The Legacy of Arab Science

Occidental society tends to believe that the scientific and cultural bedrock upon which it sits was a product of the Classical world, most notably that of the Romans and the Greeks. At our schools, teachers hold forth explaining Latin etymology, talking about the contributions of Euclid, Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle. They remind us of the breakthroughs of these scholars, and highlight how the knowledge amassed by Classical cultures has shaped our own world of learning.

But, in our obsession with the Romans and the Greeks, we blinker ourselves to the full picture. We forget how exactly the knowledge in our libraries, in our universities, and in our heads, arrived there. And, we forget how the breakthroughs of Classical culture were moulded to form the basis of modern Occidental civilization.

As usual with the transmission of knowledge, things weren’t nearly as simple as we trick ourselves into believing. In reality, the knowledge of the Classical scholars passed through a matrix, a distinct system that honed it and gave it shape, rather like a sword-smith giving edge to a blade. As so often happens in human history, the lines of transmission are not straight, but zigzag.

Now, for the first time, historians are re-evaluating the way scientific thought developed, focussing on how one breakthrough fuelled another in both East and West. And, for the first time, the Occident is coming to terms with the extraordinary and pivotal contribution of Arab science – a contribution that allowed the world we recognize to be conjured into existence.

Without it, quite simply, most of the technology we know and take for granted wouldn’t exist. The cell phone in my pocket wouldn’t be able to communicate, and the laptop at which I’m typing wouldn’t work. The hospital that kept me alive in the first week of life wouldn’t have existed either. Nor would the technology that allowed me to hold this printed page. There wouldn’t be panes of glass in the windows and, perhaps most of all, the technology that runs our computers and so shapes our lives today, simply wouldn’t be there.

As someone who has one foot in the East and the other in the West, I find it extraordinary to remember the roll call of breakthroughs that can be attributed to Oriental society. More precisely, breakthroughs that came about between the ninth and thirteenth centuries CE, regarded as the golden age of Arab learning.

During this time, a wildfire of learning swept through the land, a realm that was fast expanding as the boundaries of the Islamic faith were pushed out in all directions. It was an era in which the first hospitals and lending libraries were constructed, and the first academic degrees presented. Mental patients were treated with music for the first time – more than a millennium before our idea of music therapy. And, an endless catalogue of inventions was spawned from the learning centres which, in time, became the blueprint for our own Occidental universities.

The Arabs invented chemical apparatus, hydraulics systems and pharmaceuticals, astronomical tools, and even household soap. They wrote about the concepts of evolution, environmentalism, and pollution, outlined scientific method for the first time, as well as the idea of peer review. They shaped the building blocks of our own scientific culture, and reworked all sorts of other things that are so critical to our world. It was through them that we received paper, the ‘Indian’ numbers, and the massive mathematical breakthrough of Zero.

Arab contributions from the golden age span almost all the sciences. They can be found in mathematics and botany, in chemistry, psychology and philosophy, and in engineering, physics, agriculture and astronomy, in metallurgy, medicine and zoology.

The nucleus of almost all the technologies which govern our lives passed through Arab cultures – from the gears in our cars, to the watches on our wrists, to the satellites which bring us TV, and the know-how that makes the Internet possible.

This lecture will give a snapshot of the role of Arab science, and consider the knock-on effect it had, allowing the Renaissance to take place, in turn enabling our world to be conjured.

The rise of Arab science really begins with the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 CE. At the rather traditional prep school I attended in England, they used to teach that centuries of darkness followed in the wake of the Roman collapse. Then, as though a lightning bolt from the heavens struck, came the European Renaissance. In between – so they taught me at any rate – there wasn’t anything important to speak of – just a black hole of culture, a time that schoolboys learn (or used to learn) that was called the ‘Dark Ages’. No scholarship, no learning, no breakthroughs, just a desert of utter cultural and intellectual darkness.

Picture it: Almost a thousand years when nothing really happened at all. And, then, the Renaissance – the rebirth of learning – constructed solely on the bedrock of glorious Classical culture.

