Omar Ihwainish
NY - USA
عمر يوسف احوينش
نيويورك امريكا
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Sciences
The traditional view of Arabic science was that it was chiefly a preserver and transmitter of ancient knowledge. For example, (Donald 2004) argues that modern science originated in Europe as an amalgam of medieval technology and Greek learning. These views have been disputed in recent times, with some scholars suggesting that Muslim scientists laid the foundations for modern science, for their development of early scientific methods and an empirical, experimental and quantitative approach to scientific inquiry. Some scholars have referred to this period as a "Arabic scientific revolution", a term which expresses the view that Islam was the driving force behind the Muslim scientific achievements (93) and should not to be confused with the early modern European Scientific Revolution leading to the rise of modern science. Edward (2002) argues that modern science was due to the cumulative efforts of the Hellenic, Islamic and Latin civilizations.
Scientific method:
Early scientific methods were developed in the Islamic world, where significant progress in methodology was made, especially in the works of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) in the 11th century, who is considered the pioneer of experimental physics. The most important development of the scientific method was the use of experimentation and quantification to distinguish between competing scientific theories set within a generally empirical orientation. Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) wrote the Book of Optics, in which he significantly reformed the field of optics, empirically proved that vision occurred because of light rays entering the eye, and invented the camera obscure to demonstrate the physical nature of light rays.
Ibn al-Haytham has also been described as the "first scientist" for his introduction of the scientific method, and his pioneering work on the psychology of visual perception is considered a precursor to psychophysics and experimental psychology although this is still the matter of debate.
The golden age of Islamic (and/or Muslim) art lasted from 750 to the 16th century, when ceramics, glass, metalwork, textiles, illuminated manuscripts, and woodwork flourished. Lustrous glazing was an Islamic contribution to ceramics. Islamic luster-painted ceramics were imitated by Italian potters during the Renaissance. Manuscript illumination developed into an important and greatly respected art, and portrait miniature painting flourished in Persia. Calligraphy, an essential aspect of written Arabic, developed in manuscripts and architectural decoration.
1.The Islamic financial system comprises the Islamic banking system. Islamic money market, Islamic insurance, Islamic capital market and the specialized financial institutions, which provide alternative sources of financing Table 23.2 byKabir Hassan &Mervyn Lewis (2007)
Market Economy:
During Islamic Golden age period proto-capitalism and free markets were present. (Fawaz 2010)
Some refer this to as "Islamic capitalism”. Organizational enterprises independent from the state also existed in the medieval Islamic world. Monetary economy was developed on the basis of a widely circulated common currency (the dinar) and the markets were developing rapidly and many new bases of business and payment terms has been developed by the scholars in a advanced field. Such as contracts, long-distance international trade, early forms of partnership, and early forms of credit, debt, profit, loss, capital expenditure, bills of exchange, revenue, capital accumulation circulating capital, cheques, promissory notes, the double-entry bookkeeping system, trusts ,savings accounts, transactional accounts, assignments, and lawsuits, loaning, exchange rates, bankers, money changers, ledgers, deposits (p.56)
Industrial growth:
Arabic science did in fact innovate industrialization as Hydropower, tidal power, and wind power were used to power mills and factories. Limited use was also made of fossil fuels such as petroleum. The industrial use of watermills in the Islamic world dates back to the 7th century, while horizontal-wheeled and vertical-wheeled water mills were both in widespread use since at least the 9th century. A variety of industrial mills were being employed in the Islamic world, including early fuelling mills, gristmills, hullers, sawmills, ship mills, stamp mills, steel mills[citation needed], sugar mills, tide mills and windmill (Paula, 2002, p.19).
1. 155 In this section, current practices of these Islamic banks will be detailed. It starts with an overview encompassing market size, regional scope and major market types in Islamic finance. Subsequently, the institutional framework by Alexander von Pock (2007)
By the 11th century, mills operated throughout the Islamic world, from al-Andalus and North Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia.. Muslim engineers also invented crankshafts and water turbines, employed gears in mills and water-raising machines, and pioneered the use of dams as sources of water power, used to provide additional power to watermills and water-raising machines. Such advances made it possible for many industrial tasks that were previously driven by manual labor in ancient times to be mechanized and driven by machinery instead in the medieval Islamic world. The transfer of these technologies to medieval Europe had an influence on the Industrial Revolution (Adas, 1998, p.39)
Established industries active during Islamic golden age included astronomical instruments, ceramics, chemicals, distillation technologies, clocks, glass, mechanical hydro powered and wind powered machinery, matting, mosaics, pulp and paper, perfumery, petroleum, pharmaceuticals, rope-making, shipping, shipbuilding, silk, sugar, textiles, water, weapons, and the mining of minerals such as sulphur, ammonia, lead and iron. Knowledge of these industries was later transmitted to medieval Europe, especially during the Latin translations of the 12th century. For example, the first glass factories in Europe were founded in the 11th century by Egyptian craftsmen in Greece (p.55) the agricultural and handicraft industries also grew during this period.
With the Muslim Agricultural Revolution (Goody 2004), Arabic science did in fact innovate a number of industries including early industries for agribusiness, astronomical instruments, ceramics, chemicals, distillation technologies, clocks, glass, mechanical hydropower and wind 1. 1. Numeration and arithmetic AHMAD S. SAIDAN The earliest Arabic works of arithmetic ever written are those by al- Khwarizmi, Muhammad ibn Musa (ninth century). He wrote two tracts: one, on Hindu arithmetic, (Rushdī Rāshid, Régis Morelon 1996)
powered machinery, matting, mosaics, pulp and paper, perfumery, petroleum, pharmaceuticals,
rope-making, shipping, shipbuilding, silk, sugar, textiles, water, weapons, and the mining of
minerals such as sulphur, ammonia, lead and iron. Early large factory complexes were built for many of these industries and knowledge of these industries were later transmitted to medieval Europe, especially during the Latin translations of the 12th century, as well as before and after. The handicraft and agricultural industries also experienced high levels of growth during this period.
Agricultural Revolution:
There is fundamental transformation witnessed in agriculture in the Islamic Golden Age known as the "Arab Agricultural Revolution". Muslim traders enabled the diffusion of many crops and farming techniques between different parts of the Islamic world, as well as the adaptation of plants and techniques from beyond the Islamic world. Crops from Africa such as sorghum, crops from China such as citrus fruits, and numerous crops from India such as rice, cotton, and sugar cane, were distributed throughout Islamic lands which normally would not be able to grow these crops. Newly adopted crops combined with an increased mechanization of agriculture. which led to major changes in economy, population distribution, vegetation cover, agricultural production and income, population levels, urban growth, the distribution of the labour force, cooking and diet, clothing, and numerous other aspects of life in the Islamic world. During the Muslim Agricultural Revolution, sugar production was refined and transformed into a
large-scale industry, as Arabs and Berbers built the first sugar refineries and established sugar plantations.
1. Significantly, this volume will shed much-needed light on the conditions under which such theories were developed in medieval Islam (George Saliba1995)
Sugar production diffused throughout the Islamic Empire from the 8th century.
Against such a background, there are many who see Islamic finance as a possible way forward to a brighter and more ... and have adopted Islamic practices to serve this expanding market. Islamic mutual funds have also sprung up which by ANGELO M. VENARDOS (2005)
Muslims introduced cash cropping[ and a crop rotation system in which land was cropped four or more times in a two-year period. Winter crops were followed by summer ones. In areas where plants of shorter growing season were used, such as spinach and egg plants, the land could be cropped three or more times a year. Muslims developed a scientific approach to agriculture based on three major elements; sophisticated systems of crop rotation, highly developed irrigation techniques, and the introduction of a large variety of crops which were studied and catalogued according to the season, type of land and amount of water they require. Numerous detailed encyclopedias on farming and botany were produced (Barker, 2009, p.12)
Educational institutions:
A number of important educational and scientific institutions previously unknown in the ancient world have their origins in the early Islamic world, with the most notable examples being: the public hospital (which replaced healing temples and sleep temples and psychiatric hospital, the public library and lending library, the academic degree-granting university, and the astronomical observatory as a research institute The first universities which issued diploma certificate were the Bimaristan medical university-hospitals of the medieval Islamic world, where medical diplomas
1. IBD's Infrastructure Fund Saudi-based Islamic Development Bank has launched a $1.5 billion infrastructure fund, ... The company will tap the capital market once the initial equity was at hand by World Muslim Conference, World Muslim Congress (1998)
were issued to students of Islamic medicine who were qualified to be practicing doctors of medicine from the 9th century.
The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes the University of Al Karaouine in Fez, Morocco as the oldest degree-granting university in the world with its founding in 859 CE Al-Azhar University, founded in Cairo, Egypt in the 975 CE, offered a variety of academic degrees, including postgraduate degrees, and is often considered the first full-fledged university. The origins of the doctorate also dates back to the ijazat attadris wa 'l-ifttd ("license to teach and issue legal opinions") in the medieval Madrasahs which taught Islamic law.
By the 10th century, Cordoba had 700 mosques, 60,000 palaces, and 70 libraries, the largest of which had 600,000 books. In the whole al-Andalus, 60,000 treatises, poems, polemics and compilations were published each year. The library of Cairo had two million books, while the library of Tripoli is said to have had as many as three million books before it was destroyed by Crusaders. The number of important and original medieval Arabic works on the mathematical sciences far exceeds the combined total of medieval Latin and Greek works of comparable significance, although only a small fraction of the surviving Arabic scientific works have been studied in modern times. For instance, Jamil Ragep, an historian of science from McGill University, says that 'less than 5% of the available material has been studied.'Salim Al-Hassani states that 50,000 of the surviving manuscripts have been reviewed and that there are 5 million more manuscripts still awaiting review. A Russian historian O. B. Frolova gives an idea of the numerical quantity of these manuscripts and works always findable:
"The results of the Arab scholars' literary activities are reflected in the enormous amount of works (about some hundred thousand) and manuscripts (not less than 5 million) which were current... These figures are so imposing that only the printed epoch presents comparable materials" (Campo 2009).
Religion and Ethics:
Religious freedom, though society was still controlled under Islamic values, helped create cross-cultural networks by attracting Muslim, Christian and Jewish intellectuals and thereby helped spawn the greatest period of philosophical creativity in the Middle Ages from the 8th to 13th centuries. Another reason the Islamic world flourished during this period was an early emphasis on freedom of speech. Bring forward all the arguments you wish and say whatever you please and speak your mind freely. Now that you are safe and free to say whatever you please appoint some arbitrator who will impartially judge between us and lean only towards the truth and be free, and that arbitrator shall be Reason, whereby God makes us responsible for our own rewards and punishments. Herein I have dealt justly with you and have given you full security and am ready to accept whatever decision Reason may give for me or against me. For "There is no compulsion in religion" and I have only invited you to accept our faith willingly and of your own accord and have pointed out the hideousness of your present belief. Peace is upon you and the blessings of God!" (Frederic et el 2009). Arabic treatises are the earliest known treatises dealing with environmentalism and environmental science, especially pollution, were written by al-Kindi, al-Razi, Ibn Al-Jazzar, al-Tamimi, al-Masihi, Avicenna, Ali ibn Ridwan, Abd-el-latif, and Ibn al-Nafis. Their works covered a number of subjects related to pollution such as air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination, municipal solid waste mishandling, and environmental impact assessments of certain localities. This is the example that Islamic golden age period are scientific in their working and have initiated developing the technology for their usage.
