Humanism in Europe and the Middle East

In the tenth century C.E., a group of philosophically inclined men with literary training who were associated with the Abbasid dynasty participated in an Islamic renaissance centered in Baghdad. Joel L. Kraemer has claimed for this group of thinkers the mantle of humanism on the grounds that they subscribed to an intellectual agenda that privileged the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, upheld the ideal of "urbanity," and endorsed ideas such as individualism, cosmopolitanism, and secularism, which are commonly embraced by humanists.

Although this humanist movement exercised a limited influence on later Islamic philosophy, it seems to have enjoyed a wide following among both scholars and courtly scribes. In turn, these figures were patronized by some of the most powerful political officials of the Muslim world at the time. Hence, the Islamic humanist revival ought not to be viewed as a tangential or marginal phenomenon in medieval Arabic civilization. Indeed, it helps explain the more advanced state of learning in the East than in the Christian West throughout the Middle Ages.