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Alumni of Aligarh Muslim University (India)
Scientific & Cultural Development in Muslims Rule
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During the
almost 1,000 years that science was dormant in Europe, the Arabs,
who by the 9th century had extended their sphere of influence as far as Spain,
became the custodians of science and dominated biology, as they did other disciplines. - Encyclopaedia Britannica |
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Excerpt of remarks by
CARLETON (CARLY) S. FIORINA ..................
There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world. |
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During the almost 1,000 years Muslims were the custodian of science and other disciplines of knowledge. Arabic was the language of Science and Philosophy during these periods. The Muslims scientist have not only explore and explain the old theories but invented new fields in science, mathematics, astrology, geology, geography etc. They are the founder of biology, botany, chemistry, algebra, integral and differential mathematics, algorithm, trigonometry, coordinate geometry and many more discipline of science and mathematics. The Spain was one of great center of learning and was having the world finest library and world largest book markets in Cَrdoba, Toledo, and Granada. For the Muslims the fall of Spain was a great loss in terms of knowledge. Hundreds of years Muslims knowledge treasures were felt into the hand of Europe, which they translated into Latin and made their today's progress. Baghdad was another big center of learning. In the period of Al-Ma`mun (819-833), Baghdad was in zenith of knowledge in every fields. It was then considered the richest city in the world. The caliph himself collected texts, established an academy in Baghdad, the Bayt al-Hikmah ("House of Wisdom"), with a grand library and an observatory lab and research center. This activity had a profound effect not only on Muslim intellectual life but also on the intellectual life of western Europe, for much of the science and philosophy taught in universities in the Middle Ages was derived from these Arabic translations, rendered into Latin in Spain in the 12th century. |
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Medieval Muslim scientists often
focused on practical matters, particularly hydraulic engineering, as water
was always a precious resource in the arid lands where Islam traditionally
flourished. Engineers designed various kinds of water-raising machines, some
powered by animals, others powered by rivers and streams. The waterwheels
along the Orontes River in Syria were used to irrigate until modern times.
Watermills were used to grind corn and other grains, though in Iran water
power was often supplemented or replaced by wind.
Bridges and dams were needed to channel water. In addition to the standard beam, cantilever and arch bridges, engineers also designed bridges of boats to span rivers. Dams were widely used to divert rivers into irrigation canals. Perhaps the most ingenious hydraulic technologies were the distribution networks of canals and qanats, subterranean aqueducts that sometimes carried water for hundreds of miles. Cisterns and underground ice-houses were used for storage. Various instruments were used to measure water flow, and the Nilometer built in 861-62 still stands on Rawda Island in Cairo. In addition to these machines and
technologies related to water, Muslim engineers also designed several types
of siege engines, notably the traction and the counterweight trebuchet. Their
ingenuity is clear from the many kinds of fine machines they also perfected,
ranging from clocks and automata to fountains. Some were meant for practical
purposes but others were designed for amusement or aesthetic enjoyment, and
their components and techniques were of great importance for the development
of machine technology. |
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Albumazar, also spelled ALBUMASAR, or ABU MA'SHAR (b. Aug. 10, 787, Balkh, Khorasan [now in
Afghanistan]--d. March 9, 886, al-Wasit, Iraq), leading astrologer of the Muslim world, who is
known primarily for his theory that the world, created when the seven planets were in conjunction in
the first degree of Aries, will come to an end at a like conjunction in the last degree of Pisces. Albumazar's reputation as an astrologer was immense, both among his contemporaries and in later times. Albumazar's principal works include Kitab al-Madkhal al-Kabir 'ala 'ilm ahkam al-nujum ("Great Introduction to the Science of Astrology"), Kitab al-qiranat ("Book of Conjunctions"), and Kitab tahawil sini al-'alam ("Book of Revolutions of the World-Years"). | |
