Civilising the Savages

Publisher: Harper Collins

Price: Rs 256

Saeed Mirza has always defied categorisation,with the one exception that he is always thought proving. His latest book,The Monk,the Moor and Moses ben Jalloun,is neither fiction,nor non-fiction,but whatever it is,it is extremely interesting. At best it can be described as a condensed history exploring the connections between the advances in science,literature and general civilisation of Europe and the Arab world.

This is done by three main stories. The first,set in contemporary times,involves four friends in an American university an American,Arab,Indian and South African delving into the history of ideas. The second is the story found in a 12th century diary from the Arab students ancestor,a record of conversations between a Christian monk,an Arab,and the Jewish scholar Moses ben Jalloun as they translate Arabic texts into European languages. The third is about a young woman who is a student of the scholar Al Beruni.

It is hard to condense the complex story that Mirza tells,and therefore it may be best to illustrate it through another set of stories,that of the Crusades.

The siege of Maarra is not mentioned by Mirza in his book,although it would fit well. It took place in 1098,when a large Crusader army besieged the Syrian town. The only people to defend the town were a citizens militia. Surrounded and outnumbered,Maarras citizens negotiated their surrender with Bohemond,the prince of Antioch and the most important leader of the first Crusade. The Crusaders,though,did not honour their promise of safe passage: instead they killed all the inhabitants of the town after they surrendered.

Fulcher of Chartres,the chronicler of the Crusades,wrote what happened next,I shudder to tell that many of the Crusaders,harassed by the madness of excessive hunger,cut pieces from the buttocks of the Saracens already dead there,which they cooked,but when it was not yet roasted enough by the fire,they devoured it with savage mouth.

This is the general image of the Crusaders,and Europeans,burnt into the consciousness of those on the receiving end of their expansion. No wonder then that Gandhi,when asked what he thought about Western civilisation,replied sarcastically,It would be a good idea.

Yet the story of the Crusades did not end there. Frederick II,king of Sicily and Germany and the Holy Roman Emperor,led the Sixth Crusade in 1229. He was not interested in small towns. He wanted the ultimate prize,Jerusalem,and won it after five months of negotiations none of battle with the Ayubid ruler,Al Kamil.

Frederick is one of the heroes of Mirzas book and rightly so. The king was a fascinating man,free-thinking to the point of heresy,who refuted anything not proven by reason. He was excommunicated by the Pope when he did not carry out a military Crusade (this was his second excommunication). In fact,when he was crowned king of Sicily he wore a red silk mantle which had a benediction written in Arabic wishing the wearer,vast prosperity,great generosity and high splendour,fame and magnificent endowments,and the fulfilment of his wishes and hopes. May his days and nights go in pleasure without end or change. The robe is stored at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna,Austria.

What happened? How did the marauding savages become such high-minded,rational and dignified people in a space of just over a century? The answer is simple: civilisation,that is the worlds heritage. This is part of the story that Mirza tells.

In encountering the Arab empire (which included Jews,Persians,Turks,Kurds and others),the Europeans came face to face with the empire that had risen before them,again out of unlearned barbarity,only a few centuries earlier. The Arabs had the good sense to learn from the people they conquered or incorporated into their empire,and even the better sense of learning from far-flung areas they encountered. Thus,they learned paper making from the Chinese,the numeric system from the Indians,and gave us treatises on everything from fractions to algebra and algorithms. The base of the modern scientific method on topics like astronomy,mathematics,optics,geography and social sciences was translated into European languages and helped fuel the rise of Europe. Everything from the distillation of alcohol to troubadours was part of that heritage.

Mirza contends that the West has chosen to obscure the transmission of this common world culture as a way to justify its wars against other civilisations. This is not altogether convincing as the preservation of Frederick IIs coronation robe shows. The West may be aware of its heritage,but rabble-rousers can still obscure this heritage in favour of demonising perceived enemies. We do that so often in India ourselves,where we are all too aware of our complex,combined heritage and yet murder our neighbours in riot after riot. But maybe,now that he has drawn out the story of our common humanity,Mirzas next interesting and difficult-to-categorise book might be about how we go about forgetting it?