Book Review: Islamic Civilisation - History and Treasures
Al Ahram Weekly (Gamal Nkrumah)
Islamic Civilisation: History and Treasures
Francesca Romana Romani
The author makes clear that Arabia was not always so iconoclastic. Arab culture was originally just as decadent as its polytheistic neighbours, even in its austere parched desert surroundings. Yet, traces of the pre-Islamic decadence remained, albeit subdued, and were transferred in hidden forms to other cultures that embraced Islam such as the Mesopotamian, Persian, Turkish and Indian versions of Islam."Bedouin society is unpolished and even wild, and its only art is constituted by the words of the poet," Romani postulates. "Muruwwa (manliness, courage and loyalty) formed the basis of the ethical code of the desert. It was the sense of honour which replaced faith and encapsulated ideals."
And, to distinguish the true Arab Islam from its simulacrums in the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, Anatolia, Andalusia, Persia and beyond, she pinpoints what differentiates the forbidding seat of passion of Arabian culture from its more flamboyant sister cultures that thrived in more bounteous surroundings. "The desert was, and still is, the reign of the nomad."
The true flowering of Islamic art took place elsewhere, first on the fringes of Arabia and then towards the periphery of the then known world. "The Arabian Peninsula was inhabited by nomadic and sedentary tribes that had a close symbiotic relationship" with the barren nature of the region, the author extrapolates.
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