The race of civilizations (II)

In the race of civilizations, the Muslim world today like the symbolic Nigeria in the cartoon, is first from behind even though Muslim scientists and philosophers were the link through which Greek science passed to the West. Modern scientists couldn’t have actually broken any grounds in science and technology without the translation works of Arab […]

In the race of civilizations, the Muslim world today like the symbolic Nigeria in the cartoon, is first from behind even though Muslim scientists and philosophers were the link through which Greek science passed to the West. Modern scientists couldn’t have actually broken any grounds in science and technology without the translation works of Arab scholars.
If Sibawayhi, the great eighth century pioneering Arabist of the Basra school of grammarians were to be alive today and asked to syntactically analyze the contemporary Muslim world, his response in Arabic would likely be, “La mahalla laha min al-i‘rab” approximately meaning “Nigeria lacks any (expressive) position for analysis”.
The world after the fall of Rome saw the emergence of Muslim civilization among the Arabs of Arabia. With capital at Baghdad, the Muslim world during the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid (reigned 786-809) is described by the united opinion of history and legend as the most brilliant period of intellectualism. Baghdad in the ninth century became “a city with no peer throughout the world”. Muslim science, philosophy, and mathematics, based largely on the achievement of the ancient Greek, made brilliant contributions to knowledge at a time when Latin Christendom had lost much of Greco-Roman thought and culture.
By translating Greek works into Arabic and commenting on them, Muslim scholars performed the enormous historical task of preserving the philosophic and scientific heritage of Greek philosophers and scientists; a body of knowledge they equally passed on to Christian Europe. The most celebrated of all translators of Greek scientific works in to Arabic was Hunayn bn Ishaq al-‘Abadi (d. 877). Many of the early Arab philosophers were influenced by Aristotelian theories through their study of Greek scientific materials. They include Abu Yusuf Ya’qub bn Ishaq al-Kindi (d. after 873) commonly known as “the philosopher of the Arabs; Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi (d. 950); Ibn Sina (or Avicenna d. 1037) and Ibn Rushdi (or Averoes d. 1198).
The era of translation (750-850) laid the literary foundation that did not only help the Arabs to assimilate the classical heritage of Greece but equally influenced their ways of thinking. Apart from being translators of Greek works, Arab scholars carried on with original thinking and research; adding new dimensions to the already established theories and concepts. Their works were transmitted together with their contributions to Europe through Syria, Spain and Sicily; laying the basis of knowledge that dominated medieval European thought.
Scholars (Arabs and Persians) of the ninth through to the twelfth century left intellectual foot prints in many areas of knowledge. Hunayn bn Ishaq’s “Ashr Maqalat fi ‘Ayn” is described as the earliest existing text-book on ophthalmology. Other scholars include Jabir bn Hayyan, father of Arabic alchemy; and Abubakar Muhammad bn Zakariya al-Razi (or Rhazes) who authored several pharmacological works. His treatise “al-Judari wal Hasbah” is among several others considered as the first clinical account of small pox. Al-Razi’s most important work, al-Hawi, was first translated into Latin in 1279.
Ibn Sina’s al-Qanun fil-Tibb translated in to Latin in the twelfth century and published in Rome in 1583 became the text-book for medical education in the schools of Europe; passing through fifteen Latin editions in the last thirty years of the fifteenth century. Al-Biruni (973-1050) made his mark in astronomy in the same way al-Khawarizmi is credited with the oldest work on algebra. Al-Khawarizmi’s works were responsible for the introduction in to the West of the Arabic numerals called algorithms after him.
The ancient Greek thought our eyes emitted rays like a laser, which enables us to see. The first person to realize that light enters the eye, rather than leaving it, was the tenth century Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haytham. He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better the picture, he worked out, and set up the first camera obscura (from the Arabic word qamara for a dark or private room).
Many modern surgical instruments are of exactly the same design as those devised in the tenth century by a Muslim surgeon called al-Zahrawi. His scalpels, bone saws, forceps, fine scissors for eye surgery and many of the 200 instruments he devised are recognizable to a modern surgeon. It was he who discovered that catgut for internal stitches dissolves away naturally (a discovery he made when his monkey ate his lute strings). In the thirteenth century, another Muslim medic named Ibn Nafis described the circulation of the blood, 300 years before William Harvey discovered it.
A thousand years before the Wright brothers; a Muslim poet, astronomer, musician and engineer named Abbas bn Firnas made several attempts to construct a flying machine. In 852, he jumped from a minaret from the Grand Mosque in Cordova 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. In 875, aged 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles’ feather, he tried again and jumped from a mountain. He flew to a significant height and stayed aloft for ten minutes but crashed on landing; concluding that it was because he had not given his device a tail to make it stall on landing.
The third and concluding part of the discourse comes up next week insha Allah. May Allah (SWT) guide us to distinguish and do that which is right, amin.