Documentary about Zheng He
This is a documentary about a Chinese explorer/geogpraher, maybe engineer named Zheng He. Chinese, huh? Did I post on the wrong sight, no really he was also brough up a Muslim. This documentary descibes his upbringing in a part of rural China where Islam was practiced, and is still practices today. But heres the question, would you consider him an Islamic scientist/explorer? He didn’t really serve under a Muslim dynasty and he wasn’t surrounded by a strong Muslim presence for much of his work. I guess this just proves to show that the whole concept of Islamic science in history is somewhat ambigious.
Whats even more fascinating is that Zheng He kind of represents a hyrid between two prominent intellectual civilizations, the Islamic and Chinese ones. His accomplishments would have integrated things he learnt from his religion, his contact with other Muslims and his lessons from Chinese society. Also notice how history about him is tough to come by, it is not very transparent. This is common to what we have seen for many other scientists as well, good thing to think about.
I haven’t watched the whole thing, there’s 14 parts but it definetely seems worthwhile. I sorta wish I’d wrote my wiki about him.
Raheem