Punjabis
Punjabis (Panjabis). People from the Punjab region of Southern Asia. The word Punjab or Panjab is derived from two Persian terms, panch (“five”) and "ab" (“waters”), and refers to the land through which flow five rivers: the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej. The exact borders of this area are not fixed and have often included all land between the Indus River, further west of the Chenab, and the Sutlej on its eastern edge. Under the British, Punjab had as its eastern border the Jumna (Yamuna) River rather than the Sutlej. To the north, the Punjab includes the Siwalik Hills, the lowest range of the Himalayan barrier, and to the south it roughly terminates at the confluence of the Indus and Panjnad rivers. Between the rivers lie the doabs, elevated strips of land separated by two river basins. The Punjab plains are dry and subject to undependable rainfall. Consequently, agriculture developed along the rivers, as did most of the cities and towns, while the doabs were used primarily for grazing until irrigation systems could open them to farming. The Punjab, with its location west of the Ganges Plain and east of the Iranian Plateau, has been crisscrossed by several major trade routes since antiquity.
The Punjab was a major site of the Indus Valley Civilization (c.2700 B.C.T.-c.1700 B.C.T.), an agricultural society that encompassed the entire Indus River basin. A nomadic people, the Aryans, entered the Punjab from the northwest about 1700-1500 B.C.T. and conquered and replaced the Indus civilization with their own village society. By 1000 B.C.T. towns reappeared on the eastern edge of the Punjab and, as civilization extended into the Ganges basin, the Punjab became a border area sometimes dominated by empires to the east and at other times by states to the west. In the sixth century B.C.T., Darius I, ruler of the Achaemenid empire, annexed the Punjab. The Persians held it until Alexander of Macedon destroyed their empire. Alexander penetrated the Punjab in 327-325 B.C.T., fought against the local rulers, and then departed.
In the fourth century, the Punjab came under control first of the Nanda dynasty and then under the Maurya empire, whose base was in Bihar. The Punjab remained part of an extensive Indian state from the fourth to the second century B.C.T. When the Maurya empire disintegrated after 182 B.C.T., the Punjab again became a path of immigration from Central Asia through Afghanistan and the passes on the eastern edge of the Iranian Plateau. Following the steps of the Aryans and Persians came Indo-Greeks in the second century B.C.T., Sakas in the first century B.C.T., Kushans in the first century C.C., and Hunas in the sixth century. Although these dates are still being debated, it is clear that the population of the Punjab underwent considerable modification as new groups of invaders were added to the original inhabitants. It was a center of both physical and cultural intermixing, particularly the Gandhara region on the northwestern edge of the Punjab.
At the end of the tenth century, the Punjab underwent the beginnings of a fundamental change in its culture. Under the leadership of the sultan of Ghazna, an empire centered in eastern Afghanistan, Muslims began raids into the Punjab and further east. Raiding continued through the eleventh century and by the end of the twelfth century it shifted to the process of annexation. The Afghan kingdom of Ghur replaced Ghazna and sections of the Punjab were absorbed by this state. Between 1192 and 1206 the army of Muhammad Ghuri conquered northern India as far east as Bengal, founding the Delhi sultanate, which lasted from 1206 to 1526. Once again the Punjab became a border province of an empire, this time based in Delhi and ruled by a Muslim military elite. The Mongols raided Punjab during the fourteenth century, but the Delhi sultanate succeeded in holding them at bay. In 1398, Timur fought his way through the Punjab to Delhi and sacked the city before returning once more through the Punjab. A new empire was created by Babur, founder of the Mughal empire. The Punjab remained under control of the Mughal empire from the mid-sixteenth century. The loss of power by the Mughals led to another period of incursions from the northwest and the south, as Afghans, Mughals, Marathas, and a new historic force, the Sikhs, struggled to control the Punjab.
