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Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
How Islamic Inventors Changed the World
From: "abdul-Rahman Mahboob"
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 06:13:37 +0000
Subject: How Islamic Inventors Changed the World
How Islamic inventors changed the world
news.independent.co.uk
Article from The Independent - UK
How Islamic inventors changed the world
>From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us
many innovations that we take for granted in daily life. As a new exhibition
opens, Paul Vallely nominates 20 of the most influential- and identifies the men
of genius behind them
Published: 11 March 2006
1 The story goes that an Arab named Khalid was tending his goats in the Kaffa
region of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals became livelier after
eating a certain berry. He boiled the berries to make the first coffee.
Certainly the first record of the drink is of beans exported from Ethiopia to
Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake all night to pray on special occasions.
By the late 15th century it had arrived in Mecca and Turkey from where it made
its way to Venice in 1645. It was brought to England in 1650 by a Turk named
Pasqua Rosee who opened the first coffee house in Lombard Street in the City of
London. The Arabic qahwa became the Turkish kahve then the Italian caffé and
then English coffee.
2 The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which enabled
us to see. The first person to realise that light enters the eye, rather than
leaving it, was the 10th-century Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist
Ibn al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way
light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better
the picture, he worked out, and set up the first Camera Obscura (from the Arab
word qamara for a dark or private room). He is also credited with being the
first man to shift physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one.
3 A form of chess was played in ancient India but the game was developed into
the form we know it today in Persia. From there it spread westward to Europe -
where it was introduced by the Moors in Spain in the 10th century - and eastward
as far as Japan. The word rook comes from the Persian rukh, which means chariot.
4 A thousand years before the Wright brothers a Muslim poet, astronomer,
musician and engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas made several attempts to construct
a flying machine. In 852 he jumped from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in
Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts. He hoped to glide like
a bird. He didn?EUR~t. But the cloak slowed his fall, creating what is thought
to be the first parachute, and leaving him with only minor injuries. In 875,
aged 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles?EUR~ feathers he tried
again, jumping from a mountain. He flew to a significant height and stayed aloft
for ten minutes but crashed on landing - concluding, correctly, that it was
because he had not given his device a tail so it would stall on landing. Baghdad
international airport and a crater on the Moon are named after him.
5 Washing and bathing are religious requirements for Muslims, which is perhaps
why they perfected the recipe for soap which we still use today. The ancient
Egyptians had soap of a kind, as did the Romans who used it more as a pomade.
But it was the Arabs who combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and
aromatics such as thyme oil. One of the Crusaders?EUR~ most striking
characteristics, to Arab nostrils, was that they did not wash. Shampoo was
introduced to England by a Muslim who opened Mahomed?EUR~s Indian Vapour Baths
on Brighton seafront in 1759 and was appointed Shampooing Surgeon to Kings
George IV and William IV.
6 Distillation, the means of separating liquids through differences in their
boiling points, was invented around the year 800 by Islam?EUR~s foremost
scientist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, who transformed alchemy into chemistry, inventing
many of the basic processes and apparatus still in use today - liquefaction,
crystallisation, distillation, purification, oxidisation, evaporation and
filtration.
As well as discovering sulphuric and nitric acid, he invented the alembic still,
giving the world intense rosewater and other perfumes and alcoholic spirits
(although drinking them is haram, or forbidden, in Islam). Ibn Hayyan emphasised
systematic experimentation and was the founder of modern chemistry.
7 The crank-shaft is a device which translates rotary into linear motion and is
central to much of the machinery in the modern world, not least the internal
combustion engine. One of the most important mechanical inventions in the
history of humankind, it was created by an ingenious Muslim engineer called al-
Jazari to raise water for irrigation. His 1206 Book of Knowledge of Ingenious
Mechanical Devices shows he also invented or refined the use of valves and
pistons, devised some of the first mechanical clocks driven by water and
weights, and was the father of robotics. Among his 50 other inventions was the
combination lock.
8 Quilting is a method of sewing or tying two layers of cloth with a layer of
insulating material in between. It is not clear whether it was invented in the
Muslim world or whether it was imported there from India or China. But it
certainly came to the West via the Crusaders. They saw it used by Saracen
warriors, who wore straw-filled quilted canvas shirts instead of armour. As well
as a form of protection, it proved an effective guard against the chafing of the
Crusaders?EUR~ metal armour and was an effective form of insulation - so much so
that it became a cottage industry back home in colder climates such as Britain
and Holland.
