Science in the Islamic Golden Age: An Overview by Historians
The Islamic Golden Age is one of the most important periods in the history of science and technology, and its importance is best represented by those who study it. This article presents the writings of historians and scholars from the time of the Enlightenment to the current day, in order to give an accurate representation of this period.
A General Overview
Robert Briffault (d. 1948), the famous British social anthropologist, in his major work of history, The Making of Humanity, writes:
The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories ; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence. The ancient world was, as we saw, pre- scientific. The astronomy and mathematics of the Greeks were a foreign importation never thoroughly acclimatized in Greek culture. The Greeks systematized, generalized and theorized, but the patient ways of investigation, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute methods of science, detailed and prolonged observation, experimental inquiry, were altogether alien to the Greek temperament. Only in Hellenistic Alexandria was any, approach to scientific work conducted in the ancient classical world. What we call science arose in Europe as a result of a new spirit of inquiry, of new methods of investigation, of the method of experiment, observation, measurement, of the development of mathematics in a form unknown to the Greeks. That spirit and those methods were introduced into the European world by the Arabs [1].
He continues:
Science is the most momentous contribution of Arab civilization to the modern world, but its fruits were slow in ripening. Not until long after Moorish culture had sunk back into darkness did the giant to which it had given birth rise in his might. It was not science which brought Europe back to life. Other and manifold Influences from the civilization of Islam communicated its first glow to European life [2].
George Sarton (d. 1956), considered to be the founder father of the history of science being its own academic discipline, writes in his landmark book Introduction to the History of Science:
From the second half of the eighth to the end of the eleventh century, Arabic was the scientific, the progressive language of mankind. When the West was sufficiently mature to feel the need of deeper knowledge, it turned its attention, first of all, not to the Greek sources, but to the Arabic ones [3].
Sarton also writes:
It will suffice here to evoke a few glorious names without contemporary equivalents in the West: Jabir ibn Haiyan, al-Kindi, al-Khwarizmi, al-Fargani, al-Razi, Thabit ibn Qurra, al-Battani, Hunain ibn Ishaq, al-Farabi, Ibrahim ibn Sinan, al-Masudi, al-Tabari, Abul Wafa, ‘Ali ibn Abbas, Abul Qasim, Ibn al-Jazzar, al-Biruni, Ibn Sina, Ibn Yunus, al-Kashi, Ibn al-Haitham, ‘Ali Ibn ‘Isa al-Ghazali, al-Zarqab, Omar Khayyam — a magnificent array of names which would not be difficult to extend. If anyone tells you that the Middle Ages were scientifically sterile, just quote these men to him, all of whom flourished within a short period, 750 to 1100 A.D [3].
Adam Smith (d. 1790), the Enlightenment philosopher considered to be the father of economics and capitalism, also composed major works on the history of science and philosophy, in which he wrote:
The ruin of the empire of the Romans, and, along with it, the subversion of all law and order, which happened a few centuries afterwards, produced the entire neglect of that study of the connecting principles of nature, to which leisure and security can alone give occasion. After the fall of those great conquerors and civilizers of mankind, the empire of the Califfs* seems to have been the first state under which the world enjoyed that degree of tranquillity which the cultivation of the sciences requires. It was under the protection of those generous and magnificent princes, that the ancient philosophy and astronomy of the Greeks were restored and established in the East; that tranquillity, which their mild, just, and religious government diffused over their vast empire, revived the curiosity of mankind, to inquire into the connecting principles of nature. The fame of the Greek and Roman learning, which was then recent in the memories of men, made them desire to know, concerning these abstruse subjects, what were the doctrines of the so much renowned sages of those two nations [4].
*Caliph is spelled as Califf.
The historians of science Jan P. Hogendijk and Abdelhamid I. Sabra state:
Between AD 800 and 1450, the most important centers for the study of what we now call “the exact sciences” were located in the vast multinational Islamic world. The sciences denoted by this name included the mathematical sciences of arithmetic, geometry and trigonometry, and their applications in various fields such as astronomy, astrology, geography, cartography, and optics, to mention only some of the more prominent examples. During the eighth and ninth centuries, the bulk of Greek science, medicine and philosophy, and much of Indian and pre-Islamic Persian science, were appropriated by Islamic civilization through a complex process of translations from Pahlavi, Sanskrit, Greek, and Syriac, in the course of which Arabic became the language of a rich and active scientific and philosophical tradition for many centuries. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, many Arabic scientific works and Arabic versions of Greek scientific and philosophical texts were translated into Latin, and in turn were appropriated into the Latin medieval culture. These translations were crucial for the rise of the “renaissance of the twelfth century” in Europe and they later played an important part in the development of the exact sciences during the Renaissance of the sixteenth century [5].
