Notes on the ‘Silk Road Exhibit’: Islamic revisionism and civilizational jihad

“Traveling the Silk Road,” at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, appears to be a small section of a larger, global exhibition, “1001 Inventions,” which, accompanied by an award-winning film, professes to be a revelation of a thousand years of scientific and cultural achievements by the Muslim world, with a nod to some contributing faiths and cultures.  However, these faiths and cultures were victims of Muslim jihadists who, following in Mohammed’s footsteps, invaded the “infidel” world for more than 1400 years, enslaving, slaughtering, and plundering.  Their greatest achievement was their ability to expropriate every creative, innovative, groundbreaking device of Islam’s victims and, defying all logic, fraudulently claim each as their own.

The Silk Road exhibit is a betrayal of its name and deception to the tourists, individuals, schoolteachers and students.  Some of the visitors are of those cultures whose contributions were formidable, but were given scant recognition or complete disregard, thereby denying them the knowledge and sense of pride to be had upon learning that their heritage contributed to the growth of civilization along the early trade routes.  This Islamic presentation allowed about 20 percent to China.

Islam’s growth in both religious adherents and these “achievements” emanated from their invasions into foreign lands, enforcing their will under penalty of death, and booty acquired from the invaded and enslaved cultures (the worst, the black African trade, was excluded).  Slavery, including sexual slavery, is justified in the Qur’an and practiced in many countries, to this day.

Islam is socialism, and socialism is antithetical to creativity. Islam is based on envious hatred of what is noble, the aspirations and outstanding creative individuality in all fields of human endeavor.  Muslims are enraged that a small Israel could smash the rocket launchers and their terror tunnels of Gaza, for example.  They resent and hate human excellence, yet they take ownership of the ingenuity of others out of envy and deceit to entice.

The museum exhibit is just such an example of Muslims’ adopting achievements of others for their own acclaim, because they have produced nothing of value in 1400 years of existence. The majority of the Islamic world is illiterate, violent combatants who commit atrocities beyond the Western imagination – although we are beginning to learn of what these people are truly capable.

DEFINING THE SILK ROAD

The Silk Road is a series of trade and cultural transmission routes, central to cultural interaction through regions of the Asian continent.  Traders, merchants, pilgrims, monks, soldiers, nomads and urban dwellers from China to the Mediterranean Sea connected the West with the East, during various periods of time.

Extending 4,000 miles, the Silk Road derives its name from the lucrative trade in Chinese silk carried out along its length, beginning during the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD). The Central Asian sections of the trade routes were expanded around 114 BC by the Han dynasty, largely through the missions and explorations of Chinese imperial envoy, Zhang Qian.  The Chinese took great interest in the safety of their trade products and extended the Great Wall of China to ensure the protection of the trade route.

Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the civilizations of China, the Indian subcontinent, Persia, Europe, and Arabia, as well as Korea and Japan, opening long-distance, political and economic interactions between civilizations.  Although silk was the major trade item from China, many other goods and various technologies, religions, and philosophies, as well as the bubonic plague (the “Black Death“), also travelled along the Silk Road. It also provided a route for cultural trade among the civilizations.

A vertical screen hangs at the entrance: HOUSE OF WISDOM “He who travels in the search of knowledge, to him God shows the way of Paradise.”  (attributed to the Prophet Mohamed)

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That Islam provides a martyr’s way to Paradise, which includes destruction, slavery, suicide and genocide, and looting.

2. That Islamic countries lead the world in illiteracy.

FACTS:

1. The most prominent reward promised Islamic Martyrs are the 72 Dark-Eyed Virgins in Paradise. A Palestinian religious leader explained, “…the purpose of authentic Islam is to fill Muslims with desire for Paradise” – the anticipation and love of death.

He [Muhammad] said (in a Hadith, Islamic tradition):

“[There is] a palace of pearls in Paradise and in it seventy courts of ruby… And in each court [there are] seventy houses of green emerald stone. In every house, seventy beds. On every bed, seventy mattresses of every color and on every mattress a woman.” (Hadith)

2. Sahih al-Bukhari HadithHadith 1.35  Narrated by Abu Huraira  The Prophet said, “The person who participates in (Holy battles) in Allah’s cause and nothing compels him to do so except belief in Allah and His Apostles, will be recompensed by Allah either with a reward, or booty (if he survives) or will be admitted to Paradise (if he is killed in the battle as a martyr).”

EXHIBIT SIGN: The main traders during antiquity were the Chinese, Persians, Romans, Armenians, Indians, and Bactrians, and from the 5th to the 8th century the Sogdians. During the coming of age of Islam, Arab traders became prominent.

HISTORIC BACKGROUND:

Ancient Chinese guarded the silk production secret for centuries.  Ottoman Turks and Persians fought over it; English and French competed to restrict its markets, but every culture was touched by silk.  It was found aboard medieval Viking ships sailing out of Constantinople, as kerchiefs from India and as silk bandanas brought by pirates and worn by American cowboys.Damask silk of Damascus, Syria, was actually from China.  Martha Washington wore a dress of Virginia silk to George’s inauguration, and Native Americans learned silk embroidery to decorate traditional apparel.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:   

1. That the Persian and Babylonian Jews pioneered the intercontinental trade and the Silk Road.

2. It is likely that “Arab traders” is an all-encompassing term to include all the people, religions and cultures that existed in the Middle East, that the Muslims captured and made their own.  In fact, the Arab ethnic groups included Lebanese, Syrians, Emiratis, Qataris, Saudis, Bahrainis, Kuwaitis, Iraqis, Omanis, Jordanians, Yemenis, Sudanese, and Egyptians.  These were not all Arab, in fact; neither were they of the same original religion; the exhibit is misleading.

FACTS:

1. Intercontinental trade was pioneered by Persian Jews who forged the “Silk Route” to the heart of China in the fifth century BCE.  Augustus, first Roman emperor, is said to have commissioned “the first travel guide” from Isidore of Charax (a Greco-Roman geographer of the 1^st century BC and 1^st century AD). Centuries later, while the Europeans were still deep in the Dark Ages, Persian Rhadanite scholar/travelers (medieval Jewish merchants who traded between the Christian and Islamic worlds, 500-1000 AD) pioneered land and sea trade routes to the Far East.  “These merchants speak Arabic, Persian, Roman, Frankish, Spanish, and Slavonic,” wrote Ibn Khurdadhih in the ninth century CE, “They travel from East to West and from West to East by land as well as by sea.” They also spoke Hebrew and Aramaic.

2. The Silk Route was pioneered by Babylonian Jews in the fifth century BCE. The Kaifeng, China synagogue complex was erected in 1163 to serve a community of three thousand worshipers, and to accommodate Jewish trader-travelers who came across Asia with their caravans.

Spices

Cinnamon, Cassia (the bark from which cinnamon is made), jade, camphor, and many other Chinese products were greatly in demand in the West. The earliest reference in any literature to the oriental products, cinnamon and cassia, occurs in Exodus 30:23: Moses is instructed to take “principal spices, of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon (kinamon besem) half so much.” In 30:24 he is likewise instructed to take “of cassia (kiddah) five hundred shekels.”]

1        Herodotus (485-425 BCE) stated that Kinnamomon (Greek) came from Canaan (3.111); the word in Exodus for cassia, kiddah, appears in Greek as Kitto. Another Biblical word, kes’iah (Psalms 45.9), became the Greek Kasia.² The transcription of Aramaic words into the Greek language identifies the merchants who first brought these spices in the 5th c. BCE from the Orient to the Mediterranean.

2        Linen fabrics (Byssus) were as marketable in China as silk fabrics were in the west. One of the earliest centers of industrial weaving of fine linen fabrics was the city of Beth She’an. The Bible informs us that Beth She’an (“Scythopolis” by the Greeks), was a Canaanite town that fell to the forces of David. By the 3rd cc BCE, the Jews of Beth She’an achieved world fame as producers of fine fabrics. The Jerusalem Talmud refers to “the fine linen vestments which come from Beth She’an.”

