Self-concealment means that the perfected servants of God who attribute to God whatever good or virtues that they may have, try to be known as ordinary people by constantly keeping secret the special blessings and extraordinary attainments with which the Eternally All-Generous favors them, as well as the blessed times when they come. But such an attitude is by no means false pretense or deception. It is usually felt during the tides between seeing everything annihilated in God and distinguishing the Existence of the Truly Existent One and the relative existence of others. Those who are seeking self-concealment are in constant pursuit of sincerity and frequently question themselves to ensure that they are really preserving their devotion and loyalty to God. They do their best to keep God’s special favors to them that come in different forms as sacred secrets between themselves and their Bestower, out of respect for Him, and they consider whatever comes from Him as a secret gift. Whatever good or blessing has been attributed to them, they always draw attention back to the Almighty and, if there is not anything to make them absolutely obliged to display their blessings, they will always try to find ways to conceal them, as in the allusions of Prophet Abraham, who said, I am sick (37:89) when he was invited to the religious festival of his people, and, Rather, (some doer) must have done it—that is their biggest (21:63), when he was asked whether he had smashed the idols [1]. They shy away from becoming a person who is sought after in the same way as others shy away from snakes and other vermin.

Perfected persons of self-concealment are extremely careful not to display any inward riches and spiritual profundity. Even if they should sometimes feel they are really profound in spirituality, they try to persuade themselves of their essential insignificance. However, in trying to impress on others that they do not have any extraordinary virtues, they avoid causing Islam to be criticized for being a religion that brings dishonor and ignominy to its followers. Without saying or doing anything to suggest that they have been specially favored by God, they are always deeply devoted and loyal to Him. They regard attributing to themselves whatever good or spiritual attainment that others may discern in them as usurpation. Even if at times they are in the center of the Divine favors, they always act with good manners and modesty, saying to themselves: “You are neither the source nor the owner of these favors. These gifts which sometimes appear to you and then disappear can in no wise belong to you. As you can clearly see that it is not you who has brought them about, nor is it you who takes them away, you must see that you cannot own them. Your position with respect to them is that you are essentially a dark mirror; therefore you must attribute these gifts to the Eternally All-Generous and draw attention to Him.” When Divine gifts and favors do not come in abundance, they think: “You must conceal the Divine secrets and His treatment of you. You must be able to do so in order that His transactions with you may continue, and so that these gifts, which are beyond your capacity, may not lead you to gradually perish because you think that you own them.” Such people are quite ordinary among people; they are extremely careful to keep their inner world pure and they are very sincere in their exclusive devotion to God and attributing to Him whatever virtue they have.

Heroes of self-concealment follow a secure way to verification and always pursue God’s approval and good pleasure. They never think of others’ approval or appreciation and they expect nothing from others. They try to make their feelings and devotion deeper and to rise higher and higher without stopping; they are in a state of continuous self-supervision. They always control themselves so that they can be with God even while mixing with other people. They try to direct others to the way of the light, which is the way of knowledge and love of God and a source of spiritual pleasures, although those pleasures should not be sought. They show the way to Paradise to those who linger at the crossroads between Paradise and Hell, and they try to inculcate lofty ideals in the hearts of those who are living aimlessly. They can establish good relations with all, be they from any segment of society, without any difficulty or ceremony.

Heroes of self-concealment are always in self-negation and self-denial and try to attract the attention to the Almighty in everything they do. But some scholars, like Harawi [2] and Ibn Qayyim [3], went to extremes in evaluating this virtue; the former asserted that it is the Almighty, not the servant, Who conceals His servant from others, while the latter denied this state altogether. For this reason, I would like to remind the reader once more that self-concealment denotes that travelers to the Ultimate Truth, who have attained spiritual purity by carefully performing their obligatory religious duties, have become deeper in their attachment to supererogatory acts of worship in order to be favored with God’s company and have become polished mirrors reflecting His manifestations of Majesty and Grace. The All- Generous becomes the eyes and ears of His servants who have reached this point; they see and hear with Him, and He never leaves them to suffer loneliness and helplessness without anyone to claim them. By means of the criteria which He inspires in them so that they view life, things and events appropriately, He causes them to reach the best results in both this world and the Hereafter. He causes them to see things that others cannot see and to hear things that others cannot hear, and he employs them to carry out His will in the human realm and to convey to people the things which He is pleased with and the things He wills others to do.

The Qur’anic statements, When you threw, it was not you who threw, but God threw (8:17), and Those who swear allegiance to you (O Muhammad), swear allegiance only to God. God’s Hand (of aid) is over their hands (48:10), refer to this point, in that those who have reached this rank are absolutely convinced of Divine Unity, but sometimes they see everything annihilated in God and sometimes they are able to distinguish the absolute (Divine) Existence and the relative existence (of other beings) from each other. Although the rank indicated by the verses belongs primarily to the Prophets, who are the purest of all and incomparably superior in self-concealment, as in all other virtues, other heroes of self-concealment have a share in it. However, the self-concealment experienced by travelers on the way to God is concerned with the Divine Attributes, not the Divine Being, and the unchangeable rules of the Shari‘a determine its limits and nature. The throwing and hitting, seeing and speaking, and exalting by participating in allegiance, which are mentioned in the verses just cited, signify that the Ultimate Truth manifests His Attributes of Majesty and Perfection, not His Divine Being, on the chosen, matchless being, upon him be peace and blessings.

This consideration is expressed in the following words of Jalalu’d-Din Rumi, although they also suggest to some extent annihilation in God and subsistence by Him:

Noah said: O people leading rebellion to God, I am not myself;
I am dead with respect to my soul, but alive to the Beloved.
I died and was annihilated with respect to some senses of Adam, the father of humanity,
And the Ultimate Truth has become (a means of) hearing, seeing and perceiving for me.

From the very beginning, the people of truth have stressed that existence arises from self-annihilation and that the assertion of self-existence ends in annihilation. The best and most appropriate approach in this respect is that travelers to the Ultimate Truth annihilate themselves with respect to their carnal souls and ego and that they find a new life in spirit and heart.

Our Lord, do not let our hearts swerve after You have guided us, and bestow upon us mercy from Your Presence. Surely You, only You, are the (Munificent) Bestower. And bestow blessings and peace on our master Muhammad and on his Family and Companions to the fullness of the earth and heavens.

Notes

1. “Rather, (some doer) must have done it—that is their biggest,” in a manner to cause the people to understand that the biggest one had done it, although he did not say so. (Tr.)
2. Abu Ismail ‘Abdullah ibn Muhammad al-Harawi (1005–1089) was born in Herat in Afghanistan. He was a Hanbali devoted to the Qur’an and Sunna. He was also well-versed in Sufism. Kitabu Manazili’s-Sairin is his most well-known work on Sufism. (Tr.)
3. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya Shamsu’d-Din ‘Abdullah Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr (1292–1350) is the most famous pupil of Ibn Taymiya (1292–1350), one of Islam’s strictest religious scholars. He lived in Damascus. He followed the Hanbali School in Islam. Kitabu Fawaidi’l-Musawwiqa ila ‘Ulumi’l-Qur’an wa ‘Ilmi’l-Bayan is among his well-known books. (Tr.)

