Golden Age Of Ilsam[1]

The Golden Age of Islam (750-1350)

The Golden Age of Islam included advances in

• international trade

• manufacturing

• agriculture

• art

• architecture

• literature

• mathematics

• astronomy

• medicine

Islam expands during the Golden Age

• Added North Africa and Spain as well as Western India

• Main cities included Damascus, Syria, Alexandria, Egypt and Cordova, Spain

Great Mosque, Damascus

Period of Wealth

During the Abbasids Abbasids Dynasty (750-900), Dynasty (750-900), Capital of Baghdad (Iraq) exceeded Constantinople in size and wealth

Reasons for Islamic Success

• Islam unified the tribes of Arabia• Religious zeal inspired Arab

armies• Allowed some religious freedom to

Christians and Jews• Honored merchants

More Reasons for Arab Success

• Byzantine and Persian Empires were weak

• Islam was attractive to the conquered– easy to become Muslim– preaches equality (people could move up in

society)

Art

• The golden age of Islamic (and/or Muslim) art lasted from 750 to the 16th century, when ceramics, glass, metalwork, textiles, and woodwork flourished.

• Lusterous glazing became the greatest Islamic contribution to ceramics.

• Calligraphy, an essential aspect of written Arabic, developed in manuscripts and architectural decoration.

Arabic Art

An Arabic manuscript from the 13th century depicting Socrates in discussion with his pupils.

Do you know who Socrates was?

Literature

• The most well known fiction from the Islamic world was The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), which was a compilation of many earlier folk tales.

The character of Aladdin is from this book

Architecture

Architecture – Great Mosques use domes and arches

Do you know of any buildings that have these features?

The Alhambra• The Alhambra (Arabic:

;'Al-Ħamrā = الحمراءliterally "the red") is a palace and fortress, in southern Spain on the south-eastern border of the city of Granada.

• It was the residence of the Muslim kings of Granada and their court, but is currently a museum exhibiting exquisite Islamic architecture.

I visited this structure as an 8th Grade Student at HMS in 1989

Science

– Ibn al-Haytham (ca. 965-1039), the so-called "father of optics," explained how human vision takes place

– He used an early form of the scientific method to explain optics

What do we use this for?

Scientific Method

• The modern scientific method was first developed in the Muslim world, where significant progress in methodology was made, especially in the works of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) in the 11th century,

• The most important development of the scientific method was the use of experimentation and quantification

Scientific Advances• Many other advances were made by Muslim

scientists in biology (botany, evolution, and zoology), mathematics (algebra, arithmetic, calculus, geometry, number theory, and trigonometry), chemistry, the earth sciences (anthropology, cartography, geography, and geology), physics (astrophysics, optics, mechanics, and motion), psychology (experimental psychology, psychiatry, psychophysics, and psychotherapy), and the social sciences (demography, economics, history and historiography, and sociology).

Medicine• Ibn Sina (980-1037),

known in the West as Avicenna, his Canon of Medicine became the most famous medical book in the East or West, translated at least 87 times.

• The great Egyptian physician Ibn al-Nafis (d. 1288), discovered the minor, or pulmonary, circulation of the blood.

Do you know what pulmonary means?

Medicine

The Arabs invented the hospital

Does this hospital look familiar to you?

Math– Muhammad ibn

Musa al-Khwarizmi (ca. 800-ca. 847) principally responsible for the diffusion of the Indian system of numeration (Arabic numerals) in the Islamic lands and the West.

– Introduced algebra

And You Thought Mr. Colella was making this stuff up as he

goes along!

Astronomy

• Muslim astronomers accepted the geometrical structure of the universe expounded by Ptolemy, in which the earth rests motionless near the center of a series of eight spheres, which encompass it,

Say What? Can you explain what that means?

Project

• You are to choose any single thing mentioned in this PowerPoint.You are to research it using three distinct sources.

• Internet sources are acceptable, you must be able to write what page you are accessing this from.

Paper Structure

• Your paper must have the following– A one paragraph introduction

– One paragraph on each of the following questions• What you are writing about?

• Who was responsible for this invention or innovation

• How did they discover this?

• How did this invention/innovation affect people of its time?

• How has this invention/innovation changed?

• How does this invention/innovation affect people today?

– A one paragraph conclusion.

Paper Structure

• You must have a works cited/bibliography page.

• Your paper must contain at least one picture of this invention or innovation.

Internet sources are acceptable, they should be cited like this:

Structure: Author or originator. Title of item. [Online] Date of document or download (day, month, year). URL <http://address/filename>.

Example: U.S. Census Bureau. "American FactFinder: Facts About My Community." [Online] 17 August 2001. <http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/BasicFactsServlet>.

Due Date

• This paper is due on Friday, October 12, 2007.

• This will be worth one full test grade.

• Late papers will lose 10 points per day.

• Papers will not be accepted more than 5 days late.