THE IMMENSITY of the Muslims’ contributions can best be realised by recapitulating the most significant of theirs activities, considering its postive impact on Europe’s struggle to break the cult of barbarism—the Dark Ages.
Medical Science
SINCE, the science of medicine is important to human welfare, its advancement has been continuous from ancient times to the present day. The contribution of Muslims to this area is immense indeed. Drawing on the medical lore of the Greeks, Persians and Egyptians, the Muslim world eagerly adapted all the available knowledge in this field. Recognising importance of the medical science, the Arabs raised physicians to a high social rank, rewarding them with generous emoluments.
The science of medicine is allied, in the Muslim as in the Hellenistic world, to the study of philosophy, flourished in every caliphate and court of Islamic Empire. The Arab scientists made significant advances in the art of healing, especially in the use of curative drugs. The world’s pharmacopoeia is rich with these discoveries. They established hospitals far and wide and provided medical care to prisoners. They made careful clinical observations of diseases. They did creative work in the field of optics. The greatest contributions of Islamic medical scientists to Europe of the middle Ages, however, were in the encyclopedic field. The Persian Al Razi (Rhazes in Europe: 865-925 A.D.) wrote an important encyclopedia of medicine, Al Havi (Continens). It sums up the knowledge of medicine possessed by the Arabs in the 10th century as gleaned from Greek, Persian and Hindu sources. It was translated and published in Sicily in 1279 A.D.
The greatest of the Muslim encyclopedists was Ibn Sina (Avicenna in Europe: 980-1037 A.D.). One of the world’s great intellects, Avicenna had an encyclopedic mind and a photographic memory. By the age of twenty-one, he had read and absorbed all works in the royal library of the Sultan of Bukhara and presented to the world the final codification of Graeco-Arabic medical thought. Translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the 12th century, this work became the most authoritative medical text of the Middle Ages, taught as a textbook in Europe. The “materia medica” of this Canon contains some seven hundred and sixty drugs. From the 12th to 17th centuries, this work served as “a medical bible” in the West and it is still in occasional use in the Muslim East.
The medical doctrines of Galen, greatest of Greek physicians, as improved upon by the Arabs, dominated Europe through the Middle Ages. As the Renaissance brought a new awakening of the human intellect, Europe which had been stimulated by its contacts with Islamic culture proceeded on its own energy and initiative towards those discoveries that had affected the health and longevity of man upon this planet.
Chemistry
THE ARABS, upon the conquest of Alexandria in 642 A.D., fell heir to all the science of ancient Egypt as developed and reconstructed by the brilliant Hellenes of the Alexandrian period. The Egyptians had done more in the development of what is now called chemistry than any other race of ancient or classic times. The Muslims, picking up the applied science from the Alexandrians, expanded it and handed it on to Europe. The Arabic apethep of this science was ‘al-chemr’ that was ‘alcehmy’ to medievalists of Europe.
Up to the Renaissance, alchemy and chemistry were synonymous. The most important discoveries in the field of chemistry were those made by the alchemist in his search for a formula for converting baser metals into gold. In this search for the magical creation of gold and in their researches in materia medica, the Arab chemists developed formulas for making three chief mineral acids—nitric acid, sulphuric acid and hydrochloric acid—used in the modern world. They discovered the arts of distillation, oxidation and crystallization, also making of alcohol.
In this science, as in others, Muslims developed an objective approach and experimental method as opposed to the purely speculative method of the Greeks. Europe was indebted for all of its beginnings in alchemy and chemistry to the chemical science of the Arabs, which they accessed through translations of Arabic works into Latin.
The father of Arabic chemistry and its greatest genius was Jabir (Geber). He made significant advances in the theory and practice ofhis science, developing new methods for evaporation and sublimation perfecting the process of crystallisation. Translatios of his works in Latin exerted a tremendous influence in Europe until the beginning of modern chemistry.
Astronomy, Geography And Navigation
THE ARABS absorbed all the astronomical, geographical and navigational science and skill of the ancient world and set about formulating it into a practicable body of knowledge. Accepting the contention of Eristosthenes and other Greek geographers that the earth is round, the Arabs established correctly its circumference and measured quite accurately length of terrestial degrees. They devised the world’s tables of latitude and longitude and worked out means of determining positions.