9 The pointed arch so characteristic of Europe?EUR~s Gothic cathedrals was an
invention borrowed from Islamic architecture. It was much stronger than the
rounded arch used by the Romans and Normans, thus allowing the building of
bigger, higher, more complex and grander buildings. Other borrowings from Muslim
genius included ribbed vaulting, rose windows and dome-building techniques.
Europe?EUR~s castles were also adapted to copy the Islamic world?EUR~s - with
arrow slits, battlements, a barbican and parapets. Square towers and keeps gave
way to more easily defended round ones. Henry V?EUR~s castle architect was a
Muslim.
10 Many modern surgical instruments are of exactly the same design as those
devised in the 10th century by a Muslim surgeon called al-Zahrawi. His scalpels,
bone saws, forceps, fine scissors for eye surgery and many of the 200
instruments he devised are recognisable to a modern surgeon. It was he who
discovered that catgut used for internal stitches dissolves away naturally (a
discovery he made when his monkey ate his lute
strings) and that it can be also
used to make medicine capsules. In the 13th century, another Muslim medic named
Ibn Nafis described the circulation of the blood, 300 years before William
Harvey discovered it. Muslims doctors also invented anaesthetics of opium and
alcohol mixes and developed hollow needles to suck cataracts from eyes in a
technique still used today.
11 The windmill was invented in 634 for a Persian caliph and was used to grind
corn and draw up water for irrigation. In the vast deserts of Arabia, when the
seasonal streams ran dry, the only source of power was the wind which blew
steadily from one direction for months. Mills had six or 12 sails covered in
fabric or palm leaves. It was 500 years before the first windmill was seen in
Europe.
12 The technique of inoculation was not invented by Jenner and Pasteur but was
devised in the Muslim world and brought to Europe from Turkey by the wife of the
English ambassador to Istanbul in 1724. Children in Turkey were vaccinated with
cowpox to fight the deadly smallpox at least 50 years before the West discovered
it.
13 The fountain pen was invented for the Sultan of Egypt in 953 after he
demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes. It held ink in a
reservoir and, as with modern pens, fed ink to the nib by a combination of
gravity and capillary action.
14 The system of numbering in use all round the world is probably Indian in
origin but the style of the numerals is Arabic and first appears in print in the
work of the Muslim mathematicians al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi around 825.
Algebra was named after al-Khwarizmi?EUR~s book, Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, much
of whose contents are still in use. The work of Muslim maths scholars was
imported into Europe 300 years later by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci.
Algorithms and much of the theory of trigonometry came from the Muslim world.
And Al-Kindi?EUR~s discovery of frequency analysis rendered all the codes of the
ancient world soluble and created the basis of modern cryptology.
15 Ali ibn Nafi, known by his nickname of Ziryab
(Blackbird) came from Iraq to
Cordoba in the 9th century and brought with him the concept of the three- course
meal - soup, followed by fish or meat, then fruit and nuts. He also introduced
crystal glasses (which had been invented after experiments with rock crystal by
Abbas ibn Firnas - see No 4).
16 Carpets were regarded as part of Paradise by medieval Muslims, thanks to
their advanced weaving techniques, new tinctures from Islamic chemistry and
highly developed sense of pattern and arabesque which were the basis of
Islam?EUR~s non-representational art. In contrast, Europe?EUR~s floors were
distinctly earthly, not to say earthy, until Arabian and Persian carpets were
introduced. In England, as Erasmus recorded, floors were "covered in rushes,
occasionally renewed, but so imperfectly that the bottom layer is left
undisturbed, sometimes for 20 years, harbouring expectoration, vomiting, the
leakage of dogs and men, ale droppings, scraps of fish, and other abominations
not fit to be mentioned". Carpets, unsurprisingly, caught on quickly.
17 The modern cheque comes from the Arabic saqq, a written vow to pay for goods
when they were delivered, to avoid money having to be transported across
dangerous terrain. In the 9th century, a Muslim businessman could cash a cheque
in China drawn on his bank in Baghdad.
18 By the 9th century, many Muslim scholars took it for granted that the Earth
was a sphere. The proof, said astronomer Ibn Hazm, "is that the Sun is always
vertical to a particular spot on Earth". It was 500 years before that
realisation dawned on Galileo. The calculations of Muslim astronomers were so
accurate that in the 9th century they reckoned the Earth?EUR~s circumference to
be 40,253.4km - less than 200km out. The scholar al-Idrisi took a globe
depicting the world to the court of King Roger of Sicily in 1139.
19 Though the Chinese invented saltpetre gunpowder, and used it in their
fireworks, it was the Arabs who worked out that it could be purified using
potassium nitrate for military use. Muslim incendiary devices terrified the
Crusaders. By the 15th century they had invented both a rocket, which they
called a "self-moving and combusting egg", and a torpedo - a self-propelled
pear-shaped bomb with a spear at the front which impaled itself in enemy ships
and then blew up.