The long history of Muslim dominance has created a sizable community of Punjabi Muslims in this region both through immigration and conversion. It had also seen the destruction of Jain and Buddhist communities. Guru Nanak (1469-1539) began the creation of a new religious community. He founded a quietist sect that stressed a strict morality and monotheism while rejecting caste, idolatry, and the role of brahman priests. Nanak drew on the rich Sant tradition of Hinduism and on Islamic mysticism. The Sikh disciples grew and under the leadership of ten gurus a religion developed with its own scriptures, rituals, and customs. In 1606, Guru Arjun, the fifth in the line of succession, was executed by the Mughal emperor Jahangir. Afterward an intense animosity developed between the Sikhs and the Mughal government. Following the execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur by Emperor Aurangzebin 1675 antagonism became warfare. Under the leadership of Guru Gobind Singh (1675-1708) the Sikh religion was reshaped and fused with military values, ending a transition from the original teachings of Nanak to an aggressive religious community engaged in a lengthy military struggle. In 1799, the Sikhs established their own kingdom under the leadership of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who ruled the Punjab until his death in 1839. In 1846, the first Anglo-Sikh War resulted in the British annexation of the Jullundur Doab and in 1849, after the Second Anglo-Sikh War, the British-Indian government seized the entire Punjab.
Under British administration the Punjab was given a set of English laws, new concepts of land ownership, a system of roads and railways, and the introduction of schools teaching literacy in both English and the vernaculars. The British also introduced an extensive system of canal irrigation that produced an extensive system of canal irrigation that produced a significant rise in agricultural productivity. They were accompanied by aggressive Christian missionaries who heightened existing religious competition. In 1891, the Punjab was divided into three major religious communities: Muslims (50 percent), Hindus (38 percent), and Sikhs (12 percent). Punjabis were drawn into competing socio-religious movements: the Arya Samaj, Dev Samaj, and Sanatana Dharm Sabha among Hindus; the Ahmadiyya, Ahl-i Hadis, and Ahl-i-Qur’an among Muslims; and the Namdharis, Nirankaris and Singh Sabhas among the Sikhs. By the close of the nineteenth century religious competition intensified as each community became associated with a particular language and script: Muslims with Urdu written in the Arabic script, Hindus with Hindi in the Devanagari script, Sikhs with Punjabi in the Gurmukhi script, and Christians with English in the roman script.
During the first half of the twentieth century the Punjab was subject to religious and political conflict. Sikh and Hindu revolutionaries of the Ghadr Party turned to open rebellion in the years 1913 to 1915 and on April 13, 1919, the city of Amritsar was the scene of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in which 379 protestors were killed and more than 1,200 wounded. In the years 1920 to 1925, militant Sikhs launched the Gurdwara reform campaign, a struggle that employed both non-violent and violent tactics. It also led to the creation of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee and the Akali Dal, two organizations that still dominate Sikh politics.
Through the 1920s and 1930s the rural based Unionist Party dominated Punjab politics, but by the mid-1940s it lost power to communal organizations as the Punjab was divided by rival forms of nationalism. The Punjab was formally bifurcated in 1947 with the creation of two new nation states, India and Pakistan. The new international border ran north and south between the cities of Lahore and Amritsar. Refugees fled the Punjab: Muslims moved west, while Hindus and Sikhs fled east. The Punjab became a border area for two nations and was the scene of fighting in the Indo-Pakistani wars of 1965 and 1971.
Pakistani Punjab was initially a separate province within the new country, but in October 1955 West Pakistan became a single administrative and political unit. A separate Punjab province ceased to exist until it was reinstated in October 1970 when Punjab became one of four states in the divided Pakistan. After independence, Indian Punjab consisted of the British-administered territories. In 1957, these districts were fused with several princely states to create a state of Punjab. At the same time the Punjab hill states were joined together to form a new political division, Himachal Pradesh. In 1966, Indian Punjab was divided into a Punjab state made up of the northern Punjabi-speaking area and Haryana, composed of the southern Hindu-speaking districts. At the same time hill tracts formerly part of the Punjab were added to Himachal Pradesh. Indian Punjab remains torn by religious conflict, this time between Hindus and Sikhs, while Pakistani Punjab is the scene of competing linguistic and cultural groups. Culturally the Punjab has become increasingly divided. The Urdu language in Pakistani Punjab is steadily evolving toward close links with Arabic and with Southwest Asian culture, while Hindi and Punjabi have lost much of the Perso-Arabic influence built over centuries of Islamic domination.
