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Islamic Civilization and Human Progress
PART 1 - Introduction
INTRODUCTION I - Terminology
Western writers have often used the word Arabs or Muhammadans for
Muslims and Arabic civilization for Islamic Civilization. In other
instances, the words Saracen(ic) and Moor(ish) are also used for
Muslims (Arabs and non-Arabs) from various parts of Europe, Africa,
Arabia and Asia. According to a tradition of the Prophet Muhammad
(pbuh) anyone whose primary language is Arabic is an Arab despite his
ethnic origin, place of birth, or national origin. Arabic was the
medium of communication throughout the Muslim world until a couple of
centuries ago, regardless of the type of activity whether religious,
social or scientific. During 800-1500 C.E. essentially all
scientific works were written in Arabic. It is only after colonization
of Muslim lands that this practice became less prevalent and in many
instances was eliminated.
INTRODUCTION II - Tributes of Western Authors
George Sarton's Tribute to Muslim Scientists in the "Introduction to
the History of Science," I "It will suffice here to evoke a few
glorious names without contemporary equivalents in the West: Jabir ibn
Haiyan, al-Kindi, al-Khwarizmi, al-Fargani, al-Razi, Thabit ibn Qurra,
al-Battani, Hunain ibn Ishaq, al-Farabi, Ibrahim ibn Sinan, al-Masudi,
al-Tabari, Abul Wafa, 'Ali ibn Abbas, Abul Qasim, Ibn al-Jazzar,
al-Biruni, Ibn Sina, Ibn Yunus, al-Kashi, Ibn al-Haitham, 'Ali Ibn
'Isa al-Ghazali, al-zarqab, Omar Khayyam. A magnificent array of names
which it would not be difficult to extend. If anyone tells you that
the Middle Ages were scientifically sterile, just quote these men to
him, all of whom flourished within a short period, 750 to 1100 A.D."
John William Draper in the "Intellectual Development of Europe"
"I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of
Europe has continued to put out of sight our obligations to the
Muhammadans. Surely they cannot be much longer hidden. Injustice
founded on religious rancour and national conceit cannot be
perpetuated forever. The Arab has left his intellectual impress on
Europe. He has indelibly written it on the heavens as any one may see
who reads the names of the stars on a common celestial globe."
Robert Briffault in the "Making of Humanity"
"It was under the influence of the arabs and Moorish revival of
culture and not in the 15th century, that a real renaissance took
place. Spain, not Italy, was the cradle of the rebirth of Europe.
After steadily sinking lower and lower into barbarism, it had reached
the darkest depths of ignorance and degradation when cities of the
Saracenic world, Baghdad, Cairo, Cordova, and Toledo, were growing
centers of civilization and intellectual activity. It was there that
the new life arose which was to grow into new phase of human
evolution. From the time when the influence of their culture made
itself felt, began the stirring of new life.
"It was under their successors at Oxford School (that is, successors
to the Muslims of Spain) that Roger Bacon learned Arabic and Arabic
Sciences.
Neither Roger Bacon nor later namesake has any title to be credited
with having introduced the experimental method. Roger Bacon was no
more than one of apostles of Muslim Science and Method to Christian
Europe; and he never wearied of declaring that knowledge of Arabic and
Arabic Sciences was for his contemporaries the only way to true
knowledge. Discussion as to who was the originator of the experimental
method....are part of the colossal misinterpretation of the origins of
European civilization. The experimental method of Arabs was by Bacon's
time widespread and eagerly cultivated throughout Europe.
"Science is the most momentous contribution of Arab civilization to
the modern world; but its fruits were slow in ripening. Not until long
after Moorish culture had sunk back into darkness did the giant, which
it had given birth to, rise in his might. It was not science only
which brought Europe back to life. Other and manifold influence from
the civilization of Islam communicated its first glow to European Life
.
"For Although there is not a single aspect of European growth in which
the decisive influence of Islamic Culture is not traceable, nowhere is
it so clear and momentous as in the genesis of that power which
constitutes the permanent distinctive force of the modern world, and
the supreme source of its victory, natural science and the scientific
spirit.
"... science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its
existence.
The Astronomy and Mathematics of the Greeks were a foreign importation
never thoroughly acclimatized in Greek culture. ... detailed and
prolonged observation and experimental inquiry were altogether alien
to the Greek temperament.... What we call science arose in Europe as a
result of new spirit of enquiry, of new methods of experiment,
observation, measurement, of the development of mathematics, in a form
unknown to the Greeks. That spirit and those methods were introduced
into the European world by the Arabs.
"It is highly probable that but for the Arabs, modern European
civilization would never have arisen at all; it is absolutely certain
that but for them, it would not have assumed that character which has
enabled it to transcend all previous phases of evolution."
Arnold and Guillaume in "Lagacy of Islam" on Islamic science and
medicine "Looking back we may say that Islamic medicine and science
reflected the light of the Hellenic sun, when its day had fled, and
that they shone like a moon, illuminating the darkest night of the
European middle Ages; that some bright stars lent their own light, and
that moon and stars alike faded at the dawn of a new day - the
Renaissance. Since they had their share in the direction and
introduction of that great movement, it may reasonably be claimed that
they are with us yet."
