Kâtip Çelebi was arguably the most important Ottoman intellectual figure of the 17th century. Being the author of many works in the fields of bio-bibliography, geography, history and economics, he held reformist opinions and cultivated knowledge of both the classical Islamic tradition in science and culture as well as a relative familiarity with the European literature of his time. 2009 being the 400th anniversary of his birth, several meetings and conferences have been organised to celebrate him as intellectual and scholar. In the following article, we present an account of some of those events that were organised recently in Turkey, with a survey of Kâtip Çelebi's bio-bibliography.
The famous image we find in an Arabic manuscript depicting the "al-faras al-mastuh" (a horse lying on its back) is a clear representative of the degree of progress attained in the Islamic tradition of veterinary science in general and in hippiatry, in particular. The following article by Rania Elsayed, a scholar from Cairo, presents a reproduction of this image taken from the original manuscript and the English translation of the portions of the Arabic text, those being like captions presenting the comments of the original author on the different parts of the anatomy of the horse.
The article of Professor Dr. Bekir Karliǧa on the horizon of Katip Çelebi's thought is a tremendous analysis of the reformist efforts deployed by the renowned 17th-century Ottoman scholar Katip Çelebi Mustafa bin Abdallah, known as Haji Khalifa. Striving to show the acute consciousness Katip Çelebi had of the intellectual stagnation that was occuring in the Islamic world, in comparison with the earlier centuries of Islamic civilisation and with the then ongoing growth of science in Europe, the author depicts a faithful picture of Katip Çelebi's warning to his contemporaries. Four centuries later the alert that Katip Celebi sounded still holds good.
Among the original machines described in the corpus of Islamic technology, the six-cylinder "monobloc" piston pump designed by Taqi al-Din Ibn Ma'ruf in the late 16th century holds a special place. Working as a suction pump, this complex machine included components that are often associated with modern technology, such as a camshaft, a cylinder block, pistons, and non-return valves. In this article, Joseph Vera, an expert in re-engineering ancient inventions, describes how he created a SolidWorks CAD model of this remarkable pump, that he completed with a motion simulation. The conclusion he drew after creating the model and the simulation is that the engineers of the Islamic tradition, represented by Taqi al-Din, had a very solid grasp of kinematics, dynamics and fluid mechanics. He notes also that Taqi al-Din's "monobloc" pump is a remarkable example of a machine using renewable energy, a topic that is currently of utmost importance.
The following research article in a particular field of the history of medicine, written by two eminent experts, Drs Adnan A. Al-Mazrooa and Rabie E. Abdel-Halim, is composed of two parts. This first part surveys the use of narcotics for pain relief from Antiquity up to the Renaissance; the second part is a historical investigation in the contribution of the Islamic medical tradition to develop anaesthesia methods and uses. Reviewing some of the medical texts written by Muslim scholars from the 9th to the 14th century, the authors present evidence that anaesthesia monitoring and resuscitation were practised by Muslim scientists more than 1000 years ago.
Abu Bakr Muhammed Al-Karaji is a Muslim mathematician and engineer from the late 10th century-early 11th century. Of Persian origin, he spent an important part of his scientific life in Baghdad where he composed ground breaking mathematical books. Al-Karaji is also the author of Inbat al-miyah al-khafiya (The Extraction of Hidden Waters), a technical treatise that reveals such a profound knowledge of hydrology that it should be celebrated as the oldest text of its kind in this field. The book provides an outstanding study on the different kinds of waters, the methods to find the water level, the description of instruments for surveying, the construction of the conduits, their lining, protection against decay, and their cleaning and maintenance. In this article the scientific work of Al-Karaji is characterized, details of his biography are surveyed and a special attention is paid to expound the contents of his treatise of hydology.
This is a study and translation of the section on pericarditis in Kitab al-taysir fi al-mudawat wa-'l-tadbir (Book of Simplification Concerning Therapeutics and Diet) written by the Muslim physician Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) who lived and practiced in Al-Andalus between 1091-1162 CE. Ibn Zuhr described the serous type of pericarditis as well as the pathological findings in fibrinous pericarditis. His description of the latter may also fit with the picture of chronic fibrous pericarditis. He also described acute purulent pericarditis and involvement of the pericardium in cases of acute carditis with hectic fever. Ibn Zuhr's description of the pericardial effusion in serous pericarditis as "looking like urine" indicates that he must have seen a sample of the fluid obtained either by pericardiocentesis or during a post-mortem examination. However, his description of "solid substances accumulating on the inside of the heart's covering looking like layers upon layers of membranes" could not have been made possible without post-mortem dissection.
At first sight, the place held by education in Ibn Khaldun's sociology appears uncertain to say the least. What today we understand by the term ‘education'—the replication of individuals and groups, firstly at the level of values and secondly at that of knowledge and know-how—is found in the Muqaddima only in a scattered and incomplete fashion. More important, Ibn Khaldun makes no use of a general concept of education. This is all the more surprising as he accustoms us elsewhere to a systematic approach to the main phenomena of life in society. However, upon closer view we discover that this ambiguity and these lacunae in fact reflect the state of the Muslim system of education, and we are forced to admit that, in this field as in many others connected with the knowledge of Muslim society, Khaldun's contribution is the most complete at our disposal.
In this study, we present a brief commentary on four books written by Muslim physicians and medical authors who lived between the ninth and the eleventh centuries, having to do with urology, with a special view toward aspects of paediatric urology. The books are: Al-Hawi fi al-tibb by Muhammad al-Razi, Risala fi siyasat as-sibian wa-tadbirihim by the scholar of Qirawan Ibn al-Jazzar, Kitab at-tasrif li-man 'ajiza 'an at-ta'lif by the Andalusian physician al-Zahrawi and Al-Qanun fi al-tibb, the famous Canon of Medicine by Al-Shaykh al-Ra'is Abu 'Ali Ibn Sina.
With few exceptions, most of the current publications on history of urology still ignore the scientific and technological events of the more than a thousand years between the Greco-Roman times and the modern era. This has broken an important link in the globally continuous line of progress and evolution of world civilizations. In this article, Professor Rabie E. Abdel-Halim restores this missing-link. He attracts the attention on the medical works of the scholars of the Islamic civilisation who lived and practiced between the 9th and the 13th centuries and whose Latinized books were available in Europe as early as the 12th century with their influence lasting until the 18th century: Ibn al-Nafis, Ibn Zuhr, Al-Razi, Ibn Al-Jazzar, Al-Zahrawi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Zuhr, Ibn Rushd, Muhadhdhab Al-Din Al-Baghdadi, Ibn Al-Baytar and Ibn El-Quff.
Egyptology: The Missing Millennium published by Okasha El Daly is an invaluable resource showing the extent of efforts by Muslims to study and develop knowledge inherited from prior generations. In this book, El-Daly explores the varying areas of Egyptology in which Arab and Muslim scholars made profound discoveries while attempting to understand and conceptualise Egyptian culture and science. He analyses a number of works created by Arabic writers on Egyptian practices, providing proof of the unending interest in Egyptology by Muslims, invalidating the wide-spread idea that Muslims did not value pre-Islamic cultures and traditions.
The following article focuses on the cubic measure of the volume of the sphere in Arabic mathematics. After a short presentation of the Greek and Chinese ancient legacies on this topic, the article surveys thoroughly the different formulas methods proposed by the mathematicians of the Arabic-Islamic civilization from the 9th to the 17th century to measure the volume of the sphere. The achievements of eminent scholars are thus presented: Banu Musa, Al-Buzgani, Al-Karaji, Ibn Tahir al-Baghdadi, Ibn al-Haytham