الإسلام والغرب: نحو عالم أفضل

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Pathways to an Open World

developing in a more open, decentred area, of mixed identity, confused intention, oscillating economically between socialism and liberalism. When, in Glasgow, I was reading Hegel, Spengler and Toynbee (who, in the last pages of his Study of History takes the space outside the Pillars of Hercules between Morocco and Spain as metaphor for the whole postmodern context), I thought of myself as an ‘Atlanticist’. My geographical situation had obviously a lot to do with my use of this term, but there was also that historico-cultural reference, as well as an intellectual one, since I was aware of the name that had been given to the secret notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, in which he consigned his multiple researches : the Codice Atlantico . Before going a little farther into this Atlanticist area, a word as to its connection with the (Near) East, since it might seem to some that to speak of an Atlantic world would be to marginalize, if not totally exclude, the Arab countries. Far from it. One has only to think of the sea-movements of these countries, on which I’ve already insisted in this essay – sea- movements out into the Atlantic and, via the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, down into the Ocean of India. From the ninth century on there are dozens of logbooks and rutters (I have some of them in my Atlantic library here on the Breton coast) that speak of navigation in ‘the Sea of Darkness’ ( al-Bahr al- muzlim ), and ‘the surrounding Ocean’( al-Bahr al-muhit ). Here’s an extract from one of them (Ibn Rurstih’s book) : ‘The Uqiyânûs sea is the sea of the Maghreb, the green sea. It goes from Abyssinia ( ard al-Habsa ) up to Brittany ( Bartiniya ) . ’ One can find traces of this Arab atlanticity in the visionary tales I’ve referred to : ‘At the edge of the farthest West, there is a great open sea’; ‘Beyond the Darkness lies a vast space flooded with light.’ To this I’d add that, as a Scot, I don’t forget Syrian influence on the early Celtic monasteries. Having made that clear, and, making it, already, further clear that, whether from Mediterranean, Atlantic, Indian Ocean or Pacific, we are all

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