SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE ABBASID CALIPHATE DURING THE 10TH–11TH CENTURIES
Abstract
The 4th century AH / 10th century CE and the opening decades of the 5th / 11th century constituted a formative phase in the history of Islamic civilization, marked by far-reaching socio-political transformations that paradoxically coincided with an extraordinary cultural and intellectual flourishing. Analyzing the scholarly and intellectual environment of this era and its influence on scholars’ work yields important theoretical conclusions about the relationship between political authority and the production of knowledge. This article examines the social, political, and scientific circumstances of the Abbasid Caliphate during the 10th–11th centuries, addressing the state’s ethnic composition, interethnic relations, modes of life, cultural and religious festivals, the patronage of science, and the formation of centres of learning. It argues that political fragmentation under the Buyid amirs did not arrest intellectual life but, in several respects, decentralized and intensified it.
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