Medicine
The historians of medicine Peter E. Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith assert that the origins of early modern Western medicine are Islamic:
The medical tradition that developed in the lands of Islam during the medieval period has, like few others, influenced the fates and fortunes of countless human beings. It is the story of contact and cultural exchange across countries and creeds, affecting caliphs, kings, courtiers, courtesans, and the common crowd. In addition to being fascinating in its own right, medieval Islamic medicine is also important because of its influence on Europe where it formed the roots from which modem Western medicine arose. To be sure, the earlier Graeco-Roman scholarly medical literature was the stem from which much Islamic medicine grew, just as, several centuries later, Islamic medicine was to be at the core of late medieval and early modem European medical education …. Late medieval and early Renaissance European medical education owed much to the medieval Islamic medical tradition. In fact the debt was so great that the history of medieval Islamic medicine is in essence the history of the origins of early modern Western medicine… Yet the origins of the approaches and methodology of modem Western medicine can be traced in large part to medieval Islamic medicine (in its Latin garb), while the institutionalisation of both teaching and the provision of medical care was foreshadowed by Islamic institutions [6].
Donald Campbell (d. 1949), an early 20th-century historian of medicine, discusses how Arabic medicine provided many of the foundations for later Western medicine, such as developing the application of chemistry to medicine, as well as elevating medicine to a learned profession:
The great interest of Arabian Medicine and Science centres on the fact that while Europe was in its Dark Age, the Caliphs of Baghdad and Cordova endowed and fostered education among their subjects (Mahomedan and “unbeliever”) to the extent that in the latter city, which enjoyed a “golden age” analogous to that of Ancient Greece, every boy and girl of twelve was able to read and write, and this at a time when the barons and ladies of Christendom were scarcely able to write their names.
The Arabians raised the dignity of the medical profession from that of a menial calling to the rank of one of the learned professions; they were the first to introduce systematically arranged illustrations in their medical writings, and also gave us their system of numbering which has all but replaced the cumbersome Roman numerals. They also developed the science of chemistry as applied to medicine, and considerably improved the art of dispensing by the introduction of such elegant preparations as rose and orange water. To the Arabians we owe the introduction of the idea of the legal control of qualifying examinations for admission to the medical profession, and though the idea of establishing hospitals did not originate with them, they were responsible for the establishment of a large number of these institutions, which they richly endowed [7].
Campbell also discusses the incredible importance of the Muslim scholar al-Zahrawi (Albucasis) to the development of surgery:
Albucasis’ fame among the Arabs was soon surpassed by that of Avicenna, and he was not used to any great extent by the Arabian surgeons: it, however, was the standard textbook on surgery in Europe for several centuries, being translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona as early as the twelfth century.
The chief influence of Albucasis on the medical system of Europe was that his lucidity and method of presentation awakened a prepossession in favour of Arabic literature among the scholars of the West: the methods of Albucasis eclipsed those of Galen and maintained a dominant position in medical Europe for five hundred years, i.e. long after it had passed its usefulness. He, however, helped to raise the status of surgery in Christian Europe; in his book on fractures and luxations, he states that “this part of surgery has passed into the hands of vulgar and uncultivated minds, for which reason it has fallen into contempt”. The surgery of Albucasis became firmly grafted on Europe after the time of Guy de Chauliac (d. 1368) [7].