It sounds wonderfully romantic, but nothing could be father from the truth…

To understand the present, we need to look carefully at how the Classics reached us. Because, like so often happens in human history, the lines of transmission aren’t straight.

Please rest assure though – not for a minute am I going to pretend that the Arabs came up with everything from scratch. Far from it. And this is the key point: in the sciences, the Arabs took Classical work and refined it. They corrected the mathematics because they could, using the immensely powerful Indian numbers. It must have been like harnessing the power of a mainframe computer. But these numbers were just one arrow in their armoury of equipment. As we shall see, the Abbasids developed paper, and writing equipment, and they had a common language that was a lingua franca – all the way from Timbuktu in the west to Samarkand and beyond in the east.

Yet, given what we know, it seems remarkable to me that the Arab contribution – which was so profound – is often sidelined or completely forgotten altogether. And, very often, it was centuries ahead of its time.

All the while, the early Arab scholars committed their ideas to paper, allowing them to be circulated in the farthest reaches of the fledgling Islamic world. They wrote about the concepts of evolution and discussed what we would know as environmentalism, and classification (what we know as mineral, animal and vegetable), as well as coming up with clear scientific method.

Yet, for me, the most exciting thing of all was the way that the scientists were polymaths, working in half a dozen areas of study at the same time. This all-rounder approach allowed them to harness breakthroughs in one area, and apply cutting-edge know-how to other completely unrelated fields.

As I said, until very recently, Western science has tended to reject the Arab contribution, or even regard it as responsible for the destruction of Classical texts – rather than being their saviour.

But new scholarship in the West has shown that, by harnessing existing knowledge, and building upon it, the Arab contribution allowed the European Renaissance to take root. Yet perhaps worst of all is that the Arabs are themselves often ignorant of the immensely important role they have played. They seem oblivious to the direct way their communal scholarship has made the modern world possible, almost as though they are toeing the Occidental line.

So, how and where did it all begin – this amazing Arab contribution? What was the spark? Well, I’ll tell you. It started in present day Kyrgyzstan, in central Asia, on a crisp July morning in the year 751 CE. The location was a battlefield on the banks of the Talas River. And, it was there that the secret that made the rise of Arab learning possible, passed from the Tang Chinese to the Abbasid Arabs. That July morning was one of those pivotal moments in history, a moment that’s all too often forgotten.

By chance, the Arab conquerors – sweeping eastward with Islam – won the battle. They weren’t expected to do so, and how they did is another story. The key point was that they took prisoners, Chinese prisoners, who knew a secret art, a technology that would change the world. It was the art of paper-making. This secret was, until then, known to a small elite fraternity, and was guarded day and night. Indeed, well aware of the value of this technology, the Arabs kept it secret from Europe for centuries. They built paper-making factories in the intellectual nerve centres of their new Islamic empire, at Baghdad, Damascus, Cordoba, Fès and Samarkand.

For the first time, the Arabs could copy the Qur’an easily, as well as other books, books devoted to the sciences. Like a touchpaper being lit, it meant that knowledge could be multiplied and passed up and down the pilgrimage routes to centres of learning across the Islamic world. Paper quickly surpassed parchment and papyrus. It was far cheaper to make, and lightweight – so light that it could be conveyed by carrier pigeons. And it led directly to a vast library being built in Baghdad, to which I’ll come in a moment.

And, as always with the golden age of Arab scholarship, the buzzword was ‘innovation’. The Chinese had been making rough paper from mulberry bark since the second century BCE. It was best suited to the use of brushes rather than nibs. Never satisfied with existing technology, the Arabs refined their paper and used cotton pulp rather than tree bark. And they changed the equipment – using their newly designed waterwheels to power the paper mills, instead of human labour.

To understand the seismic change that was the golden age of Arab learning, you have to appreciate the time, the era of the Abbasids. After overthrowing the Umayyads, the second of the two great Islamic Caliphates, the Abbasids ruled from 750 CE. They moved the capital from Damascus to Baghdad. In the ninth century it was a city of eight hundred thousand souls, second in population to only Constantinople. And, it was ruled by one of the greatest leaders of all time, the Abbasid Caliph Harun ar-Rachid.

