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The Russians, while they were in the countries of snow and frost hidden in the north of the globe, were never far from Islam and the Islamic peoples adjacent to them in Central Asia, the Caucasus, Anatolia and the countries of Eastern Europe. Rather, the Russian-Islamic relations, whether Arab or not, are back To distant times, more than a thousand years, and since the tenth century AD, the Russians converted to Orthodox Christianity, and they became affiliated with the Eastern Church in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantines or “Istanbul.” This new alliance resulted in a kind of common hostility and hatred for Islam. In view of the wars that did not subside between Muslims since the era of the Prophet, the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, the Umayyads, then the Abbasids and their successors on one side, and between the Byzantines in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe on the other.
Relations between the two teams continued in this way, until the Russian Empire expanded from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries AD, and was able to gain its hand over the Muslim Tatar regions in the northern Caspian Sea, and then entered into bitter conflicts with the neighboring Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And the nineteenth AD, in which the Ottomans lost large areas in the Caucasus to the Russians, and when the First World War (1914-1918 AD), and before the Bolshevik Revolution took place in Russia to convert it to communism in 1917 AD, the Russians, the Czars, had taken the side of the Christian countries that were fighting The Ottomans, like Greece, Montenegro and Armenia, helped them with all their might[1].
When the Ottomans were defeated in that war, the Russians rushed to seize the countries of Central Asia, the Crimea, and the Black Sea coasts, and to confirm their control over the Caucasus. To compete with his European and American counterparts since the beginning of modern times, and to bring out to us this field a group of giants of Russian orientalists who, despite the Russian hostility and occupation of vast areas of the Islamic world, took a sober scientific path that proved the error of the European supremacist view of the history and anthropology of the Arab and Islamic worlds.
At the head of these was the great orientalist Vasily Vladimir Barthold, the man who left nearly four hundred books and studies on the history of peoples, ideas, Islamic civilization and the Islamic world in different periods of Islamic history, and had a fair role in exposing the dust of lies and European allegations that lasted for decades. .
Who is Barthold?
What distinguished him in the study of Islamic history?
How do I do justice to Islamic civilization compared to the Orientalists, historians and Western politicians of his time?
Vasily Vladimir Bartol (networking sites)
Vasily Vladimir Barthold was born in the city of St. Petersburg in the far west of Russia in the year 1869 AD to a family whose origins go back to the Germans who settled in Russia, and his family was very rich and wealthy that helped him in his studies and travels, and he was fascinated by the study of languages and the history of eastern peoples, so he graduated from the Faculty of Oriental Languages at the University of Petersburg in 1891 AD, then decided after graduation to travel to hear the great orientalists of his time, so he headed towards Germany, and was able to hear the lectures of the masters of this type of studies such as August Muller and Noldeke and others, then decided to travel to some Central Asian countries such as Turkestan to stand for himself on the history of these People see it with their own eyes[2].
Barthold returned to Russia and decided to complete his postgraduate studies at the University of Petersburg. He devoted himself to studying for a master's degree in medieval Islamic history. He chose "The History of Turkestan" as a topic for his research. The committee that was appointed to discuss it was very impressed with his research, and decided to grant him the highest degree in Russia's universities instead of a master's, and in 1892 A.D., he received the title of a lecturer, and joined the academic corps at the University of Petersburg and from there to the highest ranks. A member of the Soviet Academic Complex to have a major role in issuing a scientific journal specialized in the study of Islam, the magazine "The World of Islam", of which he became editor-in-chief[3].
In 1894, Barthold began publishing his articles on Islam, such as "Contemporary Islam and Its Missions", and "Islamic Science in Mecca", which he published the following year, and six years later, he devoted himself to studying Islamic sources in history and thought, without being restricted to clichés. Or the rigid rulings that were widespread among European orientalists at the time about Islam and the Arabs and the hot atmosphere that affected the backwardness of these peoples. Barthold published his study “Theocratic Ideas and Urban Authority in the Islamic State.”
Barthold revealed that Cromer was very intolerant towards Islam and eastern peoples, and that he did not want to address the factors that contributed to the spread of Arab civilization and culture
In this study, Barthold addressed the intellectual and ideological structure of the concept of authority in Islam from the era of the Rashidun Caliphate until the moments of Ottoman weakness that he was contemporaneous with at the end of the nineteenth century. Soon, Orientalists and European researchers of all nationalities took up this study to translate it into their German, English, French, and even Turkish languages. Barthold's talent emerged as a scholar of Islamic culture and civilization, and then he began publishing his articles on the peoples of Central Asia and their history under Islam, and studies and articles were no less sober and knowledgeable than their predecessors[4].
In these articles and studies, Barthold has well established a solid scientific base for the study of this field, represented in the need to criticize the "centrism of the European mind", and to refute the wrong patterns and results that have been addressed over centuries among Western students of Islamic sciences, and about the eastern mind, and the lifestyle of the eastern mind in general. He was the greatest historian and orientalist to criticize what came in Lord Cromer's book, "The History of Prevailing Ideas in Islam" [5];
That British politician who had always exaggerated his hostility to Islam and its heritage, and was the High Commissioner of the English and the absolute ruler of Egypt for a full quarter of a century.