1. In the late 20th century, a number of Islamic banks were made, to cater to this particular banking market. Islamic bankers have developed a number of instruments that can perform financial intermediation functions without Jaquir Iqbal (2009)
Age of discovery:
The Islamic Empire magnificently contributed towards globalization during the Islamic Golden Age, when the knowledge, knowhow as well as skill for trade and economies from many previously isolated regions and civilizations started interrogating due to contacts with Muslim explorers, sailors, scholars, traders, and travelers who traveled most of the Old World, and established an early global economy across much of Europe, with their trade networks extending towards east and west.. This helped establish the Islamic Empire as the world's leading economic power throughout the 7th-13th centuries. The merchants have very effective and relied systems of contract. Merchants with money loaned to them by wealthy investors would buy and sell on commission or a joint investment of several merchants, many commercial ventures would be made for Business partnerships, and trade networks through the bonds of kinship enabled to form over huge distances. Networks developed enabled the world in which money could be promised by a bank in Baghdad and cashed in Spain, creating the cheque system of today. Each time the city imposed a tax on items passed through the cities along this extraordinary network once reaching the final destination. These innovations made the foundations for the modern economic system. With the Muslim Agricultural Revolution, a number of industries were generated including early industries for agribusiness, astronomical instruments, ceramics, chemicals, distillation technologies, clocks, glass, mechanical hydropower and wind powered machinery, matting, mosaics, pulp and paper, perfumery, petroleum, pharmaceuticals, rope-making, shipping, shipbuilding, silk, sugar, textiles, water, weapons, and the mining of minerals such as sulphur, ammonia, lead and iron. Early large factory complexes were built for many of these industries and knowledge of these industries were later transmitted to medieval Europe, especially during the Latin translations of the 12th century, as well as before and after. The handicraft and agricultural industries also experienced high levels of growth during this period.
Technology
Muslim engineers and inventors did significant number of inventions .The inventions believed to have come from the Islamic Golden Age include the camera, coffee, soap bar, tooth paste, shampoo, pure distillation, liquefaction, crystallization, purification, oxidization, evaporation, filtration, distilled alcohol, uric acid, nitric acid, alembic, valve, reciprocating suction piston pump, mechanized water clocks, quilting, scalpel, bone saw, forceps, surgical catgut, vertical-axle windmill, inoculation, smallpox vaccine, fountain pen, cryptanalysis, frequency analysis, three-course meal, stained glass and quartz glass, Persian carpet, and celestial globe.
From the eighth to the eleventh century’s trade was largely concerned with finding and importing basic necessities- grain, metals, and wood. To obtain them, the Muslims had to export too, often using the imports from one region as exports to another: pearls from the Gulf, livestock from the Arabian Peninsula and also the cloths. The Muslims also traded medicines, advances in medical science.
The Golden Age also, transformed the diet of medieval Europe by introducing such plants as plums, artichokes, apricots, cauliflower, celery, fennel, squash, pumpkins, and eggplant, as well as rice, new strains of wheat, the date palm, and sugarcane. The demands on trade also generated development of crafts. From large urban population in Baghdad, for example, came craftsmen of 1. First, the Malaysian Interbank Islamic Money Market has been operating since 1994 with several Islamic instruments. Second, and in a similar vein, the Bahrain Monetary Authority established the Liquidity Management Center(LMC) in with byJuan Sole(2007)
every conceivable sort: metalworkers, leatherworkers, bookbinders, papermakers, jewelers, weavers, apothecaries, bakers, and many more. As they grew in importance to the economy, these craftsmen has organized themselves into mutual-benefit societies which in some ways were similar to later Western guilds and which offered many social services: lodging travelers, engaging in pious works such as caring for orphans, and endowing schools.
In Islamic history from 8th to the 13th centuries was such a period, when scholars from the Arab and the wider Islamic world explored the learning of earlier civilizations and built out of them a world civilization based on science which was previously unmatched. Arab and Arabic are of key importance here. For just as today, English is the language of the modern age, the language in which various important achievements, especially of science and technology are expressed. So the international language of communication of the medieval age was Arabic, in regard to science and technology. Medieval European scholars who wanted to share needed to master Arabic as a first step in this learning.
The Arab-Islamic culture spread in the Western world. European scholars discovered that Islamic culture have a great scientific heritage. So they studied and analyzed it. The
In the Islamic golden age various architecture advancement has taken place such as The Great Mosque of Xi'an in China was completed circa 740, and the Great Mosque of Samarra in Iraq was completed in 847. The Great Mosque of Samarra combined the hypostyle architecture of rows of columns supporting a flat base above which a huge spiraling minaret was constructed.
The Spanish Muslims began construction of the Great Mosque at Cordoba in 785 marking the beginning of Islamic architecture in Spain and Northern Africa The mosque is noted for its striking interior arches. Moorish architecture reached its peak with the construction of the Alhambra, the magnificent palace/fortress of Granada, with its open and breezy interior spaces adorned in red, blue, and gold. The walls are decorated with stylized foliage motifs, Arabic inscriptions, and arabesque design work, with walls covered in glazed tiles.