The city was a melting pot of humanity, people hailing from Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor and Central Asia. And this crucible of cultures was one that had never really been known before in human society – because under the new Islamic faith, all men were equal. And, most surprising of all, they could all communicate through Arabic, the lingua franca of Islam.

Harun, who tends to be remembered in the West above all else for his Alf Layla wa Layla, A Thousand and One Nights, set about accumulating books for a huge private library. He loved poetry, music and learning. Whenever he heard of erudite people, he invited them to his court. The idea of wisdom being rewarded for wisdom’s sake spread, and scholars made their way from all corners of the growing Islamic world, to Baghdad.

In March 809 CE, Harun ar-Rachid died, leaving the future of the Caliphate hanging in deep uncertainty. He was succeeded by his son Al-Amin, but he was killed four years later, which only made the situation more precarious. All that had been achieved so far was weighed in the balance. But then, thankfully, Al-Amin’s half-brother, al-Ma’mun, became Caliph, and it is with him that our story really begins…

Like his father, Ma’mun was fascinated by learning, and was eager to know how the world and the universe worked. He built up the library founded by his father, and brought together scholars from every corner of the world, from every known religion, speaking every language. He dispatched messengers to bring forth to Baghdad every book, document, and sensible man in existence – and convey them back to his centre of learning, which became known as Bayt al Hikma, ‘The House of Wisdom’.

What had started as the Caliph’s private library, quickly became a translation centre, then a kind of think-tank, a repository of knowledge, with observatories and scientific centres attached. Hundreds of thinkers and scientists toiled away at the House of Wisdom, including some of the most important polymaths in human history, such as Al-Kindi and al-Khwarizmi.

From the start, there must have been a sense that the House of Wisdom was different from anything that had come before, or at least since the great Library at Alexandria.

The story goes that Caliph Ma’mun had a dream of white-haired Aristotle seated on a throne, a dream in which he was advised to begin a quest for wisdom through knowledge and reason. From the dream, Ma’mun interpreted that he should amass knowledge. Right away, he sent scholars to Byzantium to bring him academic texts, all of which were translated into Arabic.

Then, archives were brought from Alexandria, Damascus, Cairo and Antioch. A great number of the first books that arrived were in Greek, Latin and Persian as well. They were all translated into Arabic, along with others from Turkish, Syriac, Aramaic, Sanskrit and Chinese.

Over four centuries, scholars laboured away, translating collected knowledge and pushing forward the boundaries of science. The focus was very much on the cross-pollination of ideas, and thinking in new ways. After all, until that moment, the emphasis had been on the reproduction by rote of accepted values and ideas.

Ma’mun led very much from the front. He funded the research and encouraged others to do so as well; and he also conferred formal prestige on scientists and intellectuals – lauding achievements with praise and financial remuneration.

In 832 CE, the year before he died, he is said to have travelled to Egypt, where he ordered his army to breach open the Great Pyramid of Cheops. It was still covered in white polished limestone casing stones. His army supposedly broke through the granite plug blocking access to the upper chambers. He was searching for treasure – gold perhaps, but it is more likely that the treasure he sought was knowledge.

For his sheer innovation Ma’mun was remarkable, as he was for his ability to locate brilliant minds. He rewarded experimentation and anyone who tackled an old problem in a new way. He included plenty of non-Muslims at the House of Wisdom, and was ready to learn from them. It was a rare moment in history.

Through the House of Wisdom a model was created, one that was to be replicated again and again – such as at Dar al-Hikma, in Cairo, a blueprint for something we would come to know as the university.

