Incorporated
from the Magazine "Islam: A Global Civilization", prepared by
Islamic Affairs Department, The Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Washington, D.C.
"He has
taught you that which [heretofore] you knew not."
(Qur'an 2:239)
The Attitude of the Quran and the Prophet toward Knowledge
Islam is a religion based upon knowledge for it is ultimately
knowledge of the Oneness of God combined with faith and total commitment to Him that saves
man. The text of the Quran is replete with verses inviting man to use his intellect, to
ponder, to think and to know, for the goal of human life is to discover the Truth which is
none other than worshipping God in His Oneness. The Hadith literature is also full of
references to the importance of knowledge. Such sayings of the Prophet as "Seek
knowledge even in China", "Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave",
and "Verily the men of knowledge are the inheritors of the prophets", have
echoed throughout the history of Islam and incited Muslims to seek knowledge wherever it
might be found. During most of its history, Islamic civilization has been witness to a
veritable celebration of knowledge. That is why every traditional Islamic city possessed
public and private libraries and some cities like Cordoba and Baghdad boasted of libraries
with over 400,000 books. Such cities also had bookstores, some of which sold a large
number of titles. That is also why the scholar has always been held in the highest esteem
in Islamic society.
The Integration of the Pre-Islamic Sciences
As Islam spread northward into Syria, Egypt, and the Persian empire,
it came face to face with the sciences of antiquity whose heritage had been preserved in
centers which now became a part of the Islamic world. Alexandria had been a major center
of sciences and learning for centuries. The Greek learning cultivated in Alexandria was
opposed by the Byzantine who had burned its library long before the advent of Islam. The
tradition of Alexandrian learning did not die, however. It was transferred to Antioch and
from there farther east to such cities as Edessa by eastern Christians who stood in sharp
opposition to Byzantine and wished to have their own independent centers of learning.
Moreover, the Persian king, Shapur I had established Jundishapur in Persia as a second
great center of learning matching Antioch. He even invited Indian physicians and
mathematicians to teach in this major seat of learning, in addition to the Christian
scholars who taught in Syriac as well as the Persians whose medium of instruction was
Pahlavi.
Once Muslims established the new Islamic order during the Umayyad
period, they turned their attention to these centers of learning which had been preserved
and sought to acquaint themselves with the knowledge taught and cultivated in them. They
therefore set about with a concerted effort to translate the philosophical and scientific
works which were available to them from not only Greek and Syriac (which was the language
of eastern Christian scholars) but also from Pahlavi, the scholarly language of
pre-Islamic Persia, and even from Sanskrit. Many of the accomplished translators were
Christian Arabs such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq' who was also an outstanding physician, and
others Persians such as Ibn Muqaffa', who played a major role in the creation of the new
Arabic prose style conducive to the expression of philosophical and scientific writings.
The great movement of translation lasted from the beginning of the 8th to the end of the
9th century, reaching its peak with the establishment of the House of Wisdom (Bayt al
hiLmah) by the caliph al-Matmun at the beginning of the 9th century.
The result of this extensive effort of the Islamic community to
confront the challenge of the presence of the various philosophies and sciences of
antiquity and to understand and digest them in its own terms and according to its own
world view was the translation of a vast corpus of writings into Arabic. Most of the
important philosophical and scientific works of Aristotle and his school, much of Plato
and the Pythagorean school, and the major works of Greek astronomy, mathematics and
medicine such as the Almagest of Ptolemy, the Elements of Euclid, and the
works of Hippocrates and Galen, were all rendered into Arabic. Further more, important
works of astronomy, mathematics and medicine were translated from Pahlavi and Sanskrit. As
a result, Arabic became the most important scientific language of the world for many
centuries and the depository of much of the wisdom and the sciences of antiquity
The Muslims did not translate the scientific and philosophical works
of other civilizations out of fear of political or economic domination but because the
structure of Islam itself is based upon the primacy of knowledge. Nor did they consider
these forms of knowing as "un-Islamic" as long as they confirmed the doctrine of
God's Oneness which Islam considers to have been at the heart of every authentic
revelation from God. Once these sciences and philosophies confirmed the principle of
Oneness, the Muslims considered them as their own. They made them part of their world view
and began to cultivate the Islamic sciences based on what they had translated, analyzed,
criticized, and assimilated, rejecting what was not in conformity with the Islamic
perspective.