Serenity sometimes comes in the form of perceptible or imperceptible signs; at other times it appears so clearly that even ordinary people can identify it. Whether itself and its signs resemble a spiritual breath blown into the ear of conscience or a Divine breeze that can be perceived only with great care; or it appears miraculously and so clearly that anyone can see them, as in the case of the Children of Israel during the time of Prophet Moses, and in the case of Usayd ibn Khudayr^[1], a Companion of the Prophet, to whom it came like a vapor while he was reading the Qur’an, serenity is a Divine confirmation for those believers aware of their helplessness and destitution before God, and a means of thankfulness and enthusiasm. It is God Who sends it, as declared in the verse: He it is Who sent down serenity into the hearts of the believers so that they may have more faith added to their faith (48:4).

Serenity usually comes to strengthen the believers’ willpower, to affirm their belief and hearten them. A believer gifted with serenity is not shaken by worldly fear, grief, or anxiety, and finds peace, integrity, harmony between his or her inner world and the outer world. Such a person is dignified, balanced, confident, assured and solemn, and self-possessed and careful in his or her relations with God Almighty. Egoism, vanity, and pride are abandoned; every spiritual gift received is attributed to God; humility and self- discipline are exhibited while thanking Him; and all dissatisfaction and uneasiness is ascribed to personal weakness and examined in the light of self-criticism.

As for itmi’nan (peacefulness), it is defined as full satisfaction and the state of being at complete rest without any serious lapse. It is a spiritual state beyond serenity. If serenity is the beginning of being freed from theoretical knowledge and awakened to the truth, peacefulness is the final point or station.

The ranks or stations of radiya (being pleased with God in resignation) and mardiya (being approved by God) are two dimensions of peacefulness belonging to good and virtuous believers and are the depths of resignation. The ranks of mulhama (being inspired by God) and zakiya (being purified by God) are two other difficult-to-perceive degrees of peacefulness relating to those brought near to God. The gifts coming through them are pure and abundant.

Some thoughts and inclinations displeasing to God may appear in serene souls, while only perfect calmness is found in those that are peaceful and at rest. Peaceful hearts always seek God’s good pleasure or approval, and the “compass needle” of their conscience never swerves. Peacefulness is such an elevated rank of certainty that a soul traveling through it sees in every station the truth of: I wish to set my heart at rest (2:260) and is rewarded with gifts. Wherever the believer is, the breeze of: They will have no fear nor will they grieve (2:62) is felt; the glad tidings of: Fear not, nor grieve, but rejoice in the glad tidings of Paradise that has been promised to you (41:30) is heard; the sweet, life-giving water of: Beware, in the remembrance of God do hearts find peace and tranquility (13:28) is tasted; and corporeality is defeated.

Peacefulness is realized when believers transcend material causes and means. Reason’s transnatural journey ends at this point, and spirits are freed from worldly anxieties. Here, feelings find whatever they seek and become as deep, wide, and peaceful as a calm ocean. Those who have acquired this rank find the greatest peace only in feeling the company of God. They become aware of Divine Beauty and Grace in their hearts, feel attracted toward Him in order to meet with Him, are conscious that existence subsists by God’s Existence, and that the power of speech exists only because He has Speech. Through this opened window they acquire, despite their finitude, the power to see and hear in an extremely broad capacity. In the whirl of the most complicated events, where everyone else is bewildered and falters, such people travel in safety and escape the whirl. In addition to being freed from worldly anxieties, a believer whose heart is at rest or peace welcomes with a smile both death and the obstacles following death, and hears the Divine compliments and congratulations: O soul at rest, return to your Lord, well pleased (with Him), and well-pleasing (to Him). Enter among My servants, and enter My Paradise! (89:27–30). Death is seen as the most agreeable and desired result of life. When his or her life has ended in death, he or she hears, as was heard from the grave of Ibn ‘Abbas, in every station passed through after death, the same Divine congratulations or Decree: Return to your Lord, well pleased (with Him), and well-pleasing (to Him). Enter among My servants, and enter My Paradise!

Such people spend their lives in the grave on the “shores” of Paradise, experience the Supreme Gathering in wonder and admiration, the Supreme Weighing of People’s Deeds in awe and amazement, pass over the Bridge, only because they have to pass over it, and finally reach Paradise—the last, eternal abode of those whose hearts are at rest or have found peace and tranquility. For such a person, the world is an ‘Arafat^[2] prepared on the way leading to God’s eternal forgiveness. The worldly life is the eve of the festival, and the other life is the festival day.

Our Lord! Grant us in the world what is good, and in the Hereafter what is good, and protect us from the punishment of the Fire. And bestow blessings and peace on our master Muhammad, the Prophet, the chosen one, and on his Family and Companions, good and virtuous.

Notes

1. Usayd ibn Khudayr felt surrounded by a vapor-like mass while reading the Qur’an and felt greatly exhilarated. (Tr.)

2. The plain where Muslim pilgrims stay for some time on the eve of the Religious Festival of Sacrifice as a pillar of pilgrimage. (Tr.)

Of course you have been watching movies for years. Maybe you have subscribed to various cable or satellite channels so that you can watch even more movies. So, how many of them had the qualities mentioned above? How many of them, produced with enormous budgets and large casts and over-promoted, can you watch without finally becoming bored ? How many of them can fill you with indescribable emotions and make you resolve to follow in the footsteps of those characters?

One such movie is the masterpiece The Message. How many times have you seen it? I am sure that some of you have watched it ten, fifteen, or even more times. This would not surprise me at all, for we do not get weary of reading the Qur’an, which God revealed to humanity as the source of guidance and peace. Likewise, the lives and struggles of those who tried to live according to the Quranic teachings do not tire us. On the contrary, The Message refreshes your spirit each time you watch it.

There are two versions of this movie. The Message, directed by Moustapha Akhad and produced in the U.S., attracted attention due to the participation of some famous actors and actresses, among them Anthony Quinn, who “lives” the role he plays, Hamza, the Prophet’s uncle. Irene Papas, who played Abu Sufyan’s wife Hind, made this woman a prominent character, although historically Hind did not have an important part in the story.

The other film, the Arab made al-Risala, which has almost the same scenario, was watched mostly in Arab countries. Its most distinguishing feature is that the Qur’anic verses are recited in their original form (instead of in translation). This movie did not attract as much attention, because there were no movie stars in the leading roles. Nevertheless, the characters are portrayed quite successfully.

In both movies, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is not shown. Rather, he is symbolized through the staff he carries, the camel he rides, or the people who talk with him. Both scenarios begin by depicting the “Era of Ignorance” period in Arabia. Makka’s social structure and its culture are shown in some detail: the prevailing tyranny and injustice, the hundreds of deities being worshipped and the sacrifices offered to them, the annual fairs, and other activities are presented. This was the milieu into which the Prophet was born. His world was one in which poetry and rhetoric was favored, women and slaves were not regarded as human, where might was right, and where thousands of people died in blood feuds. In short, there was no one to stand up as a living monument of faith or courage or to speak up for the truth.

We read about the Prophet’s life or learn about it from the people around us. But how many times have we contemplated his struggles and difficulties in order to understand him better? These works fulfill an important duty in terms of informing those who do not have the time for such contemplation about the lives of these ascetic people, by taking them to the Makka of that time.