As I said, the great libraries that were established under the Abbasids came about owing to the existence of affordable paper, and growing literacy – a by-product of the fact that people were required to read the Qur’an. And, these libraries were enormous, even by modern standards. The tenth century Royal Library in Cordoba, for example, assembled under the patronage of Caliph al-Hakim II, boasted four hundred thousand books. The library’s directory stretched to forty-four colossal ledgers. Caliph al-Hakim II sent scholars across the East to buy and have copied important books and, in so doing, he added to the expansion of knowledge.

The library at Cairo is said to have encompassed two million books, and the one at Tripoli had three million, before it was destroyed by Crusaders.

And, perhaps the greatest of all, that of the House of Wisdom itself in Baghdad, must have run into millions of volumes – before it was obliterated by the Mongol hordes.

A vast number of Classical texts, which no longer exist in their original Greek or Latin, were brought to the Renaissance through their Arabic translations. The Arabs not only translated entire treatises verbatim, but they also reworked existing manuscripts. These new works drew on Greek and Roman classics, as well as Persian, Turkic and Indian sources. And, just as there are Classical Greek and Latin texts that were saved by their Arabic translations, a great many Arabic texts – translated into Latin during the Renaissance – saved a number of key Arab works, which didn’t survive in their original language.

But, whereas in the Renaissance, Latin was the language of scholarship, the clergy, and the elite, Arabic was used by everyone during the golden age of Islam.

The Arab polymaths corrected a lot of Greek misconceptions, ideas passed on from one generation to the next, ideas that had been essentially set in stone. The Greek idea, for example, that light is emitted from the eye, allowing us to see. It wasn’t until the tenth century CE that the Arab physicist al-Haytham (whose Latinized name is Alhazen) correctly stated that light bounces off an object in straight lines before striking the eye. He went on to develop the first camera obscura – which, centuries later, enabled photography.

Just like the Classical world before it, and the so-called ‘Renaissance Men’ after, the golden age of Islam was championed by polymaths, whose works easily rival those of Aristotle, Da Vinci or Newton.

The Arab polymaths arrived in the Renaissance under their Latinized names. As I said, al-Haytham was known as Alhazen. But there were many others, among them: Ibn Sina, who was known as Avicenna; Ibn Bajjah, known in the Occident as Avempace; Ibn Hayyan was Geber; and Ibn Rushd was Averroes. And, perhaps the greatest of them all, was Yakub Al-Kindi, known in the West as Alkindus.

Using breakthroughs in one area of expertise, these polymaths pushed forward knowledge and understanding in another. Indeed, polymathy is a method that has almost been lost in the West, and is only now being rediscovered – so called ‘interdisciplinary’ study.

I recently heard a piece on the radio about Stanford University’s new Bio-X Program. It brings together biologists, computer scientists, medical scientists and engineers, all of whom learn from each other’s fields. The reporter presenting the piece was droning on about this amazing ‘new’ way of working – learning from each other. I rolled my eyes, and thought, ‘haven’t you ever heard of the House of Wisdom, where scientists were learning from each other and solving huge problems more than a thousand years ago?’

The scientists and polymaths from the golden age worked on areas of science that are familiar to us all, disciplines that are still being studied in schools and universities today. Indeed, it was they who brought classification to the specific disciplines, while introducing clear practices that were absent in the Classical age.

For the first time there was clear scientific method – controlled experimentation and the idea of quantifying results. This new scientific method took off in a big way and was used across the board.

The first ‘modern’ medical experiment is known to have been carried out by al-Razi in the tenth century, when he was trying to decide where to build his hospital in Baghdad. He hung pieces of meat all over the city, and observed where the meat decomposed least quickly. It was there that he built the hospital. Pure genius if you think about it.

Another key piece of original Arab thinking was what we know as ‘peer review’. It was first described by al-Rahwi, who was working in Damascus in the ninth century. In his The Ethics of the Physician, he states that the physician must always make duplicate notes of a patient’s condition on every visit. So that when the patient has been discharged, or has died, one set of notes can be given to a local medical council, to ascertain whether satisfactory medical care has been provided. It marked the start of lawsuits for medical malpractice – more than a thousand years ago.

