MIDDLE-EAST

• The Middle-East civilization has a very rich culture and tradition, they also have an enormous contribution to science and technology
• Islamicate scholars


  People influenced by Islamic civilization regardless of their religious views
• Mathematical terms contributed by Islamicate scholars

  • Algebra
  • Azimuth
  • Algorithms
• Time of Abbasid Caliphate, when Middle-East civilization flourished

  750-1517
• Middle-East civilization during Abbasid Caliphate


  • Crossroad trading zone for Persia, India, Byzantine cultures, and various religions
  • Many languages flourished
• Early Islamic science


  • Very inclusive due to blended culture and various belief systems
  • High literacy rate
  • Adherent to treat others equally
• Bayt al-Hikmah


  The house of Wisdom, a great library that began from the collections of Caliphate Al-Mansur
• Baghdad, the first capital of Abbasid, was founded by Caliphate Al-Mansur


  754 AD
• Baghdad became the largest urban area

  930 AD
• Translation Movement


  Supported by Caliphate Al-Rashid
• Caliphate Al-Mamun re-founded the House of Wisdom as an international center for translation and research

  832 AD
• By 850, the House of Wisdom became the largest library in the world
• Caliphate Al-Mamun sponsored families of scholar-translators to bring useful texts from different parts of the world with rich philosophical foundations like Greek, Chinese, Sanskrit, Persian, and Syriac to translate it to Arabic
• Caliphate Al-Mamun invested in Greek and Persian translation as a sign of civic status, a worthy cause, and a highly practical calling
• Translation of Greek and Persian texts


  Helped them to have a better understanding in astronomy and improve their knowledge on geography
• Ibn Rushd


  Sometimes called "The Commentator", being Aristotle's top fan
• Mu'tazila


  Their principles believed that rationalism could be used to understand both the physical world and spiritual world
• Mu'tazila brought the Greek Aristotelian reason based debate about nature of the cosmos into the Islamic social context
• Infrastructures established by Middle-East civilization

  • Observatories
  • Hospitals
  • Public libraries
  • Madrasas (Islamic colleges)
• In Madrasas, they could study law, Greek natural philosophy, logic arithmetic, astronomy, and astrology
• Ancient philosophers, astronomers and polymaths from Persia

  • Attempted to propose the heliocentrism, their theories were against Aristotle but with observed data
• Al-Mamun's team attempted to measure the circumference of the earth using astronomical observations and derived the number of 24,480 miles, which is less than 2% accurate compared to the modern calculation of 24,901 miles
• Al-Khwarizmi


  Wrote "kitab al-Jabr", an original manual of practical math that introduced rational, irrational numbers and different forms of numeric systems and calculations
• Middle-east civilization invented the astrolabes, which are widely used in navigations and developed algebra, trigonometry and other numeric related systems
• Middle-east civilization practiced both the techne (practical knowledge) and the episteme (theoretical knowledge)
• The Abbasid state focused on improving the application of art such as hydraulic engineering, and agricultural science. They constructed buildings, large dams, waterwheels, and underground channels to tap ground water
• The book of Ingenious devices


  Written in 850 AD by the Banu-Musa brothers, a compendium of one hundred devices and how to use them, including the earliest programmable machine, "an instrument that plays by itself"
• The book of knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices


  Written in 1206 by polymath al-Jazari, covering hundreds of machines with instructions on how to build them, including waterwheel, watermill, giant water clock, elephant and castle shaped clock, fountain, candle clock, musical automata, and water flute
• Al-Jazari invented many "medieval automations", programmable devices for music, household, and many more
• Abu Bakr al-Razi


  A Persian polymath who wrote dozens of books with detailed accounts of his work, a major contributor in the medieval field of psychology and ophthalmology, the first to identify small pox and measles, and his medicinal works are based on Greek humoral medicine and natural philosophy
• al-Hawi al-Kabir


  A very influential medical encyclopedia written by Abu Bakr al-Razi
• al-tibb al-nabawi


  Islamic prophetic medicine, advocated traditional medical practices mentioned in the Qur'an, written by Abu Bakr al-Razi
• Ibn Sina (Avicenna)


  A Persian polymath who wrote "al-Qanun fi al-Tibb" (The Canon of Medicine), a best-selling book in medical education that mashed up different books of famous physicians and made notes of his own
• The Canon of Medicine is a book of a little bit of everything in medical science, from the collected accounts of Aristotle, Hippocrates, and many more
• The Middle-east civilization has become the urban centers of trade and knowledge exchange populated by natural philosophers with a keen desire to build upon earlier insights
• The Middle-east intellectual revolution has revolutionized mathematics, astronomy, medicinal science and engineering, their sophistication to these fields is very evident
• The colorful science and technology, paired with their rich culture and religion revolutionized the way we view science and arts