Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History by Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, Donald R. Hill

Abstract

668 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE has many useful and clear line drawings and ample statistical infor­ mation to prove that their program certainly worked once, and, given the chance, might very well work again in the hands of peasants who must still extract food and some wealth from a reluctant earth. Edward Peters Dr. Peters teaches medieval history at the University of Pennsylvania. Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History. By Ahmad Y. al-Hassan and Donald R. Hill. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Pp. xiv + 304; illustrations, bibliography, index. $39.50. Ahmad al-Hassan and Donald R. Hill present a survey of mechan­ ical and civil engineering, military technology, navigation, chemical technology, textiles, agriculture, mining and metallurgy, and the role of engineers in Islamic society, with an introduction on Islamic science and an epilogue on “critical issues.” Islamic Technology is intended as a popular book, and, for this reason, footnotes are omitted. This is frustrating, especially when new material is presented and the source is not readily accessible; it also leads to the inclusion of a number of passages in quotation marks to which—inexcusably—no author is ascribed. The volume covers mainly the Middle Ages and, although no ter­ minal date is indicated, extends the study of some techniques into early modern times. The best sections are passages from Arabic texts, such as ibn Badis on papermaking, al-Jildaki on iron smelting, or ibn Hawqal on silver mining, and explications of the excellent technical illustrations, like those of al-Jazari’s machines. There is no continuity of argument, however, and so what might have been a pioneering statement on the role of technology in Islamic society is, in many chapters, little more than an inventory of resources (with the most important one, wood, omitted) and how they were processed. Some of the best recent monographs are not used: for example, R. Bulliet’s The Camel and the Wheel, which offers, besides its ingenious hypothesis on the substitution of the camel for wheeled vehicles, some observations on technological zonation in the Medi­ terranean that finely tunes the interdependence of Islamic and Eu­ ropean technology; D. Ayalon’s Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom·, the first volume, on economic foundations, of S. D. Goitein’s A Mediterranean Society; or M. Lombard’s great study of the wood trade. Still other reasonably well-studied episodes, such as the diffusion of new techniques by Moriscos fleeing Spain in the 16th and 17th cen­ turies, belie the constantly reiterated disclaimers that scholarship is as yet too thin to present a more comprehensive study. Ultimately, of course, the choice of what to include is the authors’ and much of value technology and culture Book Reviews 669 is covered. The chapters on mining and on the social role of engineers are particularly successful. Coverage aside, there are serious conceptual failures. The first is a contradictory view of traditional craft organization that has been so central to the technological enterprise in the Islamic world. The au­ thors cite a wonderful passage from Abu’l-Farraj (p. 13) to the effect that craft techniques are perfected by the process of transmission from artisan to artisan. This they characterize as evidence of a “real spirit of research and invention,” but Abu’l-Farraj’s observation might better be seen as a “folk model” that contrasts sharply with the modern view of traditional guild structure as conservative and an impediment to innovation. Assertions about a “state science policy” are unsubstan­ tiated. When discussing premodern societies one must at least define what the requirements for a “science policy” might be under tradi­ tional sociopolitical constraints. Then there are a whole slew of valuejudgments, all unsubstantiated, that really merit analytic treatment: that Islam was the driving force behind the great scientific advance of the early Islamic period; that Sarton’s insistence on an 11th-century decline has been an impedi­ ment to study of later periods; that Western historians of technology ignore the Islamic contribution or belittle it; that Islamic society once produced science and can again—with regional cooperation. Such statements overly simplify problems of great complexity. With regard to the early scientific surge, it could as well be...