Islamic Contributions mathematics and

Science

Sharafuddin B S

Scientific Orientation of Islam

• From the early days of Islam, Muslims had made immense leaps forward in the area of Science. Cities like Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo and Cordoba were the centers of civilization.

• These cities were flourishing and Muslim scientists made tremendous progress in applied as well as theoretical Science and Technology.

• In Europe, however, the situation was much different than today when Muslims were doing very good. Europe was in the Dark Ages.

Cordoba was the capital of Muslim Spain. It soon became the center for all light

and learning for the entire Europe. Scholars and students from various parts of the world

and Europe came to Cordoba to study.

Cordoba, European Jewel of the Middle

Ages • Cordoba used to be the

jewel of Europe, which attracted many visitors. Scholars and booksellers used to flock there, and made it the intellectual centre of the West by the 10th century A.D. It was ‘the most civilized city in Europe, the wonder and admiration of the world.

Step Forward towards Education

• The idea of the college was a concept which was borrowed from Muslims. The first colleges appeared in the Muslim world in the late 600's and early 700's.

• In Europe, some of the earliest colleges are those under the University of Paris and Oxford they were founded around the thirteenth century. These early European colleges were also funded by trusts similar to the Islamic ones and legal historians have traced them back to the Islamic system.

• The internal organization of these European colleges was strikingly similar to the Islamic ones, for example the idea of Graduate (Sahib) and undergraduate (mutafaqqih) is derived directly from Islamic terms.

Contributions to Science

• Islamic contributions to Science were now rapidly being translated and transferred from Spain to the rest of Europe.

• Ibnul Hairham’s works on Optics, (in which he deals with 50 Optical questions put to Muslim Scholars), was translated widely.

• The Muslims discovered the Principle of Pendulum, which was used to measure time. Many of the principles of Isaac Newton were derived from former Islamic scientific contributions.

Contributions to Chemistry

• In the field of Chemistry numerous Islamic works were translated into Latin. One of the fields of study in this area was alchemy. The Muslims by exploring various elements, developed a good understanding of the constitution of matter.

• Jabir ibn-Hayyan (Geber) was the leading chemist in the Muslim world, some scholars link the introduction of the ‘scientific method’ back to him.

• A great number of terms used in Chemistry such as alchohol, alembic, alkali and elixir are of Islamic origin.

Contributions to Medicine

• Medicine was a key science explored by Muslims. Bu Ali Sina is considered to be pioneer to the concept of surgery.

• Al-Rhazes is one of the most famous Doctors and writers of Islamic History. Every major city had an hospital, the hospital at Cairo had over 8000 beds, with separate wards for fevers, ophthalmic, dysentery and surgical cases.

• He discovered the origin of smallpox and showed that one could only acquire it once in one's life, thus showing the existence of the immune system and how it worked.

• Muslim doctors were also aware of the contagious qualities of diseases. Hundreds of medical works were translated into Latin.

Al'Khwarizmi & Al Jabr

• Al’Khwarizmi, whose full name is Abu Abd-Allah ibn Musa al’Khwarizmi, was born about AD 790 near Baghdad, and died about 850.

• His most important contribution, written in 830, was Hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala. From the al-jabr in the title we get algebra.

Introduction of Zero

• Another invention that revolutionized mathematics was the introduction of the number zero by Muhammad Bin Ahmad in 967 AD.

• Zero was introduced in the West as late as the beginning of the thirteenth century. Modern society takes the invention of the zero for granted, yet the Zero is a non-trivial concept, that allowed major mathematical breakthroughs.

Geometry

• Another outstanding Arab mathematician is Abul Wafa who created and successfully developed a branch of geometry which consists of problems leading to equations in Algebra of a higher degree He made a number of valuable contributions to polyhedral theory.

Mecca Centered MapsRecently discovered instruments

have proved that Islamic mathematicians were even further ahead of their time than anyone knew. These Mecca-centered world maps, cast in brass, indicate the direction and distance to Mecca from any point in the medieval Muslim world, and they do so with a type of map projection that was unknown in the West until the 20th century.

“I had been working on the subject [of the qibla] for 20 years, and the discovery of these maps took me by surprise,” says David King, a historian of science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.

Islamic Astronomy (dated 14th century)

• These 2 diagrams from Ibn ash-Shatir's

Nihayat al-sul illustrate the first

successful representation of the

motions of Planet Mercury exclusively in

terms of uniform circular rotations.

Biology (dated 17th century

Arabic medicine was in advance in Europe

throughout the middle ages, and from the

first medical school of Salerno down to

Vesalius, Western doctors learned from

their Muslim counterparts.

Optics (dated 1083): 

• Ibn al-Haytham's Optics, written in Eqypt in the first half of the 11th Century, represented a theory of vision that went beyond

Galen, Euclid and Ptolemy. This diagram of the two eyes seen from

above, shows the principal tunics and

humours and the optic nerves connecting the eyeballs to the brain

Mathematics - Parallel:

• The problem of parallel lines, posed by Euclid's

parallels postulate, received much attention

from Islamic mathematicians

throughout the history of medieval Arabic science.

Nasir ad-Din at-Tusi's was probably the most mature treatment of the

problem in Arabic

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