Blog 8

“Read in the name of your Lord who created, He created man from a clot of congealed blood. Read and your Lord is most bountiful – who taught with the use of the pen (to write), Taught man what he knew not.”

The Quran, surah 96 (The Clot): 1-5

Many of the world’s major religions encourage learning from sacred books – to name just a few, the Rg Vedas, the Upanishads, the Dhammapada, the Tao te Ching, the Torah, and the Bible. In many of these religions, the books themselves were in the hands of the few – priests or scholars. This was not unreasonable, given the very laborious processes that were needed in the production of written materials. By the time Islam was founded, the production of books was becoming easier than it had been previously. The importation of paper-making technology from China and the invention of compact, flat book forms greatly facilitated copying and dissemination. When Caliph Uthman, the third Caliph to rule after the death of Muhammad the Prophet, feared that variant versions of the Quran might compete with the version he had compiled, he had several thousand copies made of his predecessor Abu Bakr’s orthodox version (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran) and distributed them widely. This multiplication made the Quran irrepressible as a popular book. Contrast the Talmud, a massive compilation of Jewish religious thought, which was reduced by Christian bans and burnings in the 15th century to few and scattered copies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud), and even today is poorly accessible to most non-Hebrew-speaking potential readers who lack access to an academic library or a Jewish religious institution.

The book-oriented nature of Islam encouraged the construction of libraries and aided the preservation of much of the ancient literature that is fundamental to the world’s intellectual heritage. The Islamic empires, though at war with Christian Europe on both the east and the west sides, made an essential contribution to the intellectual revival referred to as the Enlightenment. Though broadly focused libraries had existed in ancient times and were diligently maintained in a few parts of early Christian Europe, Islamic libraries have always been integral to the maintenance of the world’s intellectual patrimony.

Knowledge relies on its repositories. Libraries are very vulnerable to conflict and to religious or political upheaval, but, collectively, they persist. They are symbols of the old to newly minted fanatics, and they are symbols of new growth and eternal vitality to all young people everywhere discovering the joy of learning. The Islamic contribution to the longevity and ongoing freshness of human thought deserves proper appreciation. 

Quran, Wikipedia, viewed 4 november 2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran

Talmud, Wikipedia, viewed 4 november 2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud