LegendaryLife Blog

Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham is the first and greatest scientist to have ever lived!

A few weeks ago, I discovered that the roots of modern science came from Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham, yes, the first true scientist was a Muslim man! I find this guy very interesting for a number of reasons but most strikingly, how the existence of this important man was completely ignored throughout my elementary, secondary and university science classes who put the beginnings of science squarely from Europe! Astonishing!

Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham’s Early Years

Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham was born in Basra (modern day Iraqi city) in 965 which, at the time, was considered among the top cultural, educational and spiritual centers of the Middle East. New ideas were freely shared, people were free to travel as they pleased and unlike now, the region was relatively stable.

Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham’s Productive Years

Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham studied both academically and on his own throughout his life and also took several jobs including that of a civil servant. He was most likely well known for his knowledge in both religious and scientific circles at the time.

Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham and the river Nile

He was very confident in his ability to solve problems and, as the story goes, was summoned by the ruler of the Fatimid Caliphate to help regulate the river Nile in order to stop the annual floods that were occurring at the time. Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham took-on the job but later realized that although his vision was possible, the technologies and methods used at the time were completely inadequate to do the job properly. For fear of pissing off the Egyptian ruler, he acted insane which spared his life and was held under house arrest for over a decade… where he produced some of his most amazing work between 1011 to 1021. The details of this story are still in dispute but the work he produced during this time isn’t.

Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham final years

In 1038, Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham managed to be in Cairo (Egypt) where he probably studied and worked with several prestigious universities and libraries. During this time, he wrote many papers relating to diverse subjects, from Astronomy to Mathematics and Medicine to Optics. He then left for a trip to Muslim Spain, part of the modern day European Union.

Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham’s Death

This legendary man most likely died in Cairo, Egypt in 1039 at the age of 76.

Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham’s World

I wrote other articles regarding the BBC’s series “Science and Islam: The Language of Science” which will give you a clearer idea of the discoveries, times and ideas he was able to live through at the time.

• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Language of Science (Episode 1)
• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Empire of Reason (Episode 2)
• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Power of Doubt (Episode 3)

Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham’s Body of Work

In 1021, Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham “published” probably the third most influential book in the history of the world after the Koran and the Bible titled “Book of Optics”. Among many things, he showed demonstratable proof that:

• light travels in straight lines
• disproved an almost 1 000 year Greek theory that we see objects because of the light hitting them followed by our eye and not the other way around
• developed the concept behind the first pinhole camera
• described in detail how the eye actually is capable of seeing
• improved upon existing theories of motion, perception and light projection
• the relationship between density and altitude including atmospheric refraction
• developed very complex celestial mathematics to help create doubt that the universe rotates around the Earth
• relationships between mass and attraction using magnitude and gravity
• disproved the theory that the Moon was a light reflector, replacing it with one of light emission
• developed the foundations behind current theories of kinetics, inertia, friction and momentum

He also commented and expanded on a number of existing theories from medicine to mathematics and is credited with being among the first to use mathematics to prove his theories.

Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham Legacy

By all accounts, Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham was a very prolific writer and adventurer (in a scientific sense). He left a wealth of knowledge that is as applicable today as it was at his time. Based on the body of his work, he rightfully deserves a place above such scientific greats as Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and even Leo Baekeland (inventor of plastic) who all used the foundations of his equations to produce their work. He is the father of the modern scientific theory and there isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t touch, see or use something whose roots lie in this greatest of men. The lives of countless people around the world were vastly improved due to his diligence and sacrifice, something that never should have been so easily dismissed.

The Bottom Line

The path of history is full of twists and turns.

Buzvia: Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham on Wikipedia, Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham researcher Bradley Steffens, BBC Article about Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham (which lead to me discovering him in the first place)

This morning I decided to start drinking coffee twice a week for the health benefits so last night, I bought some freeze-dried instant coffee and this morning made myself a mug. I can’t remember the last time I drank coffee but it has been at least a few years as I tend to like green tea instead. Anyways, I treated it like instant hot chocolate, filled my mug about a quarter full and put in some very hot water. I can’t read the local language so I had nothing to go by other than my protein supplements and hot chocolate experiences. It tasted like sweaty shoes and a few hours later, I am still feeling a bit nauseous so I decided to wash it down with some green tea which made me feel even worse! Next time, I will only put two heaping table spoons instead of five and see if I feel better after… it sure didn’t help my workout today at the gym, had to cut early due to a headache.

The Bottom Line

Beware of coffee.

I find this entire series very fascinating… it has helped me greatly in better understanding the times and events that Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham lived through which helps tremendously in developing his LegendaryLife Profile. I don’t know how long this series ran but will keep putting the video and important summaries as this is knowledge that should be lost again! I have included my final thoughts regarding this series… everybody should know about how vitally important the Islamic Empire was to our modern way of life.

BBC’s Science and Islam 3: The Power of Doubt Part 1

• astronomy is one of the oldest streams of science, as stated by Professor Jim Al-Khalili of the University of Surrey
• Islamic scientists were among the first to shake the Greek view that the Earth was in the center of the solar system with the Sun going around it
• Nicolai Copernicus (Copernicito)’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) was released in 1539 and it argued  for the first time, the planets all go around the Sun
• this book started the European scientific revolution leading to modern Physics
• Nicolai Copernicus references, in his own book, the observations made by a 9th century Muslim astronomers including calculations devised by Ibn al-Shatir, a 14th century Islamic astronomer

BBC’s Science and Islam 3: The Power of Doubt Part 2

• Ibn al-Shatir created a very precise Sun dial in Syria which was heavily referenced by Nicolai Copernicus but has since been taken out but a backup was recently discovered which kept accurate time no matter the day in the year (some days are longer, others shorter)
• Muslims need to pray five times a day at precise times, so they required not only a way to tell time but as they pray towards Mecca, precise navigational tools as well
• Dawn, Noon, Afternoon, Sunset, Nightfall is when prayers must be done
• the discovery of the Equinox lead to that of how long, precisely, a year is by an Islamic astronomer who put both Greek texts that where 700 years old and his own observations over 40 years, together (within 2 minutes error)
• the Earth’s tilt was also discovered within half a degree, variations in the diameter of the Sun and celestial distances were also worked-out… all without the use of a telescope
• the Greek astronomer, Ptolemy, devised a theory that stood for 700 years in which the Earth was surrounded by perfect circles where the other planets and Sun rotated around

BBC’s Science and Islam 3: The Power of Doubt Part 3

• the cosmic foundations of Greek astronomy were found to not match Islamic astronomers findings, as a result, they began to question the entire philosophies that the Greek held, doubt was created as a result which was a revolutionary ideas at the time
• Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham is referenced as one of the biggest and most influential doubters of Greek astronomy, he argued that ideas must be backed-up by mathematics and in the 11th century he wrote that even Ptolemy knew he was wrong and now it’s his job to fix this Greek trajedy
• Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham challenged people to come-up with an alternative theory that matched true observational data with mathematical equations
• the birth of the modern scientific age began with the complete rejection of Greek celestial theories and was figured-out by an Islamic scholar out of Iran, Nasir al-Din Tosi in the 12th century
• the Mongols changed Nasir al-Din Tosi life forever, they came into Iran and by 1255, they reached the foothills of his mountaintop home