The revelation’s beginning is portrayed by reciting the first verses in the darkness of the Hira cave. First, the Prophet invites those who are close to him to Islam. Everything is done in great secrecy. The setting is the house of Ibn Arqam (where the early Muslims gathered) and the new converts devote themselves to this cause there. When there are 40 of them, the period of public preaching begins. Then we see another touching scene: the Muslim community is walking toward the Ka’ba with the Messenger in the middle. They are met with stones, spittle, clubs, and insults. One of the most spectacular scenes is close at hand: Hamza, whom the Messenger later nicknamed “the lion of God,” rescues these people, who could have been killed on the spot due to the provocations of Abu Jahl. He rides through the crowd and, to everyone’s surprise, dismounts and hits Abu Jahl with his bow. As a result of beginning to preach in public, the poor and weak Muslims are subjected to violence at the hands of the Makkan polytheists. The audience sees Bilal and Ammar ibn Yasar being tormented and tortured.

One of the most emotive scenes is the discussion held before King Negus between the first Muslims and the Makkan polytheists who followed them there. The Prophet, describing Negus as a just ruler, told the persecuted Muslims to take refuge in his land. So, Amr ibn al- ‘As, at that time a polytheist, was sent to bring them back and was given many gifts to bestow upon Negus. The king listens to their conversation for a long time, and for a moment thinks about handing them over, but decides to protect them after Ja‘far ibn Abu Talib recites the Quranic verses about Mary. These scenes are significant in that they show how the Christians of that time and area viewed Islam.

After a while, the Prophet and many Muslims emigrate to Madina. Another well-known scene is when the Messenger and Abu Bakr enter Madina. When the people, who have been waiting for days on the rooftops and in the trees, begin singing the hymn Talaal Badru to welcome him enthusiastically, a scene is created to touch the heart of all that witness it. And Madina’s Muslims, who beg the Makkan immigrants to stay with them, as well as the heartfelt embraces that are the product of the affiliation felt between the two groups, fill our hearts with emotion and our eyes with longed-for sights.

The following scenes depict the wars between the Muslims and the polytheists. Both movies give a detailed depiction of the battles of Badr and Uhud. The war tactics practiced around the wells of Badr and Mount Uhud are presented as comprehensively as possible. The peace of Hudaybiyah is pictured, but not focused on much. After the polytheists break the treaty, the Muslims, now more powerful than before, led by the Messenger and his followers, march upon Makka. Campfires are lit around Makka to intimidate the polytheists, Abu Sufyan tries to make peace and then coverts to Islam, we see the Prophet’s entrance to the city and witness him heading toward the Ka’ba…

Here come the scenes that fill you with emotion and move you so much. The Makkan exiles are once again walking along the streets of their hometown. Some embrace their relatives, kiss the ground, or similar actions. But the Prophet, who missed God’s House more than anything else, enters the Ka’ba … and we go inside with him. He uses his staff to topple the idols that have darkened the soul of humanity one by one, for they are nothing but stones and wood. We become so absorbed that, for a moment, we forget that we are watching a movie and wish that the camera would move a little so that we could see his blessed hand holding the staff, as well as his holy face. Bilal stands upon the Kab‘a’s roof and calls the faithful to prayer, just as the Prophet has told him to do. This call rings out in Makka … bliss fills the hearts, tears fill the eyes.

Then comes the final scene: the Farewell Sermon. One hundred thousand people fill the Uranah valley of Mount Arafat, and all eyes and ears turn upon him. At the end of this sermon, after he hears his community bear witness that he has fulfilled his duty, he says: “O God, Bear witness!” three times.

We see three blessed riders in the desert, representing the thousands of companions who went out into the world to invite people to Islam. After a certain point they separate, saying farewell to each other. Perhaps never to return, they are setting off for lands that are completely unknown to them in order to obey the Messenger’s command to tell others about Islam. Then the calls to prayer begin, one after another, recited in different tones, from mosques of different architectural styles, located in different lands.

This is how the movie ends , but you just keep sitting in front of the screen for a while. Though your eyes are still on the screen, fixed absently, your mind is there, far away in the deserts of Madina, thinking about the exalted guide who reminded people of their humanity, about the world which had been oblivious of humanity. Your soul is striving to follow on his path, and you leave your seat in a completely different mood.

The debt that Briffault speaks of is often referred to as though it should be taken for granted: The Arabs only transmitted Greek science and made no contribution to the overall history of Western science. Fortunately, many historians of science no longer hold this view. The Arabs “ under an Islamic hegemony “ acquired the scientific heritage of earlier civilizations, including classical Greece and Rome, and translated, preserved, and transformed much of it. Their scientific experience profoundly impacted the late medieval world of western Europe, where Muslim scientific achievements were important to the evolving Renaissance and the grand narrative of the history of science.

Until recently, these historic achievements were unknown. Gradually, more evidence showing the magnificent work in Islamic science has come to light. Modern history of science studies show that the productive, original scientific research of Muslim scientists persisted into the sixteenth century. Yet, histories of Islamic science consistently claim that such science declined after the eleventh century due to the opposition of religious authorities (e.g., Imam al-Ghazali), Islamic law, and the absence of a capitalistic economy,(2) to name just a few.

But this theory, in addition to its palpable counter-intuitiveness, fails to explain the growing body of evidence for the rise of science in the Islamic world after the eleventh century. This article will discuss just a part of the accomplishment, importance and originality of Islamic science between the ninth and sixteenth centuries.

Islamic science defined

The more historians deconstruct the grand narrative of their discipline’s history, the harder it becomes to assign linguistic, civilizational, and cultural adjectives to science.(3) Using such adjectives as Greek, Arabic, Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and more pertinently, western, in this context is quickly becoming obsolete, due to the newly-emerging understanding of the essentially hegemonic meanings such adjectives have always harboured.(4) These terms were often used as analytical categories that imparted some significance at the time when languages, cultures and civilizations used to embody individual characteristics that could distinguish them from one another.(5)

Now, however, such terms no longer serve the same functions, for the new scrutiny now being applied to such grand narratives of the history of science is making it quite obvious that these terms can no longer yield the same analytical results they used to yield.(6) In addition, such terms as culture, civilization, language, and science are no longer the same stable, commonly accepted terms of reference they once were,(7) since they embody ambiguities of their own and embody hegemonic theoretical structures that prohibit their modification with the old adjectives as was once done.(8) Furthermore, the intimate interconnectedness between scientific traditions makes it almost meaningless to speak of a Greek, Arabic or European science as if each had a character of its own.(9)

In light of the above, Islamic science (10) perhaps should mean science conducted mainly in Arabic and within the context of Islamic civilization, for many individuals from different ethnic and religious backgrounds were actively engaged in this undertaking: Christians (e.g., Hunayn ibn Ishaq), Persians (e.g., Ibn Nawbakht), Sabians (e.g., Thabit ibn Qurrah), and Jews (e.g., Masha’allah). Arabic was the main scientific, but not necessarily the native, language of these scientists. While the terms Islamic science and Arabic science are modern historical terms for the science conducted within the context of Islamic civilization, this science is Islamic in the sense that it suited the new and growing needs of Islamic civilization; was available entirely in Arabic, which had replaced Syriac; and was familiar to an increasing number of Muslim translators, students, and scientists./(11) It is in this context that Islamic science will be used in this article.

Of equal importance is the realization that Islamic science, in this context, does not imply religious sciences (e.g., jurisprudence) but rather the natural sciences (e.g., mathematics, astronomy, and physics). Nor does it imply the type of science that states that all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, can be found in the Qur’an.(12) This view examines the Qur’an’s scientific content and claims that, from relativity, quantum mechanics, big bang theory to the entire field of embryology and much of modern geology has been ˜discovered’ in the Qur’an.(13) Its adherents claim that scientific experiments have been devised to discover what is mentioned in the Qur’an but not known to science. Although this view is now the most popular version of Islamic science, it is not the one implied in this article.