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In 9th century the Muslim Mathematician Thabit ibn Qurrah (836-901), discovered a beautiful rule for finding amicable numbers, a pair of numbers such that each number is the sum of the set of proper divisors of the other number. The investigation of such numbers formed a continuing tradition in Islam. Kamal ad-Din al-Farisi (d. c. 1320) gave the pair 17,926 and 18,416 as an example of Thabit's rule, and in the 17th century Muhammad Baqir Yazdi gave the pair 9,363,584 and 9,437,056. One scientist typical of the 9th century was Muhammad ibn Musa al- Khwarizmi. Working in the House of Wisdom, In his work the Book of Restoring and Balancing, he provided a systematic introduction to algebra, including a theory of quadratic equations. Both works had important consequences for Islamic mathematics, by the middle of the next century, led to the invention of decimal fractions (complete with a decimal point), and his Restoring and Balancing became the point of departure and model for later writers such as the Egyptian Abu Kamil. Both books were translated into Latin, and Restoring and Balancing was the origin of the word algebra, from the Arabic word for "restoring" in its title (al-jabr). From a Latin form of the author's name, algorismi, yielded the word algorithm. Al-Khwarizmi's also introduce the method of calculating the time of visibility of the new moon (which signals the beginning of the Muslim month) and the expositions by astronomers of methods for finding the direction to Mecca for the five daily prayers. Abu al-Wafa, (940-998) astronomer and one of the greatest of Muslim mathematicians, who made important contributions to the development of trigonometry. Abu al-Wafa worked in an observatory in Baghdad, where he built the first wall quadrant for observing the stars. He did not, as is sometimes claimed, discover the inequality in the Moon's motion, later called variation, but in his work on lunar theory he utilized the tangent and cotangent trigonometric functions and calculated tables for them. He also invented the secant and cosecant functions, proved the generality of the sine theorem for spherical triangles, and devised a new method of calculating sine tables. Abu al-Wafa` wrote Kitab fima yahtaj ilayh al-kuttab wa al-ummal min 'ilm al-hisab ("Book on What Is Necessary from the Science of Arithmetic for Scribes and Businessmen") and Kitab fima yahtaj ilayh al-sani 'min al-a'mal al-Handasiyha ("Book on What Is Necessary from Geometric Construction for the Artisan"). Tusi Nasir ad-Din (b. Feb. 18, 1201, Tus, Khorasan--d. June 26, 1274, Baghdad), outstanding Persian philosopher, scientist, and mathematician. His work Zij-i Ilkhani is a splendidly accurate table of planetary movements. His most famous and popular work is the Akhlaq Nasiri. Al-Biruni, (973-1048) Persian scholar and scientist, one of the most learned men of his age and an outstanding intellectual figure. Possessing a profound and original mind of encyclopaedic scope, al-Biruni was conversant with Turkish, Persian, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Syriac in addition to the Arabic in which he wrote. He applied his talents in many fields of knowledge, excelling particularly in astronomy, mathematics, chronology, physics, medicine, and history. In his works on astronomy, he discussed with approval the theory of the Earth's rotation on its axis and made accurate calculations of latitude and longitude. In those on physics, he explained natural springs by the laws of hydrostatics and determined with remarkable accuracy the specific weight of 18 precious stones and metals. In his works on geography, he advanced the daring view that the valley of the Indus had once been a sea basin. Muslim scientists in the 10th century were involved in three major mathematical projects: the completion of arithmetic algorithms, the development of algebra, and the extension of geometry. The first of these projects led to the appearance of three complete numeration systems, one of which was the finger arithmetic used by the scribes and treasury officials. This ancient arithmetic system, which became known throughout the East and Europe, employed mental arithmetic and a system of storing intermediate results on the fingers as an aid to memory. (Its use of unit fractions recalls the Egyptian system.) During the 10th and 11th centuries capable mathematicians, such as Abu al-Wafa` (940-997/8), wrote on this system. Al- Uqlidisi (c. 950) worked on algorithm. The arithmetic algorithms were completed in two ways: by the extension of root-extraction procedures, from square and cube roots, to roots of