Muslims Rich in Science

SCIENCE IN AL-ANDALUS
by
Paul Lunde

[Islamic culture was pre-eminently a culture of the book. In the ninth century, the library of the monastery of St. Gall was the largest in Europe. It boasted 36 volumes. At the same time, that of Cordoba contained 500,000. It took much more than paper to create an intellectual and scientific culture like that of Islamic Spain. Islam, with its tolerance and encouragement of both secular and religious learning, created the necessary climate for the exchange of ideas. It has been estimated that today there are 250,000 Arabic manuscripts in Western and Eastern libraries, including private collections. Yet in the 10th century private libraries existed which contained as many as 500,000 books.

Literally millions of books must have perished, and with them the achievements of a great many scholars and scientists, whose books, had they survived, might have changed the course of history. As it is, even now, only a tiny proportion of existing Arabic scientific texts have been studied, and it will take years to form a more exact idea of the contributions of Muslim scientists to the history of ideas.]

The medieval Christians of Spain had legend that Roderick, the last King of the Visigoths, was responsible for unleashing the Arab invasion of the Iberian Peninsula because, in defiance of his plighted word, he unlocked the gates of an enchanted palace he had sworn not to tamper with. As far as the West was concerned, the Arab invasion did unlock an enchanted palace. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, andals, Huns and Visigoths had pillaged and burned their way through the Iberian Peninsula, establishing ephemeral kingdoms which lasted only as long as loot poured in, and were then destroyed in their turn. Then, without warning, in the year 711, came the Arabs - to settle, fall in love with the land and create the first civilization Europe had known since the Roman legions had given up the unequal fight against the barbarian hordes.

Spain first prospered under the rule al the Umayyads, who established a dynasty there after they had lost the caliphate in the east to the Abbasids. At first, the culture of the Umayyad court at Cordoba was wholly derivative. Fashions, both in literature and dress, were imitative of those current in the Abbasidsï¿½ newly founded capital of Baghdad. Scholars from the more sophisticated lands to the east were always assured of a warm reception at the court of Cordoba, where their colleagues would listen avidly for news of what was being discussed in the capital, what people were wearing, what songs were being sung, and - above all - what books were being read.

For Islamic culture was pre-eminently a culture of the book. The introduction of paper from China in 751 gave an impetus to learning and an excitement for ideas which the world had never before known. Books became more available than they had been even in Rome, and incomparably cheaper than they were in the Latin West, where they continued to be written on expensive parchment. In the 12th century, a man sold 120 acres of land in order to buy a single Book of Hours. In the ninth century, the library of the monastery of St. Gall was the largest in Europe. It boasted 36 volumes. At the same time, that of Cordoba contained 500,000. The cultural lag between East and West in the Middle Ages can be attributed partly to the fact that the Arabs had paper while the Latin West did not.

It took much more than paper to create an intellectual and scientific culture like that of Islamic Spain, of course. Islam, with its tolerance and encouragement of both secular and religious learning, created the necessary climate for the exchange of ideas. The court of Cordoba, like that of Baghdad, was open to Muslims Jews and Christians alike, and one prominent bishop complained that young Christian men were devoting themselves to the study of Arabic, rather than to Latin - a reflection of the fact that Arabic, in a surprisingly short time, had become the international language of science, as English has today.

Luckily ï¿½Abbas survived, and, undiscouraged, turned his mind to the construction of a planetarium in which the planets actually revolved - it would be extremely interesting to know the details of the gearing mechanism. It also simulated such celestial phenomena as thunder and lightning and was, of course, a wild success. Next ï¿½Abbas turned to the mathematical problems involved in the regularity of the facets of certain crystals and evolved a formula for manufacturing artificial crystals.
It must be remembered that a knowledge of the achievements of men like ï¿½Abbas has come to us purely by chance. It has been estimated that today there are 250,000 Arabic manuscripts in Western and Eastern libraries, including private collections. Yet in the 10th century private libraries existed which contained as many as 500,000 books. Literally millions of books must have perished, and with them the achievements of a great many scholars and scientists, whose books, had they survived, might have changed the course of history. [In 1500, more than a million books including unique works of Moorish culture were burned in Granada as reported by Kamen.] As it is, even now, only a tiny proportion of existing Arabic scientific texts have been studied, and it will take years to form a more exact idea of the contributions of Muslim scientists to the history of ideas.