BBC’s Science and Islam 3: The Power of Doubt Part 4

• Nasir al-Din Tosi met with the Mongul Emperor who was very superstitious and convinced him that he could tell the future placement of celestial bodies but needed the proper equipment, which he got and was made the head scientist with the world’s largest observatory in the world at the time
• other astronomers from around the known world came to work at this world’s first, they overthrew the Greek view of the solar system as a result with incredibly complicated mathematics except for one small detail, they still had the Earth in the middle of the solar system
• based off the work of Muslim scholars, the final rejection of the Earth centris solar system was rejected in Italy during the early beginnings of the European Renaissance
• Nicolai Copernicus was like Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham, they both hated the entire concept behind Ptolemy’s interpretation of our solar system
• It wasn’t before Isaac Newton that Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham dream of finally rejecting completely Ptolemy’s interpretation using vigorous mathematical equations took place
• why was the work began by Islamic astronomers completed in Europe and not the Middle East? How did Islamic knowledge get to Europe in the first place?
• answers to both questions lay in the city of Venice, Italy
• merchants of Venice had deep trading relationships with the Islamic Empire, as a result, it became a very afluent city
• Arabic coffee culture became poppular in Venice as did their architectural style and even measurement units developed in the Middle East

BBC’s Science and Islam 3: The Power of Doubt Part 5

• with Arabic trade came Arabic books which began to flood the European marketplace
• for instance, the 9th century book about Algebra by Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham appeared in Latin in the 12th century and in the 15th century, the Cannon of Medicine was first published in the West
• the shift of knowledge from the Islamic Empire to Europe is was lead to the European Renaissance
• the very first print of the Koran was discovered in Venice, Italy among many other books that were also centuries old, oddly enough, it was first printed in Venice and not from the Islamic world by people who didn’t speak Arabic fluently as it was full of mistakes due to the use of printing press
• the first Koran printed by a press wasn’t accepted by Muslims for centuries, they preferred the hand-scribed versions of their Holy book
• the Arabic language is incredibly precise, as a result, they needed to follow this steam of precision in every other aspect of their lives, including mathematics, astronomy and even chemistry to name but a few
• due to all the extra symbols, Arabic was far harder to type than Latin so this failure lead to huge advances in Europe that didn’t translate well into the Middle East who relied on hand-made copies as a way to distribute knowledge
• the rejection of the printing press by the Islamic Empire caused a huge shift from the East to the West regarding scientific advances, causing Eastern sciences to fall behind that of the West for the first time
• in the mid 12th century, the Islamic Empire begins to falter because it was under attack from all sides; East was the Mongols who, in 1258, arrived into Baghdad and destroyed everything, West was the Christians from the North on their re-conquest and in 1492, took over Spain and destroyed anything with a hint of Arabic
• Christians were intent on reclaiming their Holy Land from the Islamic Empire, this was the time of the Crusades and they wanted Jerusalem!
• as the Islamic Empire was being attacked from all sides, it broke apart into warring thiefdoms
• the death of Islamic influence happened in 1492 when Christopher Columbus discovered America, the geography of the entire world changed overnight

BBC’s Science and Islam 3: The Power of Doubt Part 6

• the New World lead to an incredible amount of wealth being accumulated by European powers, vaster than anything that the Islamic Empire could ever have dreamed
• science followed the money and Britain became the world’s first true superpower as a result with colonies around the world
• by the 17th century, Britain was at the center of the Atlantic trade route and funded science at an incredible pace in order to maintain its superiority
• Isaac Newton required vast amounts of data from all over the world, the Islamic Empire provided him with accurate mathematics and observational data that he needed to release his first book that finally put an end to the Greek view of the world
• as the Middle East lost it’s power and influence through wars and discoveries by rivals, its science declined
• English and French, as they colonized the world, put others at a lower tier in order to more easily subjicate them and make them believe they were “helping” instead of “destroying” other cultures
• the spreading of colonial power around the world was justified by helping empires that were now in decay
• Europeans thought up till the 17th century that their superiority was due to their religion but after this time, it was in their science
• the Islamic Empire and achievements were acknowledged but as being “old” and “ancient”, none of which happened recently, thus minimizing their influence on European culture
• even to this day, the Middle Eastern achievements are not well known as they were destroyed, intentionally, by the colonial powers
• scientific achievements over the past 4 centuries have happened in the West
• now in the 21st century, the Middle East is starting to redevelop its scientific influence and knowledge
• for instance, in Iran, a deeply religious state, they are pushing the envelopes of cloning and genetic manipulation!
• science is the universal and common language of the human race
• nature’s laws are true for all of us

