The History of Arab Civilization (French: La Civilization des Arabes) is a book by the French philosopher, traveler, archaeologist, physician and social psychologist Gustave Le Bon. The book, first published in 1884, paints a historical and cultural picture of the Islamic civilization of the Arabs and shows its influence on other cultures and civilizations of the world.
In 1882-1884 Lebon traveled to North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), the Middle East (Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Iraq), visited Central Asia and Iran, studying the culture and customs of these countries and regions. Based on the impressions of these travels, Le Bon published in 1884 a "History of Civilization" of 705 printed pages (original, first edition), richly illustrated with photographs and engravings of various cultural monuments from many regions of the Islamic East. In the book, he carefully analyzed the origins, formation and flowering of culture, religion and related social institutions, astronomy and mathematics, medicine, technology, science, geographical knowledge, trade relations, art and architecture of the Arab civilization. In the book, Le Bon calls the Islamized territory from Africa to India - "Arab civilization", based on all of the above characteristics inherent in independent and self-sufficient civilizations.
The Arabs spread their religion, customs and social institutions, architecture, language and sciences - in general culture - to all the earlier civilizations of the East, such as Egypt, Byzantium, Persia, India and even partly China, subordinating even the conquerors of the East who came from outside to their cultural influence. - Mongols of Genghis Khan. Le Bon calls the Arabs the only example in the history of mankind when the influence of the culture of one people on others had such tremendous power both in depth, in terms of the number of cultural elements adopted, and in breadth in a geographical sense. Before the Arabs, so many different previously mature and self-sufficient civilizations were not influenced by the culture of one people on such a scale.
One of the central theses of Le Bon in this book is that it was the Arabs who were the teachers of European science, philosophy and, in general, civilizational progress, which, almost exclusively with the help of Arab civilization, brought semi-barbaric medieval Europe into the cultural centuries of the Renaissance and further to our times. It is to the Arabs that today's Europe owes its flourishing. As Le Bon writes, unlike other peoples and civilizations, on which the Arabs influenced the entire spectrum of their culture, the Arabs influenced Europe mainly by their intellectual achievements - in the exact sciences, history and philosophy.
In the 10th century, according to Le Bon, during the heyday of Arab civilization, European knights, sitting in their castles, boasted that they could not write and read. And only the most enlightened people of Europe at that time were a few poor and hungry monks in monasteries, all of whose enlightenment consisted in rewriting theological holy texts in Latin.
At that time, Arab scientists possessed advanced knowledge in the world in chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, medicine and philosophy, since they, firstly, collected knowledge from all parts of the Islamic East, from India and China to Egypt, and, secondly, actively this knowledge was developed further.
The Arabs influenced Europeans in the early Middle Ages through Spain, Sardinia, Sicily and southern Italy, which the Arabs owned in the early Middle Ages, and somewhat later through the trade ties of the "Arab civilization" with Venice and Genoa. One example of the influence of Arab science on the then barbarian Europe is the Arabic numerals in today's European and world science, which were adopted from the Arabs along with the rest of the knowledge in the general stream of intellectual transit. Somewhat later, the official church got involved in practical and philosophical knowledge: in 1130, Archbishop Raymond organized a collegium in the Arab Toledo in Spain for a large-scale translation of Arabic works into Latin, as a result of which Arabic knowledge systematically flowed to Europe.
Although the first university was founded by the Europeans themselves in Byzantium, Arabs also taught at some universities, and they studied translations from Arabic: works on philosophy, medicine, astronomy, algebra and other great Arab thinkers Avicenna, Averroes, al-Farabi, al-Biruni and others. Largely thanks to the Arabs too (as well as the Byzantines and Assyrians), the Europeans were able to get acquainted with the Arabic translations of ancient Greek and Roman authors, on whose ideals the European Renaissance later gained strength. The Arabs gave the Europeans Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Euclid, Ptolemy and many others. Many of the works of ancient authors have survived only in Arabic translations, having perished as a result of the fall of the Roman Empire and the subsequent abyss of time for many centuries. The Arab philosopher Averroes, writes Le Bon, was taught from the beginning of the 13th century in European universities as the highest authority. At the end of the 15th century, at the personal instruction of the French king Louis XI, Averroes and Aristotle were taught as the highest authorities of philosophy in France. Even Dante, in his "Divine Comedy" of 1320, mentions both Avicenna and Averroes, thereby testifying to the influence of the Arabs on the thought and culture of Europe at that time.