Panj-aab, the land of the five rivers (Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej) lends its name to its people, the Punjabis. Numerically and politically, they are the dominant people of Pakistan and the Indian Punjab.
The Punjab has been the most productive land in South Asia ever since the British in the nineteenth century constructed on the Punjabi plains the largest irrigation system the world had yet seen. Even 3,000 to 4,000 years earlier, the civilizations which created cities -- Harrapa, Mohenjodaroand Kot Diji -- whose ruins exhibit marked similarities to those of the Mesopotamians. The Aryan emigrations of these eras established the base of modern Punjabi culture.
The mountain passes leading down from Afghanistan, the Khyber, the Kurram, the Tochi and the Gemal, served as doorways fro successive waves of invaders: the forces of Darius and of Alexander the Great, the Persians, the Mauryas, Greco-Bactrians, Sakas, Parthians and Hepthalite Huns, each adding to the heritage of the Punjab. In 712, the Arabs extended their power to the lower Punjab, but Islam failed to take root until after the eleventh century, when the Turks under Mahmud of Ghazni invaded the land. The religion spread rapidly during the 300 year suzerainty of the Turkish sultanate of Delhi. Another period of growth came with the founding of the Mughal Empire under Babur in the sixteenth century, particularly upon Emperor Aurangzeb’s enforcement of the jizya, a tax on non-Muslims. Lahore became a center of Muslim dynamism.
Following the disintegration of Mughal power, the Punjab was conquered first by the Sikhs and then by the British, who, after the Muslim “mutiny” of 1857, suppressed Islamic leadership. Under the British, Hindus assumed ascendant social and political power.
As independence approached in India in the 1940s, relations among Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus in the Punjab turned from coolness to hostility. The promise of a country of their own prompted each group to seek positions of strength at the expense of the others. Fear of violence and the hope for prosperity led Hindus and Sikhs in western Punjab to migrate eastward to India, while Muslims in India moved westward to Pakistan. At the cost of thousands of lives lost in communal violence, nearly 12 million people moved to new homes after the partition of the Punjab and the independence of Pakistan and India in 1947. The tenuous border between Pakistani Punjab and Indian Punjab has several times witnessed warfare between the two countries. Today the Punjab of Pakistan is 98 percent Muslim; the Punjab of India is 99 percent Hindu, Sikh and Christian and perhaps 1 percent Muslim.
Since it was the Turks who brought Sunni Islam to the Punjab, the Hanafi school of the sharia dominates Punjabi Muslim doctrine. However, about one out every twelve Punjabis is Shi‘a, in most cases of the Ithna Ashari branch.
Panjabis see Punjabis
Panj-aab see Punjabis
The Punjab was a major site of the Indus Valley Civilization (c.2700 B.C.T.-c.1700 B.C.T.), an agricultural society that encompassed the entire Indus River basin. A nomadic people, the Aryans, entered the Punjab from the northwest about 1700-1500 B.C.T. and conquered and replaced the Indus civilization with their own village society. By 1000 B.C.T. towns reappeared on the eastern edge of the Punjab and, as civilization extended into the Ganges basin, the Punjab became a border area sometimes dominated by empires to the east and at other times by states to the west. In the sixth century B.C.T., Darius I, ruler of the Achaemenid empire, annexed the Punjab. The Persians held it until Alexander of Macedon destroyed their empire. Alexander penetrated the Punjab in 327-325 B.C.T., fought against the local rulers, and then departed.