One of the fields most assiduously cultivated in Spain was natural science. Although Andalusian scholars did not make contributions as fundamental as those made by their colleagues in the East, those that they did make had more effect on the later development of science and technology for it was through Spain and the scholars of al-Andalus that these ideas reached the West.

No school of translators comparable to the House of Wisdom of al-Maï¿½mun existed in Spain, and Andalusian scholars seem not to have interested themselves in the natural sciences until the translations of the House of Wisdom reached them.

Interest in mathematics, astronomy and medicine was always lively because of their obvious utility - mathematics for commercial purposes, computation of the rather complicated Islamic laws of inheritance, and as a basis for measuring distances. Astronomy was useful for determining the times of prayer and adjusting the calendar and the study of medicine needed no apology. The introduction of the new Aristotelian ideas however, even in Arab dress aroused a certain amount of suspicion in the conservative West, and it was some time before public opinion would accept that Aristotelian logic did not conflict with the Revelation.

Part of the suspicion with which certain of the ideas emanating from the scholars of the Abbasid court were viewed was due to an inadequate distinction between sciences and pseudo-sciences. This was a distinction which the Muslims made at a much earlier date than Western scholars who, even during the Renaissance, tended to confound astronomy with astrology, chemistry with alchemy. Ibn Hazm, a leading Andalusian scholar of the 11th century and staunchly conservative, was very outspoken on this point. People who advocated the efficacy of talismans, magic, alchemy, and astrology he calls shameless liars. This rational approach did much to make Islam preeminent in the natural sciences.

The study of mathematics and astronomy went hand in hand. Al-Khwarizmiï¿½s famous book entitled The Calculation of Integration and Equation reached al-Andalus at an early date, and became the foundation of much later speculation. In it, Al-Khwarizmi dealt with equations algebraic multiplication and division, measurement of surfaces and other questions. Al-Khwarizmi was the first to introduce the use of what he called "Indian" and what we call "Arabicï¿½ numerals. The exact method of the transmission of these numerals - and the place-value idea which they embodied - is not known, but the symbols used to represent the numbers had slightly different forms in Eastern and Western Islam, and the forms of our numerals are derived from those used in l-Andalus. The work of al-Khwarizmi, which now only survives in a 12th century Latin translation made in Spain, together with a translation of Euclidï¿½s Elements became the two foundations of subsequent mathematical developments in al-Andalus.[Biography of Al-Khwarizmi]

The first original mathematician and astronomer of al-Andalus was the 10th centuryï¿½s Maslama al-Majriti. He had been preceded by competent scientists - men like Ibn Abiï¿½Ubaida of Valencia, who in the ninth century was a leading astronomer - and the emigre from Baghdad, Ibn Taimiyyah, who was both a well-known physician and an astronomer, but al-Majriti was in a class by himself. He wrote a number of works on mathematics and astronomy, studied and elaborated the Arabic ranslation of Ptolemyï¿½s Almagest and enlarged and corrected the astronomical ables of al-Khwarizmi himself. He compiled conversion tables in which the dates of the Persian calendar were related to Hijra dates so that for the first time the events of Persiaï¿½s past could be dated with precision.