20 Medieval Europe had kitchen and herb gardens, but it was the Arabs who
developed the idea of the garden as a place of beauty and meditation. The first
royal pleasure gardens in Europe were opened in 11th-century Muslim Spain.
Flowers which originated in Muslim gardens include the carnation and the tulip.
SEE ALSO:
CHARTING THE LOST INNOVATIONS OF ISLAM - TOP education.guardian.co.uk
Paul Lewis highlights a new exhibition that reveals the inventions made by the
Muslim world
It is the thread that links cars, carpets and cameras and is also responsible
for three-course meals, bookshops and modern medicine.
The Islamic civilisation, according to the curators of a national exhibition
that opened this week, has made an enormous but largely neglected contribution
to the way we live in the west.
The project, 1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage of Our World,
supported by the Home Office and the Department for Trade and Industry, uncovers
the Islamic civilisation's overlooked contribution to science, technology and
art during the dark ages in European history. (MORE)
---
1001 INVENTIONS: DISCOVER THE MUSLIM HERITAGE IN OUR WORLD - TOP
"1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World" is a new exhibition
which began a nationwide tour this week. It is currently at the Science Museum
in Manchester. For more information, go to 1001inventions.com
Islamic Relief
&
Islamic Shura Council of So. Cal
Presents
REBUILDING LIVES, RESTORING HOPE
Continuing support of the victims of
South Asian Earthquake
Sunday, April 2nd, 2006, 5:30pm
GUEST SPEAKERS:
Imam Siraj Wahaj,
Imam of Masjid Taqwa, NY
Noor Muhammad Jadmani (NEW)
Consul General of Pakistan
Moin Khan & Rashid Latif
Former Captains, Pakistan National Cricket Team
Shakeel Syed,
Executive Director, Islamic Shura Council of Southern CA
Sheraton Park Hotel
1855 S. Harbor Blvd.,
Anaheim, CA 92802
714-750-1811
Admission: $25 (children Under 12 free)
Table of 10 ($250)
Babysitting Provided
Dinner provided
Contact:
714-936-9186
888-479-4968
[email protected]
BUY TICKETS ONLINE
At irw.org
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 06:13:37 +0000
Subject: How Islamic Inventors Changed the World
How Islamic inventors changed the world
news.independent.co.uk
Article from The Independent - UK
How Islamic inventors changed the world
>From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us
many innovations that we take for granted in daily life. As a new exhibition
opens, Paul Vallely nominates 20 of the most influential- and identifies the men
of genius behind them
Published: 11 March 2006
1 The story goes that an Arab named Khalid was tending his goats in the Kaffa
region of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals became livelier after
eating a certain berry. He boiled the berries to make the first coffee.
Certainly the first record of the drink is of beans exported from Ethiopia to
Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake all night to pray on special occasions.
By the late 15th century it had arrived in Mecca and Turkey from where it made
its way to Venice in 1645. It was brought to England in 1650 by a Turk named
Pasqua Rosee who opened the first coffee house in Lombard Street in the City of
London. The Arabic qahwa became the Turkish kahve then the Italian caffé and
then English coffee.
2 The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which enabled
us to see. The first person to realise that light enters the eye, rather than
leaving it, was the 10th-century Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist
Ibn al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way
light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better
the picture, he worked out, and set up the first Camera Obscura (from the Arab
word qamara for a dark or private room). He is also credited with being the
first man to shift physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one.
3 A form of chess was played in ancient India but the game was developed into
the form we know it today in Persia. From there it spread westward to Europe -
where it was introduced by the Moors in Spain in the 10th century - and eastward
as far as Japan. The word rook comes from the Persian rukh, which means chariot.
4 A thousand years before the Wright brothers a Muslim poet, astronomer,
musician and engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas made several attempts to construct
a flying machine. In 852 he jumped from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in
Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts. He hoped to glide like
a bird. He didn?EUR~t. But the cloak slowed his fall, creating what is thought
to be the first parachute, and leaving him with only minor injuries. In 875,
aged 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles?EUR~ feathers he tried
again, jumping from a mountain. He flew to a significant height and stayed aloft
for ten minutes but crashed on landing - concluding, correctly, that it was
because he had not given his device a tail so it would stall on landing. Baghdad
international airport and a crater on the Moon are named after him.
5 Washing and bathing are religious requirements for Muslims, which is perhaps
why they perfected the recipe for soap which we still use today. The ancient
Egyptians had soap of a kind, as did the Romans who used it more as a pomade.