In the fourth century, the Punjab came under control first of the Nanda dynasty and then under the Maurya empire, whose base was in Bihar. The Punjab remained part of an extensive Indian state from the fourth to the second century B.C.T. When the Maurya empire disintegrated after 182 B.C.T., the Punjab again became a path of immigration from Central Asia through Afghanistan and the passes on the eastern edge of the Iranian Plateau. Following the steps of the Aryans and Persians came Indo-Greeks in the second century B.C.T., Sakas in the first century B.C.T., Kushans in the first century C.C., and Hunas in the sixth century. Although these dates are still being debated, it is clear that the population of the Punjab underwent considerable modification as new groups of invaders were added to the original inhabitants. It was a center of both physical and cultural intermixing, particularly the Gandhara region on the northwestern edge of the Punjab.
At the end of the tenth century, the Punjab underwent the beginnings of a fundamental change in its culture. Under the leadership of the sultan of Ghazna, an empire centered in eastern Afghanistan, Muslims began raids into the Punjab and further east. Raiding continued through the eleventh century and by the end of the twelfth century it shifted to the process of annexation. The Afghan kingdom of Ghur replaced Ghazna and sections of the Punjab were absorbed by this state. Between 1192 and 1206 the army of Muhammad Ghuri conquered northern India as far east as Bengal, founding the Delhi sultanate, which lasted from 1206 to 1526. Once again the Punjab became a border province of an empire, this time based in Delhi and ruled by a Muslim military elite. The Mongols raided Punjab during the fourteenth century, but the Delhi sultanate succeeded in holding them at bay. In 1398, Timur fought his way through the Punjab to Delhi and sacked the city before returning once more through the Punjab. A new empire was created by Babur, founder of the Mughal empire. The Punjab remained under control of the Mughal empire from the mid-sixteenth century. The loss of power by the Mughals led to another period of incursions from the northwest and the south, as Afghans, Mughals, Marathas, and a new historic force, the Sikhs, struggled to control the Punjab.
The long history of Muslim dominance has created a sizable community of Punjabi Muslims in this region both through immigration and conversion. It had also seen the destruction of Jain and Buddhist communities. Guru Nanak (1469-1539) began the creation of a new religious community. He founded a quietist sect that stressed a strict morality and monotheism while rejecting caste, idolatry, and the role of brahman priests. Nanak drew on the rich Sant tradition of Hinduism and on Islamic mysticism. The Sikh disciples grew and under the leadership of ten gurus a religion developed with its own scriptures, rituals, and customs. In 1606, Guru Arjun, the fifth in the line of succession, was executed by the Mughal emperor Jahangir. Afterward an intense animosity developed between the Sikhs and the Mughal government. Following the execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur by Emperor Aurangzebin 1675 antagonism became warfare. Under the leadership of Guru Gobind Singh (1675-1708) the Sikh religion was reshaped and fused with military values, ending a transition from the original teachings of Nanak to an aggressive religious community engaged in a lengthy military struggle. In 1799, the Sikhs established their own kingdom under the leadership of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who ruled the Punjab until his death in 1839. In 1846, the first Anglo-Sikh War resulted in the British annexation of the Jullundur Doab and in 1849, after the Second Anglo-Sikh War, the British-Indian government seized the entire Punjab.
Under British administration the Punjab was given a set of English laws, new concepts of land ownership, a system of roads and railways, and the introduction of schools teaching literacy in both English and the vernaculars. The British also introduced an extensive system of canal irrigation that produced an extensive system of canal irrigation that produced a significant rise in agricultural productivity. They were accompanied by aggressive Christian missionaries who heightened existing religious competition. In 1891, the Punjab was divided into three major religious communities: Muslims (50 percent), Hindus (38 percent), and Sikhs (12 percent). Punjabis were drawn into competing socio-religious movements: the Arya Samaj, Dev Samaj, and Sanatana Dharm Sabha among Hindus; the Ahmadiyya, Ahl-i Hadis, and Ahl-i-Qur’an among Muslims; and the Namdharis, Nirankaris and Singh Sabhas among the Sikhs. By the close of the nineteenth century religious competition intensified as each community became associated with a particular language and script: Muslims with Urdu written in the Arabic script, Hindus with Hindi in the Devanagari script, Sikhs with Punjabi in the Gurmukhi script, and Christians with English in the roman script.
