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On the Probable Influence of Islam on Western Public and International Law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2009
Extract
On the occasion of the fifteenth century of the hijra, many scholarly publications will deal with various aspects of Islamic history, among which is the contribution of the Arabo-Muslim culture to Western civilisation. Philosophical and scientific contributions have already been discussed many times. The legacy of Islam in the field of international law has, however, not yet been studied at length.
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References
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1 See Hamidullah, Muhammad, Muslim Conduct of State (5th ed.; Lahore: Ashraf, 1968);Google Scholaral-Ghunaimi, Mohammad T., The Muslim Concept of International Law and Western Approach (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968);CrossRefGoogle ScholarBoisard, Marcel A., L'Humanisme de l'Islam (Paris: Albin Michel, 1979).Google Scholar
2 Among the numerous available publications, see the various works of Daniel, Norman, esp. The Arabs and Medieval Europe (London: Longmans, 1975);Google ScholarArnold, Thomas and Guillaume, Alfred, eds., The Legacy of Islam (Oxford: University Press, 1965: repr. of 1931 ed.);Google Scholar and, from a less scientific approach, Akkad, Abbas M., The Arab Impact on European Civilisation, Kashmire, Ismail and Hadi, Mohammad El, trans. (Cairo: Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, n.d.).Google Scholar
3 Duby, Georges, Des societes medievales (Paris: Gallimard N. R. F., 1975), p. 46.Google Scholar
4 One that we are trying to undertake. This essay is a résumé of a wider research, to be published later.Google Scholar
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9 Such was the case of Alphonse VI who, upon becoming king and victorious, married the Khalifs daughter.Google Scholar
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18 Massignon has shown the Muslim influence on the creation of such “guilds” in Western Europe. It is beyond the scope of this article to elaborate on this aspect.Google Scholar
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22 One of these, an Auvergnat monk called Gerbert, became Pope, taking the name of Sylvester II, between 999 and 1003.Google Scholar
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29 For example, the striking of Muslim maxims onto gold pieces and exhortations to abstain from the eating of pork.Google Scholar
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32 We should be reminded that one of these abbeys was an open window onto Muslim Spain.Google Scholar
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34 The fact that the names of the principal philosophers and learned Muslims passed into the West under latinised forms, not only proves that they were known there before the Renaissance, but also leads us to suppose that they had an influence on the clergy, by a process of cultural transmission.Google Scholar
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36 The Franciscans counted among their number St. Bonaventure, Robert Grossetête, Raymond Lull, Duns Scotius, and Bacon, by way of example.Google Scholar
37 With their successors. See Gorny, Léon, Croisés et Templiers (Paris: André Bonne, 1974).Google Scholar
38 See Eydoux, Henri-Paul, Saint-Louis et son temps (Paris: Larousse, 1971,) pp. 154 ff.Google Scholar
39 Guardini, Termps modernes, pp. 35 ff. He shows that both humanist criticism and experimental science drew from the same sources.Google Scholar
40 Tyan, Emile, Histoire de l'organisation judiciaire en pays d'Islam (2d ed.; Beirut, 1961,) pp. 23 ff.Google Scholar
41 We have even been able to read that it was not “a pure coincidence that the palace of Louis IX … became … the Palace of Justice” (in Paris). In Dunoyer, Jean-Marie, “La force de Saint-Louis,” Le Monde 18/19 October 1970.Google Scholar
42 Quoted by Klein, Charles, Saint-Louis, un roi aux pieds des pauvres, Paris: S. O. S., 1970,) pp. 60–61.Google Scholar
43 To enable this a gate was opened called “The Gate of Justice” or Bab El Adl, under which they came to sit for a weekly audience. It is not without interest to mention in this context that the popular contemporary press unconsciously rejected any notions of value for those Muslim traditions which were maintained, out of a necessary desire to draw an ethnocentric parallel. We can read, for example, concerning the audience given by the King of Saudi Arabia in the work by Michel Clerc, “Le roi Fayçal ne reverra pas Jerusalem,” Paris Match, no. 1349, April 1975: “It was St. Louis at the foot of the oak, seven centuries late” (“c'était, avec sept siècles de retard (sic), Saint-Louis au pied du chêne”!).Google Scholar
44 Taube, Baron, quoted by Hamidullah: Muslim Conduct, p. 64.Google Scholar
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46 Grousset, Epopdée, p. 79.Google Scholar
47 Declinchamps, Philippe Dupuy, La Chevalerie, “Que sais-je” (3d rev. ed.; Paris: P.U. F., 1973), p. 11.Google Scholar
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49 (After capture) “either liberation or ransom, until the war lays down its burden” (XLVII [Mohammed] 4).Google Scholar
50 Zananiri, Gaston, Eglise et Islam (Paris: Spes, 1969,) who demonstrates on pages 208–209 that “these monks wore habits of white wool and a cloak and scapular emblazoned with a red and blue cross”. The concordance of evidence is interesting even if we cannot extrapolate from this the influence that this might have had on the organisation created by Dunant seven centuries later.Google Scholar
51 See critical commentaries of a very incisive nature in Hassan, AbulNadawi, A., Islam and the World (2d ed.; Lahore: Ashraf, 1967,) pp. 118 ff.Google Scholar
52 Hamdullah: Muslim Conduct, pp. 67–68.Google Scholar
53 The Spaniard Michel Servet, for example, paid with his life in the Calvinist Geneva of the sixteenth century for his “discovery”, which was in fact nothing but a compilation or even simple translation of a thirteenth-century Arab work.Google Scholar
54 Did not Erasmus have to explain himself after having put the “holy” nature of war against Islam into doubt?Google Scholar
55 Abwab al-Siyarfi Ard el-Harb, trans. into English with the title: The Islamic Law of Nations Shaybani's Siyar by Khadduri, Majid (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1961).Google Scholar
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