3        Beth She’an is described as a city that supplies textiles to the world in the Latin Descriptus Orbis, 4^th c.  The superiority of the textiles and clothes made by Jews in Beth She’an was affirmed by Roman Emperor Diocletian, in 296 CE.  The edict listed Judaic glassware (by Jews of Judah) and vitri Alessandrini(by Jews of Alexandria). Hadrian also asserted that Jews were the glass-makers of Alexandria.

4        Rabbi Chiyya bar Abba, a famous sage is named in the Bible, was involved with trading goods of glassware, flax, and linen along the Silk Route into China.

5        The tradition of travel and trade expanded into a world-girdling network of Jewish trade under the Rhadanites. Ibn Khurdadhibih, an Arab chronicler of the ninth century, wrote that “these merchants speak Arabic, Persian, Roman, Frankish, Spanish and Slavonic. They travel from East to West, and from West to East by land as well as by sea.” They also spoke Hebrew and Aramaic.  The routes radiated out from the Jewish centers of population in the agricultural and industrial heart of Babylonia to Europe, North Africa, India, and China.

EXHIBIT SIGN: The Beginning of Islam The Islamic religion is based on the teachings of Muhammad, a merchant from the Arabian city of Mecca, who lived from around 570 to 632.  Muhammad became the leader of the Arab people in the early 600s, after receiving a series of messages that he accepted as the word of God. Muhammad recited these revelations to others, and after his death, his followers gathered them into a book that became known as the Koran, or “recitation.”  As the new religion of Islam spread, Arabic calligraphy spread with it.  This page is the work of the renowned Baghdad calligrapher Ibn al-Bawwab, who made 64 copies of the Koran in all.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That this exhibit is an in-doctrinal, rather than educational, explanation of Muslim activity in this period, representing approximately 80 percent of the exhibit, and those who contrived it must have been aware of its nature, yet complicit in what we recognize as civilizational jihad.

2. That Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions are not represented with historic accuracy; and visiting viewers were lured to view a deceptive work.

FACTS:

1. Mohammed became the leader of the Arab people in the early 600s, after dreaming that he received messages from God.

2. He beheaded the Jewish men of Mecca; killed or enslaved men, women and children of Mecca and Medina (including Christians and idol worshippers), ethnically cleansed the cities and designated them “holy.”  Thus he became the leader of the surviving converted  to Islam.

3. Moslems or Mohammedans do today as they did in the early 600s: behead men and enslave and convert to Islam the surviving women and children.

4. “Spread” is an oft-used euphemism in today’s revisionist textbooks.  The word, although never defined, refers to conquest and forced conversion.

5. European and American historians assert that 10 to 18 million people were taken by Arab slave traders from Africa between the 8^th and 19^th century, and between one and 1.25 million Europeans from Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, Ireland, and even Iceland, were captured and sold between the 16^th and 19^th centuries, by Barbary corsairs.

EXHIBIT SIGN: TIMELINE c. 1070 Persian poet and mathematician, Omar Khayyam, makes advances in algebra and geometry. 1100-1200 Scholars translate scientific works from Arabic into Latin, setting the stage for the European Renaissance.  Islamic scholars translated many Greek works into Arabic, including this groundbreaking book on medicinal plants by the Physician Pedianos Dioscorides (c: AD 40-90).  The volume shown here was made in the 1240.  This page catalogues the herbs mint, basil, thyme, and germander.

 WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That the term “scholars” is used only for Muslims, and presented as an isolated phenomenon, unknown to other cultures.

2. That the intent is to usurp the inventions and creativity from other cultures and subtly present them as Islamic.

3. In a show of multiculturalism, there were several one-minute slides, questions and answers on a screen.  One slide asked about the music of Matisyahu, “An American singer,” who identifies himself as an orthodox Jew and sings a combination of Hebrew and reggae.  The “correct answer” was given only as reggae.

FACTS:

1. Muslims translated Greek works into Arabic, but the exhibit implies that they, not the Greeks, are to be credited with the scientific achievements.  Arabs introduced the Indian numeric system as Arabic numerals.

2. Several references to China’s accomplishments were shown as hinged on products from around the world, insinuating that China could not have progressed without the aid of Arabs.

Merchants

EXHIBIT SIGN: Precious Wares The Sogdian Culture of Samarkand was closely linked with the Persian realm – through language, religion and the arts.  Both Persian and Sogdian artists excelled at the craft of shaping beautiful objects from precious metals.  Caravan merchants traded these gleaming vessels for silk on the borders of China, and for furs, honey, and amber near the Caspian Seas.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That Sogdians were mainly Zoroastrian (a religion that exists today), yet linked to suggest they are Muslim craftsmen.

2. That Jews who worked at creating merchandise in Samarkand and produced much of the “beautiful objects” described in the exhibit sign, remain unidentified; the Aramaic alphabet may be a means of identification.

FACTS:

1. Sogdians were an ancient civilization of an Iranian people whose religion was Zoroastrianism.  Although many converted to Islam, they may number up to 2.6 million today.  Not politically aligned, Sogdiana’s various territories centered around Samarkand.  They wrote in a variety of scripts derived from the Aramaic alphabet.

2. Most merchants tended to trade goods in a central oasis, and Sogdians established a trading network across the 1500 miles from Sogdiana to China, until they became the all-encompassing name for all merchants to trade with China’s Han Dynasty, into the 10^th century.  Their language became a lingua franca of trade; they taught their children to read at age 5.  Sogdians worked as farmers, carpetweavers, glassmakers, and woodcarvers.

EXHIBIT SIGN: The Sogdian merchants of Samarkand were masters of trade along the Silk Road.  Some put up the money for long-distance exchange.  Some haggled in markets. And some acted as camel drivers and caravan leaders.  A single caravan might include peddlers, pilgrims, soldiers, guides and many horses, mules and camels.  The leader had to show skill at handling both animals and people, as well as courage and knowledge of the trail.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That the Sogdian designation for merchants of Samarkand remains unexplained.  The exhibits’ focus is promoting Islam.

2. That skill may have been needed to handle animals and people, named in a questionable order, unless the people are women and children who had been abducted into slavery.

FACTS:

1. The Silk Road exhibit is a tribute to the Islamic culture, with all negative characteristics whitewashed, removed, and replaced with positive traits usurped from the cultures conquered.   Islam was and continues to be a culture of acquisition, subjugation, and genocide, responsible for the killing of 270 million people over 1400 years, to this day.

2. The countries involved in the Silk Route include China, Persian Empire, Greece (particularly maritime trade routes), and mainland Europeans.  By religion, they were Jews, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Romans, Grecians, Hindus, Pharoahans, Christian sects and Muslims.

3. Dating back about three millennia, the Jewish community in Iran is the oldest in Asia. Freed from slavery by Persia’s Emperor Cyrus in 539 BCE, they became an integral part of the Persian Empire.  They travelled widely in Persian-dominated Afghanistan, the Caucasus and Caspian through Central Asia, and traded with displaced Turgik tribes, and Khazars (glassworks factories, c.  7^th and 8^th centuries).  Persian Jews were merchants in Uzbekistan, Central Asian Silk Road in Bukhara and Samarkand, where major trading posts were established.

EXHIBIT SIGN: REST STOP After a long day’s journey along the Silk Road, weary travelers could stop to rest at a guesthouse or caravanserie.  In Islamic lands these inns had a standard form: Rooms for sleeping and storing foods were arranged around an open courtyard where guests could water and feed their camels and horses.  A thick wall with a guarded gate kept caravans secure.  At a caravanserie, travelers of many cultures ate, bathed, traded goods, relaxed, and exchanged news.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. Some inns provided sex workers to the Silk Road merchants; one Sogdian-language contract shows at least one Chinese bought a Sogdian girl in 639 AD.  Earlier 7^th century documents point to massive volume in the sex-slave trade, with some recorded marriages.  One record shows a Sogdian merchant sold an 11-year-old girl for 40 bolts of silk.