higher degree, and by the extension of the decimal system for whole numbers to include decimal fractions. These fractions appear simply as computational devices in the work of both al-Uqlidisi and al-Baghdadi (c. 1000), but in subsequent centuries they received systematic treatment as a general method. As for extraction of roots, Abu al-Wafa` wrote a treatise (now lost) on the topic, and Omar Khayyam ('Umar al-Khayyami (1048-1131) solved the general problem of extracting roots of any desired degree. Omar's treatise, too, is lost, but the method is known from other writers, and it appears that a major step in its development was al-Karaji's 10th-century derivation by means of mathematical induction of the binomial theorem for whole-number exponents. During the 10th century Muslim algebraists progressed from al-Khwarizmi's quadratic polynomials to the mastery of the algebra of expressions involving arbitrary positive or negative integral powers of the unknown. Several algebraists explicitly stressed the analogy between the rules for working with powers of the unknown in algebra and those for working with powers of 10 in arithmetic, and there was interaction between the development of arithmetic and algebra from the 10th to the 12th century. A 12th-century student of al-Karaji's works, as-Samaw`al, was able to approximate the quotient (20x + 30 x)/(6x + 12) as and also gave a rule for finding the coefficients of the successive powers of 1/x. Although none of this employed symbolic algebra, algebraic symbolism was in use by the 14th century in the western part of the Islamic world. The context for this well-developed symbolism was, it seems, commentaries that were destined for teaching purposes, such as that of Ibn Qunfudh (1330-1407) of Algeria on the algebra of Ibn al-Banna` (1256-1321) of Morocco. Other parts of algebra developed as well. The great scientist Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham [965-1041]) solved problems involving congruencies by what is now called Wilson's theorem, which states that, if p is a prime, then p divides (p - 1) (p - 2) . . . 2 1 + 1, and al- Baghdadi gave a variant of the idea of amicable numbers by defining two numbers to "balance" if the sums of their divisors are equal. However, not only arithmetic and algebra but geometry too underwent extensive development. Thabit ibn Qurrah, his grandson Ibrahim ibn Sinan (909-946), Abu Sahl al-Kuhi (d. c. 995), and Alhazen solved problems involving the pure geometry of conic sections, including the areas and volumes of plane and solid figures formed from them, and also investigated the optical properties of mirrors made from conic sections. Ibrahim ibn Sinan, Abu Sahl al-Kuhi, and Alhazen used the ancient technique of analysis to reduce the solution of problems to constructions involving conic sections. (Alhazen, for example, used this method to find the point on a convex spherical mirror at which a given object is seen by a given observer.) Thabit and Ibrahim showed how to design the curves needed for sundials. Abu al-Wafa`, whose book on the arithmetic of the scribes is mentioned above, also wrote on geometric methods needed by artisans. In addition, in the late 10th century Abu al-Wafa` and the prince Abu Nasr Mansur stated and proved theorems of plane and spherical geometry that could be applied by astronomers and geographers, including the laws of sines and tangents. Abu Nasr's pupil al- Biruni (973-1050), who produced a vast amount of high-quality work, was one of the masters in applying these theorems to astronomy and to such problems in mathematical geography as the determination of latitudes and longitudes, the distances between cities, and the direction from one city to another. | |
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Medieval Muslims revolutionized the
science and practice of medicine, as physicians began to question the medical
traditions inherited from both East and West and distinguish one disease from
another. For example, Ibn al-Haytham (ca. 965-1039), the so-called
"father of optics," explained how human vision takes place by
integrating physical, mathematical, experimental, physiological, and
psychological considerations. His treatise had an enormous impact on all
later writers on optics, both in the Muslim world and through a medieval
Latin translation in the West. Similarly, the great Egyptian physician Ibn
al-Nafis (d. 1288), discovered the minor, or pulmonary, circulation of the
blood. Ibn Sina (980-1037), known in the West as Avicenna, synthesized
Aristotelian and later Greek theories with his own original views, and his
Canon of Medicine became the most famous medical book in the East or West,
translated at least 87 times.
