A BRIEF HISTORY OF MUSLIM SCIENCE

Professor Moslih I. Al-Moslih[a]

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 discover the truth which is none other than worshiping God in his oneness. The Hadith literature is also full references to the importance of knowledge such as the saying of the Prophet as “Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave “.

As Islam spread northward into Syria, Egypt, and Persia, 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. Alexendria had been a major center of sciences and learning for centuries.

The great movement of translation lasted from the beginning of the 8^th to the end of the 9^th century, reaching its peak with the establishment of the House of Wisdom (Bayt alhikmah) by the Caliph al-Ma’mun at the beginning of the 9^th century. Most of the important philosophical and scientific works of Aristotle, Plato, the Pythagorean school, and the major work 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. Furthermore, important works of astronomy, mathematics, and medicine were translated from Pahlavi and Sanskrit literature. 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.

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.

The first great Muslim mathematician, al-Khwarazmi who lived in the 9^th century, wrote a treatise on arithmetic whose Latin translation brought what is known as Arabic numerals to the West. The very name algebra comes from the first part of the name of the book of al-Khwarazmi, entitled Kitab al-jabr wa al muqabalah. Abu Kamil al Shuja’ discussed algebraic equation with five unknowns.

The Muslims also excelled in geometry as reflected in their art. The brothers Banu Musa who lived in the 9^th century and Thabit ibn Qurrah used the method of integral calculus. Khayyam and al-Tusi also dealt with the fifth postulate of Euclid.

In the field of trigonometry, Muslim mathematicians, especially al-Battani, Abul-Wafa, Ibn Yunus, and Ibn al-Haytham, developed spherical astronomy and applied it to the solution of astronomical problems.

In the field of number theory, the love for the study of magical 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 Alkaraji analyzed arithmetic and geometric progressions.

Muslims made many contributions in the fields of physics, balance, projectile motion, and optics. al-Biruni and al-Khazini made contributions in the measurements of specific weights of objects and the study of the balance following upon the work of Archimedes. Ibn Sina, Abul-Barakat al-Baghdadi, and Ibn Bajjah developed the idea of impetus and momentum. Another contribution was in the field of optics by Ibn-al-Hayatham (Latin Alhazen) who lived in the 11^th century, studied the property of lenses, discovered the camera obscura, explained the process of vision, studied the structure of eye, and explained why the sun and moon appear larger on the horizon. Qutb al-Din gave the first correct explanation of the formation of the rainbow.

Muslims also made contributions to astronomy: The Almaget of Ptolemy that studied the planetary theory and was criticized by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi in the 13^th century. Many new stars were discovered by Muslim scientist and some of these stars carry Arabic names such as Aldabaran. Astronomical tables called Zij were developed. The Zij of al-Ma‘mun in Baghdad, the Hakimite Zij of Cairo, the Toledan Tables of al Zarqali, the Zij of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi in Maraghah, and the Zij of Ulugh-Beg in Samarqand are among the most famous Islamic astronomical tables. Many astronomical instruments were developed by Muslims to carry out observation, the most famous being the astrolabe. Ibn Samh’s astrolabe is considered as the ancestor of the mechanical clock. The solar calendar (jalali calender) was devised under the direction of Umar Khayyam in the 12^th century.

Islamic teachings motivated Muslims to contribute to medical science. 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). At. first the great physicians among Muslims were mostly Christian but by the 9^th century Islamic medicine, properly speaking, The Paradise of Wisdom (Firdaws al-hikmah) by Ali ibn Rabban al-Tabari synthesized the Hippocratic and Galenic traditions of medicine. Muhammad ibn Zakariyya al-Razi (Rhazes) emphasized clinical medicine and observation. He was a master of prognosis and psychosomatic medicine and also medicine. He identified and treated smallpox. He used alcohol as an antiseptic and make medical use of mercury as a purgative.

The greatest of all Muslim physicians, however, was Ibn Sina who was called “the prince of physicians” in the west. His book al-Qanun fil tibb (the canon of medicine) is one of the greatest books in medicine in history. Ibn Sina discovered many drugs and treated meningitis. After Ibn Sina, Islamic medicine divided into several branches, especially ophthalmology by al-Hakim, and Ibn Nafis who discovered the lesser or pulmonary circulation of the blood long before Michael Servetus.

Sa’d al-katib of Cordoba wrote in gynecology. Abu’l- Qasim al-Zahrawi (Albucasis) whose medical masterpiece Kitab al-tasfir was well known in the West as Concessio. Other physicians should be mentioned for their contribution to medicine such as the Ibn Zuhr family, Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik Ibn Tufayl, and Ibn Rushed. The Islamic medical tradition was revived in the Safavid period when several diseases such as whooping cough were diagnosed and were treated for the first time

In the field of pharmacology: Muslim physicians studied the medical effect of many drugs, especially herbs. Ibn Juljul, Ibn al-Salt in the 12^th century were very famous phamacologists.

In Natural History and Geography, knowledge of minerals, plants, and animals was assembled from areas as far as the Malay world and synthesized for the first time by Ibn Sina in his Kitab al- Shifa’(the book of Healing). The natural historian was al-Mas’udi who intertwined 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 and the work of mineralogy.

In Botany and Zoology Kitab al-falahah was written on agriculture. Muslims showed interest in zoology especially in horses and in falcon and hunting birds (al-Jahiz and al-Damiri). The “wonders of creation” a book was written by Abu Yahya al-Qazwini.

In Chemistry, the very name alchemy as well as its derivative chemistry from Arabic “al Kimiya”. The great alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber) who lived in the 8^th century. Also Muhammad ibn Zakariyya al-Razi discovered many chemical instruments such as alembic (al-anbiq) and the mercury-sulpher theory of acid-base theory of chemistry. The use of dyes in objects of Islamic art as in carpets or glasses

In technology a wide range of technological knowledge was developed from the building of water wheels, paper, damasscene swords, vaulting, and techniques of weaving in irrigation

In architecture, one of the major achievements of Islamic civilization is architecture as shown in the masterpieces of the Cordoba Mosque, Dome of the Rock, and the Taj Mahal.

In general Islamic civilization emphasized the harmony between man and nature as seen in the traditional design of Islamic cities. Some of the Muslim technological feats such dams which have survived for over millennium, 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 vast 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.

Islamic Science and Learning had a major influence on 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 11^th 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 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 madras (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.

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