In the Sunni Muslim Ottoman Empire massive mosques with ornate tiles and calligraphy were constructed by a series of sultans including the Süleymaniye Mosque , Sultanahmet Mosque, Selimiye Mosque, and Bayezid II Mosque (Alonso et el 2006)
Examples of excellence by Muslims as modestrated by Maymo et el (1999)
Al-Razi, a 9th century Persian physician, made the first major Muslim contribution to medicine when he developed treatments for smallpox and measles. He also made significant observations about hay fever, kidney stones, and scabies, and first used opium as an anesthetic.
Ibn Sina was one of the greatest physicians in the world, with his most famous book used in European medical schools for centuries. He is credited with discovering the contagious nature of diseases like tuberculosis, which he correctly concluded could be transmitted through the air, and led to the introduction of quarantine as a means of limiting the spread of such infectious diseases.
In the 10th century, Al-Zahravi first conducted surgery for the eye, ear, and throat, as well as performing amputations and cauterizations. He also invented several surgical instruments, including those for the inner ear and the throat.
1. M. Raihan Sharif s book on Islamic Economics is expected to meet the current need mentioned above. ... While chapter five projects Islamic economics as a system dealing on rationalism, theory of consumption, production and market. By M. Raihan Sharif, Bangladesh Institute of Islamic Thought (1996)
· Abdullah Ibn Ahmad Ibn al-Baytar, was the greatest botanist and pharmacist of Spain--in fact the greatest of mediaeval times. He roamed about in search of plants and collected herbs on the Mediterranean littoral, from Spain to Syria, described more than 1,400 medical drugs and compared them with the records of more than 150 ancient and Arabian authors. The collection of simple drugs composed by him is the most outstanding botanical work in Arabic. "This book, in fact is the most important for the whole period extending from Dioscorides down to the 16th century." It is an encyclopedic work on the subject. He later entered into the service of the Ayyubid king, al-Malik al-l(amil, as his chief herbalist in Cairo. From there he traveled through Syria and Asia Minor, and died in Damascus. One of his works AI-Mughani-fi al Adwiyah al Mufradah deals with medicine. The other Al Jami Ji al Adwiyah al Mufradah is a very valuable book containing simple remedies regarding animal, vegetable and mineral matters which has been described above. It deals also with 200 novel plants which were not known up to that time. Abdul Abbas Al-Nabati also wandered along the African Coast from Spain to Arabia in search of herbs and plants. He discovered some rare plants on the shore of Red Sea.
Abu Zakariya Yahya Ibn Muhammad Ibn Al-Awwan, who flourished at the end of 12 century in Seville (Spain) was the author of the most important Islamic treatise on agriculture during the mediaeval times entitled Kitab al Filahah. The book treats more than 585 plants and deals with the cultivation of more than 50 fruit trees. It also discusses numerous diseases of plants and suggests their remedies. The book presents new observations on properties of soil and different types of manures.
Khazini, was a well known scientist of Islam, who explained the greater density of water when nearer to the center of the earth. Roger Bacon, who proved the same hypotheses afterwards, based his proof on the theories advanced by Khazini. His brilliant work Mizanul Hikma deals with gravity and contains tables of densities of many solids and liquids. It also contains "observation on capillarity uses of aerometer to measure densities and appreciate the temperature of liquids, theory of the lever and the application of balance to building." Chapters on weights and measures' were written by Ibn Jami and Al-Attar. Abdur Rahman Ibn Nasr wrote an excellent treatise on weights and measures for the use of Egyptian markets.
The Holy Qur'an had awakened a spirit of inquiry among the Arabs which was instrumental in their splendid achievements in the field of science, and according to a western critic led them to realize that "science could not be advanced by mere speculation; its only sure progress lay in the practical interrogation of nature. The essential characteristics of their method are observation. and experiment. In their writings on Mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, etc., the solution of the problem is always obtained by performing an experiment, or by an instrumental observation. It was this that made them the originator of chemistry, that led them to the invention of all kinds of apparatus for distillation, sublimation, fusion and filtration; that in astronomy caused them to appeal to divided instrument, as quadrant and astrolabe; in chemistry to employ the balance the theory of which they were perfectly familiar with; to construct tables of specific gravities and astronomical tables, that produced their great improvements in geometry and trigonometry."
The mineral substances were also classified by Al-Jabiz. Abu Mansur Muwaffaq has contributed to the method of the preparation and properties of mineral substances. Abul Qasim who was a renowned chemist prepared drugs by sublimation and distillation. High class sugar and glass were manufactured in Islamic countries. The Arabs were also expert in the manufacture of ink, lacquers, solders, cements and imitation pearls.
Physics.
Role of Business in transmission of science and technology to Europe
The Muslims were the pioneers of sciences and arts during mediaeval times and formed the necessary link between the ancients and the moderns. Their light of learning dispelled the gloom that had enveloped Europe. Moorish Spain was the main source from which the scientific knowledge of the Muslims and their great achievements were transmitted to France, Germany and England. The Spanish universities of Cordoba, Seville and Granada were thronged with Christian and Jewish students who learnt science from the Muslim scientists and who then popularized them in their native lands. Another source for the transmission of Muslim scientific knowledge was Sicily, where during the reign of Muslim kings and even afterwards a large number of scientific works were translated from Arabic into Latin. The most prominent translators who translated Muslims works from Arabic into European languages were Gerard of Cremona, Adelard of Bath, Roger Bacon and Robert Chester. Writing in his celebrated work Moors in Spain Stanley Lane Poole says, "For nearly eight centuries under the Mohammadan rulers, Spain set out to all Europe a shining example of a civilized and enlightened State--Arts, literature and science prospered as they prospered nowhere in Europe. Students flocked from France, Germany and England to drink from the fountain of learning which flowed down in the cities of Moors. The surgeons and doctors of Andalusia were in the van of science; women were encouraged to serious study and the lady doctor was not always unknown among the people of Cordova. Mathematics, astronomy and botany, history, philosophy and jurisprudence, were to be mastered in Spain, and Spain alone. The practical work of the field, the scientific methods of irrigation, the arts of fortification and shipbuilding, of the highest and most elaborate products of the loom, the gravel and the hammer, the potter's wheel and mason's trowel, were brought to perfection by the Spanish Moors. Whatever makes a kingdom great and prosperous, whatever tends to refinement and civilization was found in Muslim Spain."
