Richard Bulliett - video on "Golden Age"


Islamic world estab a "past" - Byzantium and Persia

Damascus, then Baghdad ["Madinat al-Salam" - City of Peace] - the round city

    near site of Ctesiphon; main routes between Iraq, Iran, Syria

   most fertile region of Mesopotamia

    quickly became metopolitan center - size

    center of international trade and industry

    a cosmopolitan population

    arts - architecture

    Dome of Rock, palaces, mosques

    Harun al-Rashid (786-809 C.E.)

    Literature

• study of language
• poetry
• history
• Qur'anic studies
• Persian cultural alternatives
• manuals of government
• technical and scientific knowledge - Indian and Hellenistic
• pre-Islamic academies - Athens, Alexandria
• Bayt al-Hikma
• Greek philosophy - logic, natural science, metaphysics - falasifa

Islamic Religious Study and Writing

• Sunni Scripturalism - commentary, exegisis, criticism
• Accumulation of hadith
• Development of Islamic law - Shari'a - schools of law [Basra, Kufa, Syria, Medina, Mecca]
• ritual obligations - 'ibadat
• rules of social relations - mu'amalat
• theory of collective organization - imama
• mysticism - Sufism
• Shi'ism

Spain - al-Andalus

    Recommended:  Maria Rosa Menocal - The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain.

• Umayyads
• 'Abd al-Rahman I (765-788 C.E.)
• 'Abd al-Rahman II (822-852 C.E.)
• 'Abd al-Rahman III (912-961 C.E.)
• Palaces - Madinat al-Zahra
• Mosques - at Cordoba
  
• Literature - Arabic to Latin
• Science
• Ibn-Rushd (Averroes)
• Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
• al-Ghazali
• ibn-Khaldun
• Moses ibn Ezra
• Musa ibn Maymun (Maimonides)

Dhimma - "Toleration"