An Opinion article from The New York Times website, about the Scholars from the Muslim Civilisation that Inspired Spinoza, Locke and Defoe, written by Mustafa Akyol
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Category: Feature
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Video: How Arabic Influenced Languages Around the World
Alcohol, soda and sugar, what do they have in common, they are bad for you, but also they are all derived from Arabic, the words...
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On the Coffee Trail
Coffee is a global industry and the second-largest commodity-based product; only oil beats it.
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A Candlestick Base Sold for £6.6 million ($9.1 million)?
A 13th-century candlestick broke Sotheby's record at auction for an object from the Islamic art world when it sold after a 25-minute bidding contest
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The Day a Plate Sold for £5.4 ($6.9) Million
An Exceptionally Rare Ottoman Dish - 15th Century Iznik Charger
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Translation Movement
How translation of medical knowledge helped feed its development
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Arabic Astronomy Manuscript Resurrected
EuroNews.com: Images of the Fixed Stars: Ancient astronomy manuscript resurrected by Uzbek heritage initiative
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The Art of More by Michael Brooks
How Mathematics Created Civilisation: Bestselling science writer Michael Brooks takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of civilisation, as he explains why maths is fundamental to our understanding of the world.
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Top 7 ingenious Clocks from Muslim Civilisation that defied the Middle Ages
TIME TELLING MACHINES: Revealing 7 marvellous mechanical and water-powered clocks from early Muslim Civilisation. These sophisticated devices that defied the Middle Ages.
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Major Works on Nature and the Environment from a Thousand Years Ago
The World Environment Day, celebrated annually since 1972, has grown to become one of the main vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and encourages political attention and action.
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Ibn Sina’s ‘Canon’ book, a medical reference in Europe for 500 years!
Ibn Sina, or Avicenna, lived in Hamadan and Jurjan from 980 to 1037 CE, and acquired great fame in mediaeval European medicine. His encyclopaedic book Al Qanun Fi Al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine) was translated into Latin at the end of the 12th century CE, and became a reference source for medical studies in the universities of Europe for 500 years!
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Keep your distance – health lessons from the history of pandemics
From a simple cold to a serious illness, humans have always lived with the risk of catching diseases from one another. Pandemics affecting millions are fortunately rare, but the bubonic plague of the 14th century and the 1918 influenza outbreak have left a dark shadow on history.
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Distillation in Muslim Civilisation
From rose water to hair dye, soap to paint, early chemists worked to create a panoply of useful substances. As early as the middle of the ninth century, experimenters in Muslim civilisation were aware of the processes of crystallisation, oxidation, evaporation, sublimation, and filtration. To make their experiments more accurate...
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Suleymaniye Mosque – Powerful Domes
New Building Methods that Exalted the Heavens: Sinan the Architect designed and built impressive schools, mosques, and public buildings, approaching his work with an eye for harmony between architecture and the landscape. His work appeared in Damascus, Mecca, Bosnia, and elsewhere, but perhaps his most impressive building is his last, the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, Turkey.
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Extraordinary Women from the Golden Age of Muslim Civilisation
Extraordinary women from different faiths and backgrounds worked alongside men in Muslim Civilisation to advance their societies. Those talented women are shining examples and role models of women who excelled in fields of poetry, literature, medicine, philosophy and mathematics. We pay tribute to some of those women on International Women’s Day (IWD2016).
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Constellations
Muslims also devised star maps and astronomical tables, and both of these would be used in Europe and the Far East for centuries. Maps of the heavens also appeared in art, such as on the dome of a bathhouse at Qusayr ’Amra, a Jordanian palace built in the eighth century, which has a unique hemispherical celestial map.
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Lunar Formations and Astronomers from Muslim Civilisation
In 1651, Joannes Baptista Riccioli, a Jesuit professor of astronomy and philosophy in Bologna, Italy, compiled a comprehensive work on astronomy, called Almagestum Novum, with a complete map of the Moon. He named the lunar formations after distinguished astronomers of the Middle Ages. Ten were given the names of Muslim astronomers and mathematicians...