It is viewed that of Arabic science was a preserver and transmitter of ancient knowledge During Islamic Golden age period, artist’s traders in the Islamic world contributed to the economics, industry, sciences, sociology, and technology, both adding inventions and innovations of their own and by preserving earlier traditions The period between the end of the 10th century and the 12th century CE was marked by the dominance of Arab thought and civilization in southern Europe. Many Muslim ideas were soon transmitted to medieval Europe, and influenced learning there up until the Renaissance. By the 10th century, Muslim intellectual superiority, is recognized by Europeans and quickly began translating Muslim works in such fields as medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy from Arabic into Latin, Hebrew, and sometimes vernacular languages as well. By the 13th century, European students were studying at Islamic universities, mostly in Muslim-controlled Spain. Europeans realized that studying in Seville, Cordoba, Toledo, or Granada was the key to acquiring Muslim knowledge. When Latin translations of Muslim books were not completed quickly enough, universities in Toledo, Narbonne, Naples, Bologna, and Paris started teaching Arabic, in order to facilitate reading important scientific works from the Islamic world in their original language.
The Islamic contribution to the progress of science and technology and it also depicts how Islamic world increased scientific knowledge between the 8th and 14th centuries Which later on transmitted to Europe Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen (2002).Only with the onset of the Renaissance would European knowledge surpass that of the Islamic world, but even then, many European scientists and philosophers simply built on the foundations supplied centuries earlier by Muslim scholars. The Islamic influence on the development of modern science is evident in the many Arabic-based words that remain in the English scientific vocabulary, mostly due to the fact that being unfamiliar with the subject matter, Latin translators were unable to change all words into Latin. Examples include algebra, algorithm, chemistry, alchemy, zircon, atlas, almanac, earth, monsoon, alcohol, elixir, aorta, pancreas, colon, cornea, and diaphragm.
Business has played important role in transferring the knowledge from Islamic state to the modern Europe as business man has started moving from one place to other they has started using the best practice that is their in Islamic countries and started practicing that in Europe and other parts. .While the barbarians smashed and burned in Western Europe, the Arabs and Persians used the libraries of Alexandria and Asia Minor, translated the scrolls and took them to Baghdad and far beyond. In distant Bukhara on the Silk Road to China, a teenager called Abu Ali Ibn Sina was engrossed in Aristotle's Metaphysics at the age of 17. The year was AD997 and the text - central to the subsequent development of philosophy - had long been lost and unknown in Western Europe.
It is well to recall that Islam not only caused Islamic civilization to develop but also enabled the European Renaissance to take root and grow. The time when Islam was most strongly established was also the time when art, culture and literature flourished, whether in Spain or, later, under the Ottomans, the Safavids and the Mughals. Christian Europe was enveloped in darkness until Islam came to the Iberian peninsula. For centuries Islam fed Greek, Sanskrit and Chinese ideas into Europe. Slowly and steadily Europe began to absorb those ideas. In England, France, Germany and Italy society began to explore literature and art with a new perspective; thus the seeds of the Renaissance were sown.
Commerce offered a context but the nobility, and not an imagined bourgeoisie, had the edge when it came to exploiting the market for objects. Paintings could be traded for property, land, and houses. Princes could sponsor natural philosophers, and the fluidity in values meant that good investors, like good practitioners of the arts and sciences, took an interest in all aspects of Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen (2002).s between royal families and the church in Rome, and using an agrarian system that had undergone little change for centuries. At the same time, the Muslims, who had taken control of Spain in 711 CE, were flourishing. They made great advances in the arts, architecture, medicine, exploration technologies, and education. Many inventions that Europeans would later take credit for were actually first conceived by the Muslims. If it were not for the intellect and ingenuity of the Islamic engineers and thinkers of the Middle Ages, the world we know today could have been far less advanced than the one that we are so comfortable with.
According to Howard R. Turner: "Muslim artists and scientists, princes and laborers together made a unique culture that has directly and indirectly influenced societies on every continent”
Transmission of Islamic Techniques to Europe through agricultural business
In the 12th century, through transmission of various new agricultural products such as various unknown fruits: the artichoke, spinaches, aborigines, peaches; apricots were transmitted from Muslim countries to Europe.
Numerous new techniques in clothing, as well as new materials were also introduced: muslin, taffetas, satin, skirts. Trade mechanisms were also transmitted: tariffs, customs, bazaars, magazines. Juan (2006) Arab-Norman art and architecture combined Occidental features (such as the Classical pillars and friezes) with typical Islamic decorations and calligraphy.
Numerous techniques from Islamic art formed the basis of Arab-Norman art: inlays in mosaics or metals, sculpture of ivory or porphyry, sculpture of hard stones, bronze foundries, and manufacture of silk a state enterprise which would give Sicily the monopoly of silk manufacture for all Europe).