Medicine was at the core of science then, as it is today. During the golden age, the first hospitals were created such as the one constructed by al-Razi. There were free public hospitals built across Baghdad and elsewhere – in Andalucía, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and beyond. The main difference from the ‘sleep temples’ and asylums of the Classical era was that these hospitals were designed to treat and heal, rather than merely to isolate the infected and the sick. It was a revolutionary idea that caught on, and then spread to Europe, having been taken back there by the Christian Crusaders.

These first hospitals featured competency tests for doctors and surgeons, as well as grading for purity and strength of pharmaceuticals, and separate wards for people with similar contagious diseases. The first real autopsies were carried out, too, to work out why someone had died. And, in what was a completely cosmopolitan setting, the hospitals treated patients of different religions and cultures. The surgical staff comprised Christians and Jews as well as Muslims, and there were female doctors and nurses for the first time as well.

The rise in cheap paper, and literacy, meant that everything could be written down and passed to other cities along the pilgrimage routes, for others to learn from and master. This scholarship and know-how eventually reached Europe, where it was translated into Latin – although only the Latin-speaking elite could understand them.

Early pioneering works included the thirty-volume medical encyclopaedia, the Kitab al-Tasrif, The Book of Concessions, written by al-Zahrawi, which was first published in the year 1000 CE. It was used for centuries in both East and West. And there was Ibn Sina’s The Canon of Medicine (written in about 1020 CE), still regarded as one of the most important medical textbooks of all time – it was used at the University of Montpellier’s medical department as late as 1650 CE, and was relied on across China well into the nineteenth century.

Dozens of medical breakthroughs credited to the Renaissance, or to later scholars, had already been accurately described by the Arab polymaths of the golden age. Blood circulation, for instance, usually credited to the seventeenth century English physician William Harvey, had been studied and described by Ibn al-Nafis in the thirteenth century.

The list of medical breakthroughs during this golden age is seemingly endless. The first inoculations against smallpox were carried out. There was the first description of micro-organisms, such as bacteria, centuries before the invention of the microscope. Dentistry, and pioneering work on dental fillings was done. Although, god help some of the patients. For example, Ibn Sina suggested that arsenic be boiled in oil and used to fill teeth!

Caesarean sections were performed with pain control. Antiseptics were developed and the wounded were dressed with lint, sterilized with purified alcohol – itself an Arab discovery. Cataract surgery was performed, which used the first hollow metallic hypodermic needles and glass suction tubes, in about 1000 CE. Hundreds of other steel medical tools, such as scalpels, were pioneered – a result of sword-making breakthroughs and superior Damascene steel.

The first psychiatric hospital was built in Baghdad in 705 CE. Shortly after its construction, music therapy was pioneered. The area of study included the work of the tenth century Persian music theorist al-Farabi, whose book Meanings of the Intellect discussed the effect of music on the soul. And, for the first time, specific diseases were isolated and studied, including diabetes, meningitis, and cancer, as well as rabies, smallpox, and forms of plague.

Reading accounts from the golden age of the Abbasids, you get a sense that a wildfire of learning was roaring east and west, north and south. New methods and ideas were being swapped face to face in tea houses, just as they were being exchanged by correspondence, linking scientists and polymaths all over the Islamic world and beyond. There was a sense of pure exhilaration, one that was mirrored later by the Renaissance, or by the Industrial Revolution and, more recently, by the birth of the Internet.

New theories were hammered out and challenged, the most brilliant minds of the day working at fever pitch in the fledgling universities founded across the Islamic world. The theory of evolution, for example, was widespread by the twelfth century. One of the pioneers of such thinking was Al-Jahiz. Working in ninth century Baghdad, he wrote about the effect of the environment on an animal, and the animal’s chances of survival based on the environment. He came up with something he termed ‘the struggle for existence’, a forerunner of Darwin’s ‘natural selection’.

