The five civilizations that formed the foundations of what became the modern West are Greece, Rome, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. We often think of the four, but not the fifth.
So many of the ideas and artistic forms that we today associate with Europe find roots among Muslims, including algebra, astronomy, medicine, philosophy and stained glass. In some cases, these were original works; in other cases, they were translations or expansions on prior works, especially those of the Greeks. The most influential of all Christian thinkers after St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, speaks of two inspirations in “The Philosopher” and “The Commentator” in his Summa Theologica. “The Philosopher” is Aristotle; “The Commentator” is the Islamic religious philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd) of Spain. A prominent Jewish scholar named Moses Maimonides, known in Arabic as Musa ibn Maymun, was also from Spain and received tutelage in Muslim seminaries, though much of his work was in Egypt and North Africa. Cervantes writes of Don Quixote being taken from (probably imaginary) Arabic source material. Shakespeare’s Othello is a Muslim (Moor). Dante’s The Inferno condemns Muslims and mosques to Hell, though he does not mention he takes inspiration from a famous Muslim scholar, Ibn Arabi.
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