The impact of the plague, the fall of Constantinople, and the translation from Arabic .. This is how the European elite was formed

Abdul Rahman Mazhar Al-Halloosh-Al-Qamishli

The European elite in the 14th century was still subject to the authority of the Church and was unable to move outside its knowledge system, but two important events contributed to its liberation from ecclesiastical authority, namely the shock of the plague epidemic in the 14th century, and the fall of Constantinople in the hands of the Ottomans in the mid-15th century . 

In his book "The Emergence of the European Elite 1400-1920" published by the Culture House for Publishing and Distribution, the Lebanese writer and thinker Walid Noueihed observes that moment that started in the 15th century, and grew upward after changing the old trade lines (the Silk Road) and crossing the ocean ships.

Noueihed traces the paths of the European elite through what the book called "embracing urbanism with knowledge", which led to the cracking of church authority in the 16th century and the emergence of instances of rebellion. 

The role of the elite by change.
In the introduction to the book, the author defines the elite as a segment that is formed from contradictory tributaries in its cultural composition and social origins, as it is usually a minority that is selected from indigenous groups (denominations, sects, classes, races, and religions). Harmonious in consciousness and thinking, acting as a mentor or influencing public opinion.

The author says to Al Jazeera Net that the elite does not only mean the intellectual, thinker or philosopher, but also includes a wide segment of doctors, engineers, inventors, discoverers, bureaucrats and that layer of employees in the state apparatus that has become a competing force for the church’s organs in the period of its rise and traditional slide.

Noueihed believes that since the second half of the fifteenth century, the continent witnessed an extraordinary turning point in the consciousness of the European elite, as in this transitional era a group of minds would have been created in the early 16th century.

It was at this point that Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452, Niccolo Machiavelli in 1469, Nicholas Copernicus in 1473, and Louis Figes in 1492. The author confirms that a segment of this elite worked to modernize astronomers in astronomy to facilitate the missions of ships and marine navigation. 

On the other hand, the Syrian researcher, lecturer at the French Institute for the Near East in Beirut, Hamdan Al-Oklah, told Al-Jazeera Net that the concept of elite means the superior thinker in his field, therefore this concept is limited to the philosophers and thinkers who founded the concept of modernity, and they led the European continent to the Renaissance in an integrated manner .

The dualism of the elite and the church
Noueihed sees that the Catholic Church united Europe until the end of the 15th century, until the Protestant movement came to bring about an ideological revolution that violated all of the above, which gave the elite an opportunity to present a rational reading beyond the vision of the Church, so the revolution was from and against the Church at the same time. 

The author says that the church was a serious obstacle to being the reference point for all questions posed to the general public, and confrontations were to be broken that broke those sanctuaries. Inventions, discoveries and encyclopedias came to help the parallel elite to provide alternative answers that began to impose their presence at a segment that began to increase in proportion with the days, so She succeeded in asserting her leadership role in making contemporary awareness.

Cultural friction
The author stresses that the readings regarding the role of Arab Islamic civilization in the revival of the European Renaissance ranged from an ignorant adopting the approach of complete exclusion, and he said with a limited and simple effect, and another recognized that there is a link between the rise of Europe and the role of Islam in the framework of Mediterranean civilizations. 

Noueihed indicates that the European majority at that time benefited from the Muslim conqueror in Andalusia, and based his modern civil progress on a set of inherited rules at the beginning of his contemporary start. After that, he began to give up the traditions of the knocker to re-establish his independent system after continuous decades of independent cumulative development. 

The author mentions the most important names that worked in the field of translation from Arabic to European, such as the physician Constantine the African (born in Carthage Tunisian in the 11th century), who translated books of medicine and philosophy because of his mastery of the Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and Ethiopian languages, and Constantine was interested in re-translating the available books of Hanin bin Ishaq, Ali bin Abbas Al-Majusi, Isaac the Israeli, and Ibn Al-Jazzar.