Navigation in the Mediterranean required only starlore. Something more was needed for navigation in the Atlantic Ocean. Muslims borrowed this something more, ‘the compass’, from Chinese and ‘the astorabe’ from Greeks. (Astrolabe is an instrument used for mappign position of stars for navigational purposes.) The
Arabs were expert navigators. For millennia, they had boldly traversed the Indian Ocean in quest of trade with India and with the east coast of Africa. They dominated the Mediterranean Sea for about five centuries. They had anticipated Columbus in venturing into the Atlantic, as far perhaps as the Azores.
It was under the tutelage of these skilled Arab navigators that Prince Henry, ‘the Navigator’, trained his sailers, soon claiming for Portugal the best seamen and the fastest ships in Europe. Portuguese navigators became the foremost masters of nautical science of their day, possessing the most exact instruments then known. It was in Portugal and on the newly won Portuguese islands of Madeira and the Azores that Columbus studied navigation. There, the explorer sought information before setting out from Spain to find the seaway to India.
Ibn Battutah was the gretest Muslim traveller who trversed around 120,000 kilometers from Morocco to North Africa, Egypt, Arabia, Yeman, Asia Minor, Cimea, Central Asia, Byzantium, Bulgaria, Persia, to India, China, Ceylon and Sumarta back to Spain via Syria and Morroco in 1349 A.D.
It is safe to say that Columbus would never have ventured forth over the Atlantic or even have conceived the idea of such a voyage without these navigational skills, which the Arabs bequeathed him, and without the revival of the Greek concept of a round earth,which the Arabs restored to Europe.
The Decimal System
THE INTRODUCTION of Arabic-Hindu symbols for numerals and of positional notation (the decimal system), eabling today’s elementary school children to perform operations beyond the capacities of learned mathematicians of Greek, Roman and medieval times.
To the Arabs belongs the credit for perserving the useful ‘zero’ from the heart of India, putting it to work in elaboration of the decimal system, without which the achievements of modern science would have been impossible.
It was the Hindu philosophic genius that first conceived the idea that ‘nothing’, represented by ‘zero’, could have any mathematical value. Furhter, the value of less than nothing could be indicated algebraically as negative quantities. Working on Hindu foundations, the Arabs elaborated which has become the present-day decimal system. They also introduced the Arab numerals, that is, an adaptation of the ten Hindu digits, which gradually displaced the clumsy Greek symbols and the impossible Roman numerals.
The seven centuries beginning with 800 A.D. saw a development of computational mathematics with the Islamic intellectual and logical community, surpassing achievements of the past. The use of the decimal system spread gradually into Europe through the work of Leonardo of Pisa, a Latin Christian lived for years in North Africa, where he picked up the Arabic system of numerals and the use of decimals. Leonardo’s work, as the Oxford History of Technology observers, was the most important western work by a European in which the system of numerals, then long in use by Arabic-speaking craftsmen and merchants, was expounded for technical and commercial use in the west. It took Europe three hundred years, however, to fully accept and become adept in the use of the decimal system.
Algebra
THE SCIENCE of algebra owes much to the gifted mathematicians of the Islamic era of poliical ascendancy. Its very name proves the magnitude of this debt. For the name Algebra is derived from an Arabic ‘al-gebr’ (a binding together). Though of Greek origin, algebra was greatly expanded by Muslim mathematicians. From about 800 to 1200 A.D., the Arabs evolved a more critical study of equations giving them for the first time some element of scientific treatment. Algebra was then furhter handed on to Europe via Spain and Sicily.
Paper
THE INTRODUCTION OF PAPER into the Muslim and European world was made possible when Arab conquerors overran Asia and Africa in the eighth century. In 751 A.D., Chinese attacked the Arabs in Samarkand. The attack was repulsed and the governor came across ‘paper’. The governor, eagerly questioning captives taken in the battle, learned that among them were men skilled in papermaking. These artisans were sent to Persia and to Egypt to give instruction in the art of manufacturing paper from flax, rags and vegetable fibres.
The unusual interest of the Arab world in papermaking was perhaps due to the fact that they were already acquainted with Egyptian ‘papyrus’ that dispalced the use of costly parchments for manuscripts and books. The methods used in manufacturing paper and papyrus were somewhat similar, escept the suprirotiy of paper for printing. Thereafter, paper found its way westward from China where it had been invented before the time of the Christ.