Some Final Thoughts

What started as work to write a biography about Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham for LegendaryLife.com has lead me down a path that really changed the entire way I am viewing the world now. I had thought of the Middle East as a backward place with very little achievement to show for itself due to my Western education that neglected to tell me about how important and truly influential this place really was! Think of it this way, if it wasn’t for the Islamic Empire, we most likely would NOT have cars, airplanes, computers and so on right now but all living in wood or mud huts. Seriously… the spread of the Islamic Empire is something that should be imprinted in the minds of ALL people around the world, they are not a decayed people (European view) but actually a very vibrant one that had it’s tree of knowledge almost completely killed by the European’s and their superiority complex. There is nobody to blame for the past events that our ancestors played a role in but I find it very sad that for the past 32 years of my life, this knowledge wasn’t even told to me. This makes me wonder about how much more there is to discover from the vast empires of Africa, again, another people who were colonized, subjicated and whose history was destroyed in order to make our ancestors feel superior in order to justify slavery.

What about today?

With this new knowledge, I now understand why the West looks at the Middle East as I once did, as a people with little scientific value than what they can ship in oil tankers. I now understand a little more as to why the United-States are so fervent on their support of Israel and more importantly, why they continue to hold back, even now, the advancement of the Middle East by allowing dictators to squander their wealth which could be used for scientific knowledge and the acquisition by Iran of nuclear research. We are still, even today, in a world where the West sees itself as the “masters of knowledge” and fear the Middle East or even Asia of ever becoming as formidable as the Islamic Empire once was. We, collectively in the West, are not being told the truth in order to maintain a lie, that of superiority.

This series has been an incredible revelation to me!

The Bottom Line

The truth is out there… but difficult to find unless you are given a hint as to its existence.

• LegendaryLife Profile: Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham
• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Language of Science (Episode 1)
• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Empire of Reason (Episode 2)
• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Power of Doubt (Episode 3)
• The roots of Modern Science come from Islam!

This is the review of the second episode of the BBC’s Science and Islam: The Language of Science.

BBC’s Science and Islam 2: The Empire of Reason Part 1

• Islamic scholars realized that everything was based off rules, hence the idea of the Scientific Method was born
• powerful, advanced and wealthy civilizations lead to huge leaps in knowledge
• over a thousand years ago, the Islamic Empire was the largest in the world, governing about 60 million people or 30% of the world’s population at the time
• to give an idea of the size of the Islamic Empire, the Roman Empire would have occupied but a third of the territory
• “The Translation Movement” was funded by the enormous tax revenues collected by the Islamic Empire which sent scholars around the world to gather-up the sum of the world’s knowledge and get it all translated into one language, God’s language, Arabic
• the legacy of the powerful Islamic Empire is spread throughout the Middle East and southern Spain
• in the 8th century, Cairo was under Islamic rule and the first thing they did was try to measure, in the hopes of taming, the mighty river Nile
• they build the Nilometer which allowed scientists to measure, accurately, the level of the river and record it to help discover patterns and seasonal flows

