Following the fall of the Roman Empire, a period known as the Middle or Dark Ages descended over Europe. It is during this time that scientific thought flourished in the Middle East.

Under the patronage of the great Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates to name a few, Muslims distinguished themselves as scientific scholars and contributed immense gains in virtually all fields of science. From soap-making to surgical procedures, from the system of numbers we use to that delicious warm brown substance we all know as coffee, the ancient inventors from the Islamic world did more than their share in paving the way towards the progress of civilization as we know it. Few of us realize their contribution even as we benefit today from their creativity and practicality. Checking accounts, clocks, fountain pens, soft drinks are just some of the practical innovations we take for granted. On a more scientific level, the strides in mathematics, medicine, astronomy and chemistry, to name a few, established foundations upon which modern medicine, chemistry and physics are based on.

A new exhibition running at the Science Museum in Manchester titled ‘1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World’ aims to put the record straight on  a 1000 years of missing Muslim heritage. “The extent to which Muslims have contributed to Western Civilisation is generally not well known,” says Prof. Al-Hassani, chairman of the Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation. “Yet these ancient scholars from the Islamic world gave us many of the everyday things we use today such as coffee, soap and clocks. This exhibition shows that Muslims have always shared the heritage that provides a platform for developments that makes the Western World tick.”

Although 1000 years is a lot to cover, here are just a few examples of the ingenuity and practicality that were given to us by the Islamic world hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

> Qahwa, or Coffee. Arab traders introduced qahwah beans from the districts of Kaffa and Buno, in Ethiopia and began the first true cultivation of the plants in the Arabian Peninsula sometime between 1000 to 1500 years ago. The main center of qahwah production was the port city of Mocha, Yemen. Qahve imported from Yemen was a popular strong brew with the Turks who served the drink to visiting Italian merchants. Arriving in Mecca and Turkey in the late 15th century, it made its way to Venice in 1645 and to England in 1650. The first coffeehouses were opened in Mecca and were called ‘kaveh kanes’. They quickly spread throughout the Arab world and became successful places where an early game of chess was played, which evolved into a game we know today.

> In Europe, when bathing was considered bad for your health, it was an Islamic ritual to bathe and wash regularly. Arabs originated the general recipe for soap: vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and aromatic oils which we still use today.

> Algebra which comes from the Arabic word “al-jabr” which means “restoration of balance” in both sides of the equation. In the ninth century, Al-Khwarizmi wrote one of the first Arabic algebras with both proofs and examples. Because of his work, he is called “the Father of Algebra.” He converted (changed) Babylonian and Hindu numerals into a workable system that almost anyone could use. Moreover, “zero” is an invaluable addition made to mathematical science by Muslims.

While European “hospitals” at this time were usually simply monasteries where the sick were told they would live or die according to God’s will, Muslim hospitals pioneered the practices of diagnosis, treatment, and future prevention. They offered the best care possible free of charge and provided treatment for whomever came in 24 hours a day. The first hospital in the Islamic world was built in Damascus in 707, and soon most major Islamic cities had hospitals, in which hygiene was emphasized and healing was a priority. Later, the Abbasid ruler established a central hospital was established in Baghdad,  the first of thirty-four hospitals throughout the Muslim world, many of them with special wards for women and even a section for the insane. Travelling clinics with adequate supplies of medicines toured the countryside, and others paid regular visits to the jails.

El Zahrawi (albucasis) known as the father of surgery gave us a medical encyclopaedia of 30 volumes including sections on surgery, medicine, pharmacology, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, etc.  His most famous treatise is the one on surgery where he illustrates approximately 200 instruments used during surgery, most of which were invented by him and are still in use today.

Chemistry. Jabir Ibn Haiyan, known in Europe by the name Geber, is generally known as the Father of Chemistry. He wrote twenty-two books on chemistry and alchemy where he emphasized experimentation and development of methods to show the same result when an experiment was repeated. He developed basic chemical methods and the study of various chemical reactions and thus helped to develop chemistry as a science and away from the legends and “magic” of alchemy.

