İSLAM DÜNYASINDA GERİ KALMIŞLIK SORUNU VE FUAT SEZGİN’İN KONUYA İLİŞKİN GÖRÜŞLERİ

This study will focus on the problem of backwardness in Muslim societies. First of all, some approaches mentioned about the reasons of backwardness in Muslim societies and Fuat Sezgin's opinions on the subject will be discussed. The aim of the study is to analyze Fuat Sezgin's opinion about the backwardness in conjunction with other opinions. While many researchers have addressed the problem of backwardness in the Islamic world within the framework of the combination of internal and external factors, Fuat Sezgin tends to see it as the result of external factors. The backwardness of the Islamic world is generally attributed to the reasons such as renaissance in the western world, reform, geographical discoveries and industrial revolutions, the inability of the Islamic world to follow the developments in the west, colonial activities of the west, changes in religious thought and institutions, Crusades, effects of Mongolian invasion, new trade routes and political instability in the Islamic world. Fuat Sezgin stated that the reasons for the recession in the Islamic world were the Crusades, the Mongol attack, some geographical discoveries in the west and the weakening of the Muslim presence in Spain.