Nor does it imply the mystical perspective that equates Islamic science with studying the nature of things in an ontological sense. In this viewpoint, the material universe is studied as an integral and subordinate part of the higher levels of existence, consciousness and modes of knowing.(14) Given such a context, science is not a problem solving enterprise and socially objective inquiry but more a mystical quest for understanding the Absolute.(15) This view also advocates the idea that in this universe, conjecture and hypothesis have no real place; all inquiry must be subordinate to the mystical experience.(16) Thus, its advocates view all science in Islamic civilization as sacred science, a product of a particular mystical tradition that traces its roots to the Greek neo-Platonists. This view, however, has been strongly refuted by Muslim historians of science (e.g., Ahmad al-Hassan) and Western historians (e.g., David King and Donald Hill).

Having said that, in this article Islamic science means any natural science that depends upon observation and experimentation, as well as rational thought in a critical way, that was studied by scientists of various religious and ethnic backgrounds who operated under an Islamic hegemony.

Islamic science remains largely unappreciated

With the exception of a few scholars, the contributions of Muslims scientists have been “ and remain “ poorly understood in the West. Western literature on Muslims presents them as mere torch-bearers of Greek science. This view is a product of Orientalism, which treats the Orient and Orientals as an ˜object’ of study inscribed by Otherness.(17) This typology is based on a real specificity but detached from history, and thus conceived as intangible and essential,(18) which, according to Ziauddin Sardar, the European man, from Greek antiquity onwards, becomes the measure of all men everywhere.(19) Accordingly, Muslim contributions to science were deliberately ignored or suppressed, and the view that Muslim scientists produced nothing original remained the orthodox belief until the mid-twentieth century.

In astronomy, for example, Kevin Krisciunas states that it is a common misconception that astronomical research fell into a dazed slumber following Ptolemy [the Greek scientist who lived during the second century], not to reawaken until the time of Copernicus.(20) Accordingly, Western historians of astronomy, like Neugebauer and Delamere, find nothing to report about Islamic astronomy.(21) The distinguished physicist-philosopher-historian Pierre Duhem (1861-1916), on the other hand, believed that: The revelations of Greek thought on the nature of the exterior world ended with the Almagest, (by Ptolemy) which appeared about A.D. 145, and then began the decline of ancient learning. Those of its works that escaped the fires kindled by Mohammedan warriors were subjected to the barren interpretations of Mussulman [Muslim] commentors and, like parched seed, awaited the time when Latin Christianity would furnish a favourable soil in which they could once more flourish and bring forth fruit.(22)

In other words, Muslims were fanatic, rampaging hordes, burners of Greek science, and also pale imitators, copiers of the Greeks.(23) Duhem also believed that: There is no Arabian science. The wise men of Mohammedanism were always the more or less faithful disciples of the Greeks, but were themselves destitute of all originality.(24) Ernest Renan (1823-92), the influential French philologist, believed that Islamic science could only flourish in association with heresy, and that science in Islam was merely parasitic on Greek culture and that Islam was simply a vehicle transmitting Greek philosophy to the Renaissance in Europe.(25) Other historians repeated the view that Muslim scientists acted as unproductive transmitters of Greek science. Von Grunebaum suggested that Islamic science was a mimic of Greek science, and asserted that Islam failed to put natural resources to such use as would insure progressive control of the physical conditions of life. Inventions, discoveries, and improvements might be accepted but hardly ever were searched for.”(26)

Prominent historians of Islamic science, however, explain that modern research in Islamic science poses a challenge to what is at best a caricature of history, one that portrays the ˜torch’ of science and knowledge as something that was handed down from the ancient Greeks to medieval Europe by way of Islamic scholars.(27) The danger of this representation is that it miscasts the role of the Islamic civilisation in the scientific revolution and undermines the often deep relation between cultures and intellectual movements.(28) Furthermore, it allows historians of classical science to conclude, science as theory is Greek and as experimental method it was born in the seventeenth century,29 thereby neglecting the contributions of Muslim scholars in between.

According to the torch theory, therefore, Islamic science constituted an excavation site, in which the historian is the archaeologist on the track of Hellenism.30 This approach, explains Rashed, has frequently ended up misrepresenting the results of Greek science as well as those of the seventeenth century, a necessary distortion if one wishes to link the two ends of the chain in a continuous history; on the other hand, and not without coincidence, it has led to some famous blunders affecting not only interpretation but comprehension too.(31)

Recent scholarship, however, confirms that Muslim scientists were more than just torch-bearers of Greek science, and that, in fact, they influenced the Renaissance. For example, in his The Middle East, Bernard Lewis explains that Greek science, on the whole rather tended to be theoretical. Medieval Middle Eastern [Islamic] science was much more practical, and in such fields as medicine, chemistry, astronomy and agronomy, the classical heritage was clarified and supplemented by the experiments and observations of the medieval Middle East.(32)

Today there is sufficient information about the quality and staggering quantity of Islamic science. Muslim scientists were active in many fields, from astronomy to zoology, and made original contributions. For example, recent research in astronomy shows that the mathematical models of Ibn Shatir, a fourteenth-century scientist, and the work of astronomers at the famous observatory in Maragha, laid the foundation for the Copernican revolution.(33)

Thus the novelty of Islamic science was that it was not the fruits of chance meetings, but the deliberate results of a massive movement of scientific and philosophical translation, undertaken by professionals “ sometimes rivals “ supported by power and stimulated by the research itself.(34) This movement resulted in the creation of a library on the scale of the world of its time.(35) Hence, for the first time scientific traditions from different backgrounds and languages became elements of one science, whose language was Arabic, and found ways of reacting together to engender new methods and sometimes even new disciplines, such as trigonometry, algorithms, and algebra.

Nevertheless, most people remain unaware of the importance of Islamic science. For example, most Westerners know that the Muslims invented algebra, Arabic numerals, and possibly the zero, but not that Islamic science is a possible concept.(36) Thus the most widely used American university textbook for the history of science (37) shows no interest in Islamic science per se and ignores most of the research on Islamic science conducted during the past 50 years.(38) Europe has no such textbook at all, and the less said about modern Arabic books on Islamic science the better.

Only recently has the Western scholarly community produced a substantial amount of reliable literature on the subject, some even for the general reader. For example, the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1970-80) contains a series of articles on the major Muslim scientists, as does the Encyclopaedia of the History of Arabic Science (1996).

The contributions of Muslim scientists are even less well understood in the Islamic world itself, let alone elsewhere in the world. No serious modern work of a general nature on Islamic science is available in Arabic, except George Saliba’s The Origin and Development of Arabic Scientific Thought (1998). Also, very little of the research of the past 50 years is available or even known in the Muslim world.

