ثورة فلسطين - أسبابها ونتائجها
The Palestine Revolt: Its Causes and Consequencesby Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā

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ذلك أصل الحضارة القديمة التي استمد منها اليونان فالرومان مدنيتهم، وأما الحضارة الحديثة فواضعو أساس علومها وفنونها هم العرب العدنانيون في العهد الإسلامي، كما يشهد لهم بذلك الحكماء والمؤرخون المنصفون من علماء الإفرنج على ما بينهم وبين الدول الأوربية ودعاة الدين من التنازع والتخاصم.

ولا ننكر أن العرب استمدوا من كُتب اليونان والفرس والهنود الذين كانت حضاراتهم قد درست وعفت رسومها ودُفنت كتبها في أرماس خزائن الملوك والبيوتات، فنبشوا تلك القبور، وأحيوا تلك الرمم، وصححوا واستدركوا، وزادوا واستنبطوا، وقرنوا العلم بالعمل، واستقلوا في ذلك حتى صار لهم فن مستقل خاص بهم، ووضعوا من العلوم ما لم يكن لغيرهم، وكان ذلك كله في وقت قريب خارق للعادة، فقد حقق حكيم الاجتماع الفرنسي الأكبر الدكتور (غوستاف لوبون) في كتابه (تطور الأمم) أن ملكة الفنون لا تحصل في الأمم إلا في ثلاثة أجيال: جيل المقلدين وجيل المخضرمين وجيل المستقلين، قال: وشذ العرب وحدهم فاستحكمت لهم ملكتها في جيل واحد صار لهم فيه فنون خاصة بهم، وفي كتابه (حضارة العرب) الذي صنَّفه قبل هذا الكتاب بعشرات السنين تفصيل لهذه الشهادة والدلائل عليها والرسوم الممثلة لها، وقد صرح فيه وفي غيره ولا يزال يصرح بأن العرب أساتذة أوربة في مدنيتها الحاضرة.

أنبياء العرب وملوكهم

(2) قد كان في العرب أنبياء مرسلون، وكان فيهم ملوك استشاريون مقيدون، كملكة سبأ التي قالت لرجال الدولة أَفْتُونِي فِي أَمْرِي مَا كُنتُ قَاطِعَةً أَمْراً حَتَّى تَشْهَدُونِ (النمل: 32) وكان الدين هو المرشد الأول إلى الحضارة فيهم وفي جميع الأمم، وأكثر ما بقي من آثار فنون الأقدمين وصناعاتهم عليه الصبغة الدينية الباعثة عليه كأهرام مصر وبرابيها ونواويسها، وكذلك شرائعهم وآدابهم، وإنما كانت تغلب البدع الوثنية على عقائد الدين الصحيحة وأحكامه التي يجمعها الإيمان بالله واليوم الآخر والعمل الصالح، ومن أهم أركان العمل الصالح العدل والصدق والأمانة، كما أن أعظم أركان الإيمان التوحيد، وفي آثارهم المنقوشة ومخلفاتهم الباقية ما يدل على جميع ذلك،

English
translation

That is the origin of the ancient civilization from which the Greeks and then the Romans drew their civilization. As for modern civilization, it was the Adnani Arabs of the Islamic era who laid the foundations of its sciences and arts. Fair minded European scholars and historians testify to this, despite the contention and conflict between them and the European states and advocates of religion.

We do not deny that the Arabs drew on the books of the Greeks, Persians, and Indians, whose civilizations had vanished, whose traces had faded, and whose books lay buried in the tombs of royal and family libraries. The Arabs dug up those graves and revived those remains. They corrected, supplied what was missing, added, discovered, and joined knowledge to practice. They became independent in this work, so that they had an art of their own and established sciences that others did not have. All this took place in an unusually short time. The leading French social thinker Dr. Gustave Le Bon established in his book The Evolution of Nations that a nation's capacity for the arts normally develops over three generations: imitators, those in transition, and those who work independently. He said that the Arabs alone were an exception, gaining that capacity in one generation and developing arts of their own. In The Civilization of the Arabs, which he wrote decades before that book, he gave this testimony in detail, with its evidence and illustrations. In it and elsewhere he stated, and continues to state, that the Arabs taught Europe its present civilization.

The Arabs' prophets and kings

(2) The Arabs had prophets who were sent to them and kings who ruled through consultation and within limits. One was the Queen of Sheba, who said to her statesmen, “Advise me in my affair. I never decide a matter until you are present” (Qur'an 27:32). Religion was the first guide to civilization among them and among all nations. Most surviving ancient arts and crafts bear the religious mark that prompted their making, as do the pyramids, temples, and sarcophagi of Egypt, and likewise ancient laws and customs. Pagan innovations often prevailed over correct religious beliefs and rules, which are united by faith in God and the Last Day and by righteous action. Among the main parts of righteous action are justice, truthfulness, and trustworthiness, just as the greatest part of faith is belief in one God. Their inscriptions and surviving remains point to all of this,

Analysis

Riḍā credits Arabs with the foundations of ancient and modern civilization and invokes Gustave Le Bon for a claim about rapid Arab achievement. Le Bon's 1894 French work does call Arab art an unusually rapid case and says Arab builders transformed Byzantine models in less than a century. The consulted text does not locate Riḍā's precise three-generation sequence or its one-generation exception. Le Bon's comparative claims remain his interpretation, not independent proof of Riḍā's wider account of science and civilization. The page then turns to Arab prophets and the Queen of Sheba, using the Qur'an and ancient monuments in a religious account of civilization. Qur'an 27:32 confirms the Arabic wording he quotes about consultation. The verse supports the quotation but does not establish his wider historical claims about Arab kingship or civilization.

The Sabaic evidence requires a further limit. A Cambridge linguistic history identifies Sabaic as one of the Ancient South Arabian languages of southwest Arabia and dates its earliest inscriptions to the eighth century BCE. This locates Saba in the Arabian Peninsula, but it does not make Sabaic an early form of Arabic or establish the Queen of Sheba within a single Arab national genealogy. The term Arab can also be used later as a broad geographic or cultural label, so a simple modern ethnic classification would go beyond the source.

Riḍā's claim about Europe rests on a substantial historical process but makes it too exclusive. Charles Burnett calls Arabic texts crucial to Western philosophy and describes major translation of Greek and Arabic scientific works into Latin. The same history identifies Toledo as a translation center and Jewish scholars as important in circulating and translating texts. The evidence supports a major Arabic-language and Islamic-world contribution to medieval European learning. The network also involved Greek sources and Muslim, Jewish and Christian scholars of several backgrounds, so it does not support the claim that Arabs alone taught Europe its present civilization.

The Queen of Sheba is a scriptural ruler, not an independently attested Sabaean monarch. The British Museum identifies her as a legendary ruler associated with the historical kingdom of Saba in present-day Yemen and says no surviving inscription or other evidence establishes a female ruler there. This does not challenge the Qur'anic quotation or the historical existence of Saba. It limits Riḍā's use of the queen as direct evidence for the political institutions of ancient Arabs.