Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
http://islam.about.com/library/weekly/aa050600a.htm
And the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) told Muslims to “seek knowledge, even if it be in China.” (Meaning ‘seek knowledge wherever it may be found.’)
I want to know the authenticity of these words, that the Prophet mentioned China,…just for information.
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
mate this thread is just about outlining contributions of muslims in science…it has nothing to do with if “what if they were not muslims”…because they were muslims… would they be scientists if non-muslims…again nobody knows the answer to this except god…maybe they would be maybe they won’t…
from what i have read that there was an long period of time when muslims preserved science started by greeks and transferred them to the west…
on ending note have i said that only muslims can be scientists?
unfortunately as it has been told and i firmly believe in it…is that muslims should stop living in the past
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
It is a Hadith (Sayings of the prophet S.A.W)…i have read this hadith many times…i will have to dig in to get the authenticity…maybe fellow muslim guppies may be of help
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
this has got to be one of the stupidest threads on Gupshup. pakistanis writing about arab scientists simply because they share a religion in common. that too with a sense of some mediocre achievements. I wonder how much do Pakistanis know about the universities that exisited in pre-islamic pakistan and the achievements of thier ancestors. Now that would be something to read.
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
Homer, you have the answer, you dont see it.
Greeks were not Muslims…Arabs being an older society got a lot from them…later the West collected it being the fastest society…what Islam has to do in between?
You know how many Indians, especially Hindus, Chinese, Japanese are working in Us labs, or have become most succesful doctors…but none of these societies make a styreotype claim of religion like yours do.
Were Arabs living at zero level of knoledge before invention of Islam?
It will be better if you try to find out why Arabs gave up knowledge after Islam found deep roots in the land.
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
sharing a religion in common may not seem a big thing to the likes of you…but it is a very big deal for us 
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
dude the knwoledge came to arabs after islam came in arabia…this is the sole reason why these arab scientists (as u call them) are muslims…I have mentioned the timeline of the scientists…it clearly states that all these scientists lived after the advent of islam in arabia…
anjaaan mian u are not getting what i am saying…as i said before this thread is just dedicated to outlining the achievements of muslim scientists…its has nothing to do with religion being tied with scientific achievments…
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
Muslims invented suicide bombs.......Oh no wait that sri-lankans did. Sorry.
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
I read that Omar Khayyam created a calendar that only has 1 day of error every 3,770 years. It's a little more accurate than the Gregorian calendar which has 1 day of error every 3,330 years.
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
Alhazen (c.965 - 1039)
Alhazen (full name Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Haitham) was the son of a civil servant and consequently relatively well educated. In the course of his reading he became fascinated by the flooding of the River Nile. He reasoned that constructing a dam would enable water to be stored for irrigation in the dry season, and flooding could be prevented at other times.
He pitched his idea to the ruler of Egypt, Caliph al-Hakim. The Caliph was intrigued, and provided financial backing and workmen. On arrival at the dam’s proposed site at Aswan, Alhazen realised that he had insufficient money, materials or labour to complete the project successfully. Not wanting to waste money, but concerned at the price he might have to pay for failure, he pretended to be insane, a pretence he was required to keep up until the Caliph died twelve years later.
By the time the Caliph had died, in 1021, Alhazen was teaching in Cairo, where he lived out his life. He spent much of his time conducting experiments, of which many involved a dark room with a hole in it. He hung five lanterns outside the room, adjacent to the wall with the hole, and noticed that there were five ‘lights’ on the wall inside his dark room. He would then place an obstruction between one of the lanterns and the hole, and observed one of the ‘lights’ on the wall disappear. Furthermore the lantern, the obstruction and the hole were in a straight line.
This demonstrated both that light travelled in straight lines and that, even though the light from the five lanterns all travelled through the little hole at the same time, it did not get mixed up: there were five ‘lights’ on the wall inside the room. He deduced that this is how the eye worked, which had been the subject of a long debate. Aristotle had believed the eye sent out rays to scan objects, but Alhazen believed the opposite to be true, that light was reflected into the eye from the things one observed, thus overturning a thousand years of scientific thought. His experiment was the first scientific description of the ‘camera obscura’ (dark room), the principle behind the pinhole camera.
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
**Alhazen: Master of Optics
By David W. Tschanz
23/08/2001**
The brightest name in Egyptian Islamic science is that of mathematician and scholar Abu 'Ali al-Hasan bin al-Hasan bin al-Haytham, known as “Alhazen” to the Western world. Born in Basra, Iraq in 965, he won repute there as a mathematician and engineer. He was invited to move to Cairo, Egypt by the Fatimid Caliph, al-Hakim. According to one story al-Hakim had invited Alhazen because it was believed that the mathematician had a plan for regulating the waters of the Nile.