BBC’s Science and Islam 2: The Empire of Reason Part 2

• by having a precise measure of the river Nile, the rulers now had a precise method of instituting taxes on farmers and warn the citizenry of problems early in the flooding season
• Nilometer is one of the many instruments created to help make sense of the randomness of natural processes
• the idea that you can create stability among chaos is a revelation for the times of Islamic Empire
• one of the Caliphs in the 8th century, was obsessed with maps of all kinds, making precise measurements of the world around him was a passion, which lead to the production of the first world map
• the first world map lead to a fundamental question… how big is the Earth?
• the passion for scientific endeavor continued due to a religious passion to discover everything that the creator had created, the practice is Islam also demanded that its followers have a clear understanding of the world they live in
• as they always need to pray towards Mecca no matter where they are, understanding the curvature and size of Earth was required knowledge
• Islamic scholars figured out that the circumference of the Earth was 24 thousand miles, which is within 4% of the correct value… all by measuring the angle of the Sun in two different places and measuring the distance between those places (by walking and counting your paces).
• the Caliph was pleased but wanted something more accurate so, two centuries later, the size of the Earth was discovered in far more precision

BBC’s Science and Islam 2: The Empire of Reason Part 3

• the precise circumference of the Earth was discovered, within 200 miles, by using three angles and the height of one mountain along with a simple mathematical formula
• math allows the embracing of the universe
• theory is meaningless without experimentation
• trade was the glue that, along with religion, help keep the Islamic Empire from falling onto itself due to the shier complexity of keeping everything running smoothly across such a vast area
• by the 8th century, the Islamic Empire dominated the world’s trad in both volume and importance
• anything that could be traded, was by the Islamic Empire
• carrier pigeons were used to help spread knowledge around the Empire, between governments, people and even scholars
• by the 7th century, the Islamic Empire was developing the principles of mass production

BBC’s Science and Islam 2: The Empire of Reason Part 4

• material knowledge was increasingly becoming important to both merchants and armies alike as new ways or making things had to be developed to support an expanded area of use
• the dream to turn base metals into Gold was a project the Islamic scholars poured an incredible amount of time and energy in, the practice of Alchemy had eluded them so far
• the study of Alchemy lead towards developments in the field of Chemistry, which was required in order to develop a common currency across the entire Empire
• coin making turned alchemy into chemistry
• engineers, soap makers and architects all demanded new material innovations in order to turn their concepts into reality
• Europe imported tonnes of soap from Islamic Spain during the 13th century as they didn’t have the knowledge to produce their own
• glass making expanded greatly with the discovery of new materials, they could change the color of glass by using chemicals and were able to build industrial furnaces to manufacture in large quantities, which were used also in tin, tiles and many other building materials
• chemistry was driven by the perfume marketplace as well, distillation was developed as a result to extract ever more complicated base components
• chemistry played a key role in weaponry were the Muslims would attack Catholics using bombs and grenades which struck fear in invading armies

BBC’s Science and Islam 2: The Empire of Reason Part 5

• the periodic table is the fundamental philosophy of chemistry, it lists all the known elements, grouped in order of similarities
• where the Greeks talked about the classification of elements (Earth, Air, Water, Fire), the Islamic chemists devised a classification that used the scientific observations, this was the foundations of the modern periodic table
• Physics is a Greek word meaning the science of change, the Greeks thought that math could only explain “perfect world and structures” (quantity) while the Islamic scientists realized quite the opposite, math can be used to make sense of the chaos of the world
• Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham thus created a new scientific system that combined the science of change (physics) with quantity (math)
• Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham was considered a genius and was known across the empire
• Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham used his time during house arrest to create the modern science of optics

BBC’s Science and Islam 2: The Empire of Reason Part 6

• Aristotle argued that the essence of an object flows into our eyes while Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham argued that actually, light hits an object and enters our eyes
• in 1020, Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham published his “Book of Optics” to explain the properties of light, this book is full of experiemental observation and describes them in great detail so others can see for themselves
• Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham discoverd the thickness of the atmosphere by looking at how light reflected after the Sun went under the horizon, he got a value of half of the real thickness… which is pretty good considering the technology at the time!

The Bottom Line

The Scientific Method is the single, most important idea behind our modern world

• LegendaryLife Profile: Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham
• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Language of Science (Episode 1)
• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Empire of Reason (Episode 2)
• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Power of Doubt (Episode 3)
• The roots of Modern Science come from Islam!