During the golden age, the great thirst of scholarship was to understand the world around us, how it all worked, and how it was interrelated. As always, one question led to another, as did one answer to the next. Understandings relating to our environment and the natural world allowed for breakthroughs in agriculture. These included developing practices for pollination, pesticides, irrigation, grafting, crop rotation and soil preparation, as well as the classification of plants. Works, such as those by the thirteenth century Andalusian botanist al-Baitar, were used in Europe for centuries to come. His masterwork listed fourteen hundred plants (three hundred of which he discovered himself). Translated into Latin, it was kept in print until 1758, and used until the start of the nineteenth century. And, as ever, the knock-on effects continued. Breakthroughs in water technology and hydraulics, for example, meant that areas that had been barren could be irrigated, and man could control his environment in ways that had never been possible before.

And, as the scientists began to understand their world from the inside out, they developed new fields of study. Modern chemistry may owe more to Arab science than any other area. Its very name is, of course, derived from al-kemia, the Arab word for alchemy.

Although alchemy was very important, and had come to the Arabs from both India and the Roman Empire, we now understand increasingly how many Abbasid scientists rejected the belief in transmuting base metals into gold.

Arab breakthroughs in chemistry were plentiful, and were aided by new scientific practices, as we have seen. They included the isolation of new chemicals and an array of technical processes.

Distillation equipment, for instance, was developed – including alembic apparatus, stills and retorts – allowing for alcohol to be distilled for the first time. The product was used for perfume and in medical sterilization, rather than for drinking.

Kerosene, which was used in lamps, was distilled from crude oil by al-Razi in ninth century Baghdad. He described the process in his Kitab al-Asrar, Book of Secrets. Other petroleum products were known and used. The streets of Baghdad, for instance, were paved with tar in the eighth century. And Arab scientists first distilled crude oil to create a form of what we know as petrol.

Other processes were developed and refined, including crystallization, filtration, and steam distillation. Strong acids were created for the first time, such as nitric, hydrochloric, and sulphuric acid. Amazingly, the Greeks and Romans had only known and used vinegar. At the same time, other elements were discovered, such as arsenic and antimony, and the chemical elements were clearly divided into categories and studied.

The result was a range of products which made ordinary life much better. Soap, for instance, was manufactured for the first time; and even glue was made… from cheese – a secret recipe described in ibn Hayyan’s The Book of the Hidden Pearl.

Cosmetics were developed as well, including those by the fabulous-sounding ‘Ziryab’, ‘The Blackbird’ – a former Persian slave, who is also credited with inventing toothpaste. The idea caught on like nothing else. He went on to open a beauty parlour in Andalusian Spain and, supposedly, pioneered underarm deodorants and the chemical removal of unwanted body hair for women.

Other inventions of the time, far less whimsical, were snapped up by the military. Potassium nitrate (otherwise known as saltpetre), for example, enabled a complete recipe for gunpowder in the tenth century. Gunpowder had been made and discussed for a long time, but the first book dedicated to it was written in the thirteenth century by Hasan al-Rammah, entitled The Book of Military Horsemanship and Ingenious War Devices.

The breakthroughs in chemistry led to an upsurge of new techniques, not only in medicine, as we have seen, but in all kinds of unrelated areas. Ceramic glazes, for instance – such as lustreware – were by-products of the new know-how, as were stained glass and advances in metallurgy. That science was of particular importance, as it allowed steel blades unlike any other to be crafted – like the extraordinary watered steel of Damascus, which has only recently been replicated by modern scientists, its secret having been lost for centuries.

What’s so interesting to consider is how breakthroughs came about as a result of pondering questions that were themselves at the root of early Islamic life. One area to which a huge amount of expertise was devoted was the quest to improve knowledge and understanding in the physical sciences. What was essentially an obsession came about partly through a need for accurate information – information that related to the Islamic faith. After all, the entire Islamic faith needed to know when to begin and end Ramadan, as well as when to pray, and in which direction Mecca lay.