The Mathematical Sciences and Physics
The Muslim mind has always been attracted to the mathematical
sciences in accordance with the "abstract" character of the doctrine of Oneness
which lies at the heart of Islam. The mathematical sciences have traditionally included
astronomy, mathematics itself and much of what is called physics today. In astronomy the
Muslims integrated the astronomical traditions of the Indians, Persians, the ancient Near
East and especially the Greeks into a synthesis which began to chart a new chapter in the
history of astronomy from the 8th century onward. The Almagest of Ptolemy, whose very name
in English reveals the Arabic origin of its Latin translation, was thoroughly studied and
its planetary theory criticized by several astronomers of both the eastern and western
lands of Islam leading to the major critique of the theory by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and his
students, especially Qutb al Din al-Shirazi, in the 13th century.
The Muslims also observed the heavens carefully and discovered many
new stars. The book on stars of 'Abdal-Rahman al-Sufi was in fact translated into Spanish
by Alfonso X el Sabio and had a deep influence upon stellar toponymy in European
languages. Many star names in English such as Aldabaran still recall their Arabic origin.
The Muslims carried out many fresh observations which were contained in astronomical
tables called zij. One of the acutest of these observers was al-Battani whose work
was followed by numerous others. The zij of al-Ma'mun observed in Baghdad, the
Hakimite zij of Cairo, the Toledan Tables of al Zarqali and his associates,
the Il-Khanid zij of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi observed in Maraghah, and the zij of
Ulugh-Beg from Samarqand are among the most famous Islamic astronomical tables. They
wielded a great deal of influence upon Western astronomy up to the time of Tycho Brahe.
The Muslims were in fact the first to create an astronomical observatory as a scientific
institution, this being the observatory of Maraghah in Persia established by al-Tusi. This
was indirectly the model for the later European observatories. Many astronomical
instruments were developed by Muslims to carry out observation, the most famous being the
astrolabe. There existed even mechanical astrolabes perfected by Ibn Samh which must be
considered as the ancestor of the mechanical clock.
Astronomical observations also had practical applications including
not only finding the direction of Makkah for prayers, but also devising almanacs (the word
itself being of Arabic origin). The Muslims also applied their astronomical knowledge to
questions of time keeping and the calendar. The most exact solar calendar existing to this
day is the Jalali calendar devised under the direction of 'Umar Khayyam in the 12th
century and still in use in Persia and Afghanistan.
As for mathematics proper, like astronomy, it received its direct
impetus from the Quran not only because of the mathematical structure related to the text
of the Sacred Book, but also because the laws of inheritance delineated in the Quran
require rather complicated mathematical solutions. Here again Muslims began by integrating
Greek and Indian mathematics. The first great Muslim mathematician, al-Khwarazmi, who
lived in the 9th century, wrote a treatise on arithmetic whose Latin translation brought
what is known as Arabic numerals to the West. To this day guarismo, derived from
his name, means figure or digit in Spanish while algorithm is still used in English.
Al-Khwarazmi is also the author of the first book on algebra. This science was developed
by Muslims on the basis of earlier Greek and Indian works of a rudimentary nature. The
very name algebra comes from the first part of the name of the book of al-Khwarazmi,
entitled Kitab al-jabr wa'l-muqabalah. Abu Kamil al-Shuja' discussed algebraic
equations with five unknowns. The science was further developed by such figures as
al-Karaji until it reached its peak with Khayyam who classified by kind and class
algebraic equations up to the third degree.
The Muslims also excelled in geometry as reflected in their art. The
brothers Banu Musa who lived in the 9th century may be said to be the first outstanding
Muslim geometers while their contemporary Thabit ibn Qurrah used the method of exhaustion,
giving a glimpse of what was to become integral calculus. Many Muslim mathematicians such
as Khayyam and al-Tusi also dealt with the fifth postulate of Euclid and the problems
which follow if one tries to prove this postulate within the confines of Eucledian
geometry.
