Your Egypt

[alna]

The science magazine "Nature" has a special on Islam and Science
:arrow: http://www.nature.com/news/specials/islamandscience/index.html#comment

A lot of very interesting articles and this timeline about the evolution of science through Islamic History.

[Louise]

Perhaps I am reading incorrectly, but it appears there has been no appreciable scientific activity in the Islamic world during the last century. During a time when computer technology, space flight, medical breakthroughs and mathmatical science have been escalating, Islamic laboratories have been quiet.

Does anyone have opinions on this?

[Miss Ratty]

Hi,

Whilst there were great advances in science and medicine in the 'golden age of Islam', the Muslims themselves weren't great innovators themselves, they used knowledge passed down from the Greeks and Persians and built on that.
In Andalucia, there were great advances technologically with the first wave of Muslims that settled there, and that's how lost ancient knowledge was passed back to Europeans. However, the second wave of Muslims (can't remember the names of each dynasty) that took over Andalucia were far more introverted and very religiously fundamental. They didn't like what they found in Andalucia and destroyed much of it. That's how the Christians were able to defeat them relatively easily and restore Spain to Catholicsm. The Europeans had got the technology back of the initial invaders and used it against the second wave of Muslims.
Since that happened, the science and technology remained in Europe but was destroyed in the Islamic world by this secondary group of Muslims.
It was then the Europeans who built on the scientific knowledge, again initially by innovation and it remained so since then up until recent times.
Much of the written knowledge reintroduced by the first wave of Muslims ended up in Oxford University.

[Hoss]

Who said the Muslims were not great innovators themselves? This Film is an unrefutable documentation that's just one of many others that acknowledges the great conrtibutions of Muslims to humanity...
btw, the movie can be downloaded using any file sharing program on the internet.


"Medieval Muslims made invaluable contributions to the study of mathematics, and their key role is clear from the many terms derived from Arabic. Perhaps the most famous mathematician was Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (ca. 800-ca. 847), author of several treatises of earth-shattering importance. His book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals, written about 825, was principally responsible for the diffusion of the Indian system of numeration (Arabic numerals) in the Islamic lands and the West.

Traditional systems had used different letters of the alphabet to represent numbers or cumbersome Roman numerals, and the new system was far superior, for it allowed people to multiply and divide easily and check their work. The merchant Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa, who had learned about Arabic numerals in Tunis, wrote a treatise rejecting the abacus in favor of the Arab method of reckoning, and as a result, the system of Hindu-Arabic numeration caught on quickly in Central Italy. By the fourteenth century, Italian merchants and bankers had abandoned the abacus and were doing their calculations using pen and paper, in much the same way we do today.

In addition to his treatise on numerals, al-Khwarizmi also wrote a revolutionary book on resolving quadratic equations. These were given either as geometric demonstrations or as numerical proofs in an entirely new mode of expression. The book was soon translated into Latin, and the word in its title, al-jabr, or transposition, gave the entire process its name in European languages, algebra, understood today as the generalization of arithmetic in which symbols, usually letters of the alphabet such as A, B, and C, represent numbers. Al-Khwarizmi had used the Arabic word for "thing" (shay) to refer to the quantity sought, the unknown. When al-Khwarizmi's work was translated in Spain, the Arabic word shay was transcribed as xay, since the letter x was pronounced as sh in Spain. In time this word was abbreviated as x, the universal algebraic symbol for the unknown.

Robert of Chester's translation of al-Khwarzmi's treatise on algebra opens with the words dixit Algorithmi, "Algorithmi says." In time, the mathematician's epithet of his Central Asian origin, al-Khwarizmi, came in the West to denote first the new process of reckoning with Hindu-Arabic numerals, algorithmus, and then the entire step-by-step process of solving mathematical problems, algorithm. "

http://www.pbs.org/empires/islam/innoalgebra.html

Comment :

Miss Ratty,
Please show us your references instead of just issuing some misinformed statements without any solid ground.

[Miss Ratty]

Hoss wrote: Who said the Muslims were not great innovators themselves? This Film is an unrefutable documentation that's just one of many others that acknowledges the great conrtibutions of Muslims to humanity...
btw, the movie can be downloaded using any file sharing program on the internet.


"Medieval Muslims made invaluable contributions to the study of mathematics, and their key role is clear from the many terms derived from Arabic. Perhaps the most famous mathematician was Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (ca. 800-ca. 847), author of several treatises of earth-shattering importance. His book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals, written about 825, was principally responsible for the diffusion of the Indian system of numeration (Arabic numerals) in the Islamic lands and the West.

