“On the path of true monotheism you cannot follow two directions in prayer. One seeks the satisfaction of the Friend or one’s own desire!” 

- Ahmed Ghazali (d.1126)

"Little wonder, then, that as soon as it emerged beyond the confines of Arabia, Islam won new adherents by leaps and bounds. Born and nurtured in the world-contempt of Pauline and Augustinian Christianity, the populations of Syria and North Africa, and a little later of Visigothic Spain, saw themselves suddenly confronted with a teaching which denied the dogma of Original Sin and stressed the inborn dignity of earthly life: and so they rallied in ever-increasing numbers to the new creed that gave them to understand that man was God's vicar on earth. This, and not a legendary 'conversion at the point of the sword', was the explanation of Islam's amazing triumph in the glorious morning of its history." —- Leopold Weiss (Muhammad Asad), The Road to Mecca, pp190-193. Quotations from the Qur’an and sayings of the Prophet reworded based on the originals.

"It was not Muslims that had made Islam great: it was Islam that had made the Muslims great."

"For, indeed, it was Islam that has carried the early Muslims to tremendous cultural heights by directing all their energies toward conscious thought as the only means to understanding the nature of God's creation and, thus, of His will. No demand has been made of them to believe in dogmas difficult or even impossible of intellectual comprehension; in fact, no dogma whatsoever was to be found in the Prophet's message: and, thus, the thirst after knowledge which distinguished early Muslim history had not been forced, as elsewhere in the world, to assert itself in a painful struggle against the traditional faith. On the contrary, it had stemmed exclusively from that faith. The Arabian Prophet had declared 'Striving after knowledge is a most sacred duty for every Muslim': and his followers were led to understand that only by acquiring knowledge could they fully worship the Lord. when they pondered the Prophet's saying, 'God creates no disease without creating a cure for it as well', they realized that by searching for unknown cures they would contribute a fulfilment of God's will on earth: and so medical research became invested with the holiness of a religious duty. They read the Koran verse, 'We create every living thing out of water' - and in their endeavour to penetrate to the meaning of these words, they begun to study living organisms and the laws of their development: and thus they established the science of biology... And in the same way they took to chemistry and physics and physiology, and to all other sciences in which the Muslim genius was to find its most lasting monument. In building that monument they did no more than follow the admonition of their Prophet that 'Whoever treads a path in search of knowledge, God will make easy for him the path to Paradise'; that 'The student of knowledge walks in the way of God'..." --- Leopold Weiss (Muhammad Asad), The Road to Mecca, pp190-193. Quotations from the Qur'an and sayings of the Prophet reworded based on the originals.

The Perfume Makers - Rudolf Ernst

"The hypocrite looks for faults; the believer looks for excuses." --- Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (Image: an Ottoman, 16th century gem-set box, created by Persian jewelers, thought to hold scales for jewelry making).

"During all the first part of the Middle Ages, no other people made as important a contribution to human progress as did the Arabs, if we take this term to mean all those whose mother-tongue was Arabic, and not merely those living in the Arabian peninsula. For centuries, Arabic was the language of learning, culture and intellectual progress for the whole of the civilized world with the exception of the Far East. From the IXth to the XIIth century there were more philosophical, medical, historical, religious, astronomical and geographical works written in Arabic than in any other human tongue." ---Phillip Hitti, 'Short History of the Arabs'

"Many visitors to Morocco are surprised at the Jewish areas known as Mellah in towns such as Marrakech and Essaouira. Mellah is from the Arabic word for salt as Jews in Morocco were often traders using their contacts in the Jewish Diaspora to set up the trade and banking relationships helped by the fact they often spoke several languages. Long protected and respected as “people of the book” they have been an integral part of Moroccan society and as well as traders have been respected as craftsmen and educators." --- Dáithaí C

كن رجلاً رجله في الثرى، وهامة همته في الثريا "Be a person whose feet are on the ground and his ambitions in the heavens." --- Arabic proverb

Arabic Proverb

The Peacock Room - Castello di Sammezzano in Reggello, Tuscany, Italy.

"Before the rise and expansion of Islam in the seventh century, Arabia was the scene of political instability and economic chaos." --- S.A. Nigosian

"These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century, - is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Granada! I said, the Great man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame..." --- Thomas Carlyle, 'Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History'

Despite the fact that it took place roughly at the same period, the spread of coffee consumption over the world appear to have occurred independently from the European commercial expansion. It spread during the early 16th century from Arabia through the Ottoman Empire and to Iran. The habit may have penetrated the Safavid realm via the heavily Arab-influenced southern shores. The constant wars and exchange of territories between the two empires can only have helped to spread this Turkish custom. --- Matthee, Rudi (1994) “Coffee in Safavid Iran: Commerce and Consumption”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 37/1, 1-32.

Bertrand Russel, ‘History of Western Philosophy,’ London, 1948