2. That there was a flourishing slave trade.  As a youth, Mohammed accompanied his uncle on the caravan expeditions, dealing in human slavery and trading the items looted from the conquered peoples.

3. The many cultures of travelers and slavers remain unidentified, although their grotesqueries are known and continue unabated.

Glass making 

EXHIBIT SIGN: FROM WEST TO EAST Bottle: The Chinese artist who made this porcelain vase borrowed a shape from imported Islamic glassware.Green Vase: Markets of the Middle East did a brisk business selling Chinese ceramics colored with the pale green glaze known as celadon.Bowl: In the 1100s, Islamic craftsmen developed a fine-textured clay by mixing crushed quartz with small amounts of ground-up glaze and natural white clay.  The resulting pottery, known as fritware, was snow-white, like porcelain. Potters decorated it with brightly colored glass, like the green, yellow and brown shown here.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That glass making originated with the Jewish people, a secret maintained for the next 3,000 years.

2. That it had been considered an Egyptian discovery until an archaeological expedition unearthed the truth, and acknowledged in 1983.

FACTS:

1. The art of glass making was born in Akkadia, the Biblical locale in Mesopotamia, home of Terach, father of Abraham, ~2400 B.C.E. It was a Semitic, and then Jewish, art for the next three millennia.  Unique among the arts, glass making was invented only once in all of human history and its spread was parallel and coincident with the dispersal of the Jews.

2. Manufactured glass was discovered by Dr. R. H. Hall on an archaeological expedition near the ancient city of Eridu, close to Abraham’s purported birthplace of Ur, in the winter of 1918-19. “Only one object of great interest has been found,” reported the astounded Hall, “… In the rubbish beneath the pavement was found a lump of opaque blue vitreous paste which I recognized as true glass… the most ancient piece of glass known.”  The object’s date was fixed at between 2047-2038 B.C.E.  Later, Akkadian glass, more than two centuries older, was found from buildings and cemeteries of the ancient city of Ur itself.

3. Museums and texts on glass making history had always cited Egypt as the birthplace.  However, glass making depends on thick forests for fuel, requiring several tons of wood to produce just one kilogram of glass, and Egypt had no forests.  Further, glass is liquefied silicate stone (quartz), and only a reverberatory furnace (absent from ancient Egypt technology) could achieve and maintain the necessary temperatures of 1200 degrees Celsius.  Further, glassware couldn’t suddenly appear in 1500 BCE in 18^th Dynasty tombs without a trace of hundreds of years of necessary development.  Finally, there is no word for “glass” in Egyptian language; scribes used the Akkadian term!

4. In 1983, Dr. Donald B. Harden, author of the catalogue of the British Museum’s collection of Greek and Roman Glass, finally removed all doubt, admitting, “During my two years at Ann Arbor and the next winter season on the excavating staff in Egypt, I naturally became too Egypto-oriented.”

5. Once manufactured, glass is easily melted and reformed into glassware.  Delicate glassware was not transportable, but beads or amulets were.  A Canaanite merchant vessel was found off the Turkish coast at the turn of the 14^th century, with tons of cargo of glass ingots and eye-beads (beads overlaid with concentric rings of colored glass).   Glass was produced in Israel and Judah, and transported by Canaanites, whom Greeks called Phoenicians – “purple,” from the purple-stained hands and clothes of those who made purple dye.

6. Egyptians and Greeks made advances in glass making; Romans brought glass into everyday life by making it transparent at a lower temperature.  They manufactured in bulk and transported throughout the Roman Empire via their vast trading infrastructure. The Roman love of glass evolved into the glass window, providing protection from the elements while delivering light.  They developed the mirror at a lower cost, increasing effectiveness and longevity.

7. Roman innovation developed into glassblowing to produce delicate creative shapes, and into clear drinking vessels, for color, transparency and wine clarity.

EXHIBIT SIGN: A Magnificent Exchange Islamic merchants who traveled by sea helped ideas flow as they traded glass and other goods for decorated Chinese ceramics.  In Arab and Persian households, clay pots with colorful glazes and fine white porcelain from Chinese kilns were especially prized.  Over time, potters in both China and the Middle East developed new styles and techniques in response to the overseas trade.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That Muslims were neither the first nor the only merchants to travel the seas.

2. That the Mediterranean Jews were responsible for opening up these trade routes.

FACTS:

1. Mediterranean Jews were entrepreneurs who controlled much of the trade in the region and developed the economies of those nations, which included Alexandria’s shipping; Syria’s markets; Beirut’s silk-production industry and textile dyeing; and the glass factories, with bead shapes and colorations that are traced to Near Eastern Jewish glass designs.

2. Persian/Jewish traders pioneered the route from the Near East to Kaifeng, then capital of Imperial China, 1700 years before Marco Polo set out on his journey from Venice to China.

3. Interestingly, a saying that is attributed to Marco Polo is:  “The militant Muslim is the person who beheads the infidel, while the moderate Muslim holds the feet of the victim.”

EXHIBIT SIGN: Changsha-ware had a profound impact on the ceramic industries of the Islamic cities that readily imported these Chinese goods.  But ships did not always reach their targets.  In the 800s, an Arab vessel loaded with Changsha-ware was wrecked near present-day Indonesia.  Excavated in the 1990s, the ship preserved its substantial cargo and was the model for the cargo hold recreated in this exhibition.

FACTS:

1    The first evidence of this significant historical milestone was recovered from the 5th century BCE grave at Lo-yang. Glass beads to wear in the next world were among the artifacts buried with the deceased. The Chinese had no knowledge of glassmaking at that time.

2    The beads were typical of eye beads made in Israel – overlaid with concentric rings of colored glass – and distributed around the Mediterranean by Canaanite seafarers (Phoenicians)

3    Late BCE eye-beads found in Europe and the near East paralleled those found in China. The technique and composition of eye beads traded across Eurasia validates their common Near-Eastern origin.

4    Persian Jews were merchants in Uzbekistan, the Central Asian Silk Road in Bukhara and Samarkand (areas mentioned in exhibit, improperly credited), where major trading posts were established.  Evidence of thriving Jewish settlements was found along the Eastern Silk Road, into Kaifeng, China (which included synagogues and Hebrew documents).  For the next thousand years, Jewish glassware and linens were the principal goods exchanged for the silk and spices of China and India.

5    Arabs traded with a variety of merchants and are known for taking proprietorship of the items produced by the peoples they conquered:  Africans, Greeks, Jews;

Jews traded with Persians, Georgians, Uzbeks, Chinese; Chinese traded with Indonesians, Thais, Sri Lankans. Bloodlines merged; cultural practices and foods were integrated, all blending to form the Great Silk Road.

Pottery

EXHIBIT SIGN: Foreign Beauty This Persian painting from the 1400s shows a Chinese bride traveling west to be married in Islamic lands, with finely decorated porcelain pots in her dowry.  The Islamic vogue for Chinese ceramics dates back at least to the late 700s, when a Persian governor sent a gift of 20 pieces of Chinese porcelain to the court of the caliph Harun al-Rashid.

 

EXHIBIT SIGN: Pretty as PorcelainAround 1,200 years ago, an Arab traveler watched in awe as Chinese potters made “goblets as thin as flasks, through which the sparkle of the water can be seen.”  These delicate wares were porcelain, a refined form of ceramics perfected during the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907).  For many centuries, potters in the Middle East strove to match the translucent beauty of Chinese porcelain.  The secret lay in a fine white clay called kaolin, which was not available in Islamic lands.  Islamic artists made other stunning discoveries, including the vivid glass displayed here.

 FACTS:

1. Pottery originated during the Neolithic period. Ceramic objects like the Gravettian culture Venus of Dolní Věstonice figurine discovered in the Czech Republic date back to 29,000–25,000 BC, and pottery vessels discovered in Jiangxi, China date back to 20,000 BP (before present).  Early Neolithic pottery has also been found in Jomon Japan (10,500 BC), the Russian Far East (14,000 BC), Sub-Saharan Africa and South America.

