Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
I just want to tickle under ur arms, and see u cry like a monkey 
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
doesnât matterâŠwhether they were arab, turkish or persianâŠthe bottom line is that they are muslims buddy 
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
they are also humans just like me
perhaps we share the same favorite food or hair colorâŠdo these similarities qualify me to share in the credit for their accomplishments?
religionâŠspeciesâŠfavorite foodâŠwhatâs the big difference?
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
yes mate ...of course as a human being you can also chare the credit of an accomplishement of any human being..everyone has been created by god....I know that the level of intelligence is not related to religion and I never debated that....this thread has been taken o a wrong level mate....the reason for this thread to show that being a muslim does not make a person or a country backward....Thats what i wanted to elaborate that like Jews, Christians, hindus muslims also have had accomplishments and i was outlining them....
I know most of the achievements were a very long long time ago....but they were made...now unfortunately if if similar achievements have not been made recently then that does not have to put the blame into the religion....
Now some people say that becuase of Islam muslims are bakwards...wel friends at the time when these accomplishements were made Islam was at its peak...muslims followed islam more honestly and had stringer faiths...many muslims these days donot follow islam the way they used to be...the whole idea is that islam has not made many people in many muslim countries backwards...maybe the deeds they did made them backwards....the only examples that the media gives about muslims is terrorism...People like osama bin laden have given islam a very bad name
I apologize to everyone who got a wrong message from this thread
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
nobody will deny the historic achievements by muslims and the glory of successful muslim empires. the question people ask isâŠwhy has that success disappeared today? why have the priorities of the ummah become such that education in modern science, arts, etc. is at the bottom of the list? muslims will never be able to replicate the success/contributions of their predecessors without changing their priorities to fit a rapidly changing world. A lot of muslims are quick to interpret the suggestion of any change or adaptation as âabandoning their religionââŠthis is false, and a cop-out response. unless all the muslim achievers that you listed were apostates and munafiqsâŠthen it can be done today as well.
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
^ Time changes and so the destiny
Down time for Muslims is still very very short (merely 100 years or so) compared to other nations. Just recently Muslims were ruling with might in otoman empire and India, where they were contributing in the fields of Art and sciences immensely. so
Up time: in excess of 1300 years
down time: less then 100 years
Not a bad show by any standards :k:
But we need to work hard
Good thread homer_j_simpson, very informative. I need to read all. soon :k:
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
Al Battani
Al Battani (ca. 850-923) was an Arab astronomer and mathematician (also spelled Al Batani, Latinized Albategnius, Albategni, Albatenius; full name AbĆ« ÊżAbdullÄh Muáž„ammad ibn JÄbir ibn SinÄn ar-RaqqÄ« al-កarrani aáčŁ-áčąabiÊŸ al-BattÄnÄ«), born in Harran near Urfa. He was a Sabian, a religious sect of Judeo-Christian origins from the 3rd century AD that worshipped the stars. His best-known achievement was the determination of the solar year as being 365 days, 5 hours, 46 minutes and 24 seconds.
He produced a number of trigonometrical relationships:
tan a = sin a / cos a
sec a = (1+ tan2a)1/2.
He also solved the equation sin x = a cos x discovering the formula:
sin x = a / (1+ a2)1/2
and used al-Marwaziâs idea of Tangents (âshadowsâ) to develop equations for calculating tangents and cotangents, compiling tables of them.
Al Battani worked in Syria, at ar-Raqqah and at Damascus, where he died. He was able to correct some of Ptolemyâs results and compiled new tables of the Sun and Moon, long accepted as authoritative, discovered the movement of the Sunâs apogee, treats the division of the celestial sphere, and introduces, probably independently of the 5th century indian astronomer Aryabhata, the use of sines in calculation, and partially that of tangents, forming the basis of modern trigonometry. He also calculated the values for the precession of the equinoxes (54.5" per year) and the inclination of Earthâs axis (23° 35â).