According to King, the surviving written works and artefacts relating to the achievements of Muslim scientists are some 10,000 manuscripts preserved in libraries around the world, and some 1,000 instruments preserved in museums and private collections. (39) This is an insignificant number when compared to some of the libraries that existed during Islamic civilization’s golden age, when there were about 500,000 such manuscripts on their shelves. Few of the surviving major scientific works have been translated, and modern scholars have never read thousands of these manuscripts. Simply put, the history of Islamic science as a field remains virgin territory. Nevertheless, as little as we know about Islamic science, scholars affirm that every single specialised science in the West owes its origins to the Islamic impulse “ or at least its direction from that time on.(40)

Original contributions and their impact on modern science

Islamic science made many important contributions to the history of European scientific thought. Its importance can be deduced from its original contributions and impact. Islamic science influenced the sciences of the West, and thus had a direct influence on the Renaissance and the scientific revolution.

In the twelfth century, the West discovered, via a translated catalogue of sciences (map of knowledge) by al-Farabi, the existence of a considerable body of Antiquity’s scientific work. The West started examining these sciences, including astronomy, biology, botany, mathematics, and medicine. In addition, the medieval European university became the institutional manifestation of al-Farabi’s map of knowledge. In fact, the translated work of Islamic knowledge formed the basis and the scientific foundation of the university in its living reality “ the reality of its syllabus, the content of its teaching.(41)

The originality of Islamic science and its significant innovation is clear in several fields, including mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Due to this topic’s vastness, this article shall confine itself to these three fields.

Originality in mathematics

Recent research proves that many of the ideas that once were thought to belong to European mathematicians of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries were in fact originated by Islamic mathematicians. In many respects, the mathematics studied today is far closer in style to that of the Muslims than of the Greeks.(42)

In the case of mathematics, Muslims initially were transmitters of almost all the important mathematical ideas of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, India, Persia, and the Hellenistic world. But they also made original contributions that directly influenced arithmetic, geometry, algebra, and algorithms. Before learning of Indian numerals and the dust-board system early in the eighth century from Indian and Persian sources, the Muslims used finger computation, also called the arithmetic of the scribes or secretaries because it was used by government bureaucrats. This Indian system could express any number by using only 10 figures, including an empty place for zero, and the results were written out in words. (43) Though this system was far easier than, and superior to, the Babylonian sexagesimal system (in which letters replaced numbers), the latter system was still being used especially by astronomers. While the Babylonian system was developed for practical business needs, the Indian system was inspired by the Hindus’ inherent philosophical bent.

The Muslims recognized the importance of the Indian system and thus transformed it into the well-known Arabic numerals. This system, still used today in the West, enabled the West to achieve great breakthrough in mathematics. Arabic numerals became an intensely workable code, one so simple that literally any child can handle it, so flexible that in the hands of the mathematicians it became a vocabulary by which the most complex relations between the most astronomical quantities can be expressed. It was a revolution on a par with the invention of the computer; one was able to reduce the cosmos to a system of ten elementary symbols, from zero to nine. (44)

Arabic numerals were first transmitted and used in the West during the latter half of the twelfth century through the translation of the first part of al-Khawarizmi’s The Book of Addition and Subtraction in Indian Arithmetic, which survives as a translation only. By this time, many other important works in Arabic were well ahead of the West, including the work of al-Karaji (c.1000), ˜Umar al-Khayyam (d. 1130), as-Samaw’al (d. c. 1175), and Ibn al-Haytham (d. c. 1040).

Muslims also developed Greek geometry and then used it in surveying, in designing wheels of all kinds, including waterwheels and other systems for drawing water, in improving farming equipment, and, inevitably, in devising engines and devices of war, such as catapults and crossbows.(45) In the ninth century, Thabit ibn Qurra wrote on cubatures and quadratures, and used the method of exhaustions in a manner that anticipated the development of integral calculus; advanced the study of parabolas; and used integral sums to find the area of a parabola’s segment. He also translated Appollonius’ Conics, several of Archimedes’ treatises, and Nicomachus’ Introduction to Arithmetic, in addition to calculating the volume of the parabolic and giving a geometrical solution to some third degree figures.(46)

In geometry, Umar al-Khayyam and al-Tusi re-examined the fifth postulate of Euclid concerning the parallel line theorem, which concerns the very foundation of Euclidean geometry.47 Though they did not claim to challenge Euclid’s postulates, however, their work eventually led to G. Saccheri’s first attempt to formulate a non-Euclidean geometry (1733).

While the Greeks had calculated a table of chords, trigonometry was invented by the Arabs. (48) Muslim scientists were the first to formulate explicit trigonometric functions. The first scientist to use tangents (zill) was the astronomer Habash al-Hasib, who also knew of the sine, cosine, and cotangent functions. More influential was Abu al-Wafa al-Buzanji, the first person to demonstrate the sine theorem for a general spherical triangle and to invent the secant (qutr al-zill). The latter discovery is usually attributed to Copernicus. Al-Biruni wrote the first independent work on spherical trigonometry, calculated the approximate value of a diagonal of one degree, and was the first to demonstrate that for a plane triangle ( a/sinA = b/sinB = c/sinC ).(49)

Muslim mathematicians also invented algebra. Al-Khawarizmi (780-850), the greatest Muslim mathematician and the first to establish algebra, is known for being instrumental in converting Babylonian and Hindu numerals into a simple and workable system that almost everyone could use.(50) He is also best known for originating the mathematical terms and concepts of algebra and the algorithm (which is derived from his name al-Khawarizmi). He composed many astronomical tables, worked on arithmetic and algebra, and is recognized as the founder of algebra, for he initiated the subject in a systematic form and developed it to the extent of giving analytical solutions of linear and quadratic equations.

His book The Book of Summary concerning the Process of Calculating Compulsion and Equation was used until the sixteenth century as the principle textbook of European universities. And it is from its title that the term algebra (al-Jabr: restoration and amplification of something incomplete; muqabala: the balance of the two sides of an equation) was derived. The Toledan translation of his book, Algorismi de numero indorum, had a profound impact upon the West and gave English such words as algorithm and cipher (Arabic for zero) and Spanish the word guarismo.

One of the many other mathematicians, the Persian Ghiyath al-Din Jamshid al-Kashani, devised a theory of numbers and techniques of computation that remained unmatched until recently. He also rediscovered the decimal fraction, discovered initially by al-Uqlidisi and then forgotten for centuries, made a remarkably accurate calculation of , is considered the inventor of the first calculating machine,(51) and is the first person to solve the Newton binomial theorem.

Originality in astronomy

George Saliba, a prominent historian of Islamic science, has greatly advanced our understanding of the importance of Islamic astronomy. He explains that medieval Islamic astronomers were not mere translators but also may have played a key role in the Copernican revolution, which ultimately influenced the Renaissance. The contribution of Islamic science was fundamental to the birth and subsequent development of astronomy in the West, for before this contribution the West had no advanced astronomy. The knowledge developed by Muslim astronomers produced changes in the West as regards the development of trigonometry, instruments, and the local star catalogues, and also affected the growth and development of astronomical theory proper.(52)

Astronomy was a practical science for the Muslims, because they used the stars as guides during their travel. Thus, astronomy became one of their greatest achievements. Its practical importance was also emphasized by the need to determine the prayer direction (qibla) and time regardless of one’s location.

Islamic astronomers surpassed the Greek mathematical methods, and developed trigonometry, which eventually provided the essential tools necessary for the astronomy that developed during the Renaissance. Medieval Muslim astronomers felt themselves challenged to find a simpler trigonometric method than that postulated by such earlier astronomers as Ptolemy. The study of astronomy was influenced by ancient sources, and Muslims were acquainted with Indian and Persian sources before Greek ones. The Persian Sassanids’ astronomical treatises were translated into Arabic during the eighth century. Ptolemy’s work was introduced in the ninth century. Around that time, such scholars as Thabit ibn Qurra and Hunayn ibn Ishaq translated Ptolemy’s major work Megalé syntax mathematiké (Almagest in Arabic). By the end of the ninth century, the Arabs had thoroughly studied and were acquainted with the work of Antiquity.