2. Pottery was in use in ancient India, including areas now forming Pakistan and northwest India, during the Mehrgarh Period II (5,500-4,800 BC) and Merhgarh Period III (4,800-3,500 BC), known as the ceramic Neolithic and chalcolithic. Pottery, including items known as the ed-Dur vessels, originated in regions of the Saraswati River / Indus River and were found in a number of sites in the Indus Civilization.

3. Early Islamic pottery followed the forms of the regions which the Muslims conquered. Eventually, however, there was cross-fertilization between the regions.  One major emphasis in ceramic development in the Muslim world was the use of tile and decorative tilework.

Along another Silk Road

1. The Chinese systems (Buddhism and Confucianism) fused with Korea and Japan, creating a Golden Age, which included the construction of pagodas and temples.

2. Products of the Silk Road were found at a Buddhist Temple site in Korea: bronze iron scissors, glass Buddha beads, terra cotta figures, jade ornaments, bronze buckles, images and bells, pottery, metalworking.  The Middle Kingdom (Korea) became proficient at making iron blades and tools, 500 – 400 BCE.

3. Japanese had imports from Silla of perfume, medicine, cosmetics, fabric-dyeing materials, metallic goods, musical instruments, carpets, measuring tool; silk came to Japan in 306 CE.  Buddhism became Japan’s state religion in 372 CE.

4. Korea’s Koryu Dynasty (935-1392) had the world’s first metal-printing technology before Gutenberg; the world’s oldest printed book, the Jikji; the world’s oldest surviving complete transcription of the Buddhist cantons; the world-famous Celadon pottery; and development of Buddhism throughout the peninsula.

 The Learned

EXHIBIT SIGN: Paper, Pen and Ink As paper spread from east to west along the Silk Road, books became more bountiful than ever before.  Chinese artists learned to smear ink on carved wood blocks, which they used to print thousands of pages very quickly.  When paper came to the Islamic world, a passion for reading and writing blossomed there, and Islamic scholars took the lead in the study of science, language and literature.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That Chinese calligraphy was also considered beautiful, as were Hebrew and Western Calligraphy used in illuminated documents.

2. That they did not treat equally or fairly the qualities of other cultures, using “smeared” for ink application, and “magnificent, graceful, beautiful, flowing,” for Islamic writing; that Islam produced “stunning” discoveries, adjectives not applied to other cultures.

3. That if Islamic scholars led in all the sciences, why Islam is so backward now; that if they produced so many books, why they trail behind the western countries now.

4. That Islam has always taken on the cultures of the people through which it passed and looted, and kept the enslaved illiterate.

FACTS:

1. Islam’s practice of conquest was part of the directives of Mohammed; acquiring slaves and booty encouraged.  Therefore, the spoils of war made it practically unnecessary to strive for values of the western world.  When masters have workers, they no longer need to learn or be productive; hence the population is devalued and creativity and production suffer dramatically.

2. As seen in the Koran and other Islamic scriptures, Muslims were barbarian, slaughtering wherever they went in whatever cultures they met, and the same exists today.  Therefore, how is it possible that they can claim a lofty culture in the middle (the Golden Age, for example)? And if this were actually so, what caused the changes from barbarian to civilized and the subsequent reversal.

EXHIBIT SIGN: THE PATHS OF IDEAS We may take it for granted today.  We may even claim we can do without it.  But of all the treasures that moved along the Silk Road, none was more powerful than paper.  Light, flexible and inexpensive to make, paper made an ideal surface for recording ideas.  As paper spread from China to the Middle East, it opened up a remarkable age of writing, reading, and learning.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. Once conquest was made, survivors of the slaughter were converted to Islam.  Therefore, it might be prudent to question the original identity of those who owned and ran the paper manufacturers/mills, again in Samarkand, where we know that a large Jewish population existed.

FACTS:

1. The world’s oldest paper book is Chinese, AD 256; with the oldest printed book (using woodblock printing) from China’s Han dynasty (202 BC-AD), although discoveries suggest paper was used more than 10 years before, in 8 BC.  After the Muslim defeat of the Chinese in the Battle of Talas in 751 (today Kyrgyzstan), the invention spread to the Middle East.; the first paper mill was founded in Samarkand.

2. The use of water-powered pulp mills for preparing the pulp material used in paper making dates back to 8^th c. Samarkand,   The Muslims introduced the use of trip hammers (human- or animal-powered) in the production of paper, replacing the traditional Chinese mortar and pestle method. By the 9th century, Arabs were using paper regularly for their Qur’an; Arabs made books lighter, although vellum was preferred for the Qur’an.  By the 12th century in Marrakech in Morocco, a street was named Kutubiyyin or booksellers, which contained more than 100 bookshops. (Ketubim means “writings” in Hebrew)   Chinese later employed the trip-hammer.

3. Since the First Crusade in 1096, paper manufacturing in Damascus had been interrupted by wars. Egypt continued with the thicker paper, while Iran produced the thinner papers. Papermaking was diffused across the Islamic world, from where it was diffused further west into Europe. Paper manufacture was introduced to India in the 13th century by Arab merchants, where it almost wholly replaced traditional writing materials.

4. In America, archaeological evidence indicates that a similar bark-paper writing material, amatl, was used by the Mayans no later than the 5th century AD. It was in widespread use among Mesoamerican cultures until the Spanish conquest. Paper making as more common to the European practice spread to the American continent first in Mexico by 1575 and then in Philadelphia by 1690.

EXHIBIT SIGN: By the early 1200s, Baghdad was a virtual paradise for readers and writers, with an enormous stationers market, more than 100 bookshops and 36 public libraries.  One magnificent library belonged to a college called the Mustansinya Madrasa, its reading rooms provide paper, pens and oil lamps so students could copy the texts and make books of their own.  Each student also enjoyed free tuition, room and board, medical care and a gold coin for every month of his stay.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. What happened to all these students of learning where now exists an illiterate, death-cult society.

2. That the Qur’an encourages violence, death, and plundering. Therefore, if the Arabs indeed studied this way, what caused the drastic deterioration of their culture.

3. If the conquered people, the People of the Book (dhimmis), were permitted access to the libraries.

FACTS:

1. An important reason for Judaic survival is that manual labor was never reviled In Judaism, but traditionally respected.  Labor leads to artisanship and to literacy for a fulfilled life. Therefore, Jews were also prominent among the craftsmen and technicians at the junctures of civilization where industry, technology, and commerce flourished. The market for Judaic artisanship was universal.  Art is inherent to artisanship. The former soars in the world of the imagination, and the latter produces the practical things that enhance the environment and prosperity. Through the written word, the reverence of learning, artisanship, and the subjective arts of imagery, Jews became quintessentially a creative people and creativity was their salvation.

2. Unlike the Torah, the Qur’an does not encourage reading and artisanship.  The Qur’an exhorts violence, looting, enslavement and murder.  Enslavement encourages sloth in the master.   We can wonder what happened to the virtual paradise in Baghdad when writers and readers were not rewarded for industry.  Why and how did this magnificence die, so that the current illiteracy rate for Islamic states, and where Islam is the state religion, now reaches as high as 97%? 

EXHIBIT SIGN: A WAY WITH WORDS For artists in early Baghdad, words were shapes as well as sounds. The Arabic language blossomed into a visual art as scribes made graceful copies of the Islamic holy book, the Koran. But calligraphy, the art of beautiful writing, soon moved beyond the page.  With the spread of Islam, the flowing letters of the Arabic alphabet began to wind around serving dishes, embellish clothing and splash across doorways, ceilings and walls.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:  

1. That writing was invented in Sumeria, the fertile crescent of Iraq; 3500 BCE.

2. That other cultures produced beautiful writing, also considered art forms.

FACTS:

1. With the introduction of Christianity, came magnificent illuminated manuscripts (manu – hand; script – written), made mainly by monks and nuns in monastic scriptorium. A scribe did the calligraphy (Greek: kali – beautiful; graphia – writing); an illuminator decorated the book; a bookbinder sewed the pages into book format, made the leather binding with gold and precious colors.  The Tres Riches Heures and The Book of Kells are two examples of famous exquisite manuscripts that have survived to this day.