Muslims also expanded the practice of medical schools and hospitals. The Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid used the Sasanian academy of Jundishapur in southwestern Iran as his model when he founded his own hospital in Baghdad (ca. 800). Hospitals were soon established throughout the empire. They were staffed by dozens of specialists, from physiologists, oculists, and surgeons, to bonesetters. They even had special wards for the mentally ill and separate wings for men and women. These hospitals were often incorporated into large charitable foundations and were supported by endowments made by powerful and wealthy individuals. One of the most famous was that founded by the Mamluk sultan Qalawun in Cairo. In addition, traveling clinics and dispensaries provided services to rural areas. The Muslims have developed the Medicine but during that periods the scientist who work on the research lab in Baghdad were also some Jews and Christians. The earliest Muslim scientist Rhazes, a Persian born in the last half of the 9th century near modern Tehran, who wrote a voluminous treatise on medicine, Kitab al-hawi ("Comprehensive Book"), but whose most famous work, De variolis et morbillis (A Treatise on the Smallpox and Measles), distinguishes between these two diseases and gives a clear description of both.Of later date was Avicenna (980-1037), also a Persian, who has been called the prince of physicians and whose tomb at Hamadan has become a place of pilgrimage. He could repeat the Qur`an before he was 10 years old and at the age of 18 became court physician. His principal medical work, al-Qanun fi at-tibb (The Canon of Medicine), became a classic and was used at many medical schools--at Montpellier, Fr., as late as 1650--and reputedly is still used in the East. The greatest contribution of Arabian medicine was in chemistry and in the knowledge and preparation of medicines. The chemists of that time were alchemists, and their pursuit was mainly a search for the philosopher's stone, which supposedly would turn common metals into gold. In the course of their experiments, however, numerous substances were named and characterized, and some were found to have medicinal value. Many drugs now in use are of Arab origin, as are such processes as distillation and sublimation. At that period, and indeed throughout most historical times, surgery was considered inferior to medicine, and surgeons were held in low regard. The renowned Spanish surgeon Abu al-Qasim (Albucasis), however, did much to raise the status of surgery in Cَrdoba, an important centre of commerce and culture with a hospital and medical school equal to those of Cairo and Baghdad. A careful and conservative practitioner, he wrote the first illustrated surgical text, which held wide influence in Europe for centuries. Another great doctor of Cَrdoba, born in the 12th century, just as the sun of Arabian culture was setting, was the Jewish philosopher Maimonides. Banished from the city because he would not become a Muslim, he eventually went to Cairo, where the law was more lenient and where he acquired a reputation so high that he became physician to Saladin, the Saracen leader. (He was the original of El Hakim in Sir Walter Scott's Talisman.) A few of his works, written in Hebrew, were eventually translated into Latin and printed. | |
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Al- Idrisi, ash-Sharif , was a Arab geographer, who wrote one of the greatest works of medieval geography, Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq ("The Pleasure Excursion of One Who Is Eager to Traverse the Regions of the World"). Al-Idrisi's have done three major geographic works: (1) a silver planisphere on which was depicted a map of the world, (2) a world map consisting of 70 sections formed by dividing the Earth north of the Equator into 7 climatic zones of equal width, each of which was subdivided into 10 equal parts by lines of longitude, and (3) a geographic text intended as a key to the planisphere. This was his great work of descriptive geography, known as Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq and also as Kita Rujar, or Al-Kitab ar-Rujari ("The Book of Roger"). The silver planisphere has been lost, but the maps and book have survived. A German scholar, Konrad Miller, published the maps in his Mappe Arabicae (1926-31), and later an emended world map, based upon Miller's work, was published by the Iraq Academy (Baghdad, 1951). The first loose sections of a critical edition of Idrisi's Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq, undertaken by a committee of Italian scholars in cooperation with a group of international experts, had begun to appear in the early 1970s. Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq represents a serious attempt to combine descriptive and astronomical geography. Nevertheless, al-Idrisi's book is a major geographic monument. It is particularly valuable for its data on such regions as the Mediterranean basin and the Balkans. A number of other geographic works are attributed to al-Idrisi, including one (now lost) written for William I, Roger's son and successor who reigned from 1154 to 1166, as well as several critical revisions and abridgments. The Medici press in Rome published an abridgment of Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq in 1592; a Latin translation was published under the title Geographia Nubiensis. The only complete translation of the work in any language is P.A. Jaubert's two-volume Géographie d'Édrisi (1836-40). Al-Maqdisi, in full MUHAMMAD IBN AHMAD AL-MAQDISI, (b. c. 946--d. c. 1000), Arab traveler, geographer, and author of a noted work based on personal observations of the populations, manners, and economic life of the various inhabitants of the lands of Islam, Ahson at-taqasim fi ma'rifat al-aqalim (985; "The Best of Classification for the Knowledge of Regions"). Al-Ya'qubi, in full AHMAD IBN ABU YA'QUB IBN JA'FAR IBN WAHB IBN WADIH AL-YA'QUBI (d. 897, Egypt), Arab historian and geographer, author of a history of the world, Ta`rikh ibn Wadih ("Chronicle of Ibn Wadih"), and a general geography, Kitab al-buldan ("Book of the Countries"). Until 873 al-Ya'qubi lived in Armenia and Khorasan, under the patronage of the Iranian dynasty of the Tahirids, and wrote his history there. After the fall of the Tahirids he traveled to India and the Maghrib (North Africa) and died in Egypt. In the Kitab al-buldan, a large part of which is lost, al-Ya'qubi analyzes statistics, topography, and taxation in describing the larger cities of Iraq, Iran, Arabia, Syria, Egypt, the Maghrib, India, China, and the Byzantine Empire. | |
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From the 3rd until the 11th century biology was essentially an Arab science.