His most important work is the KitÄb az-ZÄ«j (âthe book of tablesâ) with 57 chapters, which by way of Latin translation as De Motu Stellarum by Plato Tiburtinus (Plato of Tivoli) in 1116 (printed 1537 by Melanchthon, annotated by Regiomontanus), had great influence on European astronomy. A reprint appeared at Bologna in 1645. Platoâs original manuscript is preserved at the Vatican; and the Escorial Library possesses in manuscript a treatise by Al Battani on astronomical chronology.
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
Al-Razi
âŠ
Abu Bakr Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi Ù
ŰÙ
ŰŻ ŰČک۱ÛŰ§Û Ű±Ű§ŰČÛ (according to al-Biruni, born in Rayy, Iran in the year 251/865.; died in Rayy, Iran, 313/925), was a versatile Persian Philosopher (hakim), who made fundamental and lasting contributions to the fields of medicine, chemistry (alchemy) and philosophy. He is also known as Al-Razi, Ar-Razi, and Ibn Zakaria (Zakariya); or (in Latin) as Rhazes and Rasis.
Al-Razi had no organized system of philosophy, but compared to his time **he must be reckoned as the most vigorous and liberal thinker in Islam and perhaps in the whole history of human thought. ** He was a pure rationalist, extremely confident in the power of reason, free from every kind of prejudice, and very daring in the expression of his ideas without reserve. He believed in man, in progress, and in God the Wise, but in no religion whatever.
He is credited with, among other things, the discovery of sulfuric acid, the âwork horseâ of modern chemistry and chemical engineering; and also of ethanol-alcohol (in addition to its refinement) and its use in medicine.
âŠ
Contributions to medicine
[edit]
Smallpox vs. measles
As chief physician at the Baghdad hospital Razi formulated the first known description of smallpox:
âSmallpox appears when the blood boils and infected so that extra vapors may be driven out to turn childhood blood, which looks like wet extracts, into youth blood, which looks like ripe wine. Essentially, smallpox is like the bubbles found in wine at this time ⊠this disease might also be present apart from such times. The best thing to do at such times is to avoid it, that is, when the disease is seen to become epidemic.â
This is acknowledged by the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), which states: âThe most trustworthy statements as to the early existence of the disease are found in an account by the 9th-century Arabian physician Rhazes, by whom its symptoms were clearly described, its pathology explained by a humoral or fermentation theory, and directions given for its treatment.â.
Written by Razi, the al-Judari wa al-Hasbah was the first book on smallpox, and was translated over a dozen times into Latin and other European languages. Its lack of dogmatism and its Hippocratic reliance on clinical observation show Raziâs medical methods:
âThe eruption of the smallpox is preceded by a continued fever, pain in the back, itching in the nose and terrors in the sleep. These are the more peculiar symptoms of its approach, especially a pain in the back with fever; then also a pricking which the patient feels all over his body; a fullness of the face, which at times comes and goes; an inflamed color, and vehement redness in both cheeks; a redness of both the eyes, heaviness of the whole body; great uneasiness, the symptoms of which are stretching and yawning; a pain in the throat and chest, with slight difficulty in breathing and cough; a dryness of the breath, thick spittle and hoarseness of the voice; pain and heaviness of the head; inquietude, nausea and anxiety; (with this difference that the inquietude, nausea and anxiety are more frequent in the measles than in the smallpox; while on the other hand, the pain in the back is more peculiar to the smallpox than to the measles) heat of the whole body; an inflamed colon, and shining redness, especially an intense redness of the gums.â
Razi was also the first to distinguish between smallpox and measles.
[edit]
Allergies and fever
Razi is known to have discovered allergic asthma, and was the first person to have ever written an article on allergy and immunology. In the Sense of Smelling he explains the occurrence of rhinitis when smelling a rose in the spring (âAn Article on the Reason Why Abou Zayd Balkhi Suffers from Rhinitis When Smelling Roses in Springâ). In this article he talks of seasonal rhinitis, which is the same as allergic asthma or hay fever. Razi was also the first to realize that fever was a natural defense mechanism, the bodyâs way of fighting disease.