2. Of existing examples of  historical ketubot (marriage contracts) from Jewish communities around the world, the vast majority fall into the category of floral and ornamental. Jewish ketubah artists drew on the natural world for inspiration, avoiding graven images, and were as diverse as the countries where produced – florals of Italy, Morocco, India and Afghanistan.  Others are of historical design, formal, or stylized, folk or contemporary art.

3. Chinese calligraphy is considered an art form, widely practiced and revered in Asia – Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, and Japan.  The characters can be traced to 4000 BC, and are closely related to ink and wash paintings.  They are distinguishable from other cultural arts because they emphasize motion.  Calligraphy has led to the development of many forms of art in china, including seal carving, ornate paper weights, and inkstones.  In Imperial China, the graphs on old steles, dating back to 200 BC, are still accessible.

Navigation

 

EXHIBIT SIGN: SAILING When sailing the Indian Ocean, seamen took advantage of predictable monsoon winds, which blew from the northeast in winter and from the southeast in summer. Arab ships typically sailed down the Persian Gulf in September or October.  With good timing, they could catch the gentle southwestern monsoon through the South China Sea in April or May.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That many people sailed the Indian Ocean, and other cultures’ accomplishments were ignored.

2. That the history of navigation in the Indian Ocean goes back about 4,000 years ago, during the days of Pharaohs, when the Egyptian seafarers sailed to the country of Punt, the coast of Somalia or the Mozambique coast of gold and incense; and the Sumerians and Jews who were traversing the Persian Gulf.

3. Maritime links between the ancient city of Lothal in India and Mesopotamia are known to have existed, and other traders in the Western Indian Ocean were the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans.

FACTS:

1. The results of human genetic and archaeological research provide us with indirect evidence for the early use of water transport around the Indian Ocean, showing they began to move out of Africa more than 100,000 years ago… a distinct stream of modern humans crossed from the Horn of Africa to the Arabian peninsula and then spread around the rim of the Indian Ocean, eventually reaching Australia, perhaps by 80,000 BP (before the present).

 

EXHIBIT SIGN: STAR FINDER Islamic astronomers used a tool called an astrolabe as a guide to the sky.  By measuring the position of the sun and stars, they could precisely tell the time of day or night, or predict the moment that the sun would rise in the morning.To develop the astrolabe, Islamic scholars took a Greek idea, refined it and added many new features to make it more versatile.  According to one early astrolabe expert, this all-purpose astronomical instrument had 1,000 uses in all.

  

EXHIBIT SIGN: WHAT TIME IS IT? Can you tell the time by the stars?  Muslim astronomers could, using a model of the heavens, called an astrolabe.  Try it yourself.  Imagine today is November 14, AD1000, and you are in Baghdad.  Ahead of you is the eastern night sky.

  

EXHIBIT SIGN: The most useful device in an Islamic astronomer’s tool kit was the astrolabe, a form of calculator that helped chart space and time.  With an astrolabe, a scholar could determine the position of the stars, find latitude, and predict the time of sunrise and sunset, when mosques would give the call to prayer.

Astrolabe with Hebrew lettering

 WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That the Jewish Talmud teaches that the earth is round and the astrolabe is a Jewish invention.

FACTS:

1. Judaic savants were largely responsible for the invention and development of the instruments and astronomical tables that thereafter facilitated world-girdling sea voyages.   The Zohar (Leviticus 1.3) was more specific about the earth’s rotating on its axis like a ball; Maimonides and other medieval Judaic scientists subscribed to that concept.
2. Intercontinental trade was pioneered by Persian Jews who pioneered the “Silk Route” to the heart of China in the 5^th c. BCE.  Augustus, first Roman emperor, is said to have commissioned “the first travel guide” from Isidore of Charax (a town on the Euphrates River estuary on the Persian Gulf). Centuries later, while the Europeans were still deep in the Dark Ages, Persian Rhadanite (Medieval Jewish merchants) scholar/travelers pioneered land and sea trade routes to the Far East.
3.  “These merchants speak Arabic, Persian, Roman, Frankish, Spanish, and Slavonic,” wrote Ibn Khurdadhih in the ninth century CE, “They travel from East to West and from West to East by land as well as by sea.”  They also spoke Hebrew and Aramaic.
4.  Astronomical tables were similarly compiled by Joseph ben Wakkar at Toledo in 1396, and in Aragon by various Judaic specialists.   Other significant calculations were made by Emanuel ben Jacob (aka Bonfils de Tarascon).The tables were used along with an astrolabe, an instrument introduced into the Arab-speaking world by a remarkable Jewish genius, Mashala of Mosul, “the phoenix of his age.” The use of the astrolabe, an instrument for taking the altitude of heavenly bodies, in conjunction with the astronomical tables, helped determine a ship’s position at sea.

EXHIBIT SIGN: Similar to an astrolabe, a sine quadrant was used by Islamic astronomers to measure points in the sky.  Holding the quadrant in one hand at a particular angle, the astronomer would make calculations based on where the bronze weight suspended by a cord hung down the face of the quadrant.  This tool is called a quadrant because it represents one quarter of a circle.  It was first developed in the 800s in Baghdad.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That the advanced model designed by Rabbi Joseph bn Makhir was used by Copernicus and Kepler.

2. That the most notable cartographers were found among the Jews, and the most advanced cartographer was a Jew who was forced to convert to Christianity.  Christopher Columbus’s cartographers and other companions may have been conversos.

FACTS:

1. The quadrant, another device important for navigation on the high seas, measured the right ascension (angle from the horizon) of the sun and stars. An advanced model, designed by Rabbi Joseph bn Makhir, became known as the Quadrant Judaicus. Rabbi Makhir compiled the calendar used by Dante, and was quoted as an authority, long after his passing, by Copernicus and Kepler.

2. Rabbi, Levi ben Gershom, in southern France, devoted 136 chapters to astronomy in his major work, The Wars of the Lord; it included an improved quadrant, Jacob’s Staff, that Renaissance explorers depended on for determining latitude and local hour.

3. The most notable cartographers could be found among the Jews. Geographic intelligence was a boon of Judaic dispersion into the Diaspora. Information gleaned by Judaic travelers, deposited with compatriots along their itinerary, was transmitted to other passing Judaic travelers. Geographic intelligence was likewise passed along through correspondence delivered by these travelers from region to region.

4. Majorca, midway between Africa and Europe, became a beehive of Judaic mapmaking; Majorcans were unrivaled seafarers and Jews became their cartographers par excellence.  A Jew, Jehuda, forced to convert to Christianity, produced the most famous mapamundi (world map) of the Atlantic coasts and mysterious oceans beyond.  He became the first director of the famous nautical observatory in Portugal. Another convert and cartographer authored another famous mapamundi, used by Amerigo Vespucci.

5. Abraham Zacuto (1452-1515) was the most reputable astronomer of the day (University of Salamanca) and possible voyages of Columbus, and instructed Columbus on the use of the perfected astrolabe, which also became the standard in subsequent voyages by all colonialist adventurers, including the ships of Vasco de Gama.

EXHIBIT SIGN: A TIGHT SHIP Could a boat made without nails be strong enough to withstand the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean?  For hundreds of years merchants of the Middle East sailed on such ships, made of durable teak or coconut wood imported from India or Indonesia.  Shipbuilders stitched the planks together with coir, a cord made by twisting fibers of coconut husks.  Then they sealed the seams with resin or pitch mixed with whale oil.

