There are tens of thousands of extant Islamic scientific treatises currently located in research repositories throughout the world, many of them teaching textbooks. The standard approach to the pedagogy of science in premodern Islam tends to promote its history as one of discrete episodes and dependent in the main on courtly patronage or individual initiatives, i.e., outside the core institutional structures of Islamic society. Unfortunately, this view also tends to reinforce Eurocentric claims that there was no set curriculum in contrast to what one finds with the rise of the university in the Latin West. Downplayed are the questions of where Islamic scholars and students materialized from, and how such an alleged marginal enterprise was sustained, indeed thrived, for over a millennium. It is my contention that courtly patronage and individual initiatives can take us only so far in explaining this long-lived scientific tradition. This paper will discuss and challenge many of the prevailing assumptions about an Islamic scientific education, such as “an education was judged not on loci but on personae”, and that Islamic religious institutions, especially the madrasas, played a limited role. My focus will be on two extremely popular introductory scientific textbooks composed by Maḥmūd al-Jaghmīnī in the late 12th/early-13th centuries under the auspices of the Khwārizm Shāhs in Central Asia, a period often considered as one of scientific stagnation. The first is Jaghmīnī’s al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʾa al-basīṭa, an elementary work on Ptolemaic astronomy, which was studied and used as a propaedeutic for more advanced teaching texts well into the 19th century. Among other things, its extensive commentary tradition shows that even after “European science” came on the scene, Islamic scholars were attempting to seek approaches that could accommodate the older Islamic scientific traditions along with new (jadīd) scientific developments. The second work I will discuss is Jaghmīnī’s equally popular medical textbook al-Qānūnča, “the little Qānūn,” an abridgment of Ibn Sīnā’s al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb, which was said to have been used in schools of medicine, and that “students were as familiar with it as with the midday sun.” In highlighting the influence of Jaghmīnī’s two scientific treatises and their ensuing commentaries, I hope to provide strong evidence of a continuity of institutionalized scientific learning within Islamic lands; and also strongly suggest that the underlying demand for scientific works did not rest solely with individual initiatives but resulted from the society’s need to promote a scientific education.

Drawing from Mary Louise Pratt’s encounter model of cultural history and transculturation (1992) and the Foucauldian notion of knowledge systems as “technologies of power” (Foucault 1995), this paper examines Abbasid period (750-1258 CE) Arab astronomical texts as contact zones through which new astronomical expertise fragmented and redefined multivalent indigenous Arab astronomical traditions that once figured prominently in the daily lives of herdsmen, farmers and fishermen, and indeed much of society (Varisco 2000). Pratt (1992) has introduced the term “contact zone” to “refer to the space of colonial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict.” Like modern colonial encounters, Abbasid period encounters often took place through written contact zones, especially concerning the translation of foreign sciences. These acts of translation did not result in the mere passive reception of Greek, Indian and Persian astronomies within the corpus of Arab astronomy, but rather the adaptation and transformation of this knowledge consistent with the process of transculturation (Burke 1997). As a case study of framing astronomies as contact zones and astronomical knowledge as a technology of power, my research comparatively analyzes the historiography of Arab astronomy by some of its Abbasid historians--Quṭrub (d. 821 CE), Ibn Qutayba (d. 889) and al-Ṣūfī (d. 986), among others--and frames these histories as contact zones within which their authors encountered indigenous Arab “celestial complexes,” a term that I am using to designate a grouping of stars that share a certain kind of cultural significance. From the skeletal descriptions of Quṭrub when the lunar stations were not yet fully incorporated, to the vivid, living descriptions of Ibn Qutayba that centered upon the lunar stations, to the reorganization of Arab astronomical culture according to the Greek interpretation of the sky under al-Ṣūfī, each work represents a significant shift in the authors’ understanding of Arab astronomy. Despite the great variety in the writing styles and backgrounds of the authors, a common trend is clear: the transculturation of foreign ideas about the sky that ultimately dismembered the Arab celestial complexes.

In the aftermath of World War II, philanthropic bodies, transnational organizations, and the US government embarked on numerous modernization and development projects around the globe. This period also witnessed the restructuring of the scientific institutions of many countries under the influence of not only the US, but organizations such as UNESCO and OECD. Many scholars argue that while the US was not their sole initiator, such projects produced “Americanized” institutions of science, especially in Europe. In this paper I explore how these currents impacted Turkey, analyze the extent to which American models influenced institutional change in this country, and argue that the “Americanization” narrative is too simplistic for understanding this multivalent process. Between 1950 and 1970 countless American experts visited Turkey, and science was one of the key areas on which they focused. Funded in particular by US philanthropic organizations, these experts helped found a high school of science, a new research university, and a national science agency. Based on archival documents, I show that these experts did indeed consider that Turkish scientific institutions should no longer be organized around European models, and resemble American institutions instead. According to these experts, science could improve in Turkey only if new scientists with new attitudes could be produced, which, in turn, implied that educational institutions were of fundamental importance. I focus particularly on the “science high school” project, and using archival documents as a guide, trace the history of the establishment of this institution which was officially opened in 1964. I discuss the goals and experiences of the representatives of the Ford Foundation who helped initiate this process, the role of the experts from US universities who took part in the project, as well as the way the project was perceived and represented in Turkey. In the end, the American experts would characterize the outcome of the “science high school” project as unsatisfactory at best while the Turkish side saw it as highly successful. American experts saw their mission as above politics, yet their experiences in Turkey showed them how thoroughly political it actually was.

Late medieval Islamic commentaries are a potentially rich but little-used source for historians to explore how ideas about science and religion were transmitted, criticized, and revised both in and outside of formal educational institutions. In this paper, I discuss examples taken from the previously unstudied Arabic manuscript commentaries of Fatḥallāh al-Shirwānī, a 15th century astronomer and theologian who was educated at Ulugh Beg’s observatory in Samarqand before settling in Anatolia around the conquest of Constantinople, where he dedicated commentaries to prominent individuals including the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II. Shirwānī’s massive commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s Tadhkira fī ʿilm al-hayʾa (Memoir on Astronomy), along with commentaries on other works of mathematical astronomy as well as the Qurʾān, demonstrates an abiding interest in the utility of science and human rationality for understanding God’s creation. My research uncovers examples of the dynamic nature of Shirwānī’s commentaries as sites of interaction between rival scholarly traditions, which reflect his experiences as a student at Samarqand and career as a teacher and practicing astronomer. Rather than limiting himself to a technical discussion of astronomy, Shirwānī’s work covers related fields such as optics and geography, and includes discussions of physical and philosophical principles. From engaging with his predecessors’ attempts to create physically plausible models for planetary motion to relating knowledge of the stars, the heavens and the earth to broader cultural interests in astrology, historical chronology and messianism in the post-Mongol Islamic world, Shirwānī’s work provides an important case study of science in Islamic society during a formative period in the creation of the modern world.