The rise of the public sphere and deliberative democracy tends to be associated with coffee houses and salons in eighteenth-century Europe. Tenth-century Baghdad offers a different perspective on deliberative democracy. A tenth-century Spanish Muslim who visited Baghdad wrote about assemblies that regularly occurred there:
I twice attended there {the philosophers’} assemblies … At the first session there were present not only Muslims of all sects, but also agnostics, Parsees {Persians, i.e. Zoroastrians}, materialists, atheists, Jews, and Christians, in short, infidels of all kinds. Each of these sects had its spokesman, who had to defend its views. As soon as one of these spokesman entered, the audience stood up reverently, and no one sat down until the spokesman took his seat … “We are assembled to discuss matters,” one of the unbelievers declared, “you all know the conditions … Each of us shall use exclusively arguments derived from human reason.” These words were universally acclaimed.[1]
The Spanish Muslim ceased to attend the assemblies because he regarded them as godless. That was a superficial judgment. At the assemblies, persons identified by religious belief defended their groups’ views. Arguments exclusively derived from human reason, whatever that means, were a tool for supporting group beliefs about god.
The assemblies were not deliberative democracy in the sense that everyone had an equal opportunity to participate. Groups chose spokesmen to represent them.[2] Equality in participation is a laudable abstraction. Human social life in the real world involves hierarchical social dynamics prevalent across primates.
The assemblies supported an important value of deliberative democracy. “As soon as one of these spokesman entered, the audience stood up reverently, and no one sat down until the spokesman took his seat.” All participants acted publicly with ritual respect for each other. That’s an important value in deliberative democracy. It works best when it doesn’t suffocate deliberative performances, but expresses self-identification with big-hearted hospitality.[3]
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Read more:
- learned religious debate in the thirteenth-century Mongol court
- a failure of scholarly debate in eleventh-century Egypt
- al-Jahiz supported scholarly hospitality
Notes:
[1] Observations of Abu ‘Umar Ahmad ibn Sa’id, cited in Baron (1958) p. 83. I’ve made some minor stylistic changes. Al-Nadim’s Fihrist, Ch. 9, reports many more non-monotheistic sects in the tenth-century Islamic world.
[2] More egalitarian discussion groups also existed. Ali (2010).
[3] Social systems can encourage big-hearted hospitality by valuing it highly. Competition for social status was intense in the Abbasid caliphate. Ali (2008) describes expensive custom-created poems for enhancing social status. Ibn Abi Usaybiah provides examples of status-seeking poetry from thirteenth-century Damascus.
References:
Ali, Samer M. 2008. “The Rise of the Abbasid Public Sphere: The Case of al-Mutanabbī and Three Middle Ranking Patrons.” Al-Qanṭara. 29 (2): 467-494.
Ali, Samer M. 2010. Arabic literary salons in the Islamic Middle Ages: poetry, public performance, and the presentation of the past. Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press.
Baron, Salo W. 1958. A social and religious history of the Jews: High Middle Ages 500-1200, Vol. 7. New York: Columbia University Press.