The Arabic philosophic literature was translated into Hebrew, Latin, and Ladino, contributing to the development of modern European philosophy
Islamic contributions to Medieval Europe were numerous , affecting such varied areas as art, architecture, medicine, agriculture, music, language, education, law, and technology. From the 11th to 13th centuries, Europe absorbed knowledge from the Islamic civilization. Of particular importance was the rediscovery of the ancient classic texts, most notably the work of the Greek natural philosopher Aristotle, through retranslations from Arabic. In the early 20th century the musicologist Henry George Farmer wrote that a "growing number of scholars...recognize(d) that the influence of the Muslim civilization as a whole on medieval Europe was enormous in such fields as science, philosophy, theology, literature, aesthetics, than has been recognized."
For one historian the contributions from the Islamic world have had a considerable effect on the development of Western civilization and contributed to the achievements of the Renaissance (p.56)
Knowledge transmission routes to Europe via various business transactions in educational field
The points of contact between Europe and Islamic lands were multiple during the middle Ages. The main points of transmission of Islamic knowledge to Europe were in Sicily, and in Islamic Spain, particularly in Toledo In Sicily, following the Islamic conquest of the island in 965 and its recon quest by the Normans in 1091, an intense Arab-Norman culture developed, exemplified by rulers such as Roger II, who had Islamic soldiers, poets and scientists at his court. One of the greatest geographical treatises of the middle Ages was written by the Moroccan Muhammad al-Idrisi for Roger, and entitled Kitab Rudjdjar (Mukherjee 2004).
The Crusades also intensified exchanges between Europe and the Levant, with Italian City Republics taking a great role in these exchanges. In the Levant, such cities as Antioch, Arab and Latin cultures intermixed intensively.
Classical knowledge
Following the fall of the Roman Empire and the dawn of the Middle Ages, many texts from Classical Antiquity had been lost to the Europeans. In the Middle East however, many of these Greek texts (such as Aristotle) were translated from Greek into Syriac during the 6th and 7th centuries by Nestorian, Melkites or Jacobite monks living in Palestine, or by Greek exiles from Athens or Edessa who visited Islamic Universities. Many of these texts however were then kept, translated, and developed upon by the Islamic world, especially in centers of learning such as Baghdad, where a “House of Wisdom”, with thousands of manuscripts existed .These texts were translated again into European languages during the Middle Ages. Eastern Christians played an important role in exploiting this knowledge, especially through the Christian Aristotelician School of Baghdad in the 11th and 12th centuries Pamela & Findlen (2002).
We can take the example as
The most well known fiction from the Islamic world was The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), which was a compilation of many earlier folk tales. The epic took form in the 10th century and reached its final form by the 14th century; the number and type of tales have varied from one manuscript to another .All Arabian fantasy tales were often called "Arabian Nights" when translated into English, regardless of whether they appeared in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, in any version, and a number of tales are known in Europe as "Arabian Nights" despite existing in no Arabic manuscript.
Also the prominent example that Al-Ghazali also had an important influence on Christian medieval philosophers along with Jewish thinkers like Maimonides. According to Margaret Smith, "There can be no doubt that Ghazali’s works would be among the first to attract the attention of these European scholars" and "The greatest of these Christian writers who was influenced by Al-Ghazali was St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), who made a study of the Islamic writers and admitted his indebtedness to them. He studied at the University of Naples where the influence of Islamic literature and culture was predominant at the timeRené Descartes' ideas from his Discourse on the Method were also influenced by al-Ghazali, and Descartes' method of doubt was very much similar to al-Ghazali's work
Contributing to the growth of European science was the major search by European scholars for new learning which they could only find among Muslims, especially in Islamic Spain and Sicily. These scholars translated new scientific and philosophical texts from Arabic into Latin.
Islam was not, however, a simple re-transmitter of knowledge from antiquity. It also developed its own sciences, such as algebra, chemistry, geology, spherical trigonometry, etc. which were later also transmitted to the West. Stefan of Pise translated into Latin around 1127 an Arab manual of medical theory. The method of algorism for performing arithmetic with Indian-Arabic numerals was developed by al-Khwarizmi in the 9th century, and introduced in Europe by Leonardo Fibonacci (1170–1250). A translation of the Algebra by al-Kharizmi is known as early as 1145, by a certain Robert of Chester. Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen, 980-1037) compiled treaties on optical sciences, which were used as references by Newton and Descartes. Medical sciences were also highly developed in Islam as testified by the Crusaders, who relied on Arab doctors on numerous occasions. Joinville reports he was saved in 1250 by a “Saracen” doctor.
One of the most productive translators in Spain was Gerard of Cremona, who translated 87 books from Arabic to Latin, including Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī's On Algebra and Almucabala, Jabir ibn Aflah's Elementa astronomica, al-Kindi's On Optics, Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Kathīr al-Farghānī's On Elements of Astronomy on the Celestial Motions, al-Farabi's On the Classification of the Sciences, the chemical and medical works of Rhazes, the works of Thabit ibn Qurra and Hunayn ibn Ishaq, and the works of Arzachel, Jabir ibn Aflah, the Banū Mūsā, Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam, Abu al-Qasim, and Ibn al-Haytham (including the Book of Optics).