Before the spread of Islam, there was only one observatory in Alexandria; Muslims built observatories all over the Islamic world. The first one, al-Shammasiyah, was built in Baghdad built by al-Ma’mun in 828. Al-Battani built one at Raqqa (Iraq), Abdul Rahman al-Sufi built one at Shiraz (Persia), and in 1023 the Persian prince Ala al-Daula built one for Ibn Sina at Hamadan. Scientists at the famous al-Maragha observatory in western Iran greatly influenced Copernican astronomy, for their work led to the development of a planetary system that was mathematically equivalent to that of Copernicus. Such closeness caused Noel Swerdlow to ask, not whether, but when, where, and in what form Copernicus learned of those scientists.(53)

Advances in planetary theories were primarily the result of criticizing Ptolemy’s work, which had dominated the field since the time of al-Battani. While refining and improving the work’s details, rising dissatisfaction with many of its aspects led such scholars as Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, and Ibn al-Shatir to criticize the Polemic (geocentric) system in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This criticism was, to some extent, very important in the later attacks made against him during the Renaissance. The work of astronomers like Ibn al-Shatir allows modern scholars like Saliba to conclude that at some level the Renaissance “ which was at least partly inspired by the Copernican revolution “ was not a purely European creation.(54) According to him, the role of Arabic astronomy was not to preserve Greek astronomy, but to correct its flaws and finally to seek alternatives to it.(55)

Thousands of Arabic manuscripts in major libraries remain unknown to scholars. However, eminent scholars like George Saliba and David King have advanced our understanding of Islamic astronomy’s originality and influence. Unlike the traditional view that Muslim astronomers accepted the Greek work as unalloyed truth, they in fact rejected much of it and forged a new astronomy that, later on, enabled Copernicus to lay the foundation of modern astronomy. Consequently, the original contributions made by Muslims astronomers challenge the idea that Muslim scientists only transmitted ancient Greek science and knowledge to medieval Europe without adding anything.

Originality in medicine

Muslims also excelled in and made original contributions to medicine. Islamic medicine was built on tradition, mainly the theoretical and practical knowledge developed in Greece and Rome. For Muslim scholars, Galen and Hippocrates were the pre-eminent authorities, followed by the Hellenic scholars in Alexandria. Muslim and non-Muslim scholars translated the voluminous writings from Greek (e.g., Hippocrates, Dioscorides, and Galen) into Arabic, thus providing virtually all of Islam’s early medical students with their basic reference texts. Then, basing themselves upon these texts, they produced new medical knowledge. In order to make ancient medical works more accessible, understandable, and teachable, Muslim scholars ordered and systematized the vast and sometimes inconsistent Greco-Roman medical knowledge by writing encyclopedias and summaries.

The influence of Islamic medicine in the West was critical, due to the mass of information it conveyed to the West, because it helped establish medicine as a science, and because translated Arabic medical manuscripts gave a decisive direction to the teaching of medicine in the West.(56) Islamic medical knowledge built upon the achievements of classical Greece and Rome as well as that learned from Syriac, Persian, and Indian sources. After the relatively quick assimilation of this knowledge, Islamic medical writings became more systematic and synthetic, with an evident urge to produce the most comprehensive and complete medical reference work yet written.(57) A primary concern of Islamic medical scholars was the organisation of the vast body of knowledge into a logical and accessible format.(58) They also expanded theoretical discourses on causes and symptoms, and frequently introduced examples and procedures of an applied character. It was in this historical background that Islamic medicine developed and advanced, and at its zenith produced such towering physicians like Ibn Sina and al-Razi.

Al-Razi (Rhazes: 865-925) is the keenest original thinker and greatest clinician not only of Islam but of the Middle Ages,(59) and was the Islamic world’s greatest original clinical and observational physician. Along with Ibn Sina, they are considered to be among the greatest physicians ever known. In selecting a new site for the great hospital in Baghdad, al-Razi hung up shreds of meat and then chose the spot where they showed the least sign of putrefaction.

Al-Razi applied chemistry and physics to medicine, and wrote a medical encyclopedia and a treatise on smallpox and measles that was the earliest of its kind and considered a masterpiece of Arabic medical literature. He was a pioneer in pediatrics, obstetrics, and ophthalmology. In fact, his The Diseases of Children has led some historians to regard him as the father of pediatrics. He is also considered the inventor of the seton in surgery, and the first to relate hay fever to a rose’s scent,(60) isolate and use alcohol (al-kuhul) as an antiseptic, use mercury as a purgative (known in the Middle Ages as Album Rhasis), explain how to remove a cataract, and discuss the papillary reaction or widening and narrowing of an eye’s pupil. Furthermore, he mastered the way of treating by psychological shock and of using psychosomatic medicine and psychology. In its English translation, al-Razi’s Spiritual Physic devotes 20 chapters to various ailments that upset the soul and the body.

Al-Razi wrote many books on medicine, the major ones being Al-Hawi fi al-Tibb, (The Comprehensive Book), an encyclopedic composition of Greek, Persian, and early Arabic medical knowledge in their entirety, whose modern version is incomplete at 23 volumes.(61) The Sicilian Jewish physician Faraj (Farragut) ibn Salim was the first to translate Al-Hawi into Latin in 1279. Under the title Continens, it was repeatedly printed from 1486 onwards; a fifth edition appeared in Venice in 1542. Prior to the nineteenth century, Al-Hawi can be considered one of the most extensive medical texts ever written by a doctor.

His 10-volume Kitab al-Mansuri (Liber medicinalis ad Almansori), was translated in 1480 by Milan, and also into French and German. Gerard of Cremona translated the ninth volume, under the title Nonus al-Manuri, which remained popular in Europe until the sixteenth century. Here, he developed the science of anatomy by discussing such features as veins, arteries, dispositions of the heart, and so on.

His famous book on smallpox and the measles, Kitab fi al-Jadari wa al-Hasbah (Liber de Pestilentia), was very influential in Europe. It was first translated into Latin in 1565, and then into many other European languages. In fact, 40 editions were printed between 1498 and 1866. In 1848, William A. Greenhill translated it into English. Through this treatise, he became the first to draw clear comparison between smallpox and chickenpox. This treatise demonstrates quite well his concern for therapy, and its thoroughness stands in sharp contrast to the silence regarding the topic in the Hellenistic and Byzantine literature preserved today.(62)

Another great figure, Ibn Sina (Avicenna: 1126-98), was the most renowned physician, philosopher, encyclopedist, mathematician, and astronomer of his time. According to George Sarton, Ibn Sina’s thought represents the climax of medieval philosophy.(63)

One of his major contributions to medicine was his famous Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine), an immense encyclopedia of medicine that contains some of the most illuminating thoughts on the 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 (including love sickness); many psychological and pathological facts clearly analysed.(64) In it, Ibn Sina deals with the general principles of medicine, simple and compound drugs containing 760 types of drugs, disorders of each internal and external organ of the body, and diseases effecting all of the body, especially pathology and pharmacopoeia.

