Author: yasmeena

I’ve always found word etymologies really interesting, and I’ve often noticed a similarity between some words in English and Arabic but I always thought that the words were adopted by the Arabs from English colonization and the like. Little did I know that far before colonization took place, many Arabic words had been introduced to the Western world back from the 11^th to 13^th century during the Islamic Golden Age. This really isn’t surprising what with all the translations that took place but it’s sad that I automatically assumed that we adopted the words that are present in both languages from the West and not the other way around. There are numerous examples but I selected a few that struck me:

– Sugar comes from the Arabic word “sukkar”

– Coffee comes from the Arabic word “qahwa”

– Zero comes from the Arabic word “sifr”

– Cotton comes from the Arabic word “qutn”

– Admiral comes from the Arabic word “ameer el bihar” (Prince of the Sea)

Cool, huh?

I was researching for modern Muslim contributions to science that weren’t covered in anyone’s presentations (and sadly I didn’t find all that much) but I did find out about this Malaysian surgeon by the name of Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor who was the first to perform biomedical research in outer space. He performed experiments relating to the growth of cancer cells – specifically liver cancer and leukemia cells and he also performed experiments on space protein (specifically lipase (a type of protein enzyme) crystallization. The experiments relating to protein crystallization could be financially beneficial for Malaysia because lipases are used in a large variety of products. It’s actually a cool story because he prayed in space and on Eid-ul-fitr he handed out cookies that he’d packed to the rest of crew at the station, but anyways that’s a side note. I also found out about Toffy Musivand, a Persian engineer who invented a various pieces of medical equipment, his most famous invention being the Artificial Cardiac Pump. If Mohammad hadn’t already talked about Dr. Farouk el Baz in his presentation I would’ve done my post on him because he is by far the most famous modern Muslim scientist [and he’s Egyptian of courseJ].

I noticed that something we didn’t really focus on in class was Islamic contributions to music, which is probably because our class focus was mainly Islamic contributions to science. Anyways, I was really surprised to find out that a lot of classical musical instruments are actually derived from Arabic instruments for example:

– the qitara gave rise to the guitar

– the qanun gave rise to the harp

– the rabab gave rise to the rebec, which is an ancestor of the violin

There are numerous other examples but these are the ones that really stood out to me. I honestly doubt that a lot of people know about this and I just found it really awesome. Anyways if you want to find out more about it, check out the book I referenced below by Henry George Farmer.

Farmer, Henry George (1930), Historical facts for the Arabian Musical Influence, Ayer Publishing, ISBN 040508496X, OCLC 220811631

I found this video called “Islamic Countries Contributions to Humanity” and what really pulled me in (other than the name obviously) is that it’s made for PBS and that’s the same channel that has Arthur and a bunch of other awesome kids shows 😀 Anyways, on to the actual video.

I really liked how the video highlighted that unlike in Christianity, science and religion aren’t contradictory in Islam which is something that really isn’t known by the average person – as we discussed in class numerous times, ALL religions are always thought to be ‘versus’ or ‘against’ science just because Christianity has often been. Throughout the video there are constant comparisons between the highly advanced technological and social state of the Muslim countries and the ignorant, filthy state of European countries (excluding Spain of course).  It’s a really great video that is suitable for almost any audience (i.e. it doesn’t require background knowledge about Islam and science). One thing I learned from the video was why Muslims created the scientific method – the reason was that they wanted to know why Greek scholars had errors in their research – was it lack of equipment? Improper method? The answer they discovered was affirmative to the latter so they developed the scientific method. Another thing I learned was how the construction of the Gothic cathedrals of Northern Europe was highly influenced by the architecture of the Great Mosque of Cordoba.

The video’s only about ten minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIsaiyRtPHI

This is an article I came across whilst researching for my project on Islamic contributions to optics. I personally find it an extraordinarily well written article that manages to really sum up the objectives of this course. The author, Ibrahim B. Syed, manages to cover nine different areas in which Islamic medicine was, as he so aptly puts it, ‘1000 years ahead of its times’. These areas range everything from the licensing of physicians in medical education to the origin of oral anesthetics. One of the many pieces of information that really blew my mind was that when impoverished patients were discharged from the hospital, they were provided with five gold pieces to support them during their period of recovery. Yes, you read that right. Instead of being hounded to pay hospital fees, destitute patients were given money.