Invention in medicine to be transmitted from Islamic country to Europe through development of medical business in Europe
The first hospital in Paris, Les Quinze-vingt, was founded by Louis IX after his return from the Crusade between 1254-1260. One of the most important medical works to be translated was Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine which was translated into Latin and then disseminated in manuscript and printed form throughout Europe. It remained a standard medical textbook in Europe up until the early modern period and during the 15th and 16th centuries alone, The Canon of Medicine was published more than thirty-five times. It introduced the contagious nature of infectious diseases, the method of quarantine, experimental medicine, and clinical trials. He also wrote The Medicine Book of Healing, a more general encyclopedia of science and philosophy, which became another popular textbook in Europe. Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi's Comprehensive Book of Medicine, with its introduction of measles and smallpox, was also influential in Europe. Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi's Kitab al-Tasrif was also translated to Latin and used in European medical schools for centuries.
Ibn al-Nafis' Commentary on Compound Drugs was translated into Latin by Andrea Alpago who may or may not have also translated Ibn al-Nafis' Commentary on Anatomy in the Canon of Avicenna, which first described pulmonary circulation and which might have had an influence on Michael Servetus and Realdo Colombo if they saw it.
Business through various educational institution played important role in transmission of knowledge from Islamic country to Europe
The oldest university in the world which is still functioning is the eleven hundred-year-old Islamic university of Fez, Morocco, known as the Qarawiyyin. This old tradition of Islamic learning influenced the West greatly through Spain. In this land where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived for the most part peacefully for many centuries, translations began to be made in the 11th century mostly in Toledo of Islamic works into Latin often through the intermediary of Jewish scholars most of whom knew Arabic and often wrote in Arabic. As a result of these translations, Islamic thought and through it much of Greek thought became known to the West and Western schools of learning began to flourish. Even the Islamic educational system was emulated in Europe and to this day the term chair in a university reflects the Arabic kursi (literally seat) upon which a teacher would sit to teach his students in the madrasah (school of higher learning). As European civillization grew and reached the high middle Ages, there was hardly a field of learning or form of art, whether it was literature or architecture, where there was not some influence of Islam present. Europe adopted a number of educational, legal and scientific institutions from the Islamic world, including the public hospital and psychiatric hospital, the public library and lending library, the astronomical observatory as a the trust institution and charitable trust the agency and aval (Hawala) and a variety of other such institutions (p.34)
A number of technologies in the Islamic world were adopted in European medieval technology. These included various crops; Greek inventions such as the astrolabe; and a variety of original Muslim inventions, including astronomical instruments such as the quadrant and sextant, a universal astrolabe invented by Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī known as the Saphaea in Europe, the "observation tube" (without lens) which influenced the development of the telescope, cobwork (tabya), street lamps, waste containers and waste disposal facilities for litter collection,[ weight-driven mechanical clocks with escapement mechanisms, segmental gears ("a piece for receiving or communicating reciprocating motion from or to a cogwheel, consisting of a sector of a circular gear, or ring, having cogs on the periphery, or face"), distilled alcohol (ethanol) described by Muslim chemists, over 200 surgical instruments described in Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi's Al-Tasrif, explosive compositions of gunpowder, the baculus used for nautical astronomy, and various other technologies. The importation of both the ancient and new technology from the Middle East and the Orient to Renaissance Europe represented “one of the largest technology transfers in world history.”
The Muslim Agricultural Revolution in particular diffused a large number of crops and technologies into medieval Europe, where farming was mostly restricted to wheat strains obtained much earlier via central Asia. Spain received what she in turn transmitted to the rest of Europe; many agricultural and fruit-growing processes, together with many new plants, fruit and vegetables. Introduced crops included sugar cane, rice, citrus fruit, apricots, artichokes, aubergines, and saffron, lemons, oranges, and cotton. Several were later exported from Spanish coastal areas to the Spanish colonies in the New World. Also transmitted via Muslim influence, a silk industry flourished, flax was cultivated and linen exported, and esparto grass, which grew wild in the more arid parts, was collected and turned into various articles.
The industrial production of sugar, clocks, pulp and paper, perfume, silk, and the mining of minerals such as sulfur and ammonia, were transferred from the Islamic world to medieval Europe. Factory installations and a variety of industrial mills (including fulling mills, gristmills, hullers, and sugar mills may have also been transmitted to medieval Europe, along with the suction pump (which also incorporated a crankshaft-connecting rod mechanism) invented by al-Jazari, noria and chain pumps for irrigation purposes. These innovations made it possible for some industrial operations that were previously served by manual labour or draught animals to be driven by machinery in medieval Europe.
Conclusion
In conclusion as concluded by Jenkins (2003), Islam's Golden Age of Science finally ended as the stability and wealth of the Muslim world was shaken by rival powers. European states controlled the Mediterranean trade routes by the 14th century, and the Mongol invasions of the 13th to 15th centuries disrupted trade with China. State patronage of science gave way to military affairs.
Arabs and Moslems were the base of modern science in every sense of the word. They were the pioneers of modem scientific methods. From the Arab-Islamic culture European intellectuals and scholars acquired not only just information. But also they acquired scientific mentality, with all its empirical and inductive character, as they were found in the Arab-Islamic heritage the object of their long-cherished wish; they were, therefore, bent on spreading it.
It was the influence which the Islamic culture had on European Renaissance, culture and sciences which prompted a German thinker and scientist to come out openly with the truth and say: "That flourishing civilization, whose knowledge had enlightened Europe for many centuries, is truly amazing. It is the Arab-Islamic culture who contrived this magnificent civilization."
Still, Muslim science never disappeared. Instead, it reemerged as part of the new body of science developing in Europe as scholars there -- in their turn -- borrowed liberally from Muslim scholars before them.