But it was the Arabs who combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and
aromatics such as thyme oil. One of the Crusaders?EUR~ most striking
characteristics, to Arab nostrils, was that they did not wash. Shampoo was
introduced to England by a Muslim who opened Mahomed?EUR~s Indian Vapour Baths
on Brighton seafront in 1759 and was appointed Shampooing Surgeon to Kings
George IV and William IV.
6 Distillation, the means of separating liquids through differences in their
boiling points, was invented around the year 800 by Islam?EUR~s foremost
scientist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, who transformed alchemy into chemistry, inventing
many of the basic processes and apparatus still in use today - liquefaction,
crystallisation, distillation, purification, oxidisation, evaporation and
filtration.
As well as discovering sulphuric and nitric acid, he invented the alembic still,
giving the world intense rosewater and other perfumes and alcoholic spirits
(although drinking them is haram, or forbidden, in Islam). Ibn Hayyan emphasised
systematic experimentation and was the founder of modern chemistry.
7 The crank-shaft is a device which translates rotary into linear motion and is
central to much of the machinery in the modern world, not least the internal
combustion engine. One of the most important mechanical inventions in the
history of humankind, it was created by an ingenious Muslim engineer called al-
Jazari to raise water for irrigation. His 1206 Book of Knowledge of Ingenious
Mechanical Devices shows he also invented or refined the use of valves and
pistons, devised some of the first mechanical clocks driven by water and
weights, and was the father of robotics. Among his 50 other inventions was the
combination lock.
8 Quilting is a method of sewing or tying two layers of cloth with a layer of
insulating material in between. It is not clear whether it was invented in the
Muslim world or whether it was imported there from India or China. But it
certainly came to the West via the Crusaders. They saw it used by Saracen
warriors, who wore straw-filled quilted canvas shirts instead of armour. As well
as a form of protection, it proved an effective guard against the chafing of the
Crusaders?EUR~ metal armour and was an effective form of insulation - so much so
that it became a cottage industry back home in colder climates such as Britain
and Holland.
9 The pointed arch so characteristic of Europe?EUR~s Gothic cathedrals was an
invention borrowed from Islamic architecture. It was much stronger than the
rounded arch used by the Romans and Normans, thus allowing the building of
bigger, higher, more complex and grander buildings. Other borrowings from Muslim
genius included ribbed vaulting, rose windows and dome-building techniques.
Europe?EUR~s castles were also adapted to copy the Islamic world?EUR~s - with
arrow slits, battlements, a barbican and parapets. Square towers and keeps gave
way to more easily defended round ones. Henry V?EUR~s castle architect was a
Muslim.
10 Many modern surgical instruments are of exactly the same design as those
devised in the 10th century by a Muslim surgeon called al-Zahrawi. His scalpels,
bone saws, forceps, fine scissors for eye surgery and many of the 200
instruments he devised are recognisable to a modern surgeon. It was he who
discovered that catgut used for internal stitches dissolves away naturally (a
discovery he made when his monkey ate his lute
strings) and that it can be also
used to make medicine capsules. In the 13th century, another Muslim medic named
Ibn Nafis described the circulation of the blood, 300 years before William
Harvey discovered it. Muslims doctors also invented anaesthetics of opium and
alcohol mixes and developed hollow needles to suck cataracts from eyes in a
technique still used today.
11 The windmill was invented in 634 for a Persian caliph and was used to grind
corn and draw up water for irrigation. In the vast deserts of Arabia, when the
seasonal streams ran dry, the only source of power was the wind which blew
steadily from one direction for months. Mills had six or 12 sails covered in
fabric or palm leaves. It was 500 years before the first windmill was seen in
Europe.
12 The technique of inoculation was not invented by Jenner and Pasteur but was
devised in the Muslim world and brought to Europe from Turkey by the wife of the
English ambassador to Istanbul in 1724. Children in Turkey were vaccinated with
cowpox to fight the deadly smallpox at least 50 years before the West discovered
it.
13 The fountain pen was invented for the Sultan of Egypt in 953 after he
demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes. It held ink in a
reservoir and, as with modern pens, fed ink to the nib by a combination of
gravity and capillary action.
14 The system of numbering in use all round the world is probably Indian in
origin but the style of the numerals is Arabic and first appears in print in the
work of the Muslim mathematicians al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi around 825.
Algebra was named after al-Khwarizmi?EUR~s book, Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, much
of whose contents are still in use. The work of Muslim maths scholars was
imported into Europe 300 years later by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci.