During the first half of the twentieth century the Punjab was subject to religious and political conflict. Sikh and Hindu revolutionaries of the Ghadr Party turned to open rebellion in the years 1913 to 1915 and on April 13, 1919, the city of Amritsar was the scene of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in which 379 protestors were killed and more than 1,200 wounded. In the years 1920 to 1925, militant Sikhs launched the Gurdwara reform campaign, a struggle that employed both non-violent and violent tactics. It also led to the creation of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee and the Akali Dal, two organizations that still dominate Sikh politics.
Through the 1920s and 1930s the rural based Unionist Party dominated Punjab politics, but by the mid-1940s it lost power to communal organizations as the Punjab was divided by rival forms of nationalism. The Punjab was formally bifurcated in 1947 with the creation of two new nation states, India and Pakistan. The new international border ran north and south between the cities of Lahore and Amritsar. Refugees fled the Punjab: Muslims moved west, while Hindus and Sikhs fled east. The Punjab became a border area for two nations and was the scene of fighting in the Indo-Pakistani wars of 1965 and 1971.
Pakistani Punjab was initially a separate province within the new country, but in October 1955 West Pakistan became a single administrative and political unit. A separate Punjab province ceased to exist until it was reinstated in October 1970 when Punjab became one of four states in the divided Pakistan. After independence, Indian Punjab consisted of the British-administered territories. In 1957, these districts were fused with several princely states to create a state of Punjab. At the same time the Punjab hill states were joined together to form a new political division, Himachal Pradesh. In 1966, Indian Punjab was divided into a Punjab state made up of the northern Punjabi-speaking area and Haryana, composed of the southern Hindu-speaking districts. At the same time hill tracts formerly part of the Punjab were added to Himachal Pradesh. Indian Punjab remains torn by religious conflict, this time between Hindus and Sikhs, while Pakistani Punjab is the scene of competing linguistic and cultural groups. Culturally the Punjab has become increasingly divided. The Urdu language in Pakistani Punjab is steadily evolving toward close links with Arabic and with Southwest Asian culture, while Hindi and Punjabi have lost much of the Perso-Arabic influence built over centuries of Islamic domination.
Panj-aab, the land of the five rivers (Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej) lends its name to its people, the Punjabis. Numerically and politically, they are the dominant people of Pakistan and the Indian Punjab.
The Punjab has been the most productive land in South Asia ever since the British in the nineteenth century constructed on the Punjabi plains the largest irrigation system the world had yet seen. Even 3,000 to 4,000 years earlier, the civilizations which created cities -- Harrapa, Mohenjodaroand Kot Diji -- whose ruins exhibit marked similarities to those of the Mesopotamians. The Aryan emigrations of these eras established the base of modern Punjabi culture.
The mountain passes leading down from Afghanistan, the Khyber, the Kurram, the Tochi and the Gemal, served as doorways fro successive waves of invaders: the forces of Darius and of Alexander the Great, the Persians, the Mauryas, Greco-Bactrians, Sakas, Parthians and Hepthalite Huns, each adding to the heritage of the Punjab. In 712, the Arabs extended their power to the lower Punjab, but Islam failed to take root until after the eleventh century, when the Turks under Mahmud of Ghazni invaded the land. The religion spread rapidly during the 300 year suzerainty of the Turkish sultanate of Delhi. Another period of growth came with the founding of the Mughal Empire under Babur in the sixteenth century, particularly upon Emperor Aurangzeb’s enforcement of the jizya, a tax on non-Muslims. Lahore became a center of Muslim dynamism.