Another branch of mathematics developed by Muslims is trigonometry
which was established as a distinct branch of mathematics by al-Biruni. The Muslim
mathematicians, especially al-Battani, Abu'l-Wafa', Ibn Yunus and Ibn al-Haytham, also
developed spherical astronomy and applied it to the solution of astronomical problems.
The love for the study of magic squares and amicable numbers led
Muslims to develop the theory of numbers. Al-Khujandi discovered a particular case of
Fermat's theorem that "the sum of two cubes cannot be another cube", while al
Karaji analyzed arithmetic and geometric progressions such as:
1**3+2**3+3**3+...+n**3=(1+2+3+...+n)** 2
Al-Biruni also dealt with progressions while Ghiyath al-Din Jamshid
al-Kashani brought the study of number theory among Muslims to its peak.
In the field of physics the Muslims made contributions in especially
three domains. The first was the measurement of specific weights of objects and the study
of the balance following upon the work of Archimedes. In this domain the writings of
al-Biruni and al-Khazini stand out. Secondly they criticized the Aristotelian theory of
projectile motion and tried to quantify this type of motion. The critique of Ibn Sina,
Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdad), Ibn Bajjah and others led to the development of the idea of
impetus and momentum and played an important role in the criticism of Aristotelian physics
in the West up to the early writings of Galileo. Thirdly there is the field of optics in
which the Islamic sciences produced in Ibn al-Haytham (the Latin Alhazen) who lived in the
11th century, the greatest student of optics between Ptolemy and Witelo. Ibn al-Haytham's
main work on optics, the Kitab al-manazir, was also well known in the West as Thesaurus
opticus. Ibn al-Haytham solved many optical problems, one of which is named after him,
studied the property of lenses, discovered the camera obscura, explained correctly
the process of vision, studied the structure of the eye, and explained for the first time
why the sun and the moon appear larger on the horizon. His interest in optics was carried
out two centuries later by Qutb al-Din al Shirazi and Kamal al-Din al-Farisi. It was Qutb
al Din who gave the first correct explanation of the formation of the rainbow.
It is important to recall that in physics as in many other fields of
science the Muslims observed, measured and carried out experiments. They must be credited
with having developed what came to be known later as the experimental method.
Muslim
Achievements in Science |
| Muslim mathematicians devised
and developed algebra |
| Al-Khawarazmi used Arabic
numerals which came to the west through his work-9th century. |
| Al-Razi described amd
treated smallbox-10th century |
| Ibn Sina diagnosed and
treated meningities-11th century |
| Ibn al-Haytham discovered
the camera obscura- 11th century |
| Al-Birini described the
Ganges Valley as a sedimentary basin-11th century |
| Muslims built the first
observartory as a scientific institution-13th century |
| Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi
explained the cause of the rainbow- 13th century |
| Ibn al-Nafis described
the minor ciculation of the blood- 14th century. |
| Al-Kashani invented a
computer machine- 15th century |
The Medical Sciences
The hadiths of the Prophet contain many instructions
concerning health including dietary habits; these sayings became the foundation of what
came to be known later as "Prophetic medicine" (al-tibb al-nabawi ). Because
of the great attention paid in Islam to the need to take care of the body and to hygiene,
early in Islamic history Muslims began to cultivate the field of medicine turning once
again to all the knowledge that was available to them from Greek, Persian and Indian
sources. At first I the great physicians among Muslims were mostly | Christian but by the
9th century Islamic medicine, I properly speaking, was born with the appearance of the
major compendium, The Paradise of Wisdom (Firdaws al-hilmah ) by 'All ibn Rabban al
Tabari, who synthesized the Hippocratic and Galenic traditions of medicine with those of
India and Persia. His student, Muhammad ibn Zakariyya' al-Razi (the Latin Rhazes), was one
of the greatest of physicians who emphasized clinical medicine and observation. He was a
master of prognosis and psychosomatic medicine and also of anatomy. He was the first to
identify and treat smallpox, to use alcohol as an antiseptic and make medical use of
mercury as a purgative. His Kitab al-hawi (Continens) is the longest work ever
written in Islamic medicine and he was recognized as a medical authority in the West up to
the 18th century.