The pendulum was discovered by Ibn Yunus Al-Masri during the 10th century, who was the first to study and document its oscillatory motion. Its value for use in clocks was introduced by Muslim physicists during the 15th century.

Muslim physicians introduced the anaesthetic values of opium derivatives during the Middle Ages, and were the first to perform surgeries under anaesthesia. They use d sponges soaked with the opium narcotics placed over the patient’s face 600 years before the first documented inhalation anaesthesia surgery appeared in the West. Similarly while the scientific use of antiseptics in surgery wasn’t discovered in the West until 1865, Muslim physicians and surgeons were applying purified alcohol as early as the 10th century to wounds as an antiseptic agent.

Muslim astronomers made numerous improvements upon Ptolemy’s findings as early as the 9th century. They were the first astronomers to dispute his archaic ideas and show that the sun is the center of the solar system and that the orbits of the planets around it might be elliptical. 500 years before Galileo, Ibn Hazim argued that the Earth was round and his calculation of the earth’s circumference was off by less than 200km. Additionally, they produced hundreds of highly accurate astronomical tables and star charts and many of their calculations are so precise that they are regarded as contemporary. The Alphonsine Tables, i.e. Toledo Tables, are little more than copies of works on astronomy transmitted to Europe via Islamic Spain.

Windmills were another invention of the Muslim world. During the reign of Caliph Ummar (634-44), Muslims began the use of wind as a source of power and became widely used to run mill stones for grinding corn and to draw up water for irrigation. In Europe the oldest text in relation to windmills dates back to 1105.

The field of modern optics was developed to its highest degree by Ibn al-Haitham and he is often referred to as the “Father of Optics”. He was the first to formulate the idea that sight worked by light entering the eye and not vice versa as was believed by the Greek scholars of the time. In addition his invention of the pin hole camera is just one of the real and lasting advances that stand to his credit in this department of science. His greatest work is the “Book of Optics” or the “Kitab-ul-Manazir” and is quoted by a greater number of European scholars in the 16th and 17th centuries than those of Newton and Galileo combined.

The fountain pen was first commissioned by the Sultan of Egypt in 953 because he wanted a pen which wouldn’t stain his clothes and his hands. As a result the first modern pen was made which had a reservoir which held ink and fed it gradually to the nib.

In order to avoid carrying money through dangerous places, the Moslems invented a saqq, a note promising payment upon delivery of goods. It was these cheques that allowed Muslims to draw upon their money should they need it when doing business.

“Arabic” numerals, which were influenced by India’s mathematics was a system based on place values and a decimal system of tens. The Roman system which used numbers, like I, V, X, L, C, M, etc. made addition, subtraction, multiplication and division exceedingly complicated. With Arabic numerals, simple fractions and decimal fractions were now also possible.

There are many achievements and inventions that are note worthy merely because of their importance in our lives today; some are as simple as the three course meal and the soft drink, or carpeting and glass. Others have significance in terms of travel and space such as the telescope, the marine compass, and the astrolabe; others are feats of mechanical ingenuity such as the crank shaft, valves and pistons and first ever combination locks. There are architectural accomplishments still used today such as the pointed arch, dome building techniques and so forth. Needless to say the list is long and in attempting to write it all down, one could use every page of this journal. Perhaps the best way to conclude is to point out the greatest contribution of these old Muslim scholars, and one that isn’t so easily seen, was their ability to assimilate and build on the knowledge of the great civilizations before them.

A great deal of ancient history of Europe and the great works of ancient Greek philosophers exist today because it was the Arab scholars who translated them and elaborated on them. It was this knowledge, preserved and nurtured by the Muslims during Europe’s Dark Ages that eventually gave rise to the scientific revival in the West that was to shape our modern world and our understanding of it. Having said this, it would be difficult to deny the vital role the Moslems played in the “miracle of science”.  

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For further information on Jelena Petrovic, please visit http://www.1001inventions.com