Mosques often had their own astronomer, a muqqawit, to determine the time for prayer. They had their own observatories as well. Calendars of prayer times and Ramadan dates, Eid and so forth, were vital, and were created through a knowledge of astronomy. These astronomers developed elaborate cosmological charts and instruments for determining the most favourable moment to begin a battle or to set out on a journey, such as the Hajj. All this knowledge in turn fuelled breakthroughs in mathematics, geometry, and geography.

The Arabs based their astronomical research principally on the works of Ptolemy and the work of the seventh century Indian mathematician-astronomer Brahmagupta.

In astronomy, the key Arab breakthrough was in correcting long-standing errors in the Ptolemaic system. A number of the great Arab polymaths turned their hands to the field, seemingly effortlessly. These corrections and breakthroughs were eventually absorbed into the works of Copernicus and the Renaissance astronomers. Importantly, it was the Abbasid Arabs who distinguished between astronomy and astrology for the first time. For the Abbasids, astronomy was regarded as a key science.

The eleventh century Persian astronomer, Al-Biruni, proposed that the Milky Way was a collection of nebulous stars. And, Ibn Bajjah (known in the Occident as Avempace) concluded in the twelfth century that the Milky Way was a vast collection of stars, one which appeared to be a continuous entity because of the effect of refraction in the Earth’s atmosphere. It wasn’t until 1610, when Galileo studied the Milky Way with a telescope, that he discovered it was composed of a huge number of faint stars.

As a by-product, Arab astronomy developed numerous pieces of equipment for measuring angles and so forth – such as quadrants and, importantly, astrolabes. These were used for measuring the distance of celestial bodies above the horizon, as well as in determining latitude.

And it was astronomy that led indirectly to breakthroughs in yet another area – geography. The lightning speed with which Islam had spread by the eighth century – from Iberia to modern Afghanistan – paved the way for a complete reappraisal of geography. New information was flooding in to research centres in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Cordoba and elsewhere, and new technology (such as quadrants and astrolabes) was used to create ever-more-accurate maps.

Perhaps the greatest map of all was Al-Idrisi’s twelfth century atlas, prepared for the Norman King Roger II of Sicily (in 1154 CE). It incorporated Africa, Europe, Asia Minor, India and the known world, stretching eastward to the Far East. The first atlas of its kind ever produced, it took eighteen years to complete.

As astronomy developed, so did mathematics and geometry. The great Arab polymaths changed the world in which we live through their mastery of mathematics.

Without doubt the most important breakthrough was the language of mathematics: the introduction of ‘Arabic’ numerals from India, and the use for the first time of a decimal point. The Arab golden age was a time of conduits – none more striking than that which linked the Classical world with that of the Renaissance.

Introducing Zero to mainstream mathematics was the other astonishing breakthrough, the idea of representing ‘nothing’ with a symbol. It was such an inspired concept that we can even now hardly grasp its importance.

In the ninth century, Persian polymath al-Khwarizmi gave us algorithms, which form the basis of most computer programming… indeed our word ‘algorithm’ is derived from his name. Al-Khwarizmi is credited with writing the first book on algebra as well. Its title was The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing and it was published in about 820 CE.

Arab mathematics honed the work of the Greeks and the Romans, as well as that of South Asia. And this work was channelled directly into Europe through Islamic Spain and, with time, was made available to the great minds of the Renaissance.

The availability of a rock solid mathematical framework allowed the offshoots to proliferate. And, the contributions of some breakthroughs are only now being discovered. Little more than twenty years ago, a scholar roving through the Ottoman archives in Istanbul happened upon a manuscript which, it seems, had lain dormant for more than a thousand years. Entitled On Deciphering Cryptographic Messages, the work was none other than al-Kindi’s treatise on cryptanalysis: the first paper ever to describe what was – until quite recently – the backbone of all code-breaking.

The golden age was a time of wonder and a time of excellence – so many fine minds coming together, reaching new intellectual frontiers. And, for all the number-crunching and dry scholarship, there were dazzling outgrowths.

My favourite area of all is that of the inventions.

I’ve mentioned a few already – devices in medicine, chemistry and astronomy. But there are whole other areas in which the Arabs excelled.