Leo J. Vandewiele (d. 2004), a Belgian historian of pharmacy, states that pharmacy as a discipline was created by the Arabs:
Pharmacy itself is the only discipline which owes everything to the Arabs, its existence to start with. Greeks and Romans had so-called pharmacopoloi and pharmacopolae, respectively, but they were mere physician’s servants. The physicians, who were not allowed, on the basis of their status, to perform handwork, usually had two servants at their service: one of them, usually a barber expert in handling the razor, was allowed to incise abscesses, to perform amputations and to cauterize the wound with a glowing iron; the other one collected herbs, pressed them out, cooked them etc… under the supervision and responsibility of the physician. Both barbers and pharmacopolae, on the sly, exerted their practices independently. It is well known from the literature that every Roman could obtain a poison, a love or an abortion potion from the pharmacopolae. It were the Arabs who first realized that the simultaneous practices of medicine and pharmacy are incompatible and who decided that pharmacy ought to be practiced by independent and trained responsible persons. They founded schools and opened the first pharmacy in Bagdad in 770. Here also the influence of the Prophet Mohammed was decisive: “0 servant of God, use medicines, as the Lord did not allow pain without a remedy against it”[8].
Robert Briffault writes:
In the hands of Jewish doctors trained in Arab schools, where medical art had been carried far beyond that of the ancients, the practice and teaching of medicine remained throughout the Middle Ages. The pharmacopoeia created by the Arabs is virtually that which, but for the recent synthetic and organotherapic preparations, is in use at the present day ; our common drugs, such as nux vomica, senna, rhubarb, aconite, gentian, myrrh, calomel, and the structure of our prescriptions, belong to Arabic medicine. The medical school of Montpellier was founded on the pattern of that of Cordova under Jew doctors. The example was imitated at Padua and later at Pisa, where together with the Canons of Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and the Surgery of Abu ‘1-Kasim, which until the seventeenth century remained the textbooks of medical science throughout Europe, were taught the mathematics and astronomy of the Moors [9].
Mathematics
The famous historian of mathematics, Victor J. Katz, summarizes the contributions of Islamic mathematicians:
In particular, Islamic mathematicians fully developed the decimal place value number system to include decimal fractions, systematized the study of algebra and began to consider the relationship between algebra and geometry, brought the rules of combinatorics from India and reworked them into an abstract system, studied and made advances on the major Greek geometrical treatises of Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius, and made significant improvements in plane and spherical trigonometry [11].
Raymond Walter Barnard (d. 1962), a professor of mathematics, writes in Encyclopaedia Britannica on the important contributions of Arabic mathematicians to trigonometry, including how they were the first to treat trigonometry as an independent subject:
During the Middle Ages, while Europe was plunged into darkness, the torch of learning was kept alive by Arab and Jewish scholars living in Spain, Mesopotamia, and Persia. The first table of tangents and cotangents was constructed around 860 by Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib (“the Calculator”), who wrote on astronomy and astronomical instruments. Another Arab astronomer, al-Bāttāni (c. 858–929), gave a rule for finding the elevation θ of the Sun above the horizon in terms of the length s of the shadow cast by a vertical gnomon of height h. (For more on the gnomon and timekeeping, see sundial.) Al-Bāttāni’s rule, s = h sin (90° − θ)/sin θ, is equivalent to the formula s = h cot θ. Based on this rule he constructed a “table of shadows” — essentially a table of cotangents — for each degree from 1° to 90°.
…
Several Arab scholars, notably Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (1201–74) and al-Bāttāni, continued to develop spherical trigonometry and brought it to its present form. Ṭūsī was the first (c. 1250) to write a work on trigonometry independently of astronomy [12].
John J. O’Connor and Edmund F. Robertson, in the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, describe the role of Islamic mathematics:
Perhaps one of the most significant advances made by Arabic mathematics began at this time with the work of al-Khwarizmi, namely the beginnings of algebra. It is important to understand just how significant this new idea was. It was a revolutionary move away from the Greek concept of mathematics which was essentially geometry.
Algebra was a unifying theory which allowed rational numbers, irrational numbers, geometrical magnitudes, etc., to all be treated as “algebraic objects”. It gave mathematics a whole new development path so much broader in concept to that which had existed before, and provided a vehicle for future development of the subject. Another important aspect of the introduction of algebraic ideas was that it allowed mathematics to be applied to itself in a way which had not happened before.
…
Although the Arabic mathematicians are most famed for their work on algebra, number theory and number systems, they also made considerable contributions to geometry, trigonometry and mathematical astronomy. Ibrahim ibn Sinan (born 908), who introduced a method of integration more general than that of Archimedes, and al-Quhi (born 940) were leading figures in a revival and continuation of Greek higher geometry in the Islamic world. These mathematicians, and in particular al-Haytham, studied optics and investigated the optical properties of mirrors made from conic sections. Omar Khayyam combined the use of trigonometry and approximation theory to provide methods of solving algebraic equations by geometrical means [13].