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Code Breaking a Thousand Years Ago
From Al-Kindi to Bletchley Parka
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Master Navigators From Muslim Civilisation
A time when Muslim merchants could travel virtually unobstructed from Morocco to Southeast Asia, and navigators from Ming China could boast of enormous naval expeditions reaching as far west as Hormuz, Aden, and Mombasa, Western Europeans remained almost totally confined, both physically and intellectually, to a small slice of the world...
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Travellers and Explorers from a Golden Age
Since the Quran said every able-bodied person should make a pilgrimage, or hajj, to Mecca at least once in their lifetime, thousands travelled from the farthest reaches of the Islamic empire to Mecca, beginning in the seventh century. As they travelled, they made descriptions of the lands that they passed through. Some of the most famous include...
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Major Works on Herbal Medicine from a Thousand Years Ago
As the Muslim lands grew, merchants, scholars, and travellers came across exotic plants, trees, seeds, and spices previously unknown to them. They collected and brought back a huge number of samples of raw ingredients, along with knowledge and information about their use, combing the world and its harshest of environments, going as far afield as the steppes of Asia and the Pyrenees...
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Inoculation from East to West
The Anatolian Ottoman Turks knew about methods of inoculation. They called it Ashi, or engrafting, and they had inherited it from older Turkish tribes. Vaccination is a process where a person is given a weakened or inactive dose of a disease-causing organism. This stimulates the immune system to produce antibodies to this specific disease.
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Hospital Development In Muslim Civilisation
The idea behind hospitals in the Muslim world a thousand years ago was to provide a range of facilities from treatments to convalescence, asylum, and retirement homes. They looked after all kinds of people, rich and poor, because Muslims are honour-bound to provide treatment for the sick, whoever they may be.
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Celebrating Sake Dean Mahomed
In addition to our Top 10 Google Doodles' for Muslim Civilisation featured story, Google Doodle has a new important figure from Muslim Civilisation called Sake Dean Mahomed, who we also mentioned in our 1001 Inventions book from the first edition.
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Web Of Words
This alphabet lists just some of the words that have come from sources in Muslim civilization and have passed into the English language with their original meaning intact. It is only a small selection...
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A Journey of a Book: Kalila wa-Dimna
One of the most popular books ever written [in Arabic & Persian] is the book the [Muslim Civilisation] know as Kalila wa-Dimna, a bestseller for almost two thousand years, and a book still read with pleasure all over the world. It has been translated at least 200 times into 50 different languages.
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Seeking Knowledge In Muslim Civilisation: Universities
Muslims were urged throughout the Quran to seek knowledge. This was a great incentive for reflection and understanding. This Quranic urge meant that all over the Muslim world, advanced subjects were taught in mosques, schools, colleges, hospitals, observatories, and the homes of scholars.
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Trick Devices from a Thousand Years Ago
Muhammad ibn Musa ibn Shakir and his brothers Ahmed and Al-Hasan were known as the Banu Musa Brothers. They were part of the House of Wisdom of Baghdad in the ninth century. As well as being great mathematicians and translators of scientific treatises, they also invented many trick devices. Their Book of Ingenious Devices lists more than a hundred of them.
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The Birth of Modern Astronomy
Some people unaware of what Muslims accomplished believe that astronomy died with the Greeks, and was brought to life again by Nicolas Copernicus, the 15th-century Polish astronomer who is famous for introducing the sun-centered theory of the solar system, which marked the beginning of modern astronomy—even though it was not universally accepted.
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Ever heard of African King Idris Alooma?
Though we may think of Timbuktu as the pre-eminent site of pre-colonial West African scholarship, we must remember that there were other places spanning across the Western and Central Sudan that were renowned for their tradition of teaching.
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Piri Reis’ Map: A Map to Intrigue East and West Alike
In 1929, scholars working in Turkey’s Topkapi Palace Museum discovered a section of an early 16th-century Turkish world map. It was signed by a captain named Piri ibn Hajji Mohammed Reis (meaning “admiral”), and it was dated 1513. Now known as the famous “Map of America,” it was made only 21 years after Christopher Columbus had reached the New World...
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Top Five Medical Books on Healthy Living from Muslim Civilisation
If you think medical advice on healthy living - good nutrients, exercise and stress free existence is a modern medical practice, you might want to think again and join us to discover 5 medical books from 1,000 years ago that explored those exact topics.
