Scientific Contribution by Muslims Throughout Ages Jamshed Akhtar(jamshedakh...@yahoo.com) From the book:The Ultimate Revelations http://www.islamawareness.net/
Fascination with the heavens, coupled with the need to determine the timings of prayers and direction of Qibla in diverse locales, resulted in the tremendous development of Astronomy from the very beginning. The progress took place along three interlinked pathways - development of infrastructure; collection of data; and interpretation of data in conjunction with original theoretical models. First path entailed construction of royal and private observatories - at Baghdad, Damascus, Maragha, and Samarqand etc…[1]...and designing of several new instruments by highly creative innovators of the era, to felicitate observations. In this regard, a very important invention was Astrolab designed by Jandab an eighth century scientist.
Al-Battani, Ali Bin Isa and others developed and perfected it to such an extent that it became an instrument of observation and a kind of computing device for calculating complicated trigonometric functions and for determining astronomical parameters/functions. Through it, they could tell the date and hour from the position of certain stars. Movable sights on the instrument were aligned with the star and relevant numbers and signs were read off from windows in the instrument or from its circumference.
Al-Khujandi constructed another very useful device, called Sudus al-Fakhri. It is now known as Sextant. Farghani, another inventor developed and improved the Sun dial known to Greeks and Babylonians. All these devices were revolutionary inventions of their time and with the help of these instruments, astronomers collected data. They carried several observations to determine Obliquity ‘i’[2] and the eccentricity ‘e’[3], compiled tables of all kinds.
Thus by ninth century, a team working under Yahya Mansoor, the director of Al-Mamun Observatory, had made a number of astronomical observations and another team which had been given the task of determining the value of one terrestrial degree, managed to measure the radius of the earth from this observation, with only a 2.5% error. By eleventh century, Al-Bairooni using a different method reduced this error to 0.25%. Boozjani: [1011 AD] proved that sun had attraction; this attraction affected moon’s orbit and that it did not exceed 1º 15’.[4] Al-Battani, one of the great mathematicians and astronomers of the world, discovered the correct angle of inclination of earth; proved the ‘Trepidation of Equinoxes’ as being a wrong concept; proved that the orbit of the earth is not circular but elliptical; prepared Astronomical tables known as ‘Zij Al-Battani’ that were of immense value to Astronomers of the 9th and 10th centuries. The list of eminent astronomers of this era and their works is simply too long to narrate here.
After thoroughly studying the Greek theoretical model of the planetary motion and its modification given by Ptolemy, astronomers like Al-Bitruji, Al-Tusi and Qutubuddin Shirazi etc. propounded their own models, while some others like Ibn Al- Shatir suggested further modifications in the Ptolemic model. In fact, Copernicus in his famous book has used what is known today as Al-Tusi’s device for producing linear motion as a resultant of two circular motions. The famous historian W. Hartner has proved even the fact that the geometrical figure of this device as produced by Copernicus, is exactly identical even to the extent of the lettering employed by Al-Tusi in his Arabic astronomical treatise. And it was this device that played a very important role in the development of an alternative non-Ptolemic model of planetary motion[5].
The greatest contribution of these scholars is in mathematics.[6] They founded Algebra; made Trigonometry an independent branch of mathematics; and achieved tremendous advances in other fields like Geometry and spherical geometry etc. In this case too the impetus for the development was provided by the Message[7]. Al-Khwarizmi[8] the founder of Algebra, was the first mathematician to work on the details of ‘Arithmetic and Algebra of inheritance’ besides the systematisation of the theory of quadratic equations. His treatise entitled ‘Hisab Al-jabr wal muqabala’, enjoyed tremendous popularity in the medieval West for centuries. Tabit ibn Qurrah of ninth century, who had translated the works of Euclid, Apollonius, Archimedes, and Ptolemy was another fine mathematician himself. The only surviving fragment of his original work contains an exceptionally brilliant chapter on the solution and properties of cubic equations.
Umar Khayyam, the famous poet, was another great mathematician[9]. He invented the second and third degree of quadratic equations. The efforts of these mathematicians become all the more remarkable when we realise that they had not yet developed the symbolic algebra. Even for third degree equations, Khayyam had to write his problems and procedural steps in words and sentences.”
The algebraic symbols were introduced quite late. Al-Banna and Al-Marrakushi used them in thirteenth and fourteenth century. Later mathematicians like Qunfudh’s and Al-Qalasadi’s works of fourteenth and fifteenth century show quite a developed system of symbols for operations entailing extraction of square roots, exponentiation, and for unknown quantities in algebraic equations.
The numerals and the decimal notation used today originally came from India but these scholars gave them a much more explicit, simple and easy to use form, than the highly cumbersome Roman numerals, which it ultimately replaced. The development of Trigonometry, Spherical Trigonometry and Geometry also show the intensely original creative work done by these scholars. Here too the concepts of Sine and Cosine came from India, but Habsh Al-Hasib and Al-Battani extended them to other Trigonometrical ratios, like tangent, secant and their reciprocals. It was Al-Battani, who had derived this formula:
sin a = tan a / Ö (1+tan²a) and Cosa = 1 / Ö(1 + tan²a).
Later Al-Nayrizi, Abul Wafa, Al-Khujandi and Abu Nasr Mansur etc. helped develop this branch. It was Abul Wafa who had given this famous formula:
sin (a + ß) = sin a cos ß + sin ß cos a.
