Inventions Of The Islamic Golden Age

Inventions Of The Islamic Golden Age: From roughly the eighth to the thirteenth century, scholars in Baghdad, Cairo, Cordoba and beyond built on Greek, Persian and Indian knowledge to transform optics, medicine, mechanics and mathematics, and much of it reached Europe through Latin translation.

Ibn Al Haytham: His Book of Optics, written around 1011 to 1021, showed that vision works by light entering the eye rather than rays leaving it, and he studied the camera obscura while insisting on experiments to test ideas.

Al Jazari: His 1206 Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices described crank and connecting rod mechanisms, camshafts and water driven automata, many of them the ancestors of modern machine parts.

Elephant Clock: Al Jazari's water clock combined an elephant, a dragon, a phoenix and a scribe that all moved on the half hour, blending engineering with cultural symbols from China, India, Egypt and Greece.

Al Khwarizmi: The Persian scholar's book on completing and balancing equations gave algebra its name, and the word algorithm comes from the Latin form of his own name.

Ibn Sina: His Canon of Medicine, finished around 1025, organized medical knowledge so thoroughly that it remained a standard text in European universities for centuries.

Al Zahrawi: The Cordoba surgeon's great encyclopedia included illustrations of well over a hundred surgical instruments, and he described the use of catgut for internal stitches.

Al Razi: This physician distinguished smallpox from measles in a clinical treatise and was known for demanding careful observation over blind loyalty to ancient authorities.

Bimaristan Qalawun: The great Cairo hospital opened in 1284 and offered care to rich and poor alike, with separate wards for different conditions and a system of discharge when patients recovered.

Qarawiyyin University: Founded in Fez in 859 by Fatima al Fihri, it is often cited as the oldest continuously operating degree granting institution in the world.

Banu Musa: Three brothers working in ninth century Baghdad produced a Book of Ingenious Devices that described self trimming lamps, trick vessels and an automatic flute player often called an early programmable machine.

Mariam Al Astrulabi: This tenth century woman from Aleppo built astrolabes, the portable star computers of the age, and she was employed by the ruler Sayf al Dawla.

Al Biruni: Around the year 1000, he estimated the radius of the Earth by measuring the height of a mountain and the dip of the horizon, getting within a small percentage of the modern value.

Omar Khayyam: Famous in the West for poetry, he was also a leading mathematician who classified cubic equations and helped design a calendar reform in 1079 that was remarkably accurate.

Abbas Ibn Firnas: Later chroniclers say this Andalusian polymath tried a glider flight in Cordoba in the ninth century, and he is also credited with work on clear glass and a water clock.

Ibn Al Nafis: In the thirteenth century, this Damascus and Cairo physician described how blood passes through the lungs, centuries before Europeans worked out pulmonary circulation.

Battle Of Talas: A clash in 751 between Abbasid and Chinese forces is traditionally linked to the spread of papermaking westward, and Baghdad had a paper mill by the 790s, helping fuel a book boom.

Nashtifan Windmills: Persian vertical axis windmills in eastern Iran, still turning today, show the design that likely appeared in the region around the early Islamic period for grinding grain.

Jabir Ibn Hayyan: The alchemist known in Europe as Geber is credited with improving the alembic and with early laboratory methods of distillation, crystallization and careful recording.

Tabula Rogeriana: The geographer Al Idrisi produced this world map in 1154 for King Roger II of Sicily, with south at the top, and it was the most accurate world description for centuries.

Fibonacci: The Italian mathematician learned Hindu Arabic numerals as a boy in North Africa and introduced them to Europe in his 1202 book Liber Abaci, replacing clumsy Roman numerals.

Al Kindi: The ninth century philosopher wrote the earliest known description of frequency analysis, the codebreaking method of counting letters to crack substitution ciphers.

Tusi Couple: Nasir al Din al Tusi devised this geometric device at the Maragha observatory in the thirteenth century, and a nearly identical construction later appears in Copernicus's work.

House Of Wisdom: This Baghdad center of translation and research under the Abbasid caliphs gathered scholars who rendered Greek, Persian and Indian works into Arabic and added to them.

Al Zarqali: The Toledo astronomer built a precise astrolabe and helped produce the Toledan Tables, which Europeans used for astronomy for generations.