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The Art of Healing: Medical Care in Muslim Civilization
Medicine is a science, from which one learns the states of the human body… in order to preserve good health when it exists, and restore it when it is lacking.
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East meets West in Venice
A fascinating article about Venice a few hundred years ago when it flourished as the hub of Europe’s trade with the lands to its east and south.
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Timbuktu
A West African city with a name long synonymous with the unknown edges of the world, Timbuktu flourished from trade in salt, gold and ivory and was part of the Mali Empire of the 14th century.
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1001 Inventions and Cures From The East
‘1001 Inventions and Cures from the East’ is an educational initiative created by 1001 Inventions to introduce the fascinating legacy of healthcare from the creative golden age of science in early Muslim Civilisation and connected civilisations from the East.
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10 Stunning Ceilings from the Wonders of Islamic Architecture
Discover ceilings from buildings inspired by Islamic architecture where looking up is a spellbinding experience!
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Map Making in Muslim Civilisation: The first map to show Europe, Asia, and North Africa
A thousand years ago, accurate plans of countries, continents, and waterways were unknown. But as more people began to travel the world for trade, exploration, and religious reasons, the demand for good maps increased. Some of the world’s most precious maps were drawn by great scholars of Muslim civilization, who assembled all the geographical knowledge available to them...
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Ibn Sina’s ‘Canon’ – a medical reference in Europe for 500 years
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Where algebra got its name from
Khiva in Uzbekistan, the birth place of the famous mathematician Al-Khawarizmi
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Gracious living in the towns of Muslim civilization
From Córdoba to Damascus and Baghdad, old streets still remain intact in some ancient towns, providing glimpses of life 1,000 years ago. The Spanish cities of Córdoba and Seville still retain areas of their old towns in which you can glimpse how life was lived centuries ago under Muslim rule...
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Canon of Medicine
Ibn Sina wrote and taught widely on medicine, philosophy, and natural sciences. In the Canon, Ibn Sina collected together medical knowledge from across civilizations. Made up of five volumes, the book covered medical principles, medicines, diseases of various body parts, general disease, and traumas.
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Ancient and Modern Ways To Harness The Wind
A thousand years ago, geographer Al-Istakhri wrote of seeing windmills used to provide power, running mills that were built everywhere. Unlike the traditional European design, Central Asian windmills had vertical shafts onto which vertical vanes were mounted to catch the wind...
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Top 10 Maps from Muslim Civilisation, when North was South and South was North, towards Mecca
1001 Inventions reveals 10 marvelous maps from Muslim Civilisation that include one of the earliest known maps of South America and maps where the world appears upside down! A time when North was South and South was North, towards Mecca… We tend to take many things for granted. Today, we are equipped with numerous means...
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The Story Corner: The Mystery of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan
In early 12th-century Muslim Spain, a gifted philosopher, mathematician, poet, and medical doctor was born. Ibn Tufayl, or Abu Bakr ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Tufayl al-Qaysi, to give his full name, became known in the West as Abubacer...
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Secret Source: Top Five Fountains in the Gardens of Muslim Civilisation
Blue skies, lush greenery, and brightly-coloured flowers. A garden offers shade, serenity and inspiration whether it’s in the grounds of a luxurious palace or hidden within a modest courtyard. Add the soothing sounds of water gushing from a fountain, and the picture is complete.
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Fictional Short Stories
1001 Inventions ran a creative writing competition that had writers from all over the world invited to submit a fictional short story based on the real lives of one of eleven scholars, adventurers and pioneers from Muslim civilisation. The stories of the winners in each category appear in this anthology, along with three other selected stories from the shortlisted entries.
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Al-Jahiz’s Book of Animals: The transcendent value of disgust
Jeannie Miller is making a big impact with a new perspective on some very old prose.
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Top 5 Mega Cities on the Silk Road
Throughout history, trade routes played a central role in the transfer of goods and exchange of ideas between different parts of the world. The historic Silk Roads, which were a network of trade routes across land and sea that connected the lands from China across Asia to the Meditteranean...
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Top 10 Google Doodles’ for Muslim Civilisation
A Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the logo on Google's homepages that commemorate holidays, events, achievements, and people. Some of the people featured are prominent figures from Muslim Civilisation from scientists to scholars, travelers to other social figures.