The historian of science Edward Stewart Kennedy (d. 2009) affirms that trigonometry became an independent branch of mathematics during the Islamic period:
These things originated in the general region of the eastern Mediter-
ranean, were recorded by people writing in Greek, and were well es-
tablished by the second century of our era. The centroid of activity
then shifted to India (where the chord function was transformed into
varieties of the sine), and thence it moved part of the way back. In
the region stretching from Syria to Central Asia, and in the period
from the ninth century through the fifteenth, the new sine function
and the old shadow functions (tangent, cotangent, secant, etc.) were
elaborately tabulated as sexagesimals. With this development the first
real trigonometry emerged, in the sense that only then did the object
of study become the spherical or plane triangle, its sides and angles [14].
The historians of mathematics Victor J. Katz and Karen Hunger Parshall, in their work on the history of algebra, write about how Islamic mathematicians shifted algebra into the “algorithmic” stage in its history, marking a definite improvement over Indian mathematics:
Al-Khw¯arizm¯ı’s work, however, marked a definite shift to what may be called the static, equation-solving, algorithmic stage of algebra. Although al-Khw¯arizm¯ı and other Islamic authors justified their methods through geometry — either through Mesopotamian cut-and-paste geometry or through formal Greek geometry — they were interested not in finding sides of squares or rectangles but in finding numbers that satisfied certain conditions, numbers, in other words, that were not tied to any geometric object. The procedure for solving a quadratic equation for a number is, of course, the same as that for finding the side of a square, but the origin of a more recognizable algebra can be seen as coinciding with this change from the geometric to the algorithmic state, that is, from the quest for finding a geometric object to the search for just an unknown “thing.’’ The solution of cubic equations followed the same path as that of the quadratics, moving from an original geometric stage, as seen initially in the writing of Archimedes (third century BCE) and then later in the work of various medieval Islamic mathematicians, into an algorithmic stage by the sixteenth century.
Interestingly, in India, there is no evidence of an evolution from a geometric stage to an algorithmic one, although the ancient Indians knew how to solve certain problems through the manipulation of squares and rectangles [15].
They also mention how Islamic mathematicians turned algebra into its own science:
Islamic mathematicians made their most important contributions in the area of algebra. In fact, it is fair to say that they turned the earlier study of topics that we recognize as algebraic — from both ancient Mesopotamia and classical Greece — into a new science called al-jabr [16].
Physics and Astronomy
The historian of science George Saliba summarizes Islamic contributions to astronomy, which include turning astronomy into a more theoretical subject and redefining Greek models:
In astronomy, the reactions expressed, at all levels, ranged from simple corrections of what was thought to be a mistake in the text, as was done by al-Hajjaj in the case of the Almagest, to correcting the basic parameters by fresh observations, as in the case of redetermining the better values of precession and the inclination of the ecliptic among others, to critiquing the methods of observation, as was done in the case of the fusul method, and finally to casting doubt on the reliability of the very foundations of the Greek astronomical tradition itself when it seemed to violate the principles upon which it was based in the first place.
…
The most important transformation that took place during this time was the shift from Ptolemy’s instrumental approach to astronomy (which satisfied itself with the pragmatic success of the predictive features of the mathematical models) to a more theoretical approach which required that predictive results be consistent not only with the observations but also with the cosmological presuppositions of the observations themselves. In other words, in Islamic astronomy, it was no longer sufficient to say that a specific predictive mathematical model, such as that of Ptolemy, gave good results about the positions of the planets for a specific time. The new requirement was that the model itself should also be a consistent representation of the cosmological presuppositions of the universe, in addition to its accounting for the observations [17].
He also states how the Islamic faith helped the scientific development of astronomy as a discipline due to its opposition to astrology:
But with the Islamic religious aversion toward astrology itself and toward the craft in general, astronomy had to define itself as a discipline that went beyond that simple predictive feature and had to pose itself as raising questions of much greater relevance to a wider and larger world view that required exacting measures at every turn. The astronomer had to attend to all larger intellectual questions that had any bearing on his craft [18].