Al-Zarqali, known to the Latin West as Arzachel, was another leading mathematician and astronomer who flourished in Cordoba in the 11th century. He combined theoretical knowledge with technical skill, and excelled at the construction of precision instruments for astronomical use. He built a waterclock capable of determining the hours of the day and night and indicating the days of the lunar month. He contributed to the compilation of the famous Toledan Tables a highly accurate compilation of astronomical data.
His Book of Tables written in the form of an almanac (almanac is an Arabic word meaning climate, originally indicating the stations of the moon) contains tables which allow one to find on what day the Coptic, Roman, lunar and Persian months begin; others give the position of the various planets at any given time; and still others allow prediction of solar and lunar eclipses. He also compiled valuable tables of latitude and longitude; many of his works were translated, both into Spanish and into Latin. [Biography of Al-Zarqali] Still another luminary was al-Bitruji (the Latin scholars of the middle ages called him Alpetragius), who developed a new theory of stellar movement and wrote the Book of Form in which it is detailed. [Biography of Al-Bitruji] The influence of these astronomical works was immense. Today for example, the very appelations of the constellations still bear the names given them by Muslim astronomers - Acrab (from ï¿½aqrab, "scorpion"), Altair (from al-taï¿½ir, "the flyer"), Deneb (from dhanb, "tail"), Pherkard (from farqad, "calf") - and words such as zenith, nadir and azimuth, all still in use today, recall the works of the Muslim scholars of al-Andalus. [More on Latinized Names of Arabic Origin] But the Muslim science par excellence was the study of medicine. Interest in medicine goes back to the very earliest times. The Prophet [Muhammad (pbuh)] himself stated that there was a remedy for every illness, and was aware that some diseases were contagious.

The great contribution of the Arabs was to put the study of medicine on a scientific footing, and eliminate superstition and harmful folk-practices. Medicine was considered a highly technical calling, and one which required long study and training. Elaborate codes were formulated to regulate the professional conduct of doctors. It was not enough to have a mastery of oneï¿½s subject in order to practice medicine. Certain moral qualities were mandatory. Ibn Hazm said that a doctor should be kind understanding, friendly, good, able to endure insults and adverse criticism; he must keep his hair short, and his finger nails as well; he must wear clean, white clothes and behave with dignity.

Before doctors could practice, they had to pass an examination, and if they passed they had to take the Hippocratic oath which, if neglected, could lead to dismissal. Hospitals were similarly organized. The large one built in Cordoba was provided with running water and baths, had different sections for the treatment of various diseases, each section of which was headed by a specialist. Hospitals were required to be open 24 hours a day to handle emergency cases and could not turn any patient away. [More on Hospitals and Medical Schools.]

Muslim physicians made many important additions to the body of medical knowledge which they inherited from the Greeks. Ibn al-Nafis for example, discovered the lesser circulation of the blood hundreds of years before Harvey and ideas of quarantine sprang from an empirical notion of contagion. [Biography of Ibn Al-Nafis] Another example is Ibn Juljul who was born in Cordoba in 943, became a leading physician by the age of 24 (he began his studies of medicine at the age of 14) and compiled a commentary on the De Materia Medica of Dioscorides, and a special treatise on drugs found in al-Andalus. In his Categories of Physicians, composed at the request of one of the Umayyad princes, he also presents a history of the medical profession from the time of Aesculapius to his own day.

During the 10th century al-Andalus produced a large number of excellent physicians. Several went to Baghdad, where they studied Greek medical works under the famous translators Thabit Ibn Qurra and Thabit ibn Sinan. On their return, they were lodged in the government complex at Madinat [city of] al-Zahra. One of these men, Ahmad ibn Harran, was placed in charge of a dispensary which provided free medical care and food to poor patients.
Ibn Shuhaid, also known as a popular doctor, wrote a fundamental work on the use of drugs. He - like many of his contemporaries - recommended drugs only if the patient did not respond to diet, and said that if they must be used, simple drugs should be employed in all cases but the most serious.

Al-Zahrawi [known in the West as Albucasis], who died in 1013, was the most famous surgeon of the Middle Ages He was court physician of al-Hakam II, and his great work, the Tasrif was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona and became a leading medical text in European universities in the later middle ages. The section on surgery contains a number of illustrations of surgical instruments of elegant, functional design and great precision. It describes lithotrites, amputations ophthalmic and dental surgery, the treatment of wounds and fractures.
[Biography of Al-Zahrawi] Ibn Zuhr, known as Avenzoar who died in 1162, was born in Seville and earned a great reputation throughout North Africa and Spain. He described abscesses and mediastinal tumors for the first time, and made original experiments in therapeutics. One of his works, the Taysir was translated into Latin in 1280 and became a standard work. [Biography of Ibn Zuhr] [Translators of Scientific Knowledge in the Middle Ages.] [ Names of Muslim Scientific Books Translated into Latin and European Languages.Click here for continuation:

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