Arab engineers learned from the Romans, Greeks, and from their own scientists, arriving at creations that demonstrated their astonishing ingenuity. Some extended life and improved living conditions, while others were more whimsical, as we shall see.

Engineers were hugely important during the Abbasid Caliphate. When the tenth century Persian physicist and polymath, Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) reached Cairo, the Caliph himself went to the gates to great him. He had been invited to regulate the flooding on the Nile. It soon dawned on him that he couldn’t solve the problem. The only way to save his neck was to feign madness and live for years under house arrest, biding his time until the Caliph’s own death.

Windmills were a key piece of technology, and one that has come to the fore again, as we harness the winds. They were first described by Persian geographer Estakhri in the ninth century. Being used to grind corn and draw up water, they reached Europe through Islamic Spain.

And the first hydro-powered water supply system – driven by gears – was developed by al-Jazari in Damascus to supply water to the city’s mosques and hospitals. Fès had a similar system which worked until relatively recently, the remnants clearly visible in the medina, on Talaa Kebira.

And, as I have said, water was used to power paper mills and all sorts of other ingenious devices. Water wheels, or ‘norias’ as they are known, were developed for feeding water into aqueducts. The newly invented crankshaft was added, and the technology was constantly refined.

In addition to crankshafts, Arab engineers devised flywheels, chain pumps, gearing systems, suction pumps, and automata.

The greatest and most celebrated engineer of the era was without doubt al-Jazari, whose technical breakthroughs in the twelfth century can still be found all around us today. His masterwork was The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices. He developed the first automatic gates, run on water power, as well as accurate water clocks, and the flush mechanism still used in toilets. But it was his work with humanoid automata that gained him the most attention. His full-sized models of people would serve chilled drinks and play music, wooing his wealthy patrons, and so ensuring that funding for his real work didn’t dry up.

Al-Jazari’s most brilliant yet fanciful device was a vast elephant clock, powered by water, and featuring a dragon, a phoenix, and a golden howdah upon which a prince was seated. Shortly after this pièce de résistance of curious engineering was created, the golden age of the Abbasids came to an abrupt end.

It was as if the ‘stop’ button was pressed on a culture that had achieved so much in such a remarkably short span of time. The reason for this cessation of know-how?

The Mongol invasion.

In 1257, the grandson of Genghis Khan, Hulagu Khan, set out for Baghdad with a vast army. The Caliph refused to surrender and enraged the Mongol leader with threats. Worse still, he hadn’t strengthened the city walls or prepared for a siege. As a result, victory was swift, the siege lasting less than two weeks. The Caliph capitulated on February 10^th 1258.

Seven days and nights followed of looting, rape, pillage, and utter destruction. Baghdad was sacked and burned to the ground. The waters of the Tigris were said to have run black with ink for weeks when the House of Wisdom’s and other libraries were hurled into the river.

The Caliph was, it was said, rolled up in a carpet before the Mongols rode their horses up and down over him. So great was the stench of death and decay that Hulagu had to move his camp upwind of the city. As for Baghdad, the great capital of learning, it lay ruined for centuries – its population, wealth, and treasure houses of knowledge decimated.

Rather than end on the thought of Mongolian slaughter, I’d like to conclude with a glimmer of hope.

In the centuries since the golden age of the Abbasids, some good scholarship has taken place in translating and studying the surviving works from Bayt al Hikma, the House of Wisdom. As I have described, the availability of affordable paper – coupled with literacy and the pilgrimage routes – allowed scholars to send copies of their works to libraries thousands of miles away. The result was that a great number of key texts survived the Mongol horde. Indeed, there are far more Arabic manuscripts in existence from medieval Islam than from the Roman and Greek world.

And the glimmer of hope… thousands of Arabic texts are still untranslated, lying dormant in archives and libraries across the West and the East.

And so, the next time you reach for your mobile phone, or write an email on your laptop, or use Google, please spare a thought for the golden age of the Abbasids.

After all, without them, I doubt that many of us would be here today.

The End