The Canon influenced Europe’s medical schools for the next 600 years and was probably the most used of all medieval medical references.(65) Gerard of Cremona translated it in the twelfth century. During the last 30 years of the fifteenth century, 15 Latin editions and one Hebrew edition were published. During the sixteenth century, it was reissued more than 20 times. From the twelfth to the seventeenth century, it was the West’s chief medical book and fulfilled that function longer than any other medical work.

Ibn Sina was the first to describe meningitis and differentiate it from meningismus of other acute diseases and to suggest treatment for lachrymal fistula, the first to describe the manner of spread of epidemics and the contagious nature of tuberculosis. He described many details of the eye, such as conjunctive sclera, the cornea, choroids, the iris, the retina, the layer lens, the aqueous humour, the optic nerve, and the optic chiasm.

Other important medical figures were Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar, d.1161) for his work on diet, Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1121-98) for his work on general principles, and the Syrian Ibn al-Nafis (d.1288) for his discovery of the minor circulation of the blood.

Conclusion

The contribution of Muslims to science dispels the common beliefs that they only preserved and transmitted Greek knowledge to the West. Recent studies by competent historians has led to a qualitative shift in our understanding of their contributions. Such historians adduce that Muslim scientists both influenced almost every branch of science and were instrumental in influencing the Renaissance.

Today, however, the Muslim world produces a disproportionately small amount of scientific output, and much of it is of relatively low quality. In numerical terms, 41 predominantly Muslim countries, having about 20% of the world’s population, generate less than 5% of its science. Given Muslims past contributions to science, this situation raises several questions: Is there a dichotomy between Islam and modern science? If not, how does one explain the huge gap in scientific output between the Muslim world and the West or East Asia? And what must change so that science can flourish in Muslim countries?

The past achievements of Muslim scientists clearly show that Islam is not the key problem facing scientific achievement in the Muslim world of today. The theory that implies a dichotomy between Islam and science is part of a larger conflict in post-Enlightenment historiography that opposes science and religion in general in post-medieval civilizations. Rather, the problem is a result of cumulative “ as opposed to one dominant “ factors.

Footnotes 

1. Robert Briffault, The Making of Humanity, (London, 1938), p.200.
2. Among those who suggest this are T. E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); P. Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality (Pakistan: Zed Books, 1992); J. J. Saunders, Muslims and Mongols: Essays on Medieval Asia (University of Canterbury: Whitcoulls Ltd., 1977).
3. George Saliba, Whose Science is Arabic Science in Renaissance Europe, Columbia University http://www.columbia.edu/~gas1/project/visions/case1/sci.1.html.
4. Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid.
5. George Saliba, Greek Astronomy and the Medieval Arabic Tradition, in American Scientist 90 (July-August 2002): 367.
6. We define science as systemized knowledge derived from observation, study, and experimentation carried on in order to determine the nature or principle of what is being studied. This definition specifically excludes such applied fields as technology and engineering.
7. G. M. Wickens The Middle East as a World Centre of Science and Medicine, in Introduction to Islamic Civilisation, ed. R. M. Savory, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 113.
8. Ziauddin Sardar, Islamic Science, www.islamonline.net/english/Contemporary/ 2002/05/Article21.shtml (2/6/2002).
9. Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid.
10. Abdel-Malek (1981) quoted in Ziauddin Sardar, Orientalism (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999), 59.
11. Ibid. 19 Ibid.
12. Kevin Krisciunas, Astronomical Centres of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 23.
13. Salah Zaimeche, A Review on Muslim Contribution to Astronomy, (Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation, 2002). Online at: www.muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=233.
14. Ibid. 23 Ibid.
15. Quoted in David C. Lindberg, The Beginning of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 (Chicago: The University Chicago Press, 1992), 175.
16. Ernest Renan (ed.), Islamism and Science, in Poetry of the Celtic Race and Other Studies (London: W. Scott., 1896), 85. Quoted in Bryan S. Turner, Orientalism, Postmodernism & Globalism (New York: Routledge, 1994), 31.
17. Von Grunebaum, as cited in Ibid., 71.
18. Saliba, Greek Astronomy, 360.
19. Ibid.
20. Roshdi Rashed, Preface, in Roshdi Rashed (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the History of Arabic Sciences (London: Routledge, 1996), 1:x.
21. Ibid. 31 Ibid.
22. Bernard Lewis, The Middle East (New York: Touchstone Books 1998), 266.
23. Ibid.
24. Ahmed Djebbar, Une Histoire de la science arabe, entretiens avec Jean Rosmorduc (A History of Arab Science — Conversations with Jean Rosmorduc), (Paris: Seuil, 2001), in David Tresilian, Greeker than the Greeks, Al-Ahram Weekly Online, 10-16 Jan. 2002, no.568. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/568/bo5.htm, p. xi.
25. Ibid.
26. David A. King, Proposal for an exhibition on Islamic science and technology, www.unesco.org/science/pao/exhib/islam2.htm#1.
27. David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1992.
28. King, Proposal. 39 Ibid.
29. Goldstein, T., Dawn of Modern Science (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1980), 99.
30. Alain de Libera in Sabbaghi, R., The Arab Forebears of the European Renaissance (interview with French historian and philosopher Alain de Libera), UNESCO Courier (Feb. 1997) 2(6).
31. J. J. O’Connor and E. F. Robertson, Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance? Online at:www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Arabic_mathematics.html.
32. Turner, H. R., Science in Medieval Islam: An Illustrated Introduction (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 45.
33. Goldstein, The Dawn of Modern Science, 121.
34. Turner, Science in Medieval Islam, 47.
35. Nasr, S. H., Islamic Science: An Illustrated Study (Westerham: Westerham Press, 1976), 82 and Science and Civilisation in Islam (New York: Plume Books, 1968), 149.
36. Nasr, Islamic Science, 82.
37. Huff, T. E., The Rise of Early Modern Science. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 50. According to Baron Carra de Vaux, the Arabs founded plane and spherical trigonometry (Astronomy and Mathematics, in The Legacy of Islam, 1st ed., 276). Likewise, E. S. Kennedy agrees that Arab scientists created trigonometry, the study of the plane and spherical triangle (˜The Arabic Heritage in the Exact Sciences,’ Al-Abhath 23 (1970): 337. Also see his The History of Trigonometry: An Overview, in Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences, ed. E. S. Kennedy et al. (Beirut : American University of Beirut, 1983).
38. Nasr, Islamic Science, 84.
39. Turner, Science in Medieval Islam, p.47.
40. See E. S. Kennedy, A Fifteenth-century Planetary Computer: al-Kashi’s Tabaq al-Aanateq’, Isis 41 (1950): 180-83 and 43 (1952): 42-50.
41. Henri Hugonnard-Roche, The Influence of Arabic Astronomy in the Medieval West, in Roshdi Rashed (ed.), Encyclopaedia,1:284.
42. Swerdlow, N., and Neugebauer, O., (1984), Mathematical Astronomy in Copernicus’s De revolutioibus (New York: Springer Verlag, 1984). Cited in Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science, 54.
43. Saliba, Greek Astronomy, 360.
44. In In defence of Copernicus. (Letters to the Editors), American Scientist 90, no. 6 (Nov.-Dec. 2002): 492 (1).
45. Danielle Jacquart, The Influence of Arabic Medicine in the Medieval West, in Roshdi Rashed (ed.), Encyclopaedia, 3:963.
46. Savage-Smith, Emilie, Medicine, in Ibid., 3:913.
47. Ibid. 59 Ibid.
48. Savage-Smith, Emilie, Gleanings from an Arabist’s Workshop: Current Trends in the Study of Medieval Islamic Science and Medicine, Isis 79 (1988): 246-72.
49. Ibid.
50. Savage-Smith, Medicine, 914.
51. George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science (New York: Robert Krieger, 1975), 1:709.
52. Ibid.
53. Turner, Science in Medieval Islam,136.