Islamic contributions to Medieval Europe were numerous, affecting such varied areas as art, architecture, medicine, agriculture, music, language, education, law, and technology. From the 11th to the 13th century, Europe absorbed knowledge from the Islamic civilization. In the early 20th century the musicologist Henry George Farmer wrote that a "growing number of scholars...recognize that the influence of the Muslim civilization as a whole on medieval Europe was enormous in such fields as science, philosophy, theology, literature, aesthetics, than has been recognized." For many historians the contributions from the Islamic world have had a considerable effect on the development of Western civilization and contributed to the achievements of the Renaissance. Their contributions included the rediscovery of ancient classic texts, notably the work of the Greek natural philosopher Aristotle, through retranslations and commentaries from Arabic.
It is well to recall that Islam not only caused Islamic civilization to develop but also enabled the European Renaissance to take root and grow. The time when Islam was most strongly established was also the time when art, culture and literature flourished, whether in Spain or, later, under the Ottomans, the Safavids and the Mughals. Christian Europe was enveloped in darkness until Islam came to the Iberian Peninsula. For centuries Islam fed Greek, Sanskrit and Chinese ideas into Europe. Slowly and steadily Europe began to absorb those ideas. In England, France, Germany and Italy society began to explore literature and art with a new perspective; thus the seeds of the Renaissance were sown.
The manuscript stands as a uniquely important monument to the central role of Jews and Muslims in the spread of knowledge and learning throughout medieval Europe, as well as being possibly the earliest known example of Latin script of any kind written on paper. Sotheby's says that only four other copies of this work are known.
As conquerors [Muslims], their heroism was equaled only by their moderation, and in both, for a time, they excelled the nations with whom they contended. Severed from their native homes, they loved the land given them as they supposed by Allah and strove to embellish it with everything that could administer to the happiness of man. Laying the foundations of their power in a system of wise and equitable laws, diligently cultivating the arts and sciences, and promoting agriculture, manufactures and commerce, they gradually formed an empire unrivaled for its prosperity by any of the empires of Christendom.
The cities of Arabian Spain became the resort of Christian artisans, to instruct themselves in the useful art. The Universities of Toledo, Cordova, Seville, Granada, were sought by the pale student from lands to acquaint himself with the sciences of the Arabs and the treasure lore of antiquity.
We are indebted to the Arabic world not only for arithmetic but also for algebra and trigonometry. Logarithms were invented by a mathematician called Al-Khwarizmi in the 7th century. Test tubes, the compass and the first surgical tools were all pioneered by Muslim inventors. A thousand years ago, it is said, Baghdad had 60 hospitals.
This scientific flowering was accompanied by the establishment of the first universities - or madrassahs. In a madrassah, the sheik or professor taught, literally, from a chair. He was assisted by readers. When the west eventually replicated such places of learning, we borrowed such terms (Wheatley 2000)
In the Middle Ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe, rather than from Europe to Islam as it is today. Only around A.D. 1500 did the net direction of flow begin to reverse
The Muslim expansion into Spain in A.D.1085 brought with it a new world view and new learning previously unknown in Europe, such as the technology of papermaking. The scholars of Islam in Spain also brought with them a vast body of empirical studies in natural science developed by generations of men from traditions ancient and contemporary who all spoke from outside of the narrow world view of the Catholic Church articulated by St. Augustine of Hippo.
Included in the Arabic libraries was a fully developed mathematics of physics and astronomy, and the ancient Greek medical texts of Hippocrates and Galen, as well as the entire body of Aristotle's writings Shatzmiller (1994). The Arabs massive written record of non-Christian discussion included new ideas supported by incontrovertible proofs of evidence or logic, and some of these valid new ideas contradicted outright their corollary forms as taught by the Roman Catholic Church. The recovery of this ancient learning, supplemented by
what the Arabs had gained from the Orient and from their own observations, constituted the intellectual rebirth of Europe. The Theo centric world view of Europe was further
shaken throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as the Europeans who went east to fight in the crusades discovered for themselves that their infidels had a higher civilization.
The Muslims had hospitals, sewers, irrigation, and for battle, heavy artillery in the form of great iron cross bows. In debate, the Muslims were more sensible, with their background in Aristotle. For Europeans, it was the worst form of culture shock: the discovery of their own backwardness. Disease also served to weaken the faith that Christians had the higher power on their side. The armies of the Pope s crusaders were decimated, more by diseases than by Saracen warriors. Taking into account the epidemics of bubonic plague which were also sweeping Europe, the terror of disease reduced the credibility of the Church by introducing pessimism and skepticism of miracles and religion.
As ancient trade networks reopened along the seaways of the Mediterranean because of the bustle of activity under way for the crusades, a coinciding rise of commercial enterprises encouraged a revival of the cash economy, and cities which had been abandoned for centuries were reopened as centres of trade and shipping. Ecclesiastic authority shifted from the Abbots of monastic estates who had limited fixed wealth in the land, to the bishops of those towns which controlled ever-increasing cash flow. The feudal soldier-nobility similarly lost power to the new banking and merchant families of the cities Frost, (1990). Centers of learning opened up in those cities, as in Naples where Saint Thomas of Aquinas went to study. It was at Naples that
Augustine had said that through meditation we gain knowledge of unchanging truth; that divine illumination enables lasting, knowing statements to be made. Aquinas wrote that knowledge depends on sense perception, since senses are the primary source of knowledge. Augustine taught of an agent intellect which acts universally, giving our minds the abstractions of universal truth so that we may understand the truth. Aquinas said it is our own intellect which has the power of abstraction. We don't necessarily depend on God for knowledge, since human reason is autonomous Ahmad Y Hassan (1976). Augustine had it that conscience was the voice of God within, upon which we are directly dependant. Aquinas saw conscience as a natural law flowing
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