Papermaking was introduced into Spain in the 12th century. From Toledo, hub of paper manufacturing, it spread under the tutelage of the Moors to the Christian kingdoms of Spain. Similarly, the Muslims in Sicily taught the art of paper-making to the Italians. The earliest recorded European document on paper was order of King Roger of Sicily, 1102 A.D.. Paper mills were first set up at Fabriano, Italy, in 1276 A.D.. Bestowed with paper, Europe thus was prepared for the prodcuing volumerous books and literature in large quantities with the invetion of printing press around 1440 A.D.
Gunpowder
THE ARABS also learned from the Chinese the manufacturin go gunpowder. Howver, they put it to a use the Chinese had never conceived of. They utilised the explosive power of gunpowder for projecting a missile from an enclosed chamber. The first effective cannon was made in Egypt sometime in the 12th century. Made of wood bound with bands of metal, it discharged stone-balls. By themiddle of the 15th century, Muslims had improved the cannon so that it was employed besigign and capturing Constantinople.
The origin of small arms, the arquebus for instnace, is shrouded in the mists of historical uncertainty. The earliest important use of the arquebus was in Cortez’s conquest of Mexico, 1519-20 A.D.. In Europe, it was first used in the Italian wars of 1522 A.D. by a corps of Spanish arquebusiers.
It would appear likely, then, that small-arms originated in Spain. Some historians place its appearance as early as 1300 A.D. No connection has yet been traced between the invention and development of linght weaponary n Spain and the invention and development of the cannon. But if the small-arm originated in Spain
during a cultural period, which was Arabic-Islamic, the presumption is that it was developed logically from the Arab’s previous use of gunpowder as an explosive. Moreover, the word arquebus suggests Arabic derivation.
Textiles.
The clothing worn by Europeans during the Dark Ages and most of the Medieval period was as crude as their diet was meagre. The Goths had graduated, it is true, from skins and furs to coarse clothing woven of wool and linen. The Crusaders brought back glowing accounts of the rich fabrics of the East. Soon these fabrics became a part of the regular trade building up between the port cities of Italy and the cities of the Near East. Better still, the Moors of Spain and Sicily taught the Christians of those countries their skills in textiles and taught them cultivatino of the silkworms for the production of silk.
As a result of this Arabic influence, Renaissance Europe blossomed out in delicate and lovely fabrics of delightful textures and hues, hitherto unknown to the sombre races of north Europe.
Agricultural Products
THE DIET of Medieval Europe was monotonous. It consisted chiefly of meats and bread (washed with wine, beer or ale), leeks, garlic and onions, cabbage and a few root vegetables such as carrots and beets and fruits native to Europe. The Crusaders were naturally envious of the rich and delicate tables set by the Saracens: rice cooked in many ways, served with lamb-leg or chicken; lentils and other vegetables cooked appetisingly in olive oil, and; delicious sweetmeats or fruits unknown to Europe. Rice made a welcome addition to the diet. The new foods gradually entered Europe via Spain and Sicily. Cultivation of small fruits, suhc as cherries, peaches, apricots and gooseberries, introduced to Europe by the Arabs stimulated the European appetite.
Coffee is yet anothr addition to the diet of Christendom that cheers but does not inebriate. As alcoholic drinks were prohibited to them, the Muslims found that they could derive a comparable enchantment from imbibing coffee made of fine powdered grounds brought to a quick boil and sipped piping hot. Those who have indulged in the East in this form of ‘dolce far niente’ can appreciate what coffee has meant to that Muslim world from which alcohol has been debarred for about thirteen centuries.
Coffee was introduced in Vienna in the 17th century from Yeman, its place of origin. Soon famous coffee-houses sprang up all over in Europe. The Dutch managed to smuggle the prohibited coffee plant to Java where it was extensively cultivated. Enterprising British made fortunes by raising it in Jamaica.
Sugar, which originated in India about the beginning of the Christian era was so popular that its cultivation soon spread from India eastward into China and westward into Persia. Learning from the Persians in the 10th century, the Arabs raised it extensively in Syria, Spain and Sicily. The Egyptians, believing sugar to have
medicinal qualities, invented methods of refining it chemically. The Crusaders developed in the East a taste for sugar and introduced it to Christendom. For years Venice conducted a lively trade in sugar,
trans-shipping it from Syria to Europe.