Algorithms and much of the theory of trigonometry came from the Muslim world.
And Al-Kindi?EUR~s discovery of frequency analysis rendered all the codes of the
ancient world soluble and created the basis of modern cryptology.
15 Ali ibn Nafi, known by his nickname of Ziryab
(Blackbird) came from Iraq to
Cordoba in the 9th century and brought with him the concept of the three- course
meal - soup, followed by fish or meat, then fruit and nuts. He also introduced
crystal glasses (which had been invented after experiments with rock crystal by
Abbas ibn Firnas - see No 4).
16 Carpets were regarded as part of Paradise by medieval Muslims, thanks to
their advanced weaving techniques, new tinctures from Islamic chemistry and
highly developed sense of pattern and arabesque which were the basis of
Islam?EUR~s non-representational art. In contrast, Europe?EUR~s floors were
distinctly earthly, not to say earthy, until Arabian and Persian carpets were
introduced. In England, as Erasmus recorded, floors were "covered in rushes,
occasionally renewed, but so imperfectly that the bottom layer is left
undisturbed, sometimes for 20 years, harbouring expectoration, vomiting, the
leakage of dogs and men, ale droppings, scraps of fish, and other abominations
not fit to be mentioned". Carpets, unsurprisingly, caught on quickly.
17 The modern cheque comes from the Arabic saqq, a written vow to pay for goods
when they were delivered, to avoid money having to be transported across
dangerous terrain. In the 9th century, a Muslim businessman could cash a cheque
in China drawn on his bank in Baghdad.
18 By the 9th century, many Muslim scholars took it for granted that the Earth
was a sphere. The proof, said astronomer Ibn Hazm, "is that the Sun is always
vertical to a particular spot on Earth". It was 500 years before that
realisation dawned on Galileo. The calculations of Muslim astronomers were so
accurate that in the 9th century they reckoned the Earth?EUR~s circumference to
be 40,253.4km - less than 200km out. The scholar al-Idrisi took a globe
depicting the world to the court of King Roger of Sicily in 1139.
19 Though the Chinese invented saltpetre gunpowder, and used it in their
fireworks, it was the Arabs who worked out that it could be purified using
potassium nitrate for military use. Muslim incendiary devices terrified the
Crusaders. By the 15th century they had invented both a rocket, which they
called a "self-moving and combusting egg", and a torpedo - a self-propelled
pear-shaped bomb with a spear at the front which impaled itself in enemy ships
and then blew up.
20 Medieval Europe had kitchen and herb gardens, but it was the Arabs who
developed the idea of the garden as a place of beauty and meditation. The first
royal pleasure gardens in Europe were opened in 11th-century Muslim Spain.
Flowers which originated in Muslim gardens include the carnation and the tulip.
SEE ALSO:
CHARTING THE LOST INNOVATIONS OF ISLAM - TOP education.guardian.co.uk
Paul Lewis highlights a new exhibition that reveals the inventions made by the
Muslim world
It is the thread that links cars, carpets and cameras and is also responsible
for three-course meals, bookshops and modern medicine.
The Islamic civilisation, according to the curators of a national exhibition
that opened this week, has made an enormous but largely neglected contribution
to the way we live in the west.
The project, 1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage of Our World,
supported by the Home Office and the Department for Trade and Industry, uncovers
the Islamic civilisation's overlooked contribution to science, technology and
art during the dark ages in European history. (MORE)
---
1001 INVENTIONS: DISCOVER THE MUSLIM HERITAGE IN OUR WORLD - TOP
"1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World" is a new exhibition
which began a nationwide tour this week. It is currently at the Science Museum
in Manchester. For more information, go to 1001inventions.com
Islamic Relief
&
Islamic Shura Council of So. Cal
Presents
REBUILDING LIVES, RESTORING HOPE
Continuing support of the victims of
South Asian Earthquake
Sunday, April 2nd, 2006, 5:30pm
GUEST SPEAKERS:
Imam Siraj Wahaj,
Imam of Masjid Taqwa, NY
Noor Muhammad Jadmani (NEW)
Consul General of Pakistan
Moin Khan & Rashid Latif
Former Captains, Pakistan National Cricket Team
Shakeel Syed,
Executive Director, Islamic Shura Council of Southern CA
Sheraton Park Hotel
1855 S. Harbor Blvd.,
Anaheim, CA 92802
714-750-1811
Admission: $25 (children Under 12 free)
Table of 10 ($250)
Babysitting Provided
Dinner provided
Contact:
714-936-9186
888-479-4968
[email protected]
BUY TICKETS ONLINE
At irw.org