Islamic Civilization

The Islamic World expansion, 622-750.  

Bernard Lewis wrote that Islamic governments inherited: The knowledge and skills of the ancient Middle East, of Greece and of Persia. They added new and important innovations from outside, such as the manufacture of paper from China and decimal positional numbering from India. Much of this learning and development can be linked to geography. Even prior to Islam's presence, the city of Mecca served as a center of trade in Arabia and Muhammad was a merchant. The tradition of the pilgrimage to Mecca became a center for exchanging ideas and goods. The influence held by Muslim merchants over African-Arabian and Arabian-Asian trade routes was tremendous. As a result, Islamic civilization grew and expanded on the basis of its merchant economy, in contrast to their Christian, Indian and Chinese peers who built societies from an agricultural landholding nobility. Merchants brought goods and their faith to China resulting in a significant population of Chinese Muslims with an estimated 37 million followers, mainly ethnic Turkic Uyghur whose territory was annexed to China, India, southeast Asia, and the kingdoms of western Africa and returned with new inventions.

ISLAMIC ART

                                         Marquetry and tile-top table from the year 1560.

DEVELOPMENT IN SCIENCE AND MEDICINE

A manuscript written during the Abbasid Era. Girih tiles arranged in Quasicrystal order is an example of the advancements that had taken place in the Islamic Golden Age. Many notable Islamic scientists lived and practiced during the Islamic Golden Age. Among the achievements of Muslim scholars during this period were the development of trigonometry into its modern form simplifying its practical application to calculate the phases of the moon, advances in optics, and advances in astronomy. The eye according to Hunain ibn Ishaq. From a manuscript dated circa 1200. Medicine was a central part of medieval Islamic culture. Responding to circumstances of time and place, Islamic physicians and scholars developed a large and complex medical literature exploring and synthesizing the theory and practice of medicine.

 Islamic medicine was built on tradition, chiefly the theoretical and practical knowledge developed in Greece, Rome, and Persia. For Islamic scholars, Galen and Hippocrates were pre-eminent authorities, followed by Hellenic scholars in Alexandria. Islamic scholars translated their voluminous writings from Greek into Arabic and then produced new medical knowledge based on those texts. In order to make the Greek tradition more accessible, understandable, and teachable, Islamic scholars ordered and made more systematic the vast and sometimes inconsistent Greco-Roman medical knowledge by writing encyclopaedias and summaries. (from the National Library of Medicine digital archives)

Pagan Latin and Greek learning was viewed suspiciously in Christian early medieval Europe, and it was through 12th century Arabic translations that medieval Europe rediscovered Hellenic medicine, including the works of Galen and Hippocrates. Of equal if not of greater influence in Western Europe were systematic and comprehensive works such as Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine, which were translated into Latin and then disseminated in manuscript and printed form throughout Europe. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries alone, The Canon of Medicine was published more than thirty-five times. In the medieval Islamic world, hospitals were built in all major cities; in Cairo for example, the Qalawun hospital had a staff that included physicians, pharmacists, and nurses.