This article came about while I was writing the LegendaryLife profile of Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham, I was so impressed that I decided that I had to dedicate a blog article solely on this great piece of journalism.

Introduction

The BBC produced an amazing series outlining the contributions (yes, contributions) that the Middle East had given to science, I encourage you to watch this… it’s well worth it! I wrote a summary of each video under them to outline key points of interest. It also gives you a great overview of the history that Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham lived through, which helps greatly in understanding what made him tick.

BBC’s Science and Islam: The Language of Science Part 1

• Professor Jim Al-Khalili (University of Surrey) introduces himself, he grew-up in Baghdad where he discovered his passion for science and fled with his family once Saddam Hussein came into power
• between the 9th and 12th centuries, the Middle East lived through a period of great scientific fever which lead to a quantum leap in knowledge across many fields
• purpose of this BBC series is to discover the relationship between science and Islam
• Professor Jim Al-Khalili is a damn good artist!
• scientific words such as Algebra, Algorithm, Alkali are all Arabic and ironically, are the foundations of science from mathematics to chemistry!
• few scientists in the West are even aware of this Medieval Islamic legacy today but between the 12th and 17th century, scientists regularly sourced material from and gave credit to their Middle Eastern brothers
• Arabic names show-up all over the place in Medieval texts from maps to medicines
• Roman numerals were hopelessly inefficient compared to Islamic methods which is why we use numbers now instead
• the idea that you can represent any number you like using only 10 symbols was first developed by Indians around the 6th century, they also created the decimal point to represent fractions
• like all great science, things are blindingly obvious only after they have been discovered (reference to the decimal point and numbers)
• looking at a map, Baghdad (Capital of the Islamic Empire, modern day Iraq) is right in the cross-hairs of the East and West, where scientific knowledge met head-on originating from Europe to China
• Baghdad was founded in 762 with the aim of it becoming the glorious capital of a vast empire, united by Islam

BBC’s Science and Islam: The Language of Science Part 2

• the armies of Islam, starting in Medina, conquered a vast territory that spread from Spain to India over several decades
• by the 8th century, Islamic caliphs ruled a vast territory and the emperors at the time realized the scientific and political power go hand in hand
• medical knowledge could save lives, military technology can win wars, mathematics could help make sense of increasingly complex state finances, Mohammad (the Prophet) himself told believers to seek knowledge where ever they could find it (an idea that seems lost in modern times)
• studying God’s creations was a religious duty for most people at the time
• the rulers used knowledge as a way to subjicate the rest of the world, making them feel even more superior
• in the 8th century, the caliph, looking over his vast, diverse empire, decided to end the Chaos that multiple cultures, languages and ways of thinking caused and told everybody to learn Arabic as the “national language” which also happens to be the language of the Koran, hence, Arabic is considered the language of God
• the text of the Koran is so sacred, its text hasn’t changed in over 1 400 years
• the effect of a unified language was huge, scholars could now talk and share knowledge with one another
• Arabic is a very precise and unambiguous language which isn’t open to interpretation which is ideal for scientific and technical terminology
• between 750-950, the rulers were plowing money into a project of unifying all the world’s knowledge in central libraries and translating all the texts into Arabic (The Translation Movement)
• scolars spread all around the world, reviewing and translating texts into Arabic and if the ruler didn’t have the book they found, they would be paid in gold by their weight! (ei: instant millionaires many times over)
• the rulers were scared that what happened in Alexandria (total loss of thousands of years of knowledge) would happen again, so they took steps to make sure this never happened again

