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How Islam has kept us out of the 'Dark Ages'
Deborah Rowe
May 2004
What did Islam do for science?
Early Islam probably encouraged the greatest international, cross-cultural, intellectual collaborations, under the banner of science. A phenomenon that has not been recorded in history of science since.
Early Islamic teaching encouraged new knowledge for largely practical reasons. Anything that improved life in Islamic society was welcomed – better means of determining the direction of Mecca from all points in the empire; improved navigational aids for travellers and traders; better health care and medical knowledge; more accurate ways of measuring, counting and converting currencies when trading with others. Effectively, astronomy, geography, medicine and mathematics were all useful, practical tools and also helped Muslims to understand the work of God.
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Some great Islamic scientists
- Ibn Sina, philosopher and physician
Produced a standard medical text in the 10th century that was still in use in the 17th century.
- Al-Tusi, astronomer
His mathematical models were essential to the work of Copernicus in proving that Earth travelled around the Sun.
- Abu Jafar Muhammad, mathematician
Gave us algebra and algorithms that were central to the development of modern computing.
- Ibn al-Haytham
His work on vision and light helped Newton formulate his theories on optics.
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As Islamic civilisation spread further into southern Europe, vast treasuries of long-forgotten knowledge from conquered lands were taken back to cities like Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo and Cordoba where they were translated into Arabic.
There was no shortage of wealthy sponsors to fund the work, nor institutions to house the translations. In the 9th century, the House of Wisdom was established in Baghdad. In the 10th century, Cairo established a huge library, with 40 rooms and thousands of texts devoted to the ancient sciences. By the 11th century, Muslim rulers had established large institutions in all the major cities to preserve their treasury of knowledge.
In cities like Gondeshapur in Persia there were international communities of academics and scholars. Some, like the Nestorians, had been forced to flee from Christian lands because of their beliefs. They could speak the ancient languages and found it easy to learn Arabic, so were the ideal choice for much of the translation work.
At the same time, in medieval Europe, there was a parallel pursuit of translation of the ancient texts, this time from Greek into Latin. The activity was sponsored largely by the monasteries but the effort was nothing like as intense or as productive as that of the Islamic scholars who had greater resources at their disposal and, at that time, greater intellectual freedom. In the early days of Islam, knowledge was actively encouraged and scholars could do more than just translate the manuscripts that came to them, they could develop the ideas further.
Less than 400 years after the first Islamic conquests, all kinds of scientists were at work throughout the vast Islamic Empire. They picked apart, catalogued and developed a huge intellectual legacy from the ancient civilisations. From the broadest ideas of the physical Universe, to the invisible workings of the human body, they organised and made sense of it all. They managed to simplify much of what the Greeks and other ancients had started and then improved on it.
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Islamic science in a nutshell
- When Western Europe was at its lowest intellectual peak, from the 5th to the 15th centuries, Islamic civilisation was rising rapidly. A thirst for knowledge, including science, was encouraged by the religious leaders of early Islam.
- The works of the ancients, including Aristotle, Socrates, Ptolemy, Galen, Pythagoras and Euclid were collected, safeguarded and translated into Arabic.
- The chemical properties of alkalis and acids were discovered by Islamic scientists.
- The process of distillation was formulated and used to produce petrol from crude oil.
- Islamic scientists contributed to algebra, algorithms, trigonometry, geometry, chemistry, cosmology, astronomy, medicine and optics.
- Islamic scholars developed the concepts of modern hospitals, universities, observatories and civil systems.
- The concept of zero reached medieval Europe through the Arab nations who had probably learned of it from ancient Hindu and Chinese cultures. Prior to this Europe struggled with a system of Roman numerals, in which large numbers would consist of huge strings of letters. Once zero was incorporated, numbers took on the more manageable decimal system that we use today.
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