@ @ Civilization or Political: The Reality of the Present Tension between the Muslim World and the West
moved to the court of Alfonso the Wise in Seville. The last famous Spanish translator was Arnald of Villanova (d. 1312), who specialized in Ibn Sina and Galen. Later, interest in Arab-Islamic culture spread into religion and theology, led by the Dominican and Franciscan orders, with the intention being either apologetic or missionary. 17 The impact of this massive cultural movement on the literary, artistic and scientific revival in Latin Europe during the Renaissance is still a matter of debate. We, for example, know little about what this movement meant for the development of European political and philosophical thought. In his monumental study on the origins of modern European political thought, Quentin Skinner made no attempt to trace the Arab-Islamic influence on the republican cultural milieu of northern Italy during the late middle ages and the renaissance. 18 Similarly, historians of Islam know even less about the relationship between the socio-cultural setting of Muslim Spain and the unique achievements of Ibn Hazm, al-Shatibi and Ibn Rushd, mainly because the Islamic intellectual legacy is still understood in isolation of its social context. What we know, however, is that the intensity of the cultural contacts between centers of Islamic civilization and Latin Europe, which imply mutual recognition and familiarity, had no impact on the intensity of the confrontation between the Muslims and Christians of Spain, unleashed by the re-conquest. The re-conquest, which by the beginning of the twelfth century passed the point of no return, was raging in parallel to the great cultural contact between the two sides. Modernization and Change in the Nineteenth Century Pre-modern Islamic society was structured on what we describe as the “traditional” social formations: the extended family, tribe, artisans and merchants association, soldiers and ‘ulama . This society was simultaneously
17 For more details, see ibid, 853-89. 18 Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 2 vols.
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