Charged with the near-impossible task, Alhazen led an army of worker south of Aswan to the place called al-Janadil. Here he expected to see the Nile’s waters descending from higher ground and was disappointed when he discovered they did not. According to a 13th century account, Alhazen feared that the eccentric and unpredictable al-Hakim would punish him for his failure. To avoid punishment, he pretended to be insane until al-Hakim’s death. He then left the house in which he had been confined and moved to a qubbah (a small domed structure) at the gate of Cairo’s Azhar Mosque. There he resumed his work as an author and teacher of mathematics. He earned his living by copying a number of basic mathematical works, which included Euclid’s Elements and Ptolemy’s Almagest.
However, Alhazen did not stop with translation. He also made original contributions in the fields of optics, astronomy and mathematics, though his writings were eclectic and prolific, covering a broad range of subjects. Among his achievements were 25 books and essays on mathematics and 45 titles on physical and metaphysical questions. These include discussions of Euclid, Apollonius and Archimedes, as well as commentaries on the philosophical works of Aristotle and the medical works of Galen.
Alhazen’s most important work, however, is the comprehensive Kitab al-Manazir (The Book of Optics), probably the most thoroughly scientific in method and thought of all medireview works. In it, Alhazen developed a broad theory that explained vision by using geometry and anatomy. He rejected the theory of Euclid and Ptolemy that vision results from a ray leaving the eye and reaching the object. Instead he postulated, correctly, that each point on a lighted area or object radiates light rays in every direction, but only one ray from each point strikes the eye perpendicularly, “and is transmitted there by the transparent body [the lens].” The other rays strike at different angles and are not seen. So profound and seminal was this explanation that it led George Sarton to call Alhazen “the greatest Muslim physicist and one the greatest students of optics of all time.”
Other existing works by Alhazen on optical subjects include On the Light of the Moon, which argues that the moon shines like a self-illuminating object though its light is borrowed from the sun; On the Halo and the Rainbow; On Spherical Burning Mirrors; On Paraboloidal Burning Mirrors; and On the Burning Sphere. In them he noted the effect of the atmosphere in increasing the apparent size of the sun or moon when near the horizon and showed that through atmospheric refraction, the light of the sun reaches us even when the sun is as much as nineteen degrees below the horizon. On this basis he calculated the height of the atmosphere at ten miles - the actual height of the troposphere. He also analyzed the correlation between the weight and density of the atmosphere and the effect of the atmospheric density on the weight of objects.
Alahzen’s On the Shape of the Eclipse describes the half moon shape of the sun’s image, during eclipses, on the wall opposite a small hole made in the window shutters - the first known mention of the camera obscura, or dark chamber, on which all photography depends.
While not numbered among the greatest Arab astronomers, his works show that he had mastered the techniques of Ptolemaic astronomy. Some of these works also reveal his ability to solve the problems that received attention from Arab astronomers, such as determining the Qiblah (direction of prayer). His critique of Ptolemaic planetary models, as presented in the Almagest and Planetary Hypotheses, appears to have inspired research that led to their replacement by non-Ptolemaic arrangements in the 13th century Maragha and 14th century Damascus. Astronomers of the European Renaissance were influenced by his On the Configuration of the World, in which the Ptolemaic planetary theory is described in terms of transparent physical bodies whose combined motions produce the apparent motions of the planets.
Other books by Alhazen address quadrature problems, such as On the Quadrature of the Circle and On Lunes (figures contained between the arcs of two circles). Additional works deal with the properties of conic sections. There is also a lengthy work on the methods of analysis and synthesis, with illustrative applications to geometry, astronomy and even music.
Alhazen’s influence on European science after his death in 1040 cannot be overlooked. Roger Bacon quotes or refers to him at almost every step in the parts of Opus maius dealing with optics and Part VI of the work is dependent on the earlier discoveries of Alhazen. Johannes Kepler’s study of light was dependent on his work as well.
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
Al-Khwarzimi: The Father of Algebra
By David W. Tschanz
28/08/2001
Algebra. Even the word is enough to strike terror into the hearts of junior high and high school students the world over - not to mention send shivers of apprehension down the backs of their parents as they start the process of solving for “x” or “y”, and sometimes both. However, junior high school students have not always studied algebra. During the ninth century, it was reserved for the intellectual elite. The word “algebra,” like the subject, is a consequence of the intellectual ferment that occurred in Baghdad during the ninth century reign of Caliph al-Ma’mun (813-33).
The “Father of Algebra” is generally acknowledged to be Abu Ja’far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, born in approximately 786 C.E. Some historians speculate that his name may indicate that he came from the Khwarizmi region, south of the Aral Sea in central Asia.
Al-Khwarzimi was born at a time of great cultural and scientific development in the Islamic world. Harun al-Rashid became the fifth Caliph of the Abbasid dynasty on the 14th of September in the year 786; about the same time that al-Khwarizmi was born. Al-Rashid ruled over an empire that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to India. His son, al-Mamun, continued the patronage of learning started by his father and founded an academy called The House of Wisdom, where Greek philosophical and scientific works were translated. He also built up a library of manuscripts - the first major library to be set up since the famous library at Alexandria - and collected important works from the Byzantine Empire and beyond. In addition to The House of Wisdom, al-Mamun set up observatories in which Muslim astronomers could build on the knowledge acquired by earlier peoples.