Of the Arab biologists, al-Jahiz, who died about 868, is particularly noteworthy. Among his biological writings his Kitab al-hayawan ("Book of Animals") is primarily an Arabic work. In it, the author emphasized the unity of nature and recognized relationships between different groups of organisms. Because al-Jahiz believed that the Earth contained both male and female elements, he found the Greek doctrine of spontaneous generation (life emerging from mud) to be quite reasonable. Ibn Sina, or Avicenna as he is better known, was an outstanding Persian scientist around the beginning of the 11th century; he was the true successor to Aristotle. His writings on medicine and drugs, which were particularly authoritative and remained so until the Renaissance, did much to bring the works of Arabs to Europe, where they were translated into Latin from Arabic. | |
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Ad-Dinawari, in full ABU HANIFAH AHMAD IBN DA`UD AL-DINAWARI (b. c. 815--d. c. 895/902), Persian astronomer, botanist, and historian, whose interest in Hellenism and the Arabic humanities has been compared with that of the Iraqi scholar al-Jahiz. Ad-Dinawari studied philology in the Iraqi cities of Basra and Kufah. The systematic approach to learning that he acquired there is reflected in the preserved fragments of his Kitab an-nabat ("Book of Plants"), one of the most famous early Muslim works on botany. Of lexicographical character, it includes oral and written Arabic botanical traditions as well as much Persian material. Written in beautiful prose, it was the standard work in the field for generations. None of ad-Dinawari's works on mathematics or the Qur`an have been preserved. There are, however, fragments of his observations on astronomy, Kitab al-anwa`. The only work that has survived in full is al-akhbar at-tiwal ("The Long Narratives"), a history of Persia written from the Persian, rather than the Arabic, viewpoint. | |
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Ibn al-'Awwam, agriculturist who wrote the Arabic treatise on agriculture,
Kitab al-fila- hah, the outstanding medieval work on the subject. The Spanish translation,
published in the early 1800s, consists of 35 chapters dealing with agronomy, cattle and poultry
raising, and beekeeping. It deals with 585 plants; explains the cultivation of more than 50 fruit
trees;
and includes many valuable observations on soils, manures, plant grafting, and plant diseases.
Ibn Wahshiyah, Middle Eastern agriculturist and toxicologist who have written al-Fillahah
an-Nabatiyah ("Nabatean Agriculture"), a major treatise dealing with plants, water sources and | |
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Muslims were responsible for the
transfer of papermaking from China, where it had been invented in the
centuries before Christ, to Europe, where it fueled the print revolution in
the late fifteenth century. Muslims encountered paper when they conquered
Central Asia in the eighth century. Paper quickly supplanted papyrus (which
was made only in Egypt) and parchment (which was made from animal skins), for
it could be made virtually anywhere from rags and waste fibers. Although it
was not cheap, paper had the great advantage of being difficult to erase, an
important consideration when documents and records had to be secure from
forgery. The use of paper soon spread from government offices to all segments
of society. By the middle of the ninth century the Papersellers' Street in
Baghdad had more than one hundred shops in which paper and books were sold.
Medieval Islamic society had a paper economy, where both wholesale and retail merchants conducted commerce on credit. Orders of payment, the equivalent of modern checks (the Persian word sakk is the origin of the word "check"), were drawn in amounts upwards from one dinar (a gold coin roughly equivalent to half a month's salary). By the ninth century paper was used for copying scientific and other types of utilitarian texts, although it took longer for Muslims to accept the use of paper as a fitting support for God's word. The first paper manuscript of the Koran to survive dates from 972, but from this date paper soon became standard for all books. Medieval Islamic libraries had hundreds of thousands of volumes far outstripping the relatively small monastic and university libraries in the West | |