[edit]
Pharmacy
Rhazes contributed to the early practice of pharmacy by compiling texts, but also in various other ways. Examples are the introduction of mercurial ointments, and the development of apparatus like mortars, flasks, spatulas and phials, as used in pharmacies until the early twentieth century.
[edit]
Ethics of medicine
On the professional level, Razi introduced many useful, progressive, medical and psychological ideas. He also attacked charlatans and fake doctors who roamed the cities and the countryside selling their nostrums and âcuresâ. At the same time, he warned that even highly educated doctors did not have the answers for all medical problems and could not cure all sicknesses or heal every disease. Humanly speaking, this is an impossibility. Nonetheless, to be more useful in their services and truer to their calling, Razi exhorted practitioners to keep up with advanced knowledge by continually studying medical books and exposing themselves to new information. He distinguished between curable and incurable diseases. On the latter, he cited advanced cases of cancer and leprosy which the doctor should not be blamed for if uncured. Then, on the humorous side, Razi pitied physicians caring for the well being of princes, nobility, and women, for they did not obey doctorâs orders for restricted diet and medical treatment, thus making most difficult the task of being their doctor.
[edit]
Books and articles on medicine
The Virtuous Life (al-Hawi).
This monumental medical encyclopedia in nine volumes â known in Europe also as The Large Comprehensive or Continens Liber â contains considerations and criticism on the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato, and expresses innovative views on many subjects. Because of this book alone, many scholars consider Razi the greatest medical doctor of the Middle Ages.
The al-Hawi is not a formal medical encyclopaedia, but a posthumous compilation of Raziâs working notebooks, which included knowledge gathered from other books as well as original observations on diseases and therapies, based on his own clinical experience. It is significant since it contains a celebrated monograph on smallpox, the earliest one known. It was translated into Latin in 1279 by Faraj ben Salim, a physician of Sicilian-Jewish origin employed by Charles of Anjou, and from then on had considerable influence in Europe.
A medical advisor for the general public (Man la Yahduruhu Tab)
Razi was possibly the first Islamic doctor to deliberately write a home medical manual (remedial) directed at the general public. He dedicated it to the poor, the traveler, and the ordinary citizen who could consult it for treatment of common ailments when a doctor was not available. This book, of course, is of special interest to the history of pharmacy since books on the same theme continued to be popular until the 20th century. In its 36 chapters, Razi described diets and drugs that can be found practically everywhere in apothecary shops, in the market place, in well-equipped kitchens, and in military camps. Thus, any intelligent mature person can follow its instructions and prepare the right recipes for good results.
Some of the illnesses treated are headaches, colds, coughing, melancholy, and diseases of the eye, ear, and stomach. In a feverish headache, for example, he prescribed, âtwo parts of duhn (oily extract) of rose, to be mixed with one part of vinegar, in which a piece of linen cloth is dipped and compressed on the foreheadâ. For a laxative, he recommended âseven drams of dried violet flowers with twenty pears, macerated and well mixed, then strained. To the filtrate, twenty drams of sugar are to be added for a draftâ. In cases of melancholy, he invariably recommended prescriptions including either poppies or their juices (opium) or clover fodder (Curcuma epithymum) or both. For an eye remedy, he recommended myrrh, saffron, and frankincense, two drams each, to be mixed with one dram of yellow arsenic and made into tablets. When used each tablet was to be dissolved in a sufficient quantity of coriander water and used as eye drops.
Doubts About Galen (Shukuk 'ala alinusor)
Rhazesâs independent mind is strikingly revealed in this book. As quoted from G. Stolyarov II:
âIn the manner of numerous Greek thinkers, including Socrates and Aristotle, Rhazes rejected the mind-body dichotomy and pioneered the concept of mental health and self-esteem as essential to a patientâs welfare. This âsound mind, healthy bodyâ connection prompted him to frequently communicate with his patients on a friendly level, encouraging them to heed his advice as a path to their recovery and bolstering their fortitude and determination to resist the illness and swiftly convalesce.â
In Doubts about Galen, Razi rejects several claims of the Greek doctor, from the alleged superiority of the Greek language to many of his cosmological and medical views. He places medicine within philosophy, inferring that sound practice demands independent thinking. His own clinical records, he reports, do not confirm Galenâs descriptions of the course of a fever. And in some cases he finds that his clinical experience exceeds Galenâs.