The medieval Muslim scientist ibn al-Haytham made foundational contributions to the science of optics, which was the basis of later discoveries during the Scientific revolution, as well as contributions to astronomy. The historian of science, Glen M. Cooper, reveals how important his contributions are:
Ibn al-Haytham was one of the truly great men of science. It is both through his clever use of thought experiments and in his emphasis on performing actual and careful experiments that Ibn al-Haytham must be considered as one of a handful of scientists whose contributions were pivotal to the development of the modern world. His famous critique of Ptolemaic astronomy led to a fruitful tradition in theoretical astronomy. However, it was through his research in optics that he made an even greater impact. Ibn al-Haytham and his followers in the West laid the groundwork for the Renaissance rediscovery of linear perspective and its inestimably important consequences, namely, the mathematicization of space on the one hand, and the exaltation of the observer, on the other, without which the Scientific Revolution might not have been possible [19].
Engineering
Donald Routledge Hill (d. 1994), a British historian of science and technology, describes the invention of the components for the mechanical clock, which is one of the most important inventions in history:
The invention of the mechanical clock is one of the most significant events in the history of technology. It was the first machine to use controlled gravitational force as motive power and it incorporates a number of ideas that were to be of importance in the development of machine design. Its key mechanism is the mechanical escapement, which controls the speed of descent of a heavy weight. Apart from this mechanism, all the features of the early mechanical clocks are to be found in the monumental water-clocks of Islam: complex gear trains; arrays of automata; and weight-drives. The idea of an escapement is also present in the mercury clocks and in the hydraulic controls used to make heavy floats descend at a slow, steady rate. We know that the Christians in Spain learned about Muslim water-clocks, not only by the translation of Arabic works into Spanish but also by the inspection of actual clocks.
…
The evidence, circumstantial though it is, points strongly to an Islamic influence upon the invention of the mechanical clock [21].
Hill discusses the contributions to mechanical technology, most especially the creation of “methods of automatic controls”:
A number of ideas and techniques appear for the first time in al-Jazari’s work. These include the double-acting pump with suction pipes and the use of a crank in a machine (both already mentioned); accurate calibration of orifices; lamination of timber to minimize warping; static balancing of wheels; use of paper models to establish a design; and casting of metals in closed mould-boxes with green sand. There is also an indication that he knew of a method for controlling the speed of rotation of a wheel by an escapement of some kind.
…
Of equal importance, to the development of mechanical technology, was the pre-occupation of engineers like the Banu Musa and al-Jazari with sophisticated methods of automatic controls, since a key element in any machine is the means for controlling the release of energy. Apart from the case of astronomical instruments, however, we have no firm evidence for the transmission of this body of knowledge into Europe. It seems most unlikely that the Muslim ideas that appeared in Europe from the later Middle Ages onwards were all reinventions, and we must therefore hope that further research will establish some of the ways by which this knowledge was diffused from Islam. In the absence of evidence we can build up, using a specific case, a reasonable theory of diffusion [22].
On the development of astronomical and computational technology, Islamic engineers played a pivotal role, as described by Hill:
It has been established that the first European treatises on the astrolabe were of Arabic inspiration and were written in Latin at the beginning of the fifth/eleventh century in the abbey of Ripoll in Catalonia. From this centre the knowledge of the instrument was diffused to the rest of Europe.
Other computing instruments were devised in the Muslim world in the later Middle Ages, perhaps the most important of these being equatoria, which were invented in Muslim Spain early in the fifth/ eleventh century [23].
Hill also describes the importance of the Banu Mūsā brothers:
The Kitab al-hiyal, although some of the devices in it come directly from Philo or Hero, goes well beyond its Greek predecessors, particularly in the use of small pressure variations and conical valves and other components in automatic controls. Indeed, the work of the Banu Mūsā in the variety and ingenuity of their control systems was unsurpassed until quite recent times. There may have been some didactic intention in their writing, but most of their constructions are quite trivial to our eyes. Nevertheless, many of the ideas, techniques, and components that they used were to be of considerable importance in the development of machine technology [24].