Traditional systems had used different letters of the alphabet to represent numbers or cumbersome Roman numerals, and the new system was far superior, for it allowed people to multiply and divide easily and check their work. The merchant Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa, who had learned about Arabic numerals in Tunis, wrote a treatise rejecting the abacus in favor of the Arab method of reckoning, and as a result, the system of Hindu-Arabic numeration caught on quickly in Central Italy. By the fourteenth century, Italian merchants and bankers had abandoned the abacus and were doing their calculations using pen and paper, in much the same way we do today.

In addition to his treatise on numerals, al-Khwarizmi also wrote a revolutionary book on resolving quadratic equations. These were given either as geometric demonstrations or as numerical proofs in an entirely new mode of expression. The book was soon translated into Latin, and the word in its title, al-jabr, or transposition, gave the entire process its name in European languages, algebra, understood today as the generalization of arithmetic in which symbols, usually letters of the alphabet such as A, B, and C, represent numbers. Al-Khwarizmi had used the Arabic word for "thing" (shay) to refer to the quantity sought, the unknown. When al-Khwarizmi's work was translated in Spain, the Arabic word shay was transcribed as xay, since the letter x was pronounced as sh in Spain. In time this word was abbreviated as x, the universal algebraic symbol for the unknown.

Robert of Chester's translation of al-Khwarzmi's treatise on algebra opens with the words dixit Algorithmi, "Algorithmi says." In time, the mathematician's epithet of his Central Asian origin, al-Khwarizmi, came in the West to denote first the new process of reckoning with Hindu-Arabic numerals, algorithmus, and then the entire step-by-step process of solving mathematical problems, algorithm. "

http://www.pbs.org/empires/islam/innoalgebra.html

Comment :

Miss Ratty,
Please show us your references instead of just issuing some misinformed statements without any solid ground.

I suggest you read some books instead of cherry picking off the internet.

If , as you say, these people were great innovators, then tell me ? What happened to all of these great 'innovators'
Why the Islamic 'dark age' after Al- Andalus?
Why are we constantly finding evidence that the Greeks and the Persians got there first ?
Is it just a major coincidence that all of these great innovators lived in one golden age, but then no one seemed to inherit their brains afterwards ?
Or was it just totally wiped out and subdued by generations afterwards in the Islamic world

I'm not knocking the ancient Muslim scientists one bit! What's wrong with building on other's knowledge ? The West has done this since ancient times, but manged to save it all. I swear, if the golden age of Islam was to return like in AL Andalus, I would celebrate it from the bottom of my heart!

[Louise]

You would welcome back that age? And what were the opportunities for women in that time, please? Were there no slaves? No oppressed peoples? No enforced conversions?

[Miss Ratty]

OK if you want 'reliable internet sources' like that film, then here's one:

http://www.enhg.org/bulletin/b33/33_10.htm


P.S. Building on ancient knowledge to produce some work of great scientific value isn't anything derogatory. It's not plagiarism either if you do your own research as the ancient Muslim scholars did... why so defensive ??
I didn't think it was some great secret that the Arabs knew of the ancient Greek, Indian and Persian works and formidibly improved them ?

[Miss Ratty]

Louise wrote: You would welcome back that age? And what were the opportunities for women in that time, please? Were there no slaves? No oppressed peoples? No enforced conversions?

There were many waves of Arab invaders. The first was indeed a golden age. Civilians had more rights than ever before, it was the second wave that enforced dhimmitude etc

Sure there were slaves and women had their place in society right through that era.

However, it was like that in every culture of every country, East and West at that time.

By welcoming back the 'golden age' I meant the technological advances, and the society that 'worked' together, rather than the East/ West nit picking that goes on nowadays with one party slating the other, and one side with all the resources. :wink:

[Louise]

Even during the so-called "golden age," terrors and enforced religious behaviors were common. Why go back? Why not move forward, stop fundamental/extreme Islamic slaughters, bring women into full partnership and create a new time of progress?

[Louise]

I am waiting for discussion on this issue. Has anyone an idea to share?

[redskin from Red Sea]

All muslim nations from european part of USSR served for nazis in the second world war. There are: chechens, qirimtatars, ingushes, kabardineans, balkarians, karachaevans, cherkesians. Every muslim family haved around 1 member ,who served in "ostern legions".
They fought for germans culture. Hitler was favourite for all muslims of the world in second world war.