The greatest of all Muslim physicians, how ever, was Ibn Sina who
was called "the prince of physicians" in the West. He synthesized Islamic
medicine in his major masterpiece, al-Qanun fi'l tibb (The Canon of Medicine), which
is the most famous of all medical books in history. It was the final authority in medical
matters in Europe for nearly six centuries and is still taught wherever Islamic medicine
has survived to this day in such lands as Pakistan and India. Ibn Sina discovered many
drugs and identified and treated several ailments such as meningitis but his greatest
contribution was in the philosophy of medicine. He created a system of medicine within
which medical practice could be carried out and in which physical and psychological
factors; drugs and diet are combined.
After Ibn Sina, Islamic medicine divided into several branches. In
the Arab world Egypt remained a major center for the study of medicine, especially
ophthalmology which reached its peak at the court of al-Hakim. Cairo possessed excellent
hospitals which also drew physicians from other lands including Ibn Butlan, author of the
famous Calendar of Health, and Ibn Nafis who discovered the lesser or pulmonary
circulation of the blood long before Michael Servetus, who is usually credited with the
discovery.
As for the western lands of Islam including Spain, this area was
likewise witness to the appearance of outstanding physicians such as Sa'd al Katib of
Cordoba who composed a treatise on gynecology, and the greatest Muslim figure in surgery,
the 12th century Abu'l-Qasim al-Zahrawi (the Latin Albucasis) whose medical masterpiece Kitab
al-tasrif was well known in the West as Concessio. One must also mention the
Ibn Zuhr family which produced several outstanding physicians and Abu Marwan 'Abd al-Malik
who was the Maghrib's most outstanding clinical physician. The well known Spanish
philosophers, Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rushd, were also outstanding physicians.
Islamic medicine continued in Persia and the other eastern lands of
the Islamic world under the influence of Ibn Sina with the appearance of major Persian
medical compendia such as the Treasury of Sharaf al-Din al-Jurjani and the
commentaries upon the Canon by Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi.
Even after the Mongol invasion, medical studies continued as can be seen in the work of
Rashid al-Din Fadlallah, and for the first time there appeared translations of Chinese
medicine and interest in acupuncture among Muslims. The Islamic medical tradition was
revived in the Safavid period when several diseases such as whooping cough were diagnosed
and treated for the first time and much attention was paid to pharmacology. Many Persian
doctors such as 'Ayn al-Murk of Shiraz also traveled to India at this time to usher in the
golden age of Islamic medicine in the subcontinent and to plant the seed of the Islamic
medical tradition which continues to flourish to this day in the soil of that land.
The Ottoman world was also an arena of great medical activity
derived from the heritage of Ibn Sina. The Ottoman Turks were especially known for the
creation of major hospitals and medical centers. These included not only units for the
care of the physically ill, but also wards for patients with psychological ailments. The
Ottomans were also the first to receive the influence of modern European medicine in both
medicine and pharmacology.
In mentioning Islamic hospitals it is necessary to mention that all
major Islamic cities had hospitals; some like those of Baghdad were teaching hospitals
while some like the Nasiri hospital of Cairo had thousands of beds for patients with
almost any type of illness. Hygiene in these hospitals was greatly emphasized and al-Razi
had even written a treatise on hygiene in hospitals. Some hospitals also specialized in
particular diseases including psychological ones. Cairo even had a hospital which
specialized in patients having insomnia.