He proved that with the expansion of the Arabs and the prosperity of their trade, they invented many scientific theories in chemistry, algebra, nautical science and others.
Barthold revealed that Cromer was very intolerant towards Islam and the eastern peoples, and that he did not want to address the historical, social and economic factors that contributed to the spread of Arab civilization and culture, and their great role among the peoples who entered Islam, as well as the scientific reasons that led to the stagnation and delay of this civilization. Indeed, Barthold expanded on the criticism of other European orientalists who wrote about Islam in an unfair and fanatical manner, such as the French father Lamens, who tried through his focus on the geographical factor and climatic changes to prove some racist ideas, such as those that say the inactivity of the eastern Islamic mind, and his love and attachment to traditions and ideas Inherited since ancient times, and the inability of people living in the hot desert climate to create and innovate[6].
Barthold proved the lie and claim of this fanatical French priest, as he proved that with the expansion of the Arabs and the prosperity of their trade, they invented many scientific theories in chemistry, algebra, nautical science and others, and that their traversal of seas and deserts made them master the knowledge of astronomical geography, so they invented the first observatories in the world, in Samarkand, Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo[7], and Barthold saw that the Western methodology in dealing with Western history and civilization is a very wrong one; Because it does not take into account the scientific method based on reading the original sources correctly. Rather, it is based on rigid patterns and conclusions drawn up by the ancient fathers of Orientalism, and for decades it has been a subject of sanctification and inevitable axioms!
After 1916, Barthold set out to write simplified pamphlets with a sound scientific methodology on Islam and Arab civilization. He issued his first booklet "Islam", which is located in 60 pages, followed by his book "Islamic Civilization" and then the book "The World of Islam", which are books that are still among the most important evidence of fairness In the field of orientalist studies of Islam, its peoples and culture, even if it was marred by some shortcomings or errors [8], but compared to what was being produced in the West at the time, it was considered one of the best and most important, and it is still of great importance a hundred years after its issuance!
In his book "Islamic Civilization", Barthold followed his new scientific approach, which revolutionized the field of Western Orientalism in its handling of Islamic history, which is not to neglect the social and economic factors and the historical development of Islamic civilization, with the need to rely on original sources, and not on static opinions that do not present the truth. Rather, lies and deception.
The book "History of Islamic Civilization" by "Vassily Barthold" (communication sites)
Western orientalists used to say that the Arabs forced non-Arabs to convert to Islam and learn Arabic during and after the conquests in Asia and North Africa, and Barthold refutes this lie in his book “History of Islamic Civilization,” because of what these peoples saw of the spiritual and linguistic development of the Arabs, and because of the Qur’an. The house is in the Arabic language, and that the Arabic language was a developed language at the time, and the non-Arab peoples looked at it from this perspective, and there is no evidence for that from the entry of the Mongols into Islam and they were the ones who defeated the Muslims militarily, but they soon condemned this advanced civilization.
Barthold began speaking about the scientific renaissance in the Abbasid era, and acknowledged it, and affirmed that Basra, Harran and Baghdad were the most important centers of science and civilization, and Baghdad attracted scholars from all parts of the Islamic world, especially from Central Asia. The origin of Balkhi, and Abu Zayd is one of his famous students from Balkh also, and the famous mathematician Abu Musa al-Khwarizmi also lived in Baghdad, and he is from the countries of Central Asia, and the philosopher Abu Nasr al-Farabi Turki al-Irq, who received his education in Baghdad, and died in Damascus] 9].
And as Barthold acknowledges the scientific progress of Muslims and gives multiple examples of it, he acknowledges their progress in administration, war and politics, saying: “The progress of Muslims in civilization began in state systems as it began in managing war and times of peace, and the philosophers were acquainted with the political theories of Plato and Aristotle, and Al-Farabi classified among them. A book on politics” [10].
Encyclopedia of works by Vasily Barthold in Russian (communication sites)
Barthold also denies Islamic civilization the badness of slavery in its abhorrent meaning, and differentiates it from the slavery of the West, deciding that "slavery related to the land (the serf) may not exist in one of the Islamic kingdoms, because no one prevented farmers from leaving their lands, just as the owners of the lands were They can take their lands from farms to rent to another farmer who pays more, but the system of feudalism as a reward or gift has increased in the Islamic countries and spread a lot, but it was not cut down and those who lived on it as it was in Europe in the Middle Ages, and in Russia in the ninth century ten, rather it is cut off by itself” [11].
As for what Barthold added to his book “Islamic Civilization” above his fairness, and his patience in contemplating the phases of this civilization, he dealt with the role of the Turkish and Persian race in the development of this civilization. Orientalists in his time used to address the role of the Arabs and the North African peoples of the Berbers and others without much interest in the Turkish element. And the Persian in the course of this civilization and its development in the fields of culture, thought and war[12].
In the year 1931 AD, the great orientalist Barthold died at the age of sixty-one after a scientific biography full of studying Islam, its history and its peoples, a biography that was characterized by huge scientific production, and the rare and feat of fairness to Islamic civilization among the orientalists of his time, with a conscious criticism of the myths and lies of Western Orientalism, as well as About his discreet studies of aspects that remained obscure in this history, especially on the history of Turkestan and the peoples of Central Asia, and his studies and works are still of great importance and prestige nearly a century after his death!