George Sarton in the "Introduction to the History of Science"
"During the reign of Caliph Al-Mamun (813-33 A.D.), the new learning
reached its climax. The monarch created in Baghdad a regular school
for translation...."
"The Muslim ideal was, it goes without saying, not visual beauty but
God in His plentitude; that is God with all his manifestations, the
stars and the heavens, the earth and all nature. The Muslim ideal is
thus infinite. But in dealing with the infinite as conceived by the
Muslims, we cannot limit ourselves to the space alone, but must
equally consider time.
"The first mathematical step from the Greek conception of a static
universe to the Islamic one of a dynamic universe was made by
Al-Khwarizmi (780-850), the founder of modern Algebra. He enhanced the
purely arithmetical character of numbers as finite magnitudes by
demonstrating their possibilities as elements of infinite
manipulations and investigations of properties and relations.
"In Greek mathematics, the numbers could expand only by the laborious
process of addition and multiplication. Khwarizmi's algebraic symbols
for numbers contain within themselves the potentialities of the
infinite. So we might say that the advance from arithmetic to algebra
implies a step from being to 'becoming' from the Greek universe to the
living universe of Islam.
The importance of Khwarizmi's algebra was recognized, in the twelfth
century, by the West, - when Girard of Cremona translated his theses
into Latin. Until the sixteenth century this version was used in
European universities as the principal mathematical text book. But
Khwarizmi's influence reached far beyond the universities. We find it
reflected in the mathematical works of Leonardo Fibinacci of Pissa,
Master Jacob of Florence, and even of Leonardo da Vinci."
"Through their medical investigations they not merely widened the
horizons of medicine, but enlarged humanistic concepts generally. And
once again they brought this about because of their over riding
spiritual convictions. ...
If it is regarded as symbolic that the most spectacular achievement of
the mid-twentieth century is atomic fission and the nuclear bomb,
likewise it would not seem fortuitous that the early Muslim's medical
endeavor should have led to a discovery that was quite as
revolutionary though possibly more beneficent."
"A philosophy of self-centredness, under whatever disguise, would be
both incomprehensible and reprehensible to the Muslim mind. That mind
was incapable of viewing man, whether in health or sickness as
isolated from God, from fellow men, and from the world around him. It
was probably inevitable that the Muslims should have discovered that
disease need not be born within the patient himself but may reach from
outside, in other words, that they should have been the first to
establish clearly the existence of contagion."
"One of the most famous exponents of Muslim universalism and an
eminent figure in Islamic learning was Ibn Sina, known in the West as
Avicenna (981-1037). For a thousand years he has retained his original
renown as one of the greatest thinkers and medical scholars in
history. His most important medical works are the Qanun (Canon) and a
treatise on Cardiac drugs. The 'Qanun fi-l-Tibb' is an immense
encyclopedia of medicine. It contains some of the most illuminating
thoughts pertaining to distinction of mediastinitis from pleurisy;
contagious nature of phthisis; distribution of diseases by water and
soil; careful description of skin troubles; of sexual diseases and
perversions; of nervous ailments."
"We have reason to believe that when, during the crusades, Europe at
last began to establish hospitals, they were inspired by the Arabs of
near East....The first hospital in Paris, Les Quinze-vingt, was
founded by Louis IX after his return from the crusade 1254-1260."
"We find in his (Jabir, Geber) writings remarkably sound views on
methods of chemical research, a theory on the geologic formation of
metals (the six metals differ essentially because of different
proportions of sulphur and mercury in them); preparation of various
substances (e.g., basic lead carbonatic, arsenic and antimony from
their sulphides)."
Ibn Haytham's writings reveal his fine development of the
experimental
faculty. His tables of corresponding angles of incidence and
refraction of light passing from one medium to another show how
closely he had approached discovering the law of constancy of ratio of
sines, later attributed to snell. He accounted correctly for twilight
as due to atmospheric refraction, estimating the sun's depression to
be 19 degrees below the horizon, at the commencement of the phenomenon
in the mornings or at its termination in the evenings."
"A great deal of geographical as well as historical and scientific
knowledge is contained in the thirty volume meadows of Gold and Mines
of Gems by one of the leading Muslim Historians, the tenth century al
Mas'udi. A more strictly geographical work is the dictionary 'Mujam
al-Buldan' by al-Hamami (1179-1229). This is a veritable encyclopedia
that, in going far beyond the confines of geography, incorporates also
a great deal of scientific lore."
"They studied, collected and described plants that might have some
utilitarian purpose, whether in agriculture or in medicine. These
excellent tendencies, without equivalent in Christendom, were
continued during the first half of the thirteenth century by an
admirable group of four botanists. One of these Ibn al-Baitar compiled
the most elaborate Arabic work on the subject (Botany), in fact the
most important for the whole period extending from Dioscorides down to
the sixteenth century. It was a true encyclopedia on the subject,
incorporating the whole Greek and Arabic experience."
