28 things Muslim's have done to make the world a better place!
From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has
given us many innovations that we take for granted in daily life. As a
new exhibition opens, Paul Vallely nominates 20 of the most influential-
and identifies the men of genius behind them:
1. Coffee!
The story goes that an Arab named Khalid was tending his goats in the
Kaffa region of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals became
livelier after eating a certain berry. He boiled the berries to make the
first coffee. Certainly the first record of the drink is of beans
exported from Ethiopia to Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake all
night to pray on special occasions.
2. Pin-Hole Camera
The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which
enabled us to see. The first person to realise that light enters the
eye, rather than leaving it, was the 10th-century Muslim mathematician,
astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole
camera a
3. The Game of Chess!
A form of chess was played in ancient India but the game was developed
into the form we know it today in Persia. From there it spread westward
to Europe – where it was introduced by the Moors in Spain in the 10th
century – and eastward as far as Japan. The word rook comes from the
Persian rukh, which means chariot.
4. The Parachute
A thousand years before the Wright brothers a Muslim poet, astronomer,
musician and engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas made several attempts to
construct a flying machine. In 852 he jumped from the minaret of the
Grand Mosque in Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden
struts. He hoped to glide like a bird. He didn’t. But the cloak slowed
his fall, creating what is thought to be the first parachute, and
leaving him with only minor injuries.
5. Shampoo
Washing and bathing are religious requirements for Muslims, which is
perhaps why they perfected the recipe for soap which we still use today.
The ancient Egyptians had soap of a kind, as did the Romans who used it
more as a pomade. But it was the Arabs who combined vegetable oils with
sodium hydroxide and aromatics such as thyme oil.
6. Distillation & Refinement
Distillation, the means of separating liquids through differences in
their boiling points, was invented around the year 800 by Islam’s
foremost scientist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, who transformed alchemy into
chemistry, inventing many of the basic processes and apparatus still in
use today – liquefaction, crystallisation, distillation, purification,
oxidisation, evaporation and filtration.
7. Crank Shaft
The crank-shaft is a device which translates rotary into linear motion
and is central to much of the machinery in the modern world, not least
the internal combustion engine. One of the most important mechanical
inventions in the history of humankind, it was created by an ingenious
Muslim engineer called al-Jazari to raise water for irrigation.
8. Metal Armor
Quilting is a method of sewing or tying two layers of cloth with a layer
of insulating material in between. It is not clear whether it was
invented in the Muslim world or whether it was imported there from India
or China.
9. Pointed Arch
The pointed arch so characteristic of Europe’s Gothic cathedrals was an
invention borrowed from Islamic architecture. It was much stronger than
the rounded arch used by the Romans and Normans, thus allowing the
building of bigger, higher, more complex and grander buildings. Other
borrowings from Muslim genius included ribbed vaulting, rose windows and
dome-building techniques. Europe’s castles were also adapted to copy
the Islamic world’s – with arrow slits, battlements, a barbican and
parapets. Square towers and keeps gave way to more easily defended round
ones. Henry V’s castle architect was a Muslim.
10. Surgery
Many modern surgical instruments are of exactly the same design as those
devised in the 10th century by a Muslim surgeon called al-Zahrawi.
11. Windmill
The windmill was invented in 634 for a Persian caliph and was used to
grind corn and draw up water for irrigation. In the vast deserts of
Arabia, when the seasonal streams ran dry, the only source of power was
the wind which blew steadily from one direction for months. Mills had
six or 12 sails covered in fabric or palm leaves. It was 500 years
before the first windmill was seen in Europe.
12. Vaccination
The technique of inoculation was not invented by Jenner and Pasteur but
was devised in the Muslim world and brought to Europe from Turkey by the
wife of the English ambassador to Istanbul in 1724. Children in Turkey
were vaccinated with cowpox to fight the deadly smallpox at least 50
years before the West discovered it.
13. Fountain Pen
The fountain pen was invented for the Sultan of Egypt in 953 after he
demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes. It held ink
in a reservoir and, as with modern pens, fed ink to the nib by a
combination of gravity and capillary action.
14. Numerical Numbering
The system of numbering in use all throughout history, math, geometry, accounting, space flight.
