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.
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 most important contribution is the Scientific Method which Muslims invented and the credit has wrongly been given to Francis Bacon. Bacon was simply translating books from Arabic.
15. The Greeks are said to have invented algebra but according to Oelsner, it was confined to furnishing amusements "for the plays of the Goblet." The Muslims applied it to higher purpose.
16. Under Caliph Mamun, "Muslims discovered equations of the second degree, and very soon after they developed the theory of quadratic equations and the binomial theorem."
17. Muslims invented spherical trigonometry; they were the first to apply algebra to geometry, to introduce the tangent, and to substitute the sine for the arc in trigonometrical calculations. [For reference Carra De Vaux's "Legacy of Islam.]
18. Al-Nasavi is the author of Almugna Fil Hissab Al-Kindi" short extracts of which were published by F. Woepeke in the journal Asiatique in 1863. His arithmetic explains the division of fractions and the extraction of square and cubic roots in an almost modern manner. He introduces the decimal system in place of sexagesimal system.
19. "Abu Zakariya Muhammad Al-Hissar who probably lived in the 12th century A.D. is the author of "Kitab-ussaghir-fil-hissab." One of his important sections was translated and published by H. Suter in 1901. Al-Hissar was the first mathematician who started writing fractions in their present form with a horizontal line. A commentary on his treatise on arithmetic, written by Ibn al-Banna, gained much popularity and was published in French by A. Marre in 1864 and reprinted in Rome in 1865."
20. Al-Khwarizmi is considered the founder of Algebra and developed it to an exceptionally high degree. He also gives geometric solutions of quadratic equations. Robert Chester was the first to translate his book into Latin in 1145 A.D. which introduced Algebra into Europe. "In the 18th century Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa...says he owed a great deal to the Arabs...Leonardo enumerates the six cases of quadratic equations just as Al-Khwarizmi gives them." Khwarizmi's trigonometric tables which deal with the sine and tangent were translated into Latin by Adelard of Bath.
21. Omar Khayyam wrote a book called "Mushkilat-i-Hisab" dealing with complicated arithmetic problems, which has been preserved in Munich (Germany). A greater part of his work to devoted to "cubic equations and his work includes an "admirable classification of equations based on the number and different terms which they include. He recognizes thirteen terms different forms of cubic and quadratic equations by the conic section method..."
22. Abul Kamil improved upon the work of Khwarizmi. "He dealt with quadratic equations,multiplication and division of algebraic qualities, additions and subtractions of radicals and the algebraic treatment of pentagons and decagons."
23. Abu Bakr Karkhi wrote a treatise on algebra known as "Al-Fakhri." It was published by Woepeke in Paris in 1853 A.D.
24. Famous brothers Muhammad, Ahmad and Hasan, sons of Musa bin Shakir wrote an excellent book on geometry which was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona, and into German by M. Kurtaza.
25. Abul Wafa Al-Buzjani (940-997, 998 A.D.) is the author of "Kitab al-Hindusa." According to H. Suter, It had a large number of geometrical problems for the fundamental construction of plane
geometry to the construction of the corners of a regular polyhedron on the circumscribed sphere; of special interest is the fact that a number of these problems are solved by a single span of the compass, a condition which we find for the first time."
26. "The notion of trigonometrical ratios, which is now prevalent, owes its birth to the mathematical talents of Al-Battani. The third chapter, of his astronomical work, dealing with trigonometry, was several times translated into Latin and Spanish languages."
27. Jabir Bin Afiah is the author of celebrated book, "Kitab Elahia," which deals with astronomy and trigonometry. "His book is noteworthy for preparing the astronomical part with a special chapter on trigonometry. In his spherical trigonometry he takes the rule of the four magnitudes as the foundation for the deviations of his formulae and gives for the first time the fifth main formula of the right angled triangle." His work was translated in Latin by Gerard of Crimean.
28. Abul Wafa (939-997 A.D.) author of "Zijush Shamil" (consolidated tables) popularized the use of the secant and tangent in trigonometry." According to Sedillot, "This was not all. Struck by the imperfection of the lunar theory of Ptolmey, he verified the ancient observations, and discovered, independently of the equation of the center and the eviction, a third inequality, which is no other than the variation determined six centuries later by Tycho Brahe." He also studied the quadrature of parabola and the volume of paraboloid. According to G. Sarton, "Abul Wafa contributed.
List compiled from: Yahoo! Answers U.S. and Yahoo! Answers UK
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