 

EXHIBIT SIGN: NEWCOMERIn the late 1200s, Venetian merchant Marco Polo journeyed to China along the Silk road, then returned west by ship, as shown in this picture of his visit to the Persian port of Hormuz.  But Marco Polo was the exception.  Few Europeans sailed the Indian Ocean until around 1500, when Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama rounded the southern tip of Africa for the first time.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That Polynesians were the finest navigators of the time.

2. Vasco de Gama owed his successful voyages and fame to the astrolabe and the mapamundi.

3. That Marco Polo was the most famous, but not the first, European to reach China.  Others had preceded him and were living under Mongol rule, some in servitude.

EXHIBIT SIGN: PATHFINDER To track progress when traveling north or south, Arab navigators used a kamal, a simple device made up of a knotted string running through a hole in the middle of a small wooden card.  Each knot corresponded to the latitude of a well-known port. A sailor held the string in his teeth by the final knot and aligned the bottom of the card with the horizon.  Then he slid the card along the string until the top aligned with the pole star.  The latitude of the ship could be gauged by the nearest knot.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That the Kemal was not the first or the only type of navigational device in use; sailors were quite ingenious:

• The first seafarers kept in sight of land: follow the coast, lining up the landmarks.
• The Greeks learned to navigate from one island to the next by following clouds, which form over land, or odors that carry far out to sea.
• The Phoenicians looked to the heavens – the sun’s movement across a cloudless Mediterranean sky gave direction and quarter, meaning east and west, Asia and Europe.  At night, they steered by the stars, finding fixed “heights” by measuring fingers laid horizontally one over the other.
• Ionian sailors navigated by the Little Bear constellation 600 BC.
• Norsemen watched the summer stars, and the behavior of birds.
• Eskimos studied the snow and Polynesians, whose navigational feats arguably have never been surpassed, watched the waves.
• Seafarers of the Marshall Islands built ingenious, elaborate maps of palm twigs and shells, denoting everything from the island to the prevailing direction of the swell.
• Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy created the first world atlas in 2 AD, plotting latitude and longitude lines; he was preceded by the Greeks, who described trading routes as far east as India.
• By the 10^th c., Italian-made portolans supplied detailed directions, distances, depths, coastal description and, by the 13^th c., sea maps with scale and bearings began to appear.
• The greatest advance in navigation came with the Chinese compass; the Chinese knew about magnetism as early as the 3^rd millennium BC.  The first western compass was mentioned in 1187.
• Indian traders rode the northeast monsoon to Africa and the southwest monsoon back to the subcontinent.  Polynesians also hitched rides on prevailing winds.
• Phoenicians to the Polynesians measured the height of the sun and stars over the horizon, using the gnomon.
• The Arabians used the Kemal, as described, to determine latitude.
• In the Middle Ages, sailors relied on the astrolabe.

EXHIBIT SIGN: MODEL OF A SEAGOING DHOW Sailors from Islamic lands traveled by dhow, a lightweight boat that sat high on the water.  Traditional dhows are rigged with a triangular sail supported by a diagonal bar attached to the mast.  The Middle Eastern invention, known as a lateen sail, allowed boats to tack, or sail across the wind.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1        That the dhow is the generic name of a number of traditional sailing and trading vessels with more than one mast.  Although some historians claim the dhow was invented by Arabs or Indians, the majority give credit to the Chinese, dating back to between 600 BC to 600 AD.  Some claim the sambuk dhow may be derived from the Portuguese caravel.

EXHIBIT SIGN: ACROSS THE SEAS In 851, an Arab traveler gave an account of the voyage from the Persian Gulf to Guangzhou, the Chinese part formerly known as Canton.   This map shows the route, with its real and imagined wonders described in his words.

 

EXHIBIT SIGN: THE RISE OF SHIPPING While caravan merchants of the Silk Road risked their worldly assets transporting goods over mountains and deserts, other traders placed their bets on the sea.  To reach China, ships sailing from Baghdad had to travel some 6,000 miles (9,600 kilometers).  The voyage took about six months – yet this was considerably faster than overland travel, which could take as long as a year.  Despite the peril of pirate attacks and shattering storms, sea trade expanded and eventually overshadowed the caravan trade.

 WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That the risk to caravan merchants of the Silk Road might have been the perils imposed by Muslims, known for their attacks, seizing ships, kidnapping, enslavement, and plunder for booty.
2. The First Barbary War (1801–1805), also known as the Tripolitan War or the Barbary Coast War, was the first of two wars fought between the United States and the Northwest African BerberMuslim states known collectively as the Barbary States.   They were fought because U.S. President Thomas Jefferson refused to pay the high tributes demanded by the Barbary States and because they were seizing American merchant ships and enslaving the crews for high ransoms. It was the first declared war that the United States fought on foreign land and seas.
3. The Tripoli Monument, the oldest military monument in the U.S., honors the heroes of the First Barbary War.

EXHIBIT SIGN: SINDBAD SAILS AGAIN Early Arab stories tell of a merchant named Sindbad who sailed the trade routes between Baghdad and China and had extraordinary adventures along the way.  In 1980 British explorer Timothy Severin set out to retrace the voyages of Sindbad in a traditional Arab dhow. The boat on display here is a scale model of the Sohar, the ship Severin sailed.  The sohar was built of planks of aini wood from the tropical forests of India and sewn together with coconut cord from the Laccadive Islands.  Setting sail in late autumn, it completed the voyage from Muscart, Oman, to Guangzhow, China in about seven months, just in time to escape the summer typhoons.

1. That Timothy Severin reproduced a voyage that never took place.

EXHIBIT SIGN: A MECHANICAL MARVEL Among the most dazzling treasures of the Abbasid age were its inventions: machines that performed all kinds of tasks, from serving drinks to telling time.  This model is based on a water-powered clock designed around 800 years ago by the Arab inventor Abu al-Izz ibn Ismail al-Jazari.  As a court engineer, al-Jazari devised plans for 50 miraculous gadgets in all, including faucets that spewed wine and water, mechanical peacocks and a robotic musical band.

Time

EXHIBIT SIGN: COUNTING THE HOURS Water clocks have a long history.  In Egypt and Babylonia, they were used as early as 1500 BC.  This drawing shows a Chinese water clock designed in AD 1088.  Islamic craftsman borrowed Greek ideas when designing their own water clock, but they may also have admired the clockwork of their Chinese partners in trade.  In early Baghdad, China was known not only for its fine ceramics, but also its highly skilled hydraulic engineers.

 WHAT WASN’T SAID

1. That we owe the invention of the water clocks entirely to the Greeks and Chinese.

EXHIBIT SIGN: WATER CLOCKBook of Mechanical DevicesLeaf from the Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, Probably Cairo, Egypt 1354,  Abu-al-Izz Ismail al-Jazari To entertain wealthy patrons, Baghdad scholars invented fantastic machines. An Islamic craftsman designed the depsydra or water clock, around AD800.  A water wheel on the upper level controls the flow of water through the clock to measure time. How does it work.  A scribe sits in the center of a clock face.  As water flows steadily from the upper tank to the lower tank,  pulling a system of pulleys that cause the scribe to turn.  In the original design, a servant emptied the lower tank and refilled the upper tank each day.  In this model, an electric pump does the same job.

WHAT WASN’T SAID

1. That they may have originated in Cairo, Egypt, but also in Babylon, India, China, with the probability of China as early as 4000 BCE, unaided by the highly skilled Islamic scholars and craftsmen.