He also criticized Galenâs theory that the body was possessed by four separate âhumorsâ, liquid substances whose balance was the key to health and normal temperature; and that the sole means of upsetting such a system was to introduce into the organism a liquid of a different temperature, which would bring about an increase or decrease in bodily heat identical to the temperature of the particular fluid. In particular, Razi noted that a warm drink may heat the body to a degree much hotter than its own. Thus the drink must trigger a response from the body, rather than simply communicating its own warmth or coldness to it. (I. E. Goodman)
This line of criticism had the potential, in time, to bring down the whole of Galenâs Theory of Humours, and the Aristotelian scheme of the Four Elements, on which it was grounded. Raziâs alchemical experiments suggested other qualities of matter, such as âoilinessâ and âsulphurousnessâ, or inflammability and salinity, which were not readily explained by the traditional fire, water, earth, and air schematism.
Raziâs challenge to the current fundaments of medical theory was quite controversial. Many accused him of ignorance and arrogance, even though he repeatedly expressed praises and gratitude to Galen for his commendable contributions and labors, saying:
âI prayed to God to direct and lead me to the truth in writing this book. It grieves me to oppose and criticize the man Galen from whose sea of knowledge I have drawn much. Indeed, he is the master and I am the disciple. But all this reverence and appreciation will and should not prevent me from doubting, as I did, what is erroneous among his theories. I imagine and feel deep in my heart that Galen has chosen me to undertake this task, and if he was alive, he would have congratulated me on what I am doing. I say this because Galenâs aim was to seek and find the truth and to bring light out of darkness. Indeed I wish he was alive to read what I have published.â
Thereafter, Razi, with a view to vindicate Galenâs greatness and to justify his criticism of him, lists four reasons why great men make more errors than lesser ones:
Negligence, as a result of too much self confidence.
Unmindfulness (indifference) which often leads to errors.
Temptation to follow oneâs own fancy or impetuosity in imagining that what he does or says is right.
Crystallization of ancient knowledge, and refusal to accept that new data and new ideas mean that present day knowledge must of necessity surpass that of previous generations.
Razi believed that contemporary scientists and scholars, because of accumulated knowledge at their disposal are, by far, better equipped, more knowledgeable, and more competent than the ancients. Raziâs attempt to overthrow blind reverence and the unchallenged authority of ancient sages encouraged and stimulated research and advances in the arts, technology, and the sciences.
âŠ
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
Arabic mathematics : forgotten brilliance?
Recent research paints a new picture of the debt that we owe to Arabic/Islamic mathematics. Certainly many of the ideas which were previously thought to have been brilliant new conceptions due to European mathematicians of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are now known to have been developed by Arabic/Islamic mathematicians around four centuries earlier. In many respects the mathematics studied today is far closer in style to that of the Arabic/Islamic contribution than to that of the Greeks.
There is a widely held view that, after a brilliant period for mathematics when the Greeks laid the foundations for modern mathematics, there was a period of stagnation before the Europeans took over where the Greeks left off at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The common perception of the period of 1000 years or so between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance is that little happened in the world of mathematics except that some Arabic translations of Greek texts were made which preserved the Greek learning so that it was available to the Europeans at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
That such views should be generally held is of no surprise. Many leading historians of mathematics have contributed to the perception by either omitting any mention of Arabic/Islamic mathematics in the historical development of the subject or with statements such as that made by Duhem in [3]:-
... Arabic science only reproduced the teachings received from Greek science.