The year 1492 has long been a historical landmark: the Americans recently celebrated the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s ‘discovery’ of the new continent. But there was another 500th anniversary to be marked in 1992. Although this event was also of momentous importance for the history of mankind, it has attracted much less attention. The event we are referring to was the fall of the last Muslim city left in Spain: Granada. The date was the second day of 1492 when the Catholic king of Castile captured the city which had been governed for nearly eight centuries by Muslims.

The Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, which marked one of the most magnificent and glorious periods in Islamic history began with an invitation from one side of a civil war then raging in Visigothic Spain in 711. Musa Ibn Nusayr, the Umayyad governor of North Africa, was asked to help the rival of a Visigoth king. Thereupon, Nusayr ordered his general Tariq Ibn Ziyad to aid these people with an army of 7,000. In the following years he himself went to Spain. Within seven years the Muslims took control of the whole of the Peninsula, except for Galicia and Austuria. Muslim rule was accepted voluntarily by many Spaniards and over time some of them accepted Islam. The Andalusian Muslims did little to disturb the natives and allowed them to perform their religions and customs. After the dissolution of the central Umayyad government between 1009 and 1031 as a result of uprisings and a succession of weak rulers, a number of independent petty kingdoms (in Arabic mutluk al-tawaif and in Spanish taifa) became established. In spite of the fact that these little kingdoms were weaker than the former Umayyad state, an astonishing flowering of arts and learning took place during the taifa period. One reason for this outstanding development was that each ruler patronized artists, scholars and scientists to gain more prestige than the others. Eventually, the absence of a centrally organized state led to the end of Muslims’ power in the Peninsula. They lost considerable areas of territory to the Christian kingdoms that were reasserting themselves in the north. The petty kingdoms of Al-Andalus asked Yusuf Ibn Tashufin, the Almoravid (in Arabic al-Murabitun) ruler in Morocco, to intervene. They got the help they needed, but in 1090, the Almovarids left the country to its own destiny. This time the taifa kingdoms asked the Almohads (in Arabic al-Muwahhidun) for help. The Almohads willingly accepted and for a period of time they won some success in Spain. Nevertheless, in 1212 at the battle of al-Iqab they were defeated and within a few decades the Almohads were forced back across the Strait of Gibraltar. Muslim cities fell one after another until 1260, when only the kingdom of Granada remained. Granada survived for another two centuries. By the end of 1491, the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella were at the gates of the city. There remained only one final act to be played out on January 2nd, 1492 by which Muslim political sovereignty in Spain came to an end. In 1500, Spanish Muslims were presented with a terrible choice–either to convert to Catholicism or be expelled from Spain. Some did convert, others continued to practice their faith in secret and the rest chose exile.

It is a fact that the Andulusians developed a uniquely plural society whose main features were freedom, tolerance and lack of assimilation–Arabs, Christians, Jews and other immigrants lived side by side in peace for about eight centuries. Cordoba, the capital city of Al-Andalus, was the centre of a sophisticated and rich Islamic-Hispanic civilisation. In its heyday, Cordoba was famous for its intellectually advanced culture, its centres of learning and its great libraries. In those years, there were about one million people, 200,000 houses, 60 palaces, 600 mosques, 700 baths, 17 universities and 70 public libraries in the city. The biggest central library of Cordoba had 400,000 hand-written books and the catalogues which included only the names of the books consisted of 44 volumes. The famous orientalist, Dozy, stated that nearly all the people in Cordoba could read and write.

Gebert of Aurillac, the French monk, later to become Pope Sylvester II, was the first European scholar of importance to study Arabic sciences. He was also responsible for sending many teams of students into Al-Andalus during the closing years of the 10th century. By the end of that century, the various schools in Cordoba employed hundreds of students as translators and just as many copyists working closely to interpret and translate hundreds, perhaps thousands, of manuscripts from Baghdad and Cairo. Through these translations, philosophical and scientific thought from the Greek, Roman and Arab worlds, preserved and expanded upon by Muslim scholars, passed into European consciousness to fuel both the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. Western Europe, in general, owes a great debt to this enormously long and rich intellectual flow from Al-Andalus.

Islamic Spain was an immensely fertile ground for learning, producing a long series of intellectual, aesthetic and scientific advances attributable to Muslim, Christian and Jewish thinkers and the ethos they created. This blossoming was due in part to the spirit of tolerance that prevailed for much of the history of Al-Andalus.

In literature, Ibn Hazm (died in 1013) expanded traditional romantic poetry with his Tawq al-Hamamah (Dove’s necklace). This form of poetry passed from Al-Andalus into North Africa. Islamic literature in Andalus, however, reached its peak during the taifa era when the poet-king of Seville, Al-Mutamid, established an academy of letters, and Ibn Darraj al-Qastalli wrote a series of qasaid (poems) of unequalled beauty.

By the end of 11th century, Al-Andalus was at the forefront of European sciences. The Andalusians excelled in astronomy, both theoretical and practical, perfecting their tables and the precision of their astronomical instruments. Toledo astronomer Al-Zargali, (d. 1087), simplified the Hellenic astrolabe; his version, known as the saphea azarchelis, remained in use until the 16th century. He also anticipated the 17th century German astronomer Johannes Kepler in suggesting that the orbits of the planets are not circular but elliptical.

In medicine, Al-Andalus produced scholars like Al-Zahrawi (d. 1013), who wrote extensively on surgery, pharmacology, medical ethics and the doctor-patient relationship. Ibn Zuhr (known in the west as Avenzoar), a century and a half later, was an advocate of clinical research and practical experimentation. The first medical school in Europe was built in Salerno by Andalusians.

Abdullah Ibn Abdulaziz was one of the best-known geographers and renowned for his great work Al-Masalik wa’l-Mamalik (Roads and Countries). Another important geographer was Al-Idrisi who was educated in Cordoba and wrote Kitab al-Rujari (Roger’s Book) under the patronage of the King of Sicily, Roger II. In this book he divided the world into seven different climatic regions and each region into ten parts. He illustrated his book with some outstanding maps remarkable (and unique) for their accuracy.

Andalusians were also very successful in mathematics, especially geometry. They used the number ‘0’ for the first time in Europe. Among the well-known philosophers who lived in Andalus were Ibn Bajja, Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rushd all of whom influenced European thought very profoundly. Abu Bakr Ibn Umar, Abu Marwan, Ibn Fradi were particularly famous in historical studies.

Although, over the years, the lost splendour of Al-Andalus has been much idealized in the Islamic world, there remains an appreciation of the factors behind its downfall. Some of these were external, such as the unification and expansion of the Christian kingdoms of Spain and the geographic and political isolation of Al-Andalus from the rest of the Muslim world. There were also internal factors that contributed to the decline of Al-Andalus particularly the rivalries that weakened and divided Muslim Spain, the greed and self-indulgence that gripped its elites, and the loss of inner religious dynamic.