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Islam, Knowledge and Science
"He has taught you that which [heretofore] you knew not."
(Quran, Surah II: 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.
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 leaming cultivated in Alexandria was opposed by the
Byzantines 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 Byzantium 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
alhikmah) by the caliph al-Ma'mun 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.
Furthermore, 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-lslamic" 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
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.
Astronomy
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 alDin
al-Shirazi, in the 13th century. The Muslims also observed
the heavens carefully and discovered many new stars. The
book on stars of 'Abd al-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 alZarqali and his associates,
the ll-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.
Mathematics, Algebra
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 Kirah al-jahr 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.
Geometry
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.
Trigonometry
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.
Number Theory
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
alKaraji 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.
Physics, Balance, Projectile Motion, Optics
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-Baghdadi, 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 Kitah 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.
Experimental Method
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.
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 the great physicians
among Muslims were mostly Christian but by the 9th century
Islamic medicine, properly speaking, was born with the
appearance of the major compendium,
Rhazes Anatomy Smallpox Antiseptic Psychosomatic
Medicine
The Paradise of Wisdom (Firdaws al-hikmah ) by 'Ali 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 Canon of Medicine and Meningitis
The greatest of all Muslim physicians, however, 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.
Pulmonary Circulation
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.
Gynecology
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-Mulk of
Shiraz also travelled 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.
Major Hospitals
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 modem European
medicine in both medicine and phammacology. 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 specialilzed in patients having
insomnia.
Pharmacology
Islamic medical authorities were also always concemed
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 phammacopias
of the Persians and Indians. They also studied the medical
effects of many drugs, 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 phammacologists, 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 modem 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 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. He also wrote the most outstanding Muslim work on
mineralogy.
Botany, Zoology
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 Yahya al-Qazwini, the
'Aja'ih al-makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation) is perhaps
the most famous.
Geography
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 Columbus made use of their knowledge in his
discovery of America.
Chemistry
The very name alchemy as well as its derivative chemistry
come 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 their
original Arabic names and the mercury-sulphur theory of
Islamic alchemy remains as the foundation of the acid-base
theory of chemistry. Al-Razi's division of materials into
animal, vegetable and mineral is still prevalent and a vast
body of knowledge of materials accumulated by Islamic
alchemists and chemists has survived over the centuries 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 learned completely from Islamic sources since
alchemy was not studied and practiced in the West before the
translation of Arabic texts into Latin in the 11th century .
Technology
Islam inherited the millenial experience in various
forrns 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
certain kinds of technology from the Far East such as paper
which they brought from 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 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.
Man and Nature
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 Treatises on natural
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, scientists were often display this
perfect wedding between the artistic illustrated with
detailed principles of Islam and remarkable technological
know-how. Much of the outstanding medieval facilitate
teaching of the 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 travelled 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 ean also be directly experienced in the Moorish
style found not only in Spain and Latin America, but in the
southwestern United States as well.
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 11th
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
civillization 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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