Before we proceed it is worth trying to define the period that this article covers and give an overall description to cover the mathematicians who contributed. The period we cover is easy to describe: it stretches from the end of the eighth century to about the middle of the fifteenth century. Giving a description to cover the mathematicians who contributed, however, is much harder. The works [6] and [17] are on âIslamic mathematicsâ, similar to [1] which uses the title the âMuslim contribution to mathematicsâ. Other authors try the description âArabic mathematicsâ, see for example [10] and [11]. However, certainly not all the mathematicians we wish to include were Muslims; some were Jews, some Christians, some of other faiths. Nor were all these mathematicians Arabs, but for convenience we will call our topic âArab mathematicsâ.
The regions from which the âArab mathematiciansâ came was centred on Iran/Iraq but varied with military conquest during the period. At its greatest extent it stretched to the west through Turkey and North Africa to include most of Spain, and to the east as far as the borders of China.
The background to the mathematical developments which began in Baghdad around 800 is not well understood. Certainly there was an important influence which came from the Hindu mathematicians whose earlier development of the decimal system and numerals was important. There began a remarkable period of mathematical progress with al-Khwarizmiâs work and the translations of Greek texts.
This period begins under the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, the fifth Caliph of the Abbasid dynasty, whose reign began in 786. He encouraged scholarship and the first translations of Greek texts into Arabic, such as Euclidâs Elements by al-Hajjaj, were made during al-Rashidâs reign. The next Caliph, al-Maâmun, encouraged learning even more strongly than his father al-Rashid, and he set up the House of Wisdom in Baghdad which became the centre for both the work of translating and of of research. Al-Kindi (born 801) and the three Banu Musa brothers worked there, as did the famous translator Hunayn ibn Ishaq.
We should emphasise that the translations into Arabic at this time were made by scientists and mathematicians such as those named above, not by language experts ignorant of mathematics, and the need for the translations was stimulated by the most advanced research of the time. It is important to realise that the translating was not done for its own sake, but was done as part of the current research effort. The most important Greek mathematical texts which were translated are listed in [17]:-
Of Euclid's works, the Elements, the Data, the Optics, the Phaenomena, and On Divisions were translated. Of Archimedes' works only two - Sphere and Cylinder and Measurement of the Circle - are known to have been translated, but these were sufficient to stimulate independent researches from the 9th to the 15th century. On the other hand, virtually all of Apollonius's works were translated, and of Diophantus and Menelaus one book each, the Arithmetica and the Sphaerica, respectively, were translated into Arabic. Finally, the translation of Ptolemy's Almagest furnished important astronomical material.
The more minor Greek mathematical texts which were translated are also given in [17]:-
... Diocles' treatise on mirrors, Theodosius's Spherics, Pappus's work on mechanics, Ptolemy's Planisphaerium, and Hypsicles' treatises on regular polyhedra (the so-called Books XIV and XV of Euclid's Elements) ...
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 âalgebraic objectsâ. 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. As Rashed writes in [11] (see also [10]):-
Al-Khwarizmi's successors undertook a systematic application of arithmetic to algebra, algebra to arithmetic, both to trigonometry, algebra to the Euclidean theory of numbers, algebra to geometry, and geometry to algebra. This was how the creation of polynomial algebra, combinatorial analysis, numerical analysis, the numerical solution of equations, the new elementary theory of numbers, and the geometric construction of equations arose.
Let us follow the development of algebra for a moment and look at al-Khwarizmiâs successors. About forty years after al-Khwarizmi is the work of al-Mahani (born 820), who conceived the idea of reducing geometrical problems such as duplicating the cube to problems in algebra. Abu Kamil (born 850) forms an important link in the development of algebra between al-Khwarizmi and al-Karaji. Despite not using symbols, but writing powers of x in words, he had begun to understand what we would write in symbols as xn.xm = xm+n. Let us remark that symbols did not appear in Arabic mathematics until much later. Ibn al-Banna and al-Qalasadi used symbols in the 15th century and, although we do not know exactly when their use began, we know that symbols were used at least a century before this.