Al-Khwarizmi and his colleagues, the Banu Musa, were scholars at The House of Wisdom in Baghdad. At the institute, they translated Greek scientific manuscripts and also studied and wrote on algebra, geometry and astronomy. Al-Khwarizmi worked under the patronage of Al-Mamun and he dedicated two of his texts to the Caliph.
Sometime around 830 C.E., Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi composed the earliest known Arabic treatment of algebra and started an algebraic line in the Arabic world that persisted for several centuries. The treatise, Hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala or The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, was also the most famous and important of all of al-Khwarizmi’s works, and the title gave us the word “algebra.” Al-Kwarzimi’s work is generally considered to be the first written on the subject and his reason for writing the work was simple, he intended to teach:
“… What is easiest and most useful in arithmetic, such as men constantly require in cases of inheritance, legacies, partition, lawsuits, and trade, and in all their dealings with one another, or where the measuring of lands, the digging of canals, geometrical computations, and other objects of various sorts and kinds are concerned.”
Conceived as an elementary textbook of practical mathematics, the Al-jabr wal-muqabala began with a discussion of the algebra of first and second-degree equations and moved on in its final two parts to the business of practical applications to questions of mensuration and legacies.
The book starts by introducing the natural numbers, and then introduces the main topic of the book’s first section - the solution of equations. All the equations are linear or quadratic and are composed of units, roots and squares. It is interesting to note that in all of al-Khwarizmi’s books, mathematics is done entirely in words and with no symbols (e.g. x2) being used.
He first reduces an equation (linear or quadratic) to one of six standard forms:
a) Squares equal to roots.
b) Squares equal to numbers.
c) Roots equal to numbers.
d) Squares and roots equal to numbers; e.g. x2 + 10x = 39.
e) Squares and numbers equal to roots; e.g. x2 + 21 = 10x.
f) Roots and numbers equal to squares; e.g. 3x + 4 = x2.
The reduction is carried out using the two operations of al-jabr and al-muqabala. To al-Khwarzimi “al-jabr” means “completion” and is the process of removing negative terms from an equation. For example, using one of al-Khwarizmi’s own examples, “al-jabr” transforms x2 = 40x - 4x2 into 5x2 = 40x. The term “al-muqabala” means, “balancing” and is the process of reducing positive terms of the same power when they occur on both sides of an equation. For example, two applications of “al-muqabala” reduce 50 + 3x + x2 = 29 + 10x to 21 + x2 = 7x (one application to deal with the numbers and a second to deal with the roots).
Al-Khwarizmi then illustrates how to solve the six standard types of equations using algebraic methods of solution and geometric proofs.
Al-Khwarizmi continues his study of algebra in Hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala by examining how the laws of algebra extend to the arithmetic solutions of algebraic objects. For example, he shows how to multiply out expressions such as (a + b x) (c + d x).
Al-Khwarizmi also wrote a treatise on Hindu-Arabic numerals. The Arabic text is lost but a Latin translation - Algoritmi de numero Indorum, and an English one - Al-Khwarizmi on the Hindu Art of Reckoning, gave rise to the word “algorithm” deriving from al-Khwarzimi’s name in the title.
Last but not least, Al-Khwarizmi authored a major work on geography, which gives latitudes and longitudes for 2402 localities as a basis for a world map. A number of other minor works on topics such as the astrolabe, the sundial, and the calendar were written by al-Khwarizmi. He also wrote a political history containing horoscopes of prominent persons. He died in Baghdad in approximately 850.
http://www.islamonline.net/english/Science/2001/08/article15.shtml
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
…
In 1073, the Malik-Shah, ruler of Esfahan, invited Khayyám to build and work with an observatory, along with various other distinguished scientists. Eventually, Khayyám very accurately (correct to within six decimal places) measured the length of the year as 365.24219858156 days.
…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayyam
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
What the hell you started this topic at a religious forum?
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
anjjaan beta how many times have i told you before that stop crying but u won't understand ...no matter how hard u try to make the image of islam look bad u will not succeed my boy...I am posting achievements of muslim scientists in a religion forum if you have something positive to say then continue otherwise keep crying like u normally do :D
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
Homer, you must learn how to hide your defeated mentality, instead you openly burst out in your irritation.
what is the status of a cultured language in your culture?
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
go ask any random Arab about the accomplishments that you have listed…he will be quick to label them as “Arab accomplishments”
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
^ So? what have you been doing thus far in your life? Arm chair crusaders! Sit in your chairs and poke hole in theories, coupla losers.
Not every Arab is a scientist , every nationality has their share of prejudiced people. Lost soul definiely brings shame to his homeland.