BBC’s Science and Islam: The Language of Science Part 3

• medical knowledge was at the top of the “must save, capture, translate and store” list of the Islamic ruler’s lists
• minor infections during this time today would be a death sentence back then, as a result, few people lived to old age
• religious teachings were a constant reminder of our mortality
• the Prophet Mohammad said “God did not send down a disease without also sending down its cure”, it’s up to us to find it!
• modern medicine still relies heavily on the findings of ancient Islamic doctors and researchers
• medieval Islamic doctors acquired knowledge from India to China, Europe to Africa and used all these different methods to find the most apt cure for any given condition
• “The Prophet’s Medicine” is still a very popular Arabic book that first came out in the 14th century, for instance, it warns against going onto land that had a plague and not bothering to try to escape it if it comes to your door and the cure for epilepsy is exorcism due to a bad spirit, it has nothing to do with the brain
• the central idea behind Islam is compassion for our fellow humans, it also preaches a high level of religious tolerance

BBC’s Science and Islam: The Language of Science Part 4

• as “The Translation Movement” was underway, new medical advances were being acquired from all four corners of the world and lead to the development of a “Pharmacy”, a completely new concept at the time
• Islamic medicine also practiced extensive surgery in less than clean (by today’s standards) rooms
• eye surgery was one of Islamic medicine’s great successes, even with the use of incredibly crude instruments
• completed in 1025 by Islamic doctor Avicenna along with a group of researchers, the “Cannon of Medicine” was a a 14 volume medical encyclopedia that ruled the world up until the 18th century when modern medicine discovered bacteria and viruses. It was the first time that all the sums of the world’s medical knowledge was able to be found, clearly organized, one one group of texts

BBC’s Science and Islam: The Language of Science Part 5

• Islamic medical researchers went at great lengths to discover the hidden secrets of the ancients, whom they believed, possessed incredible knowledge that had been lost to time
• the dark art of Alchemy was something that scientists at the time spent vast amounts of time and resources on rediscovering
• the Rosetta Stone had the same inscriptions written in both Greek and Egyptian Hieroglyphs, which proved invaluable for European researchers to decipher the Hieroglyphs but this work was done in the 9th and 10th century before by Islamic explorers who related Hieroglyphs to Arabic texts (they are related) by discovering that the Coptic (basis for Arabic) was nothing but the evolution of the Egyptian language
• this discovery was directly related to “The Translation Movement” as they had gone through a number of Coptic texts as part of their research
• Egyptology didn’t begin in the 19th century by Europeans, it began in the 9th or 10th century by Islamic scholars
• “The Translation Movement”, unlike other intellectual movements, was curious and inclusive regardless of religion, background or origin which meant a vast amount of information could be gathered, digested and put together
• Baghdad, during “The Translation Movement” was a place in which innovation and knowledge was richly valued and rewarded
• the Caliphs at the time created Magelis, places where the rich would meet with the smart to pursuit ideas and new innovations, think of it as the first Venture Capitalist System If you had a great idea, willing to debate and knew Arabic, no matter your background, you were invited to share!
• Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham is mentioned again (briefly mentioned at the beginning of the series) and was a favorite of the caliphs, highly regarded and well versed in many disciplines, he was fearless in his thinking
• Greek mathemiatics dealt mainly with geometry while India invented the 10 number and decimal system, what Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham did was put the two together

BBC’s Science and Islam: The Language of Science Part 6

• Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham managed to put together Greek Pictures with Indian Precision (Symbols) which created what we call today, Algebra
• Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham discovered that people require three sets of numbers; roots, squares and numbers
• Algebra helped to win wars by creating simple formulas that helped figure-out cannon ball trajectories or even the energy required to split attoms which ended-up creating the nuclear bomb, without Algebra, none of this would be possible
• Science isn’t Islamic, it cannot be claimed by any one group, but the Islamic scholars were the first to piece together information from across the globe into one solid piece of work that lead to the modern era we all enjoy today
• Science is therefore, a universal truth

The Bottom Line

The truth IS out there!

• LegendaryLife Profile: Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham
• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Language of Science (Episode 1)
• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Empire of Reason (Episode 2)
• BBC’s Science and Islam: The Power of Doubt (Episode 3)
• The roots of Modern Science come from Islam!