"'Abd al-Malik ibn Quraib al-Asmai (739-831) was a pious Arab who
wrote some valuable books on human anatomy. Al-Jawaliqi who flourished
in the first half of the twelfth century and 'Abd al-Mumin who
flourished in the second half of the thirteenth century in Egypt,
wrote treatises on horses. The greatest zoologist amongst the Arabs
was al-Damiri (1405) of Egypt whose book on animal life, 'Hayat
al-Hayawan' has been translated into English by A.S.G. Jayakar (London
1906, 1908)."
"The weight of venerable authority, for example that of Ptolemy,
seldom intimidated them. They were always eager to put a theory to
tests, and they never tired of experimentation. Though motivated and
permeated by the spirit of their religion, they would not allow dogma
as interpreted by the orthodox to stand in the way of their scientific
research."
De Lacy O'Leary in "Arabic Thought in History"
"The Greek material received by the Arabs was not simply passed on by
them to others who came after. It has a very real life and development
in its Arabic surroundings. In astronomy and mathematics, the work of
the Greek and Indian scientists was coordinated and there a very real
advance was made.
The Arabs not only extended what they had received from the Greeks
but
checked and corrected older records."
Carra de Vaux in the "Legacy of Islam"
"Arithmetic and algebra also flourished alongside of astronomy. This
was the period of the cerebrated al-Khwarizmi whose name, corrupted by
the Latin writers of the West, gave us, it so believed, the term
Algorism (sometimes written Algorithm)."
F.G. Alfalo in "Reguilding the Crescent"
"His (al-Khwarizmi) works in arithmetic and algebra were translated
into Latin by the name of Algorithm (which should have been Algorism).
His name is the origin of the word Logarithm."
Joseph Hell in the "Arab Civilization"
"In the domain of trigonometry, the theory of Sine, Cosine and tangent
is an heirloom of the Arabs. The brilliant epochs of Peurbach, of
Regiomontanus, of Copernicus, cannot be recalled without reminding us
of the fundamental and preparatory labor of the Arab Mathematician
(Al-Battani, 858-929 A.D.)."
"The adoption of the sign of 'Zero' (Arabic Sifr or Cipher) was a step
of the highest importance, leading up to the so called arithmetic of
positions.
With the help of the Arab system of numbers, elementary methods of
calculations were perfected; the doctrines of the properties of, and
relations between, the equal and the unequal and prime numbers,
squares and cubes, were elaborated; Algebra was enriched by the
solution of the third degree and fourth degrees, with the help of
geometry, and so on. About the year 820 A.D. the mathematician
Al-Khawarizmi, wrote a text book of Algebra in examples, and his
elementary treatise - translated into Latin - was used
by Western scholars down to the sixteenth century."
French Orientalist Dr. Gustav Lebon
"It must be remembered that no science, either of chemistry or any
other science, was discovered all of a sudden. The Arabs had
established one thousand years ago their laboratories in which they
used to make experiments and publish their discoveries without which
lavoisier (accredited by some as being the founder of chemistry) would
not have been able to produce anything in this field. It can be said
without the fear of contradiction that owing to the researches and
experimentation of Muslim scientists modern chemistry came into being
and that it produced great results in the form of great scientific
inventions, viz, steam, the electricity, the telegraph, the telephone,
the radio, the photography, the cinematography and so on."
References:
1. George Sarton, "Introduction to the History of Science, Vol. I-
IV,"
Carnegie Institute of Washington, Baltimore, 1927-31; Williams and
Wilkins, Baltimore, 1950-53.
2. Robert Briffault, "The Making of Humanity," London, 1938.
3. Thomas Arnold, "The Legacy of Islam," Oxford University Press,
1960.
4. T. Arnold and A. Guillaume, "The Legacy of Islam," Oxford
University Press, 1931.
5. E.G. Brown, "Arabian Medicine," Cambridge, 1921.
6. D. Campbell, "Arabian Medicine and its influence on the Middle
Ages," London, 1926.
7. P.K. Hitti, "A History of Arabs," London, 1937; MacMillan, 1956.
8. Carra de Vaux, "Legacy of Islam" and "The Philosophers of Islam,"
Paris, 1921; "Les Penseurs de l'Islam," 5 Vols., Paris, 1921-26. >
9. De Lacy O'Leary, "Arabic Thought in History."
10. Joseph Hell, "The Arab Civilization." Tr. Khuda Baksh, Lahore
1943.
11. Silberberg, "Zeitschrift fuer Assyriologie," Strassburg, Vols.
24-25, 1910-1911.
12. L. Sedillot, "L' Historie des Arabes," Paris, 1850.
13. E.G.R. Taylor, "Some Notes on the Early Ideas of the Form and Size
of the Earth," Geographical Journal, 1935.
14. E. Gibbon, "Decline and Fall of Roman Empire," London, 1900.
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