THE HISTORY OF ISLAMIC CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION
Year:2013 | Volume:3 | Issue:9|Papers Count:6

Human story passes through the civilizations. path and civilizations have had the most widespread role in making human identity through history. Nowadays, civilization has turned to the historical document of the nations. Culture and its particular significance is inevitable. Islam was able to found a significant civilization quickly after its establishment and to indebt other civilizations including the western civilization. Using a documentary method and an analytico-descriptive approach, this paper attempts to express what definition, feature, and state does the Islamic civilization have and what is Imam Khomeini' s definition and viewpoint about this civilization. Secondary research questions of the paper include: -What is civilization and what definitions of civilization have been given.- What may be counted as publicly known characteristics of civilization.- Which methods and approaches may be taken for civilization to be recognized.As is understood by the paper, considering the material and spiritual dimensions of civilizations, criticizing western civilization and emphasizing its being of only one aspect of materiality, Imam Khomeini has known Islamic civilization to be the most comprehensive one with a spirit full of faith to God and flowing into all of its foundations. On the other hand, Imam also emphasizes on the spiritual dimension and humane aspect of Islamic civilization as the most important element of this civilization.

Although the Quran is not a historical book, it has presented some reports from the events of the prophetic era. These reports in the era of the last prophet (p.b.u.h) were subject to criticism and evaluation of the Quran opponents. Therefore, if there were any defects latent in the historical reports of the Quran, or if there were any false report included in these reports, it would naturally be criticized by them. During the next periods, the historians embarked on writing the history of the prophetic age and used the Quran along with other resources. Now, the question poses itself as: May one consider the reports of the narrators from the events to be in conflict with the appearance of the Quranic reports or not? As is known by the paper, some conflicts between the reports of the resources and those of the Quran could be observed; with analyzing eleven cases, the conflict has been confirmed in most of them. For ease of the analysis of the subject domain, the reports have been limited to two battles (Badr and Uhud) and in comparison with the Quran, only three historical resources were used. In order to achieve the results of the study, the methods of the Shiite Imams toward the Quran during the history as well as "analytic-descriptive" and "comparative" methods were applied.

Regarding the topics of culture and civilization of the Muslim nations, the role of the pre-Islamic civilizations in formation of the Muslims' civilization or the effective scientific centers in transferring the scientific heritage of the past to the Islamic world have often been discussed. Iranian, Greek, Indian, and Egyptian civilizations are the most important of these civilizations. To mention Iran scientific centers at the end of the Sassanid period, one could point out to Jondishapoor or Khorasan especially Nishaboor and Marv, Shahjan and some scientists emerged from these regions or from those immigrated to these places. The present study attends to the role of the Tabarestan scientists and its culturo-scientific environment in transferring knowledge from Sassanid period into Islamic civilization. It seems that Tabarestan was an active center in academic affairs during the early A.H.centuries in some fields such as medicine, astronomy, mathematic, and even Persian literature. Using various resources, reports, and historical documents, the present paper mentions some of the scientists of this area and then it will give an analysis of their scientific growth. Then, referring to their scientific effective evidences on the new scientific environment of Islam world, this paper attempts to investigate the role of Tabarestan in transferring knowledge from Sassanid period to the Islamic period.

In historical research codification, biography and personality of good characters in history is investigated but conducting research of bad characters is done less though the latter have always had pivotal roles in different affairs during the history and this demands a necessary analysis.The present paper attempts to analyze the Amr ibn al-As. function in the history of Islam and also, according to main resources and implementation of the data, Amr ibn al-As. role in different affairs as well as the hidden and clear scenes of the Islam history will be investigated. Amr ibn al-As was one of the Arab cheaters and deceivers of Quraysh tribe who had played different roles in various events based on his own cryptic and clever character. He chose his political orientations just based on his personal interests and without considering ethical, religious, and humane criteria, he applied deception, trick, lie, hiding the truth, accusation, and oppression to reach his own aims. For this reason, a considerable part of the events of the Islam history has been formed based on his evil character.

The Umayyad manner of coming to power is one of the important and fundamental issues in Islam history. From the beginning of the acceptance of Islam after which about two decades the dispute was began with Islam, they aimed at regaining their previous leadership in any way, but the new criteria entering to the field of thought of the Arab Muslim and also emergence of the values impeded the fulfillment of this wish for a while. Formation of Saqifah event after the decease of the prophet (p.b.u.h) which led to the presence of some Umayyad elements in the government gradually turned to the underlying power for them. The second caliph made Umayyad more serious in gaining power by nurturing the spirit of ambition in Mu’awiya who has given him the ruling of Damascus government.With the rise of Osman who was himself from Umayyad, they had both the key to Beit al-Mal and the sword of Sultan and they strengthened themselves in any respect. They started to oppose Imam Ali’s caliphate and developed different problems for him and finally by compelling Imam Hassan to make peace, their old wish came true and they got the ruling of the Islam world. Therefore, caliphate was transferred from the house of Prophecy to the house of Umayyad. This paper aims at analyzing these areas.The main hypothesis of the research about evaluation of the Umayyad access to power is Saqifah event, the long-term presence of Mu’awiya in Damascus and weak-minded Iraqis.

Ministry has been one of the most important positions during the history of Iran governance that is emulated from ministry position of the Sassanid government during Islamic period, but there can be found a difference in the field, in Islamic period along with the added Islamic rules and practices, it took a position and features appropriate to Islamic governance. The ministry position has been analyzed by various writers through political and religious perspectives. According to two sets of texts including Seyrulmuluk and Shari. atnamah, this study attends to analyzing the ministry position and also attempts to investigate how the political and cultural origins of the authors of the mentioned texts have been effective in interpretation of the ministry position. This study indicates that the political and religious origin of the authors has caused the fact that ministry position could be interpreted through two perspectives of empiricism and idealism.