New light on old civilisation

The Monk, the Moor and Moses Ben Jalloun 
By Saeed Akhtar Mirza. Fourth Estate. Pages viii plus 247. Rs 450

Reviewed by Parshotam Mehra

Here is a striking work of fiction about a "deliberately forgotten" history.  The narrative revolves around four students in an American university in the year 2008, setting out to discover all that has been forgotten. And this largely because the search affects their own lives in some very real ways.  A parallel tale inextricably interwoven with this narrative is that of young Rehana, an Iranian from the 11th century, who has a number of passions: Her husband, her teacher, her culture and above all an insatiable quest for learning.

With an intriguingly rich set of dramatic devices — soliloquies, legends and a host of colourful characters — the author is out to demolish the long-held, carefully nourished European ‘myth’ about the making of the modern world.  And in its place, he brings to life an Islamic civilisation that was at once vibrant and nourished both the sciences and the liberal arts.  A singular literary composition as also fictionalised history, Mirza’s work helps one to have a fresh look at the past and the evolving situation with regard to the fast-changing present.

Saeed Akhtar Mirza

Alluding to Dante’s Divine Comedy, a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise it is suggested that the poet had borrowed from Ibn Sina or Ibn Rushd, both great Islamic scholars of an earlier age.  And not only the text but the poems, songs, ballads and tales translated from the Arabic. In sum, Mirza suggests, the entire edifice of Western science, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, architecture and even music needs to be reviewed because its origins are deeply suspect.  There has been a cover up of history that smacks of racism making ‘intellectual lightweights’ like Huntington (author of Clash of Civilizations) to be taken seriously.

The Egyptians, the Sumerian, the Phoenicians fought with each other and learnt from each other.  So did the Greeks, Persians and Nabateans.  Herodotus thought Greek civilisation was but "an extension" of the Egyptian.  Mathematics, the narrative suggests, was to be found everywhere: it exists in music, in the shape of the grinding wheel or a brick, in the wingspan of a bird in relation to its body, in our heartbeat, even in the way we speak!  A sultan of Ghazna determined to educate his son, who was averse to all learning, captured wisdom by force by rounding up all the scholars like sheep and goats and herding them to the capital.  Not that it helped for there is no imparting ‘instant wisdom’ to anyone. There was nothing original about Copernicus.  He had borrowed from the astronomer and polymath, Nasser al-Tussi who lived some 300 years earlier. The theorem had been translated into Greek and was available in Europe at the time.

Sicily’s capital city of Palermo was legitimately proud of its public squares, libraries, magnificent gardens and fountains.  It boasted an impressive array of poets and musicians, philosophers, astronomers, and mathematicians.   Seeing this, its Norman invaders ‘went native’ and adopted the world of the conquered. Many of the meters and rhythms of their songs sounded Andalusian from southern Spain and specifically Arabic or Moorish.  The themes of the songs did too as also the names the singers were called by- ‘troubadours’, sounding not unlike the Arab word tarab, meaning ‘to sing’.

While there is force in Mirza’s major thrust that the European ‘myth’ about the making of the modern world needs scrutiny, it is difficult to accept his somewhat dogmatic view that the Islamic world knew all that there was to know.

In history, as in life, there has been a lot of give and take.  The West borrowed from the East and so did the East from the West.  Globalisation, which is essentially an increasingly global relationship of culture, people and economic activity, is an explicit acknowledgment of this basic truth.

The book is a delight to behold. The dust jacket, beautifully designed with some excellent reproductions from the Middle Ages, shows a Moor and a Monk and a young girl- the Iranian Rehana (?). The opening end paper carries a sketch map:  ‘the spread of Islamic civilization c. AD 1000’; the closing, reproductions of a host of characters that flit through the narrative, including Nicholas Copernicus, Dante Alighieri, Pope Sylvester II, Abu Rehan al-Biruni, Ibn Sina, and  Mohammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi.

Saeed Akhtar Mirza is among the pioneers of the New Wave progressive cinema and has directed some outstanding television serials such  as Arvind Desai ki Ajeeb Dastaan, Albert Pinto ko Gussa Kyon  Aata Hai?, Mohan Joshi Hazar Ho.  His first novel, Ammi: Letter to a Democratic Mother was critically acclaimed; the one under review is the second.

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