Teun Koetsier, a Dutch historian of science and technology who specialises in the history of machines, describes the Banu Mūsā’s automatic flute player as the first programmable device:
Heron’s automatic theatre was an automaton, but it was not, in my sense of the word, programmable. The earliest known design of a programmable machine is the automatic flute player that was described in the 9th century by the brothers Musa in Baghdad, at the time a major centre of knowledge. The Banu Musa’s work was influenced by their Hellenistic predecessors, but it contains notable advances on the Greek work. They ingeniously used small variations in air and water pressure and they used conical valves as automatic regulators. The basic idea described in The Instrument that Plays by Itself is that pins on a rotating drum open via little levers one or more of the nine holes of a flute, which is positioned parallel to the drum. The wind for the flute is generated by water that fills a reservoir and forces the air to escape. The drum is driven by a water wheel [25].
This indicates that the Banu Mūsā’s device can be considered the ancestor of the first computers [26].
David Kahn (d. 2024), a famous historian of cryptography, in his landmark book The Codebreakers — The Story of Secret Writing, considered to be the definitive account of the history of cryptography and cryptoanalysis, states that cryptography was essentially created in the medieval Arab world:
Cryptology was born among the Arabs. They were the first to discover and write down the methods of cryptanalysis. The people that exploded out of Arabia in the 600s and flamed over vast areas of the known world swiftly engendered one of the highest civilizations that history -had yet seen. Science flowered. Arab medicine and mathematics became the best in the world — from the latter, in fact, comes the word “cipher.” Practical arts flourished. Administrative techniques developed. The exuberant creative energies of such a culture, excluded by its religion from painting or sculpture, and inspired by it to an explication of the Holy Koran, poured into literary pursuits [27].
Philosophy
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) is considered to be one of the most important scientists and philosophers in history, and likely the greatest intellectual of the Islamic Golden Age. Jon McGinnis, a historian of Western philosophy, summarizes the supreme importance of Avicenna’s philosophy:
It would be difficult to overestimate the impact of Avicenna’s system of thought on the subsequent history and development of philosophy in both the East and the West. Avicenna, in an intellectual tour de force, combined the Neoplatonizing tendencies favored by al-Kindi and his circle with the Aristotelianism of al-Farabi and the Baghdad Peripatetics in a way that infused philosophy with new life, saving it from the intellectual pedantry from which it was becoming moribund. Additionally, Avicenna saw to it that his system accommodated, if not even explained, many of the primary religious phenomena and concerns of the Islamic society in which he lived, ensuring that his thought remained an influence (both as a source of inspiration and target of criticism) for Muslim scholars in multiple intellectual spheres even to this day. Moreover, it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that Avicenna’s synthesis of Graeco-Arabic philosophy, with concerns central to all three of the Abrahamic religions, helped facilitate and prepare Latin Europe for the reintroduction of the Aristotelian scientific tradition. As such, Avicenna’s thought played an important role in the reinvigoration of philosophy in Europe, as well as the formulation of Christian theology by such notaries as Thomas Aquinas and others [29].
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) is one the most important philosophers in Islamic history and is most well known for his influence on philosophy and scholarship in the Latin West. His enormous importance is summarized by Robert Pasnau, a scholar of philosophy:
By the middle of the thirteenth century, that philosophical curriculum had become thoroughly Aristotelian, and the great guide to Aristotle was none other than Averroës, who became known in the Latin West as simply “the Commentator.” His various paraphrases and commentaries on the Aristotelian corpus were studied wherever Aristotle was studied, and this remained the case all the way into the modern era. Even though, by the end of the Middle Ages, there were countless Christian commentaries on the Aristotelian corpus, it was still the writings of Averroës that were most likely to be found alongside early printed editions of Aristotle’s work.
…
Averroës found the sort of posthumous fame in Christian Europe that eluded him in the Islamic world. His passionate defense of philosophy, and his career-long efforts to make Aristotle intelligible even to the likes of a busy caliph… the Islamic tradition bears witness to the fact that there is nothing inevitable about the place of philosophy in the modern world. But, as it happened, the ideas of Averroës took root in an entirely different cultural atmosphere, north of Spain, among Latinate, Christian readers, who shared his vision of a religion grounded in rigorous philosophical thinking, inspired by Aristotle. Philosophy thus took its place at the core of the European academic curriculum [30].
Ibn Tufayl, an Islamic philosopher, influenced the European Enlightenment. His legacy is described by Samar Attar:
But one of the possible torches that showed Europe the path to enlightenment was this wild boy who matured and became wise at the age of fifty. His name was Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. He was created in the imagination of an Arab Moslem philosopher from Spain in the twelfth century [32].
