According
to Prof. Hassani, there are 10 great contributions of the Moslem toward the
modern civilization:
1. Surgery
Around
the year 1,000, the celebrated doctor Al Zahrawi published a 1,500 page
illustrated encyclopedia of surgery that was used in Europe as a medical
reference for the next 500 years. Among his many inventions, Zahrawi discovered
the use of dissolving cat gut to stitch wounds. Beforehand a second surgery had
to be performed the first caesarean operation and created the first pair of
forceps.
2. Coffee
Now
the western world’s drink du jour, coffee was first brewed in Yemen around the
9th century. In its earliest days, coffee helped sufis stay up
during late nights of devotion. Later brought to Cairo by a group of students,
the coffee buzz soon caught on around the empire. By the 13th
century it reached Turkey, but not until the 16th century did the
beans start boiling in Europe, brought to Italy by a Venetian trader.
3. Flying
machine
Abbas
ibn Firnas was the first person to make a real attempt to construct a flying
machine and fly. In the 9th century he designed a winged apparatus,
roughly resembling a bird costume. In his most famous trial near Cordoba in
spain, Firnas flew upward for a few moments, before falling to the ground and
partially breaking his back. His designs would undoubtedly have been an
inspiration for farmed Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci’s hundreda
of years later.
4. University
In
859 a young princess named Fatima al Firhi founded the first degree granting
university in Fez, Marocco. Her sister Miriam founded an adjacent mosque and
together the complex became the al Qarawiyyin Mosque and University. Still
operating almost 1,200 years later, we hope the center will remind people that
learning is at the core of the Islamic tradition and that the story of the al
Firhi sisters will inspire young moslem women around the world today.
5. Algebra
The
word algebra comes from the title of a Persian mathematician’s famous 9th
century treatise “Kitab al Jabr wal Mugabala” which translates roughly as “The
Book of Reasoning and Balancing”. Built on the roots of Greek and Hindu system,
the new algebraic order was a unifiying system for rational numbers, irrational
numbers and geometrical magnitudes. The same mathematician, Al Khawarizmi, was
also the first to introduce the concept of raising a number to a power.
6. Optics
Around
the year 1000 Ibn al Haitham proved that humans see objects by light reflecting
off of them and entering the eye, dismissing Euclid and Ptolemi’s theories that
light was emitted from the eye itself. This great Moslem Physicist also
discovered the camera obscura phenomenon, which explains how the eye sees
images upright due the connection between the optic nerve and the brain.
7. Music
Moslem
musicians have had a profound impact on Europe, dating back to Charlemagne
tried to complete with the music of Baghdad and Cordoba. Among many instruments
that arrived in Europe through the Middle East are the lute and the rahab, an
ancestor of the violin. Modern musical scales are also said to derive from
arabic alphabet.
8. Toothbrush
The
prophet Mohammed popularized the use of the first toothbrush in around 600.
Using a twig from Meswak tree, he cleaned his teeth and freshened his breath.
Subtances similar to Meswak are used in modern toothpaste.
9. The
crank
Many
of the basics of modern authomatics were first put to use in the Moslem world,
including the revolutionary crank-connecting rod system. By converting rotary
motion to linear motion, the crank enables the liftingof heavy objects with
relative ease. This technology, discovered bby al jazari in the 12th
century. Exploded across the globe, leading to everything from the bicycle to
the internal combustion engine.
10. Hospitals
Medicine
is a science from which one learns the states of the human body with respect to
what is healthy and what is not, in order to preserve good health when it
exists and restore it when it is lacking (ibn sina, the opening to the Qanun fi
al tibb). Ibn sina is the most popular moslem that expert in Medical arts.
Source:“Muslim inventions that shaped the modern
world” the material from Prof. Dr. Bustami Subhan, M.S (lecturer’s
hand-out)
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