Abul Wafa had also discussed the quadrature of the parabola and the volume of the paraboloid. Yet trigonometry remained mainly the work of Al-Battani, Al-Bairooni and Al-Tusi etc. For the degree of accuracy in mathematical works, Jamshed Al-Kashi tops the list. He gave the value of p up to 16 decimal places and of Sine 1° up to 18 places.
I must also mention two other mathematicians of this era, whose contributions were quite revolutionary in content. Ali Ahmad Nasawi who died in 1030 AD, studied an alternative Indian system of time division based on 60. Indians had divided the day into 60 Ghatika. One Ghatika into 60 pal and one pal into 60 bapal. Thus one pal was equal to 24 seconds and one Ghatika or Ghari was equal to 24 minutes. Nasawi revolutionised this system, by dividing the day into 24 Saat, one Saat into 60 Daqeeqa and each Daqeeqa into 60 Sania. It was this division of time that was taken by rest of the world as standard. In the language of Message Daqeeqa means a small or minute quantity and Sania means second or the other unit. Thus we can see that the terms ‘minutes and seconds’ are exact translations of the original words used by Nasawi. Moreover, he also worked on the decimal system and made complete conversion charts between both the systems.”
Masalima al-Majriti, an expert mathematician, zoologist and chemist of tenth century, was the World’s first economist. From eighth century till thirteenth century, ‘followers of the Message’ were dominating the world’s economic scene. The entire known world was either trading with them or through them. Majriti studied markets, commercial transactions, different types of businesses and associated traditions. After that he laid down exhaustive guidelines, rules and laws for the entire commerce. He organised the information, rules, and laws in such a manner that after him commerce became a separate subject by itself. Besides commerce, he also studied zoology and prepared an exhaustive book on species of animals, their characteristics and observation about their habitats. His third interest was chemistry and on this subject too, he left a standard work.
The next important field where this civilisation showed its most sustained effort was medical science. General medicine, pharmacy, ophthalmology, surgery and gynaecology, all received attention from their researchers. One of the brightest star of this era was Mohammed Zakaria Razi [932]. An astronomer, philosopher, botanist, physicist and physician par excellence, Razi contributed immensely to the development of medical science. He not only improved the working of several hospitals of Baghdad but also established a new hospital with a streamlined procedure, devising a way to check pollution of the area.
The pollution was checked by placing pieces of meat at all the proposed sites for the new hospital. After three days, the site where the meat showed least deterioration was selected. In this hospital the patients were first screened by a batch of doctors and those with serious and complex diseases were sent to Razi. He studied them, suggested medicines, observed the progress and noted every change and its effect exhaustively. Thus he experimented on hundreds and thousands of herbs and plants; and placed them in suitable categories in a book, which can be called the first medical encyclopaedia[10]. He also wrote ‘A Treatise on the Small Pox and Measles’. This treatise contains the first clear
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Islam broke world records of genocide, slavery, religiously sanctioned rape, abuse of human rights, and prohibition of scientific inquiry. It forbids Muslim emigration to the lands of the infidels because a Muslim minority cannot enslave the infidel majority. Despite this prohibition Muslims emigrate to the West, not as migrants, but as conquerors. They live in sharia mini-states and expand these mini- states by terrorizing infidel neighbors and driving them out. Arabic proverb says "first comes Saturday, then Sunday." It means that Arabs are going to exterminate Jews before they exterminate Christians. It also means that Israel is the first line of defense against Islam.
“I have been made victorious with terror.” - Muhammad (according to Sahih Bukhari)
The average European couple now has fewer than 1.4 babies, compared to 3.6 babies born to the average Muslim immigrant couple in Europe. Across Western Europe 16 to 20 percent of babies are being born into Muslim families… By 2025, one-third of all European children will be born to Muslims… In Italy, 95% of all rapists are Muslims. Eighty-five percent of all murderers are Muslims… France will have a Muslim majority in less than 25 years! Another telling statistic is that although the Muslims are 12% of France's population, 70 percent of a total of 60,775 prisoners in France are Muslims! All of France's urban suburbs are being roamed by Muslim black African or Arabic gangs… A very high proportion of French Muslims are in the underclass, that segment of the population that relies not so much on education and work as on welfare and predatory activities. In fact, over one thousand Muslim neighborhoods are under monitoring throughout France. Seven hundred of those Muslim neighborhoods are listed as "violent" and nearly 400 hundred are listed as "very violent." Violence ranges from rape (95% of rapists are Muslim), murder (85% of murderers are Muslim), theft and looting of cars (58% committed by Muslims) and street fighting to assault on teachers and civil servants… source: http://www.masada2000.org/islam.html
"There does not exist an identifiable body of Muslims, substantive in number or an outright majority, who could be described as "moderate" by their repudiation of Muslim extremists. Violence has been an integral part of Muslim history, irrespective of whether it is sanctioned by Islam, and Muslims who unhesitatingly use violence to advance their political ambitions have created a climate within their faith culture that any Muslim who questions such practice is then deemed apostate and subject to harm. Consequently, what might pass for "moderate" Muslims, the large number of Muslims unaccounted for as to what they think, in practical terms constitute a forest within which extremists are incubated, nurtured, given ideological and material support, and to which they return for sanctuary." - Salim Mansur