Dag Nikolaus Hasse, a German historian of philosophy, summarizes the impact of Islamic philosophy:
The Arabic-Latin translation movements in the Middle Ages, which paralleled that from Greek into Latin, led to the transformation of almost all philosophical disciplines in the medieval Latin world. The impact of Arabic philosophers such as al-Fārābī, Avicenna and Averroes on Western philosophy was particularly strong in natural philosophy, psychology and metaphysics, but also extended to logic and ethics.
Among the influential Arabic theories are: the logical distinction between first and second intentions; the intension and remission of elementary forms; the soul’s faculty of estimation and its object, the intentions; the conjunction between human intellect and separate active intellect; the unicity of the material intellect (Averroism); naturalistic theories of miracles and prophecy; the eternity of the world and the concept of eternal creation; the active intellect as giver of forms; the first cause as necessary being in itself; the emanation of intelligences from the first cause; the distinction between essence and existence; the theory of primary concepts; the concept of human happiness as resulting from perfect conjunction of the human intellect with the active intellect [33].
Institutions
The United States National Library of Medicine credits hospitals as an achievement of Islamic civilisation:
The hospital was one of the great achievements of medieval Islamic society. The relation of the design and development of Islamic hospitals to the earlier and contemporaneous poor and sick relief facilities offered by some Christian monasteries has not been fully delineated. Clearly, however, the medieval Islamic hospital was a more elaborate institution with a wider range of functions.
In Islam there was generally a moral imperative to treat all the ill regardless of their financial status. The hospitals were largely secular institutions, many of them open to all, male and female, civilian and military, adult and child, rich and poor, Muslims and non-Muslims. They tended to be large, urban structures [34].
According to some historians, Islamic educational institutions may have influenced the development of Universities [35].
Sami K. Hamarneh (d. 1972), a historian of Islamic medicine at the Smithsonian Institute, describes the Islamic origins of pharmacies and drug stores:
The establishing of the first privately owned apothecary shop, marking the beginning of pharmacy’s independence from medicine, has been discussed by a number of eminent historians of the health profession. Many reported Baghdad to have been the site in A.D. 754 or about 750 of the first pharmacy shop as the precursor of our modern drug store [36].
Conclusion
The Islamic Golden Age is widely considered to be the most important period of scientific and intellectual activity between the Hellenistic period and the Renaissance. It was a time of significant development in medicine, mathematics, physics, astronomy, engineering, and philosophy. It is of prime importance that both Muslims and non-Muslims remember and study it.
References
[1] R. Briffault, The Making of Humanity. London : G. Allen & Unwin, 1919, p. 191
[2] R. Briffault, The Making of Humanity. London : G. Allen & Unwin, 1919, p. 202
[3] G. Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science. 1927.
[4] A. Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects. Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 1982, pp. 67–68
[5] Jan Pieter Hogendijk and Abd Al-Hamid Sabra, The enterprise of science in Islam: New Perspectives. Cambridge (Mass.): Mit Press, 2003, p. vii
[6] P. E. Pormann and E. Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic medicine. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press ; Washington, D.C, 2007, pp. 1–4
[7] D. Campbell, Arabian Medicine and Its Influence on the Middle Ages. 1926.
[8] L. J. Vandewiele, “THE ARABICS AND SCIENCE,” Sartoniana.
[9] R. Briffault, The Making of Humanity. London : G. Allen & Unwin, 1919, p. 201
[10] “Galen, Avicenna And Hippocrates Art Print by Science Source,” Fine Art America. https://fineartamerica.com/featured/galen-avicenna-and-hippocrates-science-source.html?product=art-print (accessed Mar. 25, 2024).
[11] V. J. Katz, A History of Mathematics. Addison-Wesley Longman, 2009, p. 267
[12] “Trigonometry — India and the Islamic world,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/trigonometry/India-and-the-Islamic-world
[13] “Arabic mathematics,” Maths History. https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Arabic_mathematics/
[14] N. Council, Historical Topics for the Mathematics Classroom. 1969.
[15] V. J. Parshall, TAMING THE UNKNOWN : a history of algebra from antiquity to the early twentieth century. S.L.: Princeton University Pres, 2014, pp. 7–8
[16] V. J. Parshall, TAMING THE UNKNOWN : a history of algebra from antiquity to the early twentieth century. S.L.: Princeton University Pres, 2014, p. 137
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