Islamic medical authorities were also always concerned with the
significance of pharmacology and many important works such as the Canon have whole
books devoted to the subject. The Muslims became heir not only to the pharmacological
knowledge of the Greeks as contained in the works of Dioscorides, but also the vast herbal
pharmacopias of the Persians and Indians. They also studied the
Medical effects of many drug, especially herbs, themselves. The
greatest contributions in this field came from Maghribi scientists such as Ibn Juljul, Ibn
al-Salt and the most original of Muslim pharmacologists, the 12th century scientist, al
Ghafiqi, whose Book of Simple Drugs provides the best descriptions of the medical
properties of plants known to Muslims. Islamic medicine combined the use of drugs for
medical purposes with dietary considerations and a whole lifestyle derived from the
teachings of Islam to create a synthesis which has not died out to this day despite the
introduction of modern medicine into most of the Islamic world.
Natural History and Geography
The vast expanse of the Islamic world enabled the Muslims to develop
natural history based not only on the Mediterranean world, as was the case of the Greek
natural historians, but also on most of the Eurasian and even African land masses.
Knowledge of minerals, plants and animals was assembled from areas as far away as the
Malay world and synthesized for the first time by Ibn Sina in his Kitab al-Shifa'(The
Book of Healing). Such major natural historians as al-Mas'udi inter twined natural and
human history. Al-Biruni likewise in his study of India turned to the natural history and
even geology of the region, describing correctly the sedimentary nature of the Ganges
basin. He also wrote the most outstanding Muslim work on mineralogy.
As for botany, the most important treatises were composed in the
12th century in Spain with the appearance of the work of al-Ghafiqi. This is also the
period when the best known Arabic work on agriculture, the Kitab al-falahah, was
written. The Muslims also showed much interest in zoology especially in horses as
witnessed by the classical text of al-Jawaliqi, and in falcons and other hunting birds.
The works of al-Jahiz and al Damiri are especially famous in the field of zoology and deal
with the literary, moral and even theological dimensions of the study of animals as well
as the purely zoological aspects of the subject. This is also true of a whole class of
writings on the "wonders of creation" of which the book of Abu Yabya al-Qazwini,
the 'Aja'ib al-makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation) is perhaps the most famous.
Likewise in geography, Muslims were able to extend their horizons
far beyond the world of Ptolemy. As a result of travel over land and by sea and the facile
exchange of ideas made possible by the unified structure of the Islamic world and the hajj
which enables pilgrims from all over the Islamic world to gather and exchange ideas in
addition to visiting the House of God, a vast amount of knowledge of areas from the
Pacific to the Atlantic was assembled. The Muslim geographers starting with al-Khwarazmi,
who laid the foundation of this science among Muslims in the 9th century, began to study
the geography of practically the whole globe minus the Americas, dividing the earth into
the traditional seven climes each of which they studied carefully from both a geographical
and climactic point of view. They also began to draw maps some of which reveal with
remarkable accuracy many features such as the origin of the Nile, not discovered in the
West until much later. The foremost among Muslim geographers was Abu 'Abdallah al-Idrisi,
who worked at the court of Roger II in Sicily and who dedicated his famous book, Kitab
al-rujari (The Book of Roger) to him. His maps are among the great achievements of
Islamic science. It was in fact with the help of Muslim geographers and navigators that
Magellan crossed the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean. Even Columnbus made use of
their knowledge in his discovery of America.
Chemistry
The very name alchemy as well as its derivative chemistry comes from
the Arabic al-kimiya'. 'The Muslims mastered Alexandrian and even certain elements
of Chinese alchemy and very early in their history, produced their greatest alchemist,
Jabir ibn Hayyan (the Latin Geber) who lived in the 8th century. Putting the cosmological
and symbolic aspects of alchemy aside, one can assert that this art led to much
experimentation with various materials and in the hands of Muhammad ibn Zakariyya' al-Razi
was converted into the science of chemistry. To this day certain chemical instruments such
as the alembic (al-'anbiq) still bear the original Arabic names and the
mercury-sulphur theory of Islamic alchemy remains as the foundation of the acid-base
theory of chemistry. A1-Razi division of materials into animal, vegetable and mineral is
still prevalent and a vast body of knowledge of materials accumulated by Islamic alch-
mists and chemists has survived over the century' in both East and West. For example the
use of dyes in objects of Islamic art ranging from carpets to miniatures or the making of
glass have much to do with this branch of learning which the West learn completely from
Islamic sources since alchem was not studied and practiced in the West before the
translation of Arabic texts into Latin in the 11th century.