Following the disintegration of Mughal power, the Punjab was conquered first by the Sikhs and then by the British, who, after the Muslim “mutiny” of 1857, suppressed Islamic leadership. Under the British, Hindus assumed ascendant social and political power.
As independence approached in India in the 1940s, relations among Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus in the Punjab turned from coolness to hostility. The promise of a country of their own prompted each group to seek positions of strength at the expense of the others. Fear of violence and the hope for prosperity led Hindus and Sikhs in western Punjab to migrate eastward to India, while Muslims in India moved westward to Pakistan. At the cost of thousands of lives lost in communal violence, nearly 12 million people moved to new homes after the partition of the Punjab and the independence of Pakistan and India in 1947. The tenuous border between Pakistani Punjab and Indian Punjab has several times witnessed warfare between the two countries. Today the Punjab of Pakistan is 98 percent Muslim; the Punjab of India is 99 percent Hindu, Sikh and Christian and perhaps 1 percent Muslim.
Since it was the Turks who brought Sunni Islam to the Punjab, the Hanafi school of the sharia dominates Punjabi Muslim doctrine. However, about one out every twelve Punjabis is Shi‘a, in most cases of the Ithna Ashari branch.
Panjabis see Punjabis
Panj-aab see Punjabis
Pushtun
Pushtun. See Pakhtun.
Pushtun. See Pakhtun.
Puskulluoglu, Ali
Puskulluoglu, Ali (Ali Puskulluoglu) (b. 1935). Turkish poet.
Ali Puskulluoglu see Puskulluoglu, Ali
Puskulluoglu, Ali (Ali Puskulluoglu) (b. 1935). Turkish poet.
Ali Puskulluoglu see Puskulluoglu, Ali
Pythagoras
Pythagoras (in Arabic, Fithaghuras) (Pythagoras of Samos) (Pythagoras the Samian) (b. c. 570/580 B.C.T., Samos, Ionia [now in Greece] — d. c. 500/495 B.C.T., Metapontum, Lucania [now in Italy]), (c. 570 B.C.T. – c. 495 B.C.T.). No true distinction was made between the Greek philosopher of the sixth century B.C.T. and the school, or schools, bearing his name. It was constantly repeated that he had coined the word “philosophy”, and that he was the inventor of the science of music and the propagator among the Greeks of arithmetic, geometry, physics, and metaphysics. The “Golden Words” which are ascribed to him enjoyed a wide circulation in their Arabic translation, and the Pythagorean “Symbola” were often cited. The influence of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism on Muslim civilization must be rated rather high.
Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him. He was born on the island of Samos, and might have traveled widely in his youth, visiting Egypt and other places seeking knowledge. He had a teacher named Themistoclea, who introduced him to the principles of ethics. Around 530 B.C.T., he moved to Croton, a Greek colony in southern Italy, and there set up a religious sect. His followers pursued the religious rites and practices developed by Pythagoras, and studied his philosophical theories. The society took an active role in the politics of Croton, but this eventually led to their downfall. The Pythagorean meeting-places were burned, and Pythagoras was forced to flee the city. He is said to have ended his days in Metapontum.
Pythagoras made influential contributions to philosophy and religious teaching in the late 6th century B.C.T. He is often revered as a great mathematician, mystic and scientist, but he is best known for the Pythagorean theorem which bears his name. However, because legend and obfuscation cloud his work even more than with the other pre-Socratic philosophers, one can give account of his teachings to a little extent, and some have questioned whether he contributed much to mathematics and natural philosophy. Many of the accomplishments credited to Pythagoras may actually have been accomplishments of his colleagues and successors. Whether or not his disciples believed that everything was related to mathematics and that numbers were the ultimate reality is unknown. It was said that he was the first man to call himself a philosopher, or lover of wisdom, and Pythagorean ideas exercised a marked influence on Plato, and through him, all of Western philosophy.
Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the Pythagorean brotherhood that, although religious in nature, formulated principles that influenced the thought of Plato and Aristotle and contributed to the development of mathematics and Western rational philosophy.