Al-Karaji (born 953) is seen by many as the first person to completely free algebra from geometrical operations and to replace them with the arithmetical type of operations which are at the core of algebra today. He was first to define the monomials x, x2, x3, ⊠and 1/x, 1/x2, 1/x3, ⊠and to give rules for products of any two of these. He started a school of algebra which flourished for several hundreds of years. Al-Samawal, nearly 200 years later, was an important member of al-Karajiâs school. Al-Samawal (born 1130) was the first to give the new topic of algebra a precise description when he wrote that it was concerned:-
... with operating on unknowns using all the arithmetical tools, in the same way as the arithmetician operates on the known.
Omar Khayyam (born 1048) gave a complete classification of cubic equations with geometric solutions found by means of intersecting conic sections. Khayyam also wrote that he hoped to give a full description of the algebraic solution of cubic equations in a later work [18]:-
If the opportunity arises and I can succeed, I shall give all these fourteen forms with all their branches and cases, and how to distinguish whatever is possible or impossible so that a paper, containing elements which are greatly useful in this art will be prepared.
Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi (born 1135), although almost exactly the same age as al-Samawal, does not follow the general development that came through al-Karajiâs school of algebra but rather follows Khayyamâs application of algebra to geometry. He wrote a treatise on cubic equations, which [11]:-
... represents an essential contribution to another algebra which aimed to study curves by means of equations, thus inaugurating the beginning of algebraic geometry.
Let us give other examples of the development of Arabic mathematics. Returning to the House of Wisdom in Baghdad in the 9th century, one mathematician who was educated there by the Banu Musa brothers was Thabit ibn Qurra (born 836). He made many contributions to mathematics, but let us consider for the moment consider his contributions to number theory. He discovered a beautiful theorem which allowed pairs of amicable numbers to be found, that is two numbers such that each is the sum of the proper divisors of the other. Al-Baghdadi (born 980) looked at a slight variant of Thabit ibn Qurraâs theorem, while al-Haytham (born 965) seems to have been the first to attempt to classify all even perfect numbers (numbers equal to the sum of their proper divisors) as those of the form 2k-1(2k - 1) where 2k - 1 is prime.
Al-Haytham, is also the first person that we know to state Wilsonâs theorem, namely that if p is prime then 1+(p-1)! is divisible by p. It is unclear whether he knew how to prove this result. It is called Wilsonâs theorem because of a comment made by Waring in 1770 that John Wilson had noticed the result. There is no evidence that John Wilson knew how to prove it and most certainly Waring did not. Lagrange gave the first proof in 1771 and it should be noticed that it is more than 750 years after al-Haytham before number theory surpasses this achievement of Arabic mathematics.
Continuing the story of amicable numbers, from which we have taken a diversion, it is worth noting that they play a large role in Arabic mathematics. Al-Farisi (born 1260) gave a new proof of Thabit ibn Qurraâs theorem, introducing important new ideas concerning factorisation and combinatorial methods. He also gave the pair of amicable numbers 17296, 18416 which have been attributed to Euler, but we know that these were known earlier than al-Farisi, perhaps even by Thabit ibn Qurra himself. Although outside our time range for Arabic mathematics in this article, it is worth noting that in the 17th century the Arabic mathematician Mohammed Baqir Yazdi gave the pair of amicable number 9,363,584 and 9,437,056 still many years before Eulerâs contribution.
Let us turn to the different systems of counting which were is use around the 10th century in Arabic countries. There were three different types of arithmetic used around this period and, by the end of the 10th century, authors such as al-Baghdadi were writing texts comparing the three systems.
-
Finger-reckoning arithmetic.
This system derived from counting on the fingers with the numerals written entirely in words; this finger-reckoning arithmetic was the system used by the business community. Mathematicians such as Abuâl-Wafa (born 940) wrote several treatises using this system. Abuâl-Wafa himself was an expert in the use of Indian numerals but these:-⊠did not find application in business circles and among the population of the Eastern Caliphate for a long time.
Hence he wrote his text using finger-reckoning arithmetic since this was the system used by the business community.
-
Sexagesimal system.
The second of the three systems was the sexagesimal system, with numerals denoted by letters of the Arabic alphabet. It came originally from the Babylonians and was most frequently used by the Arabic mathematicians in astronomical work. -
Indian numeral system.
