on: October 8, 2009
Damascus saved the ancient Greek culture; (October 10, 2009)
The German philosopher Heidegger stated: “Philosophy is purely Greek” and thus, the European love to believe that philosophy is purely a western conception. In “Aristotle at mount St. Michel”, the latest book of Sylvain Guggenheim, it is said in substance that Europe would not have needed the Arab civilization to accede to the Greek heritage in philosophy and sciences and that it is the Christian “Arabs” who introduced Hellenisms in the Islamic-Arab world. It goes on “As a religion, Islam didn’t offer anything to the European civilization, neither textual reference nor theological argument. It goes also in the legal and political domains.”
I got into thinking.
The Islamic armies defeated the Byzantium forces of Heracles in Syria and the Persian Sassanide forces in Iraq and expanded into Egypt during the second Caliphate Omar Ibn Khattab. Within five years, the Umayyad dynasty of Moawiyat decided on Damascus for Capital of the new Arab Empire.
Damascus was the hotbed of most of the Orthodox Christian sects that paid allegiance to the center in Byzantium and they were learned in the Greek language along with the Aramaic popular language. The “heretic” Christian sects had fled beyond the Euphrates River to the kingdom of Persia.
The Arab Umayyad dynasty relied on the Orthodox Christian educated people to translate Greek philosophy, medicine, mathematics, and science manuscripts into the Arabic language; the Aramaic language was the root language for the spoken Arabic language in the Arabic Peninsula and thus it was easy for the Syrian to adopt Arabic and translate the Greek and Roman manuscripts.
It is not that the Near East people just loved the ancient Greek manuscripts of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, and Sophocles. It is more likely that most of the Greek schools of sciences, philosophy, and medicine were erected by Greek speaking scholars born on the Mediterranean shores from Alexandria, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey; those famous scholars span from Euclid, Thales, Heracles, Plotine, Zenon, Ptolemy, and passing by the great law givers and founders of the Roman Empire located in Beirut.
If the new Islamic Empire failed to settle on Damascus as Capital and opted to stay in Medina then it is very likely that the Greek manuscripts and culture would have vanished during the hegemony of the Arabic Empire.
I got into thinking.
If in the nick of time, the fourth Caliphate Ali ibn Abi Taleb decided not to defeat and pursue the army of Mouawiyat then the Capital of the Islamic Arab Empire would have been Koufa in Iraq. The ancient culture of Persia would have been the civilization of the land from the confine of China to England. What the European scholars love to label their race as Indo-European would have been a more fitting name: the Persian-Indian culture and civilization.
I got into thinking.
If the Prophet Muhammad did not adopt the Jewish Bibles and the Christian New Testaments as integral part of Islam in an attempt of consolidating common denominators among these monotheist religions then what kind of Christianity Europe would be having today?
Damascus saved the ancient Greek language. Damascus saved its culture. Like it or not, the European should be proud of their real Near Eastern heritage along the eastern Mediterranean shores. (More on that topic in following posts).
Wild Goose Chase:Iskandaranian Mafias
Posted by: adonis49 on: November 25, 2008
Iskandaranian Mafias,(fiction, continue 21)
Artax learned the whereabouts and business of the three Macedonian trained divisions. The divisions have taken hold of the strategic passages between Afghanistan and current Pakistan. They started on the business of brigandage, kidnapping, and all sorts of highway robberies. By and by, their business units stabilized on legitimate transactions. The natural process cut in half the number of shareholders through a series of inner civil wars. The two officers Seleucus and Ptolemy emerged winner and alive. Seleucus and his band took control of the entrances fro Pakistan and had the monopoly on silk, spices and incense imported from India and China. Ptolemy controlled the entrances from Afghanistan and monopolized opium, furs and the slaves’ trades.
Through costly trial and error procedures, Seleucus and Ptolemy learned to respect the spirit of free market and free passage to the Afghanis tribes. Thus, the Afghans were not charged any entrance or exit fees and their caravans not inspected or intercepted. The non-Afghanis caravans were taxed by adult heads over 10 year-old. The task time measurement science proved that inspecting the belongings and ballots and bags and sacs were discouraging the soldiers and the return on minute inspection was not beneficial. They opted for a straightforward head count and the appropriate rate to cover monthly expenses. Thus, the entrance charges fluctuated but were decided on both entrances at the beginning of every month. There were extra fees when caravans needed guides in the passages, and they learned to need it, for safety and security was within the business philosophy.
Adonis Diaries 