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When the World Spoke Arabic
At the height of the Golden Age of Muslim Civilisation, the Arabic language was the lingua franca that served as the language of science, poetry, literature, governance and art. A big movement of translation of Greek, Roman and other ancient books of science, philosophy and literature into Arabic gave a push for the continued success of Arabic taking centre stage of the old world.
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Top Five Mega Cities on the Silk Road
The historic Silk Roads, which were a network of trade routes across land and sea that connected the lands from China across Asia to the Meditteranean,
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5 Things You Didn’t Know About Vikings And Muslim Civilisation
Last year news regarding the discovery of a ring found on a Viking woman with the inscription 'To Allah' erupted in the media. Some named it the “mysterious ring”, some actively debated and made up theories of how or why it arrived in Sweden. It is worth noting however that this was not the only contact documented between the Viking and Muslim Civilisation.
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The Islamic Roots of Modern Pharmacy by David W Tschanz
Along the road from sympathetic magic and shamanism to scientific method, much trailblazing was carried out over a few centuries by scholars, alchemists, physicians and polymaths of the Muslim Middle East, and their rules, procedures and expectations are, to a great extent, practiced almost universally today.
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5 Amazing Mechanical Devices from Muslim Civilisation
Fully automated environmentally friendly water raising devices, pumps, windmills and more! Discover some of the most facinating devices from the Golden Age of Muslim Civilisation that brought creative innovative ideas helping to drive agriculture and industries from southern Spain to China.
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Rediscovering a Lost History – Radio Interview with Glen Cooper
Professor Glen Cooper discusses the Golden Age of Muslim Civilisation. During the European Dark Ages, when science, art and literature seemed to flounder for centuries, there actually was a lot of discover in places like Iraq, Persia and Syria. Professor Cooper explains how science of medicine, mathematics and astronomy flourished.
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Star-Finders Astrolabes
Over a thousand-year period in Muslim Civilisation, epoch-making discoveries such as the first record of a star system outside our own galaxy were made, and astronomical instruments were developed laying the foundation for modern-day astronomy. These included celestial globes, armillary spheres, sextants and astrolabes.
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Eye witness accounts of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the wonders of the Ancient World
The Lighthouse of Alexandria is one of the wonders of the Ancient World. It was still a great tourist attraction well into the medieval period, and was visited by many travellers to the city that were impressed by its magnitude.
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Al Maqamat: Beautifully Illustrated Arabic Literary Tradition
Maqamat Al-Hariri are frequently referenced on beautiful pictorial illustrations showcasing aspects of life from the Golden Age of Muslim civilisation. But what were the Maqamat?
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Rise of Glass Industry in Golden Age of Muslim Civilisation
From Ibn Al-Haytam’s optical lenses to a mosque lamp of Amir Qawsun, Muslim Civilisation played a major role in inspiring the growth of the glass industry. Mosques, houses and cities were transformed into centres of rich decoration with glass. Muslim Civilisation turned a craft into an industry, employing large numbers of workers.
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The House of Wisdom: Baghdad’s Intellectual Powerhouse
Image © 1001 inventions House of Wisdom Sketch Arabic Version (بيت الحكمة) The heyday of Baghdad was 1,200 years ago when it was the thriving capital of the Muslim civilisation. For about 500 years the city boasted the cream of intellectuals and culture, a reputation gained during the reigns of some of its most famous...
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Is this the most beautiful mosque in the world? Mosque of Whirling Colours
Stunning colours light up the Nasīr al-Mulk Mosque in Shiraz, Iran. In this International Year of Light, photographer Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji captures what on the outside looks like a conventional mosque...
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The Rise of an Industry: Papermaking
Paper, originally, was brought from China into Muslim Civilisation. From an art, Muslim Civilisation developed it into a major industry. Paper mills flourished across the Muslim World. The impact of Muslim Civilisations manufacture of paper helped paved the way for the printing revolution.
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‘Must Read’ books from 1001 Inventions
World Book Day is a yearly event first week of March, "designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and marked in over 100 countries all over the world"*. On this occasion we highlight important 'must read books' from 1001 Inventions.