Technology
Islam inherited the millennial experience in various forms of
technology from the peoples who entered the fold of Islam and the nations which became
part of Dar al-islam. A wide range of technological knowledge, from the building of
water wheels by the Romans to the underground water system by the Persians, became part
and parcel of the technology of the newly founded order. Muslims also imported
China and whose technology they later transmitted to the West. They
also developed many forms of technology on the basis of earlier existing knowledge such as
the certain kinds of technology from the Far East such as paper which they brought from
metallurgical art of making the famous Damascene swords, an art which goes back to the
making of steel several thousand years before on the Iranian Plateau. Likewise Muslims
developed new architectural techniques of vaulting, methods of ventilation, preparations
of dyes, techniques of weaving, technologies related to irrigation and numerous other
forms of technology, some of which survive to this day.
In general Islamic civilization emphasized the harmony between man
and nature as seen in the traditional design of Islamic cities. Maximum use was made of
natural elements and forces, and men built in harmony with, not in opposition to nature.
Some of the Muslim technological feats such as dams which have survived for over a
millenium, domes which can withstand earthquakes, and steel which reveals incredible
metallurgical know-how, attest to the exceptional attainment of Muslims in many fields of
technology. In fact it was a vastly superior technology that first impressed the Crusaders
in their unsuccessful attempt to capture the Holy Land and much of this technology was
brought back by the Crusaders to the rest of Europe.
Architecture
One of the major achievements of Islamic civilization is
architecture which combines technology and art. The great masterpieces of Islamic
architecture from the Cordoba Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to the Taj
Mahal in India display this perfect wedding between the artistic principles of Islam and
remarkable technological know-how. Much of the outstanding medieval architecture of the
West is in fact indebted to the techniques of Islamic architecture. When one views the
Notre Dame in Paris or some other Gothic cathedral, one is reminded of the building
techniques which traveled from Muslim Cordoba northward. Gothic arches as well as interior
courtyards’ of so many medieval and Renaissance European structures remind the viewer
of the Islamic architectural examples from which they originally drew. In fact the great
medieval European architectural tradition is one of the elements of Western civilization
most directly linked with the Islamic world, while the presence of Islamic architecture
can also be directly experienced in the Moorish style found not only in Spain and Latin
America, but in the southwestern United States as well.
 |
|
 |
Left: One of the most important scientific
instruments developed by Muslims was the astrolab which was also used widely in the west
until modern time.
Right: This Turkish miniature depicts a group of Muslim astronomers, who were the first
astronomers in history to work in group
|
The Influence of Islamic Science and Learning Upon the West
The oldest university in the world which is still functioning is the
eleven hundred-year-old Islamic university of Fez, Morocco, known as the Qarawiyyin. This
old tradition of Islamic learning influenced the West greatly through Spain. In this land
where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived for the most part peacefully for many centuries,
translations began to be made in the 11Ith century mostly in Toledo of Islamic works into
Latin often through the intermediary of Jewish scholars most of whom knew Arabic and often
wrote in Arabic. As a result of these translations, Islamic thought and through it much of
Greek thought became known to the West and Western schools of learning began to
flourish. Even the Islamic educational system was emulated in Europe and to this day the
term chair in a university reflects the Arabic kursi (literally seat) upon which a
teacher would sit to teach his students in the madrasah (school of higher
learning). As European civilization grew and reached the high Middle Ages, there was
hardly a field of learning or form of art, whether it was literature or architecture,
where there was not some influence of Islam present. Islamic learning became in this way
part and parcel of Western civilization even if with the advent of the Renaissance, the
West not only turned against its own medieval past but also sought to forget the long
relation it had had with the Islamic world, one which was based on intellectual respect
despite religious opposition.
Credits
Incorporated from the Magazine "Islam: A Global Civilization", prepared by
Islamic Affairs Department, The Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Washington, D.C.
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