Communication in Middle East and Abroad - The Ancient Near East, Medieval Communication And Transportation, Medieval Translation Movements, Paper And Literacy
ideas west
The great continental Eurasian landmass, with its vast steppes stretching east to west in a more or less uniform climatic belt, has been a useful path for the transit of ideas and techniques throughout history, with what is now the Arab world as the fulcrum of the exchange between China and Europe. Over roughly the first thirteen or fourteen centuries of the Common Era, there was a slow, steady diffusion of ideas and, particularly, technology from East to West.
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The administration of large political entities, whether kingdoms or empires, required skills in writing and numeracy for administrative purposes, so that the ruler's writ could be understood by his officials and communicated throughout the land. In ancient empires there was a priestly monopoly on secular, as well as esoteric, knowledge. In societies whose cultural "memory" was…
The East-to-West process of diffusion picked up pace subsequent to the Islamic conquests, when the Islamic world acquired (in the words of Joseph Needham) "a focal character in the process of diffusion." The innovations diffused included a package of Indian crops and the irrigation technologies needed to grow them in arid or semiarid environments that the Arabs recognized as comprisi…
This scientific movement, based at first on translation and the retrieval of ancient lore, was an epiphenomenon of the ease of communication within the Eurasian landmass, facilitated by the political unity provided by the Islamic empire of the early Middle Ages. Travel for the sake of knowledge (Arabic, alrihla fi-talab al-'ilm) was characteristic of both Muslim and Jewish scholars, who tra…
Paper was associated with a vertical mill, whereby a water wheel turns a horizontal axis fitted with hammers. Paper was one element in a unified set of Chinese technologies that diffused simultaneously westward along with the mill type: preparation of different kinds of oil, paper, sugar, indigo, lacquer, and tea—all of which require pounding or maceration (Daniels, pp. 30–39)—…
There was an eastward reflux of technological diffusion when Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain, the Jews in 1492 and the Moriscos, in a steady flow of emigrants from 1492 through the definitive expulsion of 1610. The Moriscos took back to North Africa a version of Indian agriculture (Arabic, filaha hindiyya) updated especially with New World crops (maize, tomatoes, American beans, chili pe…
The predominant pattern of innovation in the nineteenth century was that the Ottomans filtered the European model of modernization and diffused specific techniques to selected sites in their empire. Centralization was the dominant political ideal associated with modernization. In terms of Arab society, this translated into bringing tribes under central control, which, in turn, involved a stepped-u…
Allsen, Thomas T. Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Bloom, Jonathan M. Paper before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001. Bulliet, Richard W. The Camel and the Wheel. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975. Daniels, Christian. "Sugarcane Technology."…
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