The third system was the arithmetic of the Indian numerals and fractions with the decimal place-value system. The numerals used were taken over from India, but there was not a standard set of symbols. Different parts of the Arabic world used slightly different forms of the numerals. At first the Indian methods were used by the Arabs with a dust board. A dust board was needed because the methods required the moving of numbers around in the calculation and rubbing some out as the calculation proceeded. The dust board allowed this to be done in the same sort of way that one can use a blackboard, chalk and a blackboard eraser. However, al-Uqlidisi (born 920) showed how to modify the methods for pen and paper use. Al-Baghdadi also contributed to improvements in the decimal system.
It was this third system of calculating which allowed most of the advances in numerical methods by the Arabs. It allowed the extraction of roots by mathematicians such as Abuâl-Wafa and Omar Khayyam (born 1048). The discovery of the binomial theorem for integer exponents by al-Karaji (born 953) was a major factor in the development of numerical analysis based on the decimal system. Al-Kashi (born1380) contributed to the development of decimal fractions not only for approximating algebraic numbers, but also for real numbers such as p. His contribution to decimal fractions is so major that for many years he was considered as their inventor. Although not the first to do so, al-Kashi gave an algorithm for calculating nth roots which is a special case of the methods given many centuries later by Ruffini and Horner.
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.
Astronomy, time-keeping and geography provided other motivations for geometrical and trigonometrical research. For example Ibrahim ibn Sinan and his grandfather Thabit ibn Qurra both studied curves required in the construction of sundials. Abuâl-Wafa and Abu Nasr Mansur both applied spherical geometry to astronomy and also used formulas involving sin and tan. Al-Biruni (born 973) used the sin formula in both astronomy and in the calculation of longitudes and latitudes of many cities. Again both astronomy and geography motivated al-Biruniâs extensive studies of projecting a hemisphere onto the plane.
Thabit ibn Qurra undertook both theoretical and observational work in astronomy. Al-Battani (born 850) made accurate observations which allowed him to improve on Ptolemyâs data for the sun and the moon. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (born 1201), like many other Arabic mathematicians, based his theoretical astronomy on Ptolemyâs work but al-Tusi made the most significant development of Ptolemyâs model of the planetary system up to the development of the heliocentric model in the time of Copernicus.
Many of the Arabic mathematicians produced tables of trigonometric functions as part of their studies of astronomy. These include Ulugh Beg (born 1393) and al-Kashi. The construction of astronomical instruments such as the astrolabe was also a speciality of the Arabs. Al-Mahani used an astrolabe while Ahmed (born 835), al-Khazin (born 900), Ibrahim ibn Sinan, al-Quhi, Abu Nasr Mansur (born 965), al-Biruni, and others, all wrote important treatises on the astrolabe. Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi (born 1201) invented the linear astrolabe. The importance of the Arabic mathematicians in the development of the astrolabe is described in [17]:-
The astrolabe, whose mathematical theory is based on the stereographic projection of the sphere, was invented in late antiquity, but its extensive development in Islam made it the pocket watch of the medievals. In its original form, it required a different plate of horizon coordinates for each latitude, but in the 11th century the Spanish Muslim astronomer az-Zarqallu invented a single plate that worked for all latitudes. Slightly earlier, astronomers in the East had experimented with plane projections of the sphere, and al-Biruni invented such a projection that could be used to produce a map of a hemisphere. The culminating masterpiece was the astrolabe of the Syrian Ibn ash-Shatir (1305-75), a mathematical tool that could be used to solve all the standard problems of spherical astronomy in five different ways.
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
No, Only Americans.
Re: Contributions of Muslims in science
And for the idiots who are complaining about the achievement of muslim scientists. Yes it is an important fact that they were Muslim, because Islam encourages educated thought, to learn is akin to prayer, unfortunately some individuals have decided to follow the highly restrictive and backwards mentality of Christians Jews and heathens and thus are now more ignorant than they - however it may be a source of inspiration for young muslims - this urge to be educated. By looking at the rich heritage of Islamic achievement.