Islam’s contributions to sciences

1. Islamic Contributions
mathematics and
Science
Sharafuddin B S

2. Scientific Orientation of Islam
• From the early days of Islam, Muslims had made
immense leaps forward in the area of Science.
Cities like Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo and
Cordoba were the centers of civilization.
• These cities were flourishing and Muslim
scientists made tremendous progress in applied
as well as theoretical Science and Technology.
• In Europe, however, the situation was much
different than today when Muslims were doing
very good. Europe was in the Dark Ages.

3. Cordoba was the capital of Muslim Spain.
It soon became the center for all light
and learning for the entire Europe.
Scholars and students from various parts of the world
and Europe came to Cordoba to study.

4. Cordoba, European Jewel of the Middle
Ages
• Cordoba used to be the
jewel of Europe, which
attracted many visitors.
Scholars and booksellers
used to flock there, and
made it the intellectual
centre of the West by the
10th century A.D. It was
‘the most civilized city in
Europe, the wonder and
admiration of the world.

5. Step Forward towards Education
• The idea of the college was a concept which was borrowed from
Muslims. The first colleges appeared in the Muslim world in the late
600's and early 700's.
• In Europe, some of the earliest colleges are those under the
University of Paris and Oxford they were founded around the
thirteenth century. These early European colleges were also funded
by trusts similar to the Islamic ones and legal historians have traced
them back to the Islamic system.
• The internal organization of these European colleges was strikingly
similar to the Islamic ones, for example the idea of Graduate (Sahib)
and undergraduate (mutafaqqih) is derived directly from Islamic
terms.

6. Contributions to Science
• Islamic contributions to Science were now
rapidly being translated and transferred from
Spain to the rest of Europe.
• Ibnul Hairham’s works on Optics, (in which he
deals with 50 Optical questions put to Muslim
Scholars), was translated widely.
• The Muslims discovered the Principle of
Pendulum, which was used to measure time.
Many of the principles of Isaac Newton were
derived from former Islamic scientific
contributions.

7. Contributions to Chemistry
• In the field of Chemistry numerous Islamic works were
translated into Latin. One of the fields of study in this
area was alchemy. The Muslims by exploring various
elements, developed a good understanding of the
constitution of matter.
• Jabir ibn-Hayyan (Geber) was the leading chemist in the
Muslim world, some scholars link the introduction of the
‘scientific method’ back to him.
• A great number of terms used in Chemistry such as
alchohol, alembic, alkali and elixir are of Islamic origin.

8. Contributions to Medicine
• Medicine was a key science explored by Muslims. Bu Ali
Sina is considered to be pioneer to the concept of
surgery.
• Al-Rhazes is one of the most famous Doctors and
writers of Islamic History. Every major city had an
hospital, the hospital at Cairo had over 8000 beds, with
separate wards for fevers, ophthalmic, dysentery and
surgical cases.
• He discovered the origin of smallpox and showed that
one could only acquire it once in one's life, thus showing
the existence of the immune system and how it worked.
• Muslim doctors were also aware of the contagious
qualities of diseases. Hundreds of medical works were
translated into Latin.

9. Al'Khwarizmi & Al Jabr
• Al’Khwarizmi, whose full name is Abu
Abd-Allah ibn Musa al’Khwarizmi, was
born about AD 790 near Baghdad, and
died about 850.
• His most important contribution, written in
830, was Hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala.
From the al-jabr in the title we get algebra.

10. Introduction of Zero
• Another invention that revolutionized
mathematics was the introduction of the
number zero by Muhammad Bin Ahmad in
967 AD.
• Zero was introduced in the West as late as
the beginning of the thirteenth century.
Modern society takes the invention of the
zero for granted, yet the Zero is a non-trivial
concept, that allowed major mathematical
breakthroughs.

11. Geometry
• Another outstanding Arab mathematician
is Abul Wafa who created and
successfully developed a branch of
geometry which consists of problems
leading to equations in Algebra of a higher
degree He made a number of valuable
contributions to polyhedral theory.

12. Mecca Centered Maps
Recently discovered instruments
have proved that Islamic
mathematicians were even
further ahead of their time than
anyone knew. These Mecca-centered
world maps, cast in
brass, indicate the direction and
distance to Mecca from any
point in the medieval Muslim
world, and they do so with a
type of map projection that was
unknown in the West until the
20th century.
“I had been working on the subject
[of the qibla] for 20 years, and
the discovery of these maps
took me by surprise,” says
David King, a historian of
science at the Johann Wolfgang
Goethe University in Frankfurt,
Germany.

13. Islamic Astronomy ( (dated 14th century
• These 2 diagrams
from Ibn ash-Shatir's
Nihayat al-sul
illustrate the first
successful
representation of the
motions of Planet
Mercury exclusively in
terms of uniform
circular rotations.

14. Biology (dated 17th century
Arabic medicine was in
advance in Europe
throughout the middle
ages, and from the
first medical school of
Salerno down to
Vesalius, Western
doctors learned from
their Muslim
counterparts.

15. (:Optics (dated 1083
• Ibn al-Haytham's Optics,
written in Eqypt in the first
half of the 11th Century,
represented a theory of
vision that went beyond
Galen, Euclid and
Ptolemy. This diagram of
the two eyes seen from
above, shows the
principal tunics and
humours and the optic
nerves connecting the
eyeballs to the brain

16. :Mathematics - Parallel
• The problem of parallel
lines, posed by Euclid's
parallels postulate,
received much attention
from Islamic
mathematicians
throughout the history of
medieval Arabic science.
Nasir ad-Din at-Tusi's
was probably the most
mature treatment of the
problem in Arabic

17. Thank You