Anyways, enjoy – it’s super easy to read and it’s only eight pages long.

http://www.ishim.net/ishimj/2/01.pdf

Hey FINALLY done. Thank God lol.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ali_Ibn_Isa&oldid=348636447

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shams_al-D%C4%ABn_Ab%C5%AB_Abd_All%C4%81h_al-Khal%C4%ABl%C4%AB&oldid=348638632

Ali ibn Isa (940-1010AD) is considered one of the most famous physicians of the tenth century. His famous Notebook of the Oculists combined information obtained from both Greco-Roman and Arab sources. The book encompassed information on treatment and classification of over one hundred different eye diseases. In the book, eye diseases were sorted by their anatomical location. The Notebook of the Oculists was widely used by European physicians for hundreds of years. Ibn Isa’s book was one of the first, along with Hunayn ibn Ishaq’s Ten Treatises on the Eye, to illustrate anatomy of the eye. Specifically, Ibn Isa illustrated the optic chiasm and brain [3].

Ibn Isa was the first to describe and suggest treatment for an array of diseases. For example, he was the first to discover the symptoms of Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada Syndrome (VKH) – ocular inflammation associated with a distinct whitening of the hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes [4]. Ibn Isa was also the first to classify epiphora as being a result a result of overzealous cautery of pterygium. In addition to this pioneering description, Ibn Isa also suggested treatments for epiphora based on the stage of the disease – namely treatment in the early stages with astringent materials, for example ammonia salt, burned copper, or lid past and a hook dissection with a feathered quill for chronic stages of epiphora [2]. Ibn Isa is also thought to be the first to describe temporal arteritis, although Sir Jonathan Hutchinson (1828-1913) is erroneously credited with this [1].

References:

[1] Baum E, Sams WM, Payne R. Giant cell arteritis: a systemic disease with rare cutaneous manifestations. J Am Acad Dermatol 1982 (6): 1081–1088

[2] Hirst Lawrence W. The treatment of pterygium. Surv Ophthalmol 2003;48:145-80.

[3] Lin, Daren. “A Foundation of Western Ophthalmology in Medieval Islamic Medicine” UWOMJ 78 (1) (2008), 41-45

[4] Paredes I, Ahmed M, Foster C S. Immunomodulatory therapy for Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada patients as first line therapy. Ocul Immunol Inflamm. 2006 (14): 87–90

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Shams al-Din Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Khalili worked in Damascus, Syria at the Umayyad Mosque as a religious timekeeper (muwaqqit) for the majority of his life. Other than al-Khalili’s occupation, little is known about his life. He lived at the same time as Ibn al Shatir – the famous Arab astronomer [2]. Al-Khalili is known for two sets of mathematical tables he constructed, both totaling roughly 30,000 entries. He tabulated all the entries made by the celebrated Egyptian Muslim astronomer Ibn Yunus, except for the entries that al-Khalili made himself for the city of Damascus. It is evident that number manipulation did not exhaust al-Khalili as he computed 13,000 entries into his ‘Universal Tables’ of different auxiliary functions which allowed him to generate the solutions of standard problems of spherical astronomy for any given latitude. In addition to this, he created a 3,000 entry table that gave the direction of the city of Mecca (the Qibla) for all latitudes and longitudes for all the Muslim countries of the 14^th century [1]. Knowledge of the direction of the Qibla is essential in Islam because Muslims pray in the direction of Mecca. The values present in al-Khalili’s tables have been determined to be amazingly accurate – indeed they have been calculated to be accurate up to three or four significant decimal digits. Up to the present time, it is not known how exactly al-Khalili went about calculating each of his entries [3].

References:

[1] D A King, Al-Khalili’s auxiliary tables for solving problems of spherical astronomy, J. Hist.    Astronom. 4 (2) (1973), 99-110.

[2] D A King, Al-Khalili’s qibla table, J. Near-Eastern Stud. 34 (2) (1975), 81-122.

[3] G Van Brummelen, The numerical structure of al-Khalili’s auxiliary tables, Physis Riv. Internaz. Storia Sci. (N.S.) 28 (3) (1991), 667-697.