Making History
Noueihed confirms that translation and transfer from Arabic was a development during the reign of Frederick II, one of the emperors of the Romans (1212-1250), who was familiar with nine languages, including Arabic, and used the translator Jacob Anatoly to transfer the books of Ptolemy and Ibn Rushd. He also relied on the Scottish translator Michael Scott, who studied in Spain and transferred many Arabic literature from the Toledo Library (Toledo). 

Noueihed reviewed the most prominent names that contributed to transferring and translating Islamic sciences and Islamic philosophy from Arabic into Latin. Among them, the English philosopher Adelaar Al-Bathi (1070-1150) emerged as a major shift and raised the education of the King of England, Henry II. The Spanish philosopher Raymond Lull (1232-1316) who mastered Arabic and convinced the Pope of the necessity of establishing schools in Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew languages ​​also appeared. 

Noueihed shows that the influence of Islamic civilization on Europe is the result of three types of frictions, cultural and peaceful, and they were then represented by the Silk Road, violent, and specifically the Frankish Wars. However, cultural friction was the most important because of the translations or transmissions from Al-Khwarizmi, Al-Biruni, Ibn Al-Haytham and Al-Ghazali, as well as Al-Razi, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Al-Nafees, and books of money, abscess, and agriculture. These names were considered references to the European elite until they were later overlooked and neglected. 

As for the Syrian researcher Hamdan Al-Oklah, he has another opinion, as he considers that the Islamic civilization has influenced the emergence of the elite because of its religious structure and supported by moral foundations and intellectual principles in addition to the richness of the Arabic language as well.

The plague or the black death
, Noueihed says that the sweeping plague that swept the continent and the Mediterranean basin between (1348-1393 AD) led to a partial disruption of trade through the Silk Road, and contributed to the decline in production, undermining the pension, low population, expanding poverty, widespread famines, chaos, and fear of the afterlife ( The end of man and the universe), retreating to superstitions and seeking miracles to save themselves from worldly destruction. 

Noueihed explains that the plague had a positive role, when he urged the European elite to think and search for a cure to fight the disease. 

Noueihed considered that this stage constituted a great irony, as he entered the Islamic world in a state of inactivity and surrender to the disease. 

Noueihed added that the plague shock constituted a step in the interest of the European side, as steps would be followed by further progress in the knowledge and urban circles. The challenge encouraged the European elite to make efforts to develop medicine and laboratories and invent drugs to stop the epidemic from spreading. 

This scientific aspect of development prevented the Church from interfering because of its need for a medical discovery that would reduce the continent's panic and its extinction.

Noueihed explains that the plague pandemic was a disaster for Islamic civilization in the Levant and the Maghreb, including the countryside, cities, trade and agriculture, which was afflicted by dead, atrophied and drought, and the extinction of a segment of the elite in a period of time spanning half a century, and what happened in Europe is similar to those descriptions, but Europe She succeeded in controlling the pandemic and dealt with the repercussions of the epidemic, which gave her an opportunity to outpace the competitive force in the opposite bank of the Mediterranean, according to the author’s recent interview with Al Jazeera Net.

The era of rationality.
The author monitors the ship's role in the European renaissance. Henry Al-Fateh (1394-1460) supervised a plan to organize the discovery of water crossings in the Atlantic Ocean, benefiting from the development of shipbuilding in the commercial Mediterranean cities. 

Later, Noueihed explains, Vasco de Gama’s discovery of India’s path in 1498 came after important political, cognitive and geographical transformations. On the political side, Spain succeeded in ending the Islamic presence in Europe with the fall of the Principality of Granada in 1492. This is the year in which Christophe Columbus succeeded in penetrating the ocean. The Atlantic and reaching America without knowing that it has made the most important geographical achievement in contemporary human history.   

Noueihed believes that the declining role of the Church in European societies and the relatively weak prestige of the clergy (the priestly system) was the beginning of the era of the European elite with distinction in the 17th century, as the works and writings of Bacon, Galileo, Hobbes, and Descartes shined as well as Pascal, Spinoza, Newton, and Locke And Leibniz ... had it not been for them, Europe would not be the way we know it now.