FACTS

1. The huge planetary clock-type models, driven by water and considered the forerunners of today’s mechanical clocks, originated during the 13th century and were discovered in China, the Middle East and North America.
2. A water clock or clepsydra (Greek κλέπτειν kleptein, ‘to steal’; ὕδωρ hydor, ‘water’) is any timepiece in which time is measured by the regulated flow of liquid into or out from a vessel where the amount is then measured.  These and the sundials, are likely to be the oldest time-measuring instruments, with the only exceptions being the vertical gnomon and the day-counting  tally stick.
3. Their precise origin may never be known, but the bowl-shaped outflow (simplest form) is known to have existed in Babylon and in Egypt, c. 16th century BC.  India and China also have early evidence of water clocks, dates less certain. Some claim that water clocks appeared in China as early as 4000 BC.  Therefore, inventors could be Chinese, Babylonian, Egyptian, or Indian, not Islamic.
4. The Greeks and Romans advanced water clock designs to include the inflow clepsydra with an early feedback system, gearing, and escapement mechanism, which were connected to fanciful automata and resulted in improved accuracy. Further advances were made in Byzantium, Syria and Mesopotamia, where increasingly accurate water clocks incorporated complex segmental and epicyclic gearing, water wheels, and programmability, advances, which eventually made their way to Europe. Independently, the Chinese also developed gears, escapement mechanism, and water wheels, and passed them on to  Korea and Japan
5. Some water clock designs were developed independently and transferred through trade. Early water clocks were calibrated with a sundial, replaced by the pendulum clocks in 17^th c. Europe.

EXHIBIT SIGN: NEW NUMBERS At the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, scholars pored over Indian books or mathematics.  These works used a set of ten symbols to represent numbers – not letters of the alphabet as in Baghdad and Rome, in the early 800s; mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi wrote a book on doing math using the Indian system.  Three centuries later, it was translated into Latin.  Eventually, people all over Europe followed al-Khwarizmi’s example, switched to “Arabic” numerals we use today.

WHAT WASN’T SAID

1. That the books were Indian, the symbols were Indian, and the Islamic mathematician wrote the book using Indian symbols, but the numerals are called “Arabic,” a misappropriated title.

Slave Trade

EXHIBIT SIGN: TREASURE IN THE HOLDAt its height, Baghdad attracted wealth from all corners of the world.  Built on the banks of the Tigris River, with easy access to the Persian Gulf, the city received goods not only by Silk Road trade routes, but also by sea.  By the early 800s, Arab ships were making regular voyages from Baghdad to China.  They returned heavily laden, as shown in this scene below the deck of an Islamic ship, some 1,200 years ago.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That the Arab ships were undoubtedly heavily laden with booty and human cargo.

FACTS:

1. Islam Watch: The Arab slave trade began and flourished around 800 CE, when it was virtually non-existent in Europe and female slaves often became wives. The Quran, hadith and sira support that “Muhammad took, purchased, sold, and gave away both male and female slaves.” Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya – a great scholar, astronomer, chemist, philosopher, psychologist, scientist, theologian and Islamic historian – says: “Muhammad had many male and female slaves. He used to buy and sell them, but he purchased more slaves then he sold. He once sold one black slave for two.  His purchases of slaves were more than he sold.” [Zad al-Ma’ad”, part 1, p. 160] (Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah’s (1292-1350 CE) Zad al-Ma’ad, translated as Provisions of the Hereafter, is rated as one of the finest books on the biography of Mohammed.)[1]
2. “Muhammad had a number of black slaves. One of them was named ‘Mahran’, whom Muhammad forced to do more labor than the average man. Whenever Muhammad went on a trip and he, or his people, got tired of carrying their stuff, he made Mahran carry it. Mahran said “Even if I were already carrying the load of 6 or 7 donkeys while we were on a journey, anyone who felt weak would throw his clothes or his shield or his sword on me so I would carry that, a heavy load”. Tabari and Jawziyya both record this, so Islam accepts this as true.” (Behind the Veil)

3. On one occasion,Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law Ali whipped a female slave of Aisha’s in front of Muhammad to make her speak out about the adultery charges brought against Aisha. Muhammad did not say a word to protest Ali’s beating of the slave-girl. On another occasion, Umar beat a slave-girl for wearing the veil (veil is for free Muslim women only). Muhammad had massacred 800 male Koreiza Jews and took their women and children, about 1200 heads, as slaves. He kept at least one Jewish female, named Rihana, as his concubine, and gave the rest away to his companions. He sent his disciple Sa’d bin-Zayd with a portion of the captive women and children to Nejd to sell them for horse and weapons for organizing future jihad-raids.

4. All these incidents bear testimony to the fact that Muhammad was an enslaver and slave-trader. The names of many of Muhammad’s slaves are given in detail in Muslim writings and they can be found in “Behind the Veil”. Moreover, even under Muhammad, slaves were treated brutally as above examples make it clear, although some Muslims, groundlessly claim that slaves under Islam were always treated fairly and kindly.

5. These may also bear testimony that Muhammad’s entourage and followers did not trade honestly, but raped and looted.

6. “Slavery is part of Islam; slavery is part of jihad and will remain as long as there is Islam.” (“Those who argue that slavery has been abolished are ignorant, not scholars. They are merely writers.  Whoever says such things is an infidel.” – Sheikh Saleh al-Fawzan, member of Senior Council of Clerics, Saudi Arabia, 2003.

7. “Besides being practiced more or less openly today in Sudan and Mauritania, there is evidence that slavery still continues beneath the surface in some majority-Muslim countries as well – notably Saudi Arabia which only abolished slavery in 19621; Yemen and Oman, both of which ended legal slavery in 1970; and Niger, which officially banned slavery in 2004, but which ban is widely ignored., and as many as one million people remain in bondage.  Slaves are bred, often raped and generally treated like animals.”  Dr. Daniel Pipes, New York Post (July 30, 2002.

8. “The worst, most inhumane and most diabolical institution of the black African slave trade was initiated, refined, perpetuated and implemented by the Mohammedan Arabs and later aided and abetted by the black converts to Mohammedan Islam.” – Robert Spencer, “The Persistence of Islamic Slavery.”

EXHIBIT SIGN: THE GOLDEN AGEWhenever you look at a map, gaze at the stars or take down a phone number, think of Baghdad.  Long ago, brilliant scholars in this booming city studied geography, astronomy and mathematics – and made advances that can still be felt every day.  Great minds from many lands gathered at a Baghdad library, called the House of Wisdom, one of many centers of learning in an era known as the Islamic Golden Age.

WHAT WASN’T SAID:

1. That the Golden Age of Islam was an age of inhumane servitude for Jews and Christians, the People of the Book.

FACTS:

