Note #1 A History of Muslim Philosopy with Short Accounts of Other Disciplines and the Modern Renniasance in Muslim Lands, Volume I

A History of Muslim Philosopy with Short Accounts of Other Disciplines and the Modern Renniasance in Muslim Lands, Volume I
Edited and Introduced by M.M. Sharif
1963, Otto Harrassowitz - Wiesbaden

Introductory Chapter Notes

• Three Caliphates broke into petty States or sundry dynasties—was exactly the period when the Muslim intellect reached its full flowering. It was during this period of political and moral decline that flourished such illustrious philosophers as al-Farabi, ibn Sina, Miskawaih, ibn Hazm, al-Qhazali, ibn Bajjah, ibn Tufail, ibn Rushd, and Fakhr al-Din Razi; the famous mystic Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi; great political philosophers like al-Mawardi and Nizam al-Mulk Tusi; renowned scientists and mathematicians like al-Majriti, ibn Yunus, ibn Haitham, ibn al-Naf is, al-Blriini, al-Bakri, al-Zarqali, 'Umar Efeay-yam, ibn Zuhr, and al-Idrisi; and such celebrated literary figures as al-Tabari, al-Mas'tidi, al-Mutanabbi, Firdausi, Baqillani, Sana'i, al-Ma'arri, Nasir Khusrau, al-Zamakhshari, Kashani, Nizami, 'Attar, and ibn al-Athir.
• In the Introduction to the History of Philosophy, Eastern and Western, it is complained that histories written since the beginning of the thirteenth/nineteenth century suffer from the defect that they ignore all developments in philosophy before the time of the Greeks the Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, and Babylonian civilizations, each of which had passed through several stages of development, in the briefest possible prelude (in some cases covering not even a page) to the Graeco-Roman period designated as "ancient."
• Toynbee justly describes this conception of history as an egocentric illusion, and his view is shared by all recent philosophers of history.