OpenTube

Why Did Islamic Civilisation Decline So Drastically?

Hikma History

89,840 views

💵 https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/hikma...
💵 https://www.patreon.com/user?u=12397811

Al-Muqaddimah poster in the background: almuqaddimah.com

In the year 1000 AD, if you were born anywhere in the Islamic world, you were born into the most intellectually sophisticated, economically dynamic and militarily formidable civilisation on earth. But if you contrast it with today, 1000 years later, it’s a whole other story. Muslim countries nowadays are significantly more likely to have poorer infrastructure, more conflict and less education. How could a civilization that was the epitome of progress fall so far? This question has been pondered by Muslim intellectuals for over a century but the inquiry is almost always too narrow in scope. So today I’m going to attempt to answer this very ambitious question by highlighting 5 key multifaceted factors.

FREE NEWSLETTER:
https://mailchi.mp/a69f93be6c66/hikma...

Become a Patron for as little as a dollar a month to vote on upcoming and keep the movement going!
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=12397811

Massive thank you to our Patreons:
Elman
TheBactrianGambler
Preston P
Adam
Mohammad
Areeb
Awais
Omar
Farid
Ibrahim
Ari
Joshua
Haseeb
Nahid
Amir
Mahmoud
Joel
CoreBard

Join our social media community:
Twitter:
Twitter: HikmaHistory

Instagram:
Instagram: hikmahistory

Facebook:
Facebook: HikmaHistory

Facebook group:
Facebook: hikma..

#colonialism #imperialism #islamichistory

Images Used:

Music Used:

Doug Maxwell - Arabian Nightfall (Sting):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bRzD...

If any of the images or songs are yours, please let me know I will amend them. Please don't report me straight away!

0:00 Intro
1:08 Columbus Ruins Everything
3:02 Printing Press
6:08 Military & Industrial Gap
8:13 Muslims Stop Progressing
10:15 Imperialism

20 Comments

@HikmaHistory Creator 7 days ago Pinned

What do you think is the biggest reason why the Islamic world decline so much?
FULL COMMENTARY PLAYLIST: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCGUEbiuBHCI&si=47h1beeg0xapksLD

@erloriel 6 days ago

Regarding point 1, it is interesting to note that the Islamic world held and still holds a massively lucrative industry in form of a major portion of the world's oil and gas production, but mostly squanders this wealth on regime stability and lifestyle projects. The money for reforms is there, but the political and institutional will isn't.

@Mzah14 7 days ago

A bit more on the Military and Industrial Gap - One of the reasons is that modern logistics systems require a lot of upfront capital investment unlike the past when things were done by artisans , So does industry which are both linked.
The European countries were able to build larger navies and armies using a financial innovation which we now call Sovereign debt and Bonds, This allowed the British, the Dutch to punch well above their weight in capital projects leading to more industry.
On top of it, The countries had the right institutions, social cohesion and stability to give confidence to the people lending money that they would be paid back and as such the cost of this debt was lower for lets say the British and French than it was the Ottomans who had to pay extremely high interest.
I think more needs to be studied on the role of Finances and Capital in the decline of Islamic Civilization and the rise of European powers.
We see this even today a country like Egypt is considered so unreliable that their bond yields are extremely high. While a country like Malaysia or Saudi Arabia is able to borrow far more cheaply as there is a lot more confidence in the institutions there.

@Pan_Z 4 days ago

There's a universal moral here: never take the fruits of civilisation for granted. Decline can happen for a multitude of reasons. Currently the West is slowly realising they're not the apex of the world anymore.

@andrewlim9345 6 days ago

I see parallels between the decline of the Muslim world during the early modern period, and China's Century of Humiliation. In both cases, there was a civilization failure to modernise, integrate new ideas and technology and a sense of cultural and intellectual complacency. No civilization is immune to this. All go through cycles of birth, decline and rebirth.

@ferozehasan1376 7 days ago

I really like the direction this channel is heading. We need more people asking the tough questions about our ummah.

@dirtiestharry6551 7 days ago (edited)

3:08 both the printing press and movable metal type press were invented in East Asia first. But it didn't give much of boost in speed of books being published, as their letters are logographic and not phonetic. Perhaps Koreans and Japanese could have moved away from using only chinese letters to print the books, and it could have lead to mass production of books but the classical Chinese was the letters of scholars at the time just like how Latin was used by educated in the Europe. So they refused to change and they viewed their own phonetic alphabet system that were more suitable for movable metal types as being lesser. They both called their own letters "letters of the women" at the time. Implying it's not worthy of man.

@Drbob369 5 days ago

I asked Islamic college students this. They said that people stopped following Muhammad. Not a very deep reason however obvious.

@ByzantineTomcat 7 days ago

So the list of problems was as follows:

1. The economic system they built themselves around, the Silk Road, collapsed near instantly.

2. New technologies like the printing press were actively opposed, which lead to technological, military, & intellectual stagnation.

3. The education system actively regressed, contributing even more to technological, military, & intellectual stagnation.

4. Government administration failed to modernize, leading to inefficiency & bloat

5. All this made it possible for them to be easily colonized by Europeans, which made recovery from these much harder & heavily delayed.

@adamesd3699 6 days ago (edited)

Good overview. It explains how the Islamic World fell behind. Now, what is keeping it behind? That is a very controversial topic.

@yahyaaltaf3267 6 days ago

Really well put

@blanchjoe1481 6 days ago

Dear HIKAMA HISTORY,
Thank you for another well presented piece. Another aspect to this "decline" was the 9th to 12th century process of rejection of speculative or rational theology towards the prioritization of "wrote memorization" and blind adherence to precedent, and the eventual avocation of a conservative and strict scriptural literalism that has grown and increased to this day.

@Scotty-p2y 7 days ago

Love your content

@p4rasit3 7 days ago

Mughals were somewhat islamic (depending on the ruler) but considering India Islamic???.....

@smark667 7 days ago

Thanks, I like this channel because it covers histories from parts of the world that aren't taught in English. History is cyclical, like tides. Good luck be happy :)

@kname1882 6 days ago

fantastic video

@adropintheocean9421 2 days ago (edited)

Stars were aligned for the Islamic golden age. It had Greek philosophy, Roman architecture, Chinese technology (papermaking, compass, gunpowder etc.), Indian mathmatics and lots of Persian contribution. However, golden ages usually didn't last long as stagnation was the norm for most premodern civilizations. Western Europe being able to keep innovating was the rare exception (Perhaps stars aligned for that as well).

@Ushmadand 7 days ago

Good analysis

@Gaasmrh 7 days ago

اولاً ما يصير ابداً انك تقارن عهد و جيل قبل ١٠٠٠ سنة ب الجيل الحالي . الوضع يختلف في جميع الاصعدة و المجالات وهو طبيعي جدا . لاكن للمعلومية سبب كبير جدا لتخلف دولنا العربية هو المنظومة التعليمية الفاشلة جداً و الديكتاتوريات اللي عندنا .