1. Jewish communities had always existed in the Middle East; they were called People of the Book (the Bible). The Golden Age for Jews and Christians meant large-scale discrimination. They were given the status of dhimmi, and afforded the ignominious honor to live in shame under Islamic rule.
2. Dhimmi is the Arabic term that refers to the non-Islamic-embracing population, as a distinctly subjugated, second-class, almost-slave non-citizen, who is subjected to dictatorial deprivation of any legal and human rights since he is a non-Muslim permanent resident in a Muslim state.  Bat Ye’or’s book, Dhimmi (1971) describes the basis for development of dhimmitude in Islam, and its relationship to the jihad, the war to conquer territory for Islam.
3. Throughout earliest Islamic history, the people conquered by Muslims were given the choice of conversion, death, or servitude to despotic masters.  Jews and Christians had to pay jizya taxes and tolls and give deference to Muslim neighbors and frenzied mobs.
4. Jews and Christians were allowed to continue cultivating land but cede half the produce, with threat of expulsion at any time.  Making and breaking agreements was the hallmark of the Muslim armies.
5. As the Muslims grew more powerful, their holy wars spread beyond Arabia. The jihad became a war of conquest subject to a code of eliminating infidels.  Truces were made, but never a lasting peace, as happens today.
6. The jihad became a concept of dar al harab, territory of war, and dar al islam, territory of Islamic reign.  Jihad is a normal state of dar al harab that can only end with conversion of the world.  Therefore, jihad became conquest of the world for Islam – forced conversions, killings, taking slaves, seizing property. This enriched the jihadists and brought wealth to Arab nations; participation was/is obligatory either by force or by betrayal from within.
7. The ruler of the time provided either tolerance and security or fanaticism and pogroms.  Communities could be evicted, women raped, exorbitant ransoms placed on them, children abducted for conversion; mass murders of the dhimmis was condoned.  There was no due process.
8. Discriminatory and restrictive dress and behavior codes were enacted and severely enforced to reduce dhimmi into a state of despair and poverty.  Dehumanization was generally the rule, as were various forms of physical abuse.
9. Distinctive dress identified the dhimmi to restricted areas and behaviors, or banned from walking in Muslims areas of the city.   Dress codes included not wearing shoes or sandals, not using certain colors, wearing Stars of David on their clothing.  There were prohibitions from working in many occupations, and even rules on how to ride a mule (to distinguish him from a Muslim).
10. Non-observance of rules could result in severe beatings, even mortally wounding; there was no recourse in a court of law.
11. Islam was not a Golden Age for non-Muslims.  Islam is intolerant, and it fosters and condones belligerent and aggressive actions toward people who choose not to embrace Islam.
12. Non-observance of these rules would entail a severe beating. Often passing a Muslim on the wrong side would begin a beating that could leave a dhimmi fatally wounded. Since the dhimmis were denied the ability to testify against a Muslim, there was absolutely no recourse.
13. Pogroms against the Jews since the 11^th century:  1066 Granada massacre, the razing of the entire Jewish quarter in the Andalusian city of Granada. In North Africa, there were cases of violence against Jews in the Middle Ages, and in other Arab lands including Egypt, Syria. and Yemen. Jewish population was confined to segregated quarters, or mellahs, in Morocco, walled-in ghettos, beginning from the 15th century. The Almohads, who had taken control of much of Islamic Iberia by 1172 treated the dhimmis harshly. Jews and Christians were expelled from Morocco and Islamic Spain. Faced with the choice of either death or conversion, some Jews, such as the family of Maimonides, fled south and east to the more tolerant Muslim lands, while others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms. In 1465, Arab mobs in Fez slaughtered thousands of Jews, leaving only 11 alive, after a Jewish deputy vizier treated a Muslim woman in an offensive manner. The killings touched off a wave of similar massacres throughout Morocco.

Medicine & Dentistry

EXHIBIT SIGN: MASTER OF MEDICINEOne of the greatest minds in early medicine was Muhammad ibn Zakariya al Razi (AD 865-925).  It is said that Al Razi chose the most sanitary location for a Baghdad hospital by hanging meat in different neighborhoods to see where it took longest to rot… A firm believer in logic and close observation, Al-Razi wrote some 200 books, from a pamphlet on toothaches to a medical handbook that was used in Europe for hundreds of years.

FACTS:

1. The history of Arabic science is that their scientists were among the Jews who were forced to convert to Islam.  Arabs had no scientific traditions as they rampaged into the Near East, Egypt, and Libya in 694.  The Jews had long been established in North Africa – eight Berber tribes converted to Judaism, and under their heroic Queen Kahena, liberated Libya.  The Arab troops of 60,000 prevailed; 50,000 Jews and Berbers were massacred, and descendants of the converted (not descendants of the illiterate invaders) became “Arabic” philosophers and scientists.
2. A great physician, Isaac Israeli of Kairouan, was an Egyptian Jew who had immigrated to West Africa, bringing his science with him. Known to Europe as Isaac the Jew, his surviving works include logic, On Definitions, and Aristotelian physics, On the Elements.  His work on Pharmacology, De Gradibus Simplicum (translated into Latin) became the standard for medical history.
3. It was from Isaac Israeli that the greatest of “Arab” scientists, Avicenna (980-1037), drew inspiration. He was regarded as Arabic because he wrote in Arabic.  Known as the Aristotle of the East, he became a vizier in Persia, but he was born near Bokhara, then heavily populated by Jews, and was probably of Jewish origin.  Avicenna’s work reached Europe through translations by Jewish scholars in Spain, Italy, and Provence.  The great physician Maimonides was an admirer of Avicenna, and recommended that Jews study his works in The Guide to the Perplexed.
4. Avenzoar was a Moslem scientist of Jewish origin, “thus included among the great Jewish physicians of history.” His great work, Taysir, was one of the most widely-read medical treatises of the century, not least because it was translated early on into Hebrew, “the language of the author’s ancestors.”  Johannes of Capua, a converted Jew, in collaboration with another physician from Padua, translated it into Latin in 1280. The great work of Avicenna, the Colliget (General Rules of Health), was also translated at Padua into Latin by the Jew Bonacosa. The book became a standard medical treatise and it continued to be published after the printing press was invented several centuries later…and there were others. Physicians who attended the lords and kings of Islam and Christendom were largely Jews, a convincing indication of the major role that Jews continued to play in the science of medicine.

Dentistry 

1. The first known mention of tooth decay and toothache was on a Sumerian clay tablet, dated around 5000 BC, now referred to as the “Legend of the worm.” Recovered from the Euphrates valley, it was written in cuneiform.  The belief that tooth decay and dental pain are caused by “tooth worm” is found in ancient India, Egypt, Japan, and China, and persisted until the Age of Enlightenment.
2. The word antisepsis comes from the Greek words “anti” (against) and “sepsis” (decay).  Antiseptics prevent infection and other changes in living tissue by destroying or slowing the growth of germs (microorganisms that cause disease).   The nature and use of antiseptics were not fully understood until the discovery of bacteria.
3. Physicians and healers have been aware of the anti-infective and anti-spoilage properties of certain substances since ancient times.  Egyptian embalmers (those who preserved and prepared bodies for burial) used resins (an organic substance taken from plants and trees), naphtha (a liquid hydrocarbon often used as a solvent or diluting agent), and liquid pitch, along with vegetable oils and spices. The effectiveness of this mixture is shown in the fine state of preservation of Egyptian mummies. Persian laws instructed people to store drinking water in bright copper vessels. The ancient Greeks and Romans recognized the antiseptic properties of wine, oil, and vinegar for dressing wounds, dating back to the Greek physician Hippocrates(460-377 BC).
4. Ancient China is responsible for contributing much to the modern world, including many innovations to dentistry, and methods of treating tooth diseases.  Treating toothaches with arsenic, AD 1000, and developing silver amalgam for fillings.  They were advanced in the observation of the oral cavity, specifically to mastication and deglutition, systemic diseases and their connection to oral manifestations, such as early detection of measles.  Other studies included tooth extraction, abscesses, tumor removal and repair due to trauma, early repair of cleft palates, lip and other congenital defects and the instruments required to perform such tasks.

TCP We Know Light

Jones Day

Anne and Dan Palmer

RAV Financial

Margaret W Wong & Associates Co., LPA

Anthony Y Yen

Cleveland Asian Festival

ClevelandPeople.com

Confucious Institute at CSU

Discount Drug Mart

Federation of India Community Associations of Northeast Ohio

Global Cleveland

In June 2014, UNESCO designated the Chang’an-Tianshan corridor of the Silk Road

Meet the Curators

Mark Norell

Mark A. Norell, curator and chair of the Division of Paleontology at the Museum, has been a team leader of the joint American Museum of Natural History/Mongolian Academy of Sciences expeditions to the Gobi Desert, with interests and books written on invertebrate fossils, and dinosaur species.  I found nothing to illustrate an in-depth interest in or discoveries about the Silk Road.

Denise Leidy

Denise Leidy’s bio shows a deep interest in Asian art and culture, and that she has traveled widely on the Silk Road.  Her specialty in Chinese sculpture and decorative arts in the Buddhist traditions were not obvious in the exhibit.  The majority information focused on Islam.  Further, if she curated several exhibitions of Glimpses of the Silk Road, where are the glimpses and accurate attribution of the early stages and cultures responsible for this massive development and progress that affected civilization?

William Honeychurch

William Honeychurch’s expertise falls into the category of the archaeology of ancient nomadic politics of Mongolia, and the Silk Road of the steppes region, none of which was included into the Silk Road as it existed to the west.

CONCLUSION The exhibit was noted primarily for its inadequate information and lack of proper attribution for technological and intellectual achievements.This was a lesson in Islamic revisionism – and civilizational jihad.