ABSTRACT
This paper begins with a brief outline of two major positions and the question of whether the ancient (or ‘rational’) sciences were excluded from Muslim madrasas and cognate teaching institutes. The section that follows takes up positions formulated by Jonathan Berkey and Michael Chamberlain, who both stress the importance of networks, rather than schools, for Muslim education in the post-classical period, to show that these networks integrated the teaching and studying of mathematics, astronomy, astrology, philosophy, logic and/or the occult sciences into the Muslim educational landscapes. The third and fourth sections of the paper talk about the differences between the ancient and the ‘rational’ sciences and about partnerships between the religious and philological sciences, on the one hand, and the ‘rational’ sciences, on the other. Section five discusses the inimical attitudes of religious scholars toward the ancient and ‘rational’ sciences and illustrates some of their strategies to deal with them. Finally, in the conclusion, it is claimed that the much-debated decline of the ancient sciences did not result from their exclusion from the religiously dominated Muslim educational landscapes, but rather from their integration into them.