Pythagoras migrated to southern Italy about 532 B.C.T., apparently to escape Samos’s tyrannical rule, and established his ethico-political academy at Croton (now Crotone, Italy).
It is difficult to distinguish Pythagoras’s teachings from those of his disciples. None of his writings have survived, and Pythagoreans invariably supported their doctrines by indiscriminately citing their master’s authority. Pythagoras, however, is generally credited with the theory of the functional significance of numbers in the objective world and in music. Other discoveries often attributed to him (e.g., the incommensurability of the side and diagonal of a square, and the Pythagorean theorem for right triangles) were probably developed only later by the Pythagorean school. More probably the bulk of the intellectual tradition originating with Pythagoras himself belongs to mystical wisdom rather than to scientific scholarship.
Fithaghuras see Pythagoras
Pythagoras (in Arabic, Fithaghuras) (Pythagoras of Samos) (Pythagoras the Samian) (b. c. 570/580 B.C.T., Samos, Ionia [now in Greece] — d. c. 500/495 B.C.T., Metapontum, Lucania [now in Italy]), (c. 570 B.C.T. – c. 495 B.C.T.). No true distinction was made between the Greek philosopher of the sixth century B.C.T. and the school, or schools, bearing his name. It was constantly repeated that he had coined the word “philosophy”, and that he was the inventor of the science of music and the propagator among the Greeks of arithmetic, geometry, physics, and metaphysics. The “Golden Words” which are ascribed to him enjoyed a wide circulation in their Arabic translation, and the Pythagorean “Symbola” were often cited. The influence of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism on Muslim civilization must be rated rather high.
Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him. He was born on the island of Samos, and might have traveled widely in his youth, visiting Egypt and other places seeking knowledge. He had a teacher named Themistoclea, who introduced him to the principles of ethics. Around 530 B.C.T., he moved to Croton, a Greek colony in southern Italy, and there set up a religious sect. His followers pursued the religious rites and practices developed by Pythagoras, and studied his philosophical theories. The society took an active role in the politics of Croton, but this eventually led to their downfall. The Pythagorean meeting-places were burned, and Pythagoras was forced to flee the city. He is said to have ended his days in Metapontum.
Pythagoras made influential contributions to philosophy and religious teaching in the late 6th century B.C.T. He is often revered as a great mathematician, mystic and scientist, but he is best known for the Pythagorean theorem which bears his name. However, because legend and obfuscation cloud his work even more than with the other pre-Socratic philosophers, one can give account of his teachings to a little extent, and some have questioned whether he contributed much to mathematics and natural philosophy. Many of the accomplishments credited to Pythagoras may actually have been accomplishments of his colleagues and successors. Whether or not his disciples believed that everything was related to mathematics and that numbers were the ultimate reality is unknown. It was said that he was the first man to call himself a philosopher, or lover of wisdom, and Pythagorean ideas exercised a marked influence on Plato, and through him, all of Western philosophy.
Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the Pythagorean brotherhood that, although religious in nature, formulated principles that influenced the thought of Plato and Aristotle and contributed to the development of mathematics and Western rational philosophy.
Pythagoras migrated to southern Italy about 532 B.C.T., apparently to escape Samos’s tyrannical rule, and established his ethico-political academy at Croton (now Crotone, Italy).
It is difficult to distinguish Pythagoras’s teachings from those of his disciples. None of his writings have survived, and Pythagoreans invariably supported their doctrines by indiscriminately citing their master’s authority. Pythagoras, however, is generally credited with the theory of the functional significance of numbers in the objective world and in music. Other discoveries often attributed to him (e.g., the incommensurability of the side and diagonal of a square, and the Pythagorean theorem for right triangles) were probably developed only later by the Pythagorean school. More probably the bulk of the intellectual tradition originating with Pythagoras himself belongs to mystical wisdom rather than to scientific scholarship.
Fithaghuras see Pythagoras
No comments:
Post a Comment