Islam =/ Ottomans or Arabs; Hanafi maddhabd =/ Islamic fiqh.
Since Selim I conquered Egypt and Hejaz, the Ottomans were practically, Islam's most powerful empire and leading state and representative. Given that there were also the most 'advanced'/'Europeanised' Islamic state for four centuries, I think it is fair to use the Ottomans as a general representation of Islamic Scientific thinking.
How does this matter: Western Europeans used Moor with reckless abandon and made out Muslims to be barbarians. Yet we don't call out Western Europeans for being slow on the uptake of Arab/Greek learning?
The point of that paragraph was to show that the general Islamic world view was against learning from who they deemed as barbarians and that this world view, even after centuries of political changes, changed very little. Western Europeans may have seen the Muslim as barbarians too, but their world view did not restrict them or eventually changed into engaging directly with Islamic societies for knowledge. Eventually, Western Europeans began en mass to translate and read Arab/Turkish books. But not vice-versa. The Quran, for example was already translated and reprinted in large numbers to be sold in the Ottoman Empire by the 16th century. By the 16th century, European Universities, such as Cambridge and Oxford, Salamanca that had departments for the study of Arabic and Oriental cultures. Again, the same cannot be said for the Ottoman Empire, much less, the rest of the Islamic Middle East. And this was because Islamic societies were less willing to engage with Europeans than Europeans were with Islamic societies.
Europe was no different, vernacular languages were looked down upon. Instead, most elite Europeans conversed in Latin or a prestige language like French. And that's no different to Southeast Asia either where most elites spoke and wrote in prestige Malay/Court Malay between themselves.
No, that's not the point. I wasn't talking about classic languages against vernacular languages. I was talking about European languages versus languages of Islamic societies. As I mentioned, in this and the previous post, elite Europeans were more than willing to study and learn the languages of the lands of Islam than elite Ottomans/Persians/Arabs were willing to learn the languages of the lands of Christendom. Thus, my lengthy post on the lack of Muslim Turkish diplomats that actually learned French/Latin/Elvish to talk to them, settling for substitution. It adds to my point that Islamic societies were adverse to engage with Europeans.
Here's a tissue. Runny noses are bad.
Europe did that too man. The Spanish are the most extreme example. But even in Protestant Geneva the presses were expected to churn out religious works. The other point to make is that there wasn't all that much in the way of secular works in the European literary canon at that stage. The thrust of world literature was still very much religious.
Are you saying that the rejection of the printing press by the elite courts of Europeans were on the same par as the rejection of the printing press by the Ottoman or Moroccan courts? Of course not. European learning was spurred on by the printing press because of nice cheap books and reprints. Islamic society did not have the same privileged having outright refused them for centuries on end.
And you didn't attack the main crux of my argument. The quote by Nicholas de Nocolay that summed up my argument about how the Ottomans only learned to use European inventions and warfare via immigrants who have moved into Turkey and not directly just send diplomats/officials/students whatever to said lands to learn.
It's not like they did not have the opportunity as the Ottomans had plenty of friendly enough relations with Venice, England, the Netherlands, France, Hungarian Protestants etc who wanted the Ottomans to help screw over their mutual enemies.
Although it's not possible for you to read 'The Muslim Discovery of Europe', Bernard Lewis made a compelling case for this Islamic reluctance to engage with Europeans. He cites books, the rare few diplomatic exchanges, diaries and so on so forth. In of the chapters, he states that the first real attempt to chronicle and describe European society, geography and politics was by Ottoman geographer, Katib Celebi who wroted "Guide for the Perplexed on the history of the Greeks and the Romans and the Christians" and he explains that he is writing this because "all that the Islamic histories offered about these people [Europeans] was manifest lies and grotesque fables" this was in 1655.
Lewis talks about how Tarih-i Naima, an Ottoman imperial historian, wrote about, recorded and archived in great detail, events that involved directly with Muslims, such as the Morisco Revolt, Ottoman-English Tobacco trade, Naval war in the Mediterranean. but absolutely very little on the Thirty Years War, despite it being a major event just across the Ottoman border.
He gives example after example in almost every medium possible, diplomatic exchanges, Turkish adventurers, official state letters, books written by Arabs, Turks, Iranians, Jews, captured Muslim and Christian slaves, trade accounts, religious edicts, scientific progress, Jewish doctors, in which it shows that Islamic societies were very reluctant to engage with Europeans due to their Islamic world view of Europeans, hence resulting in a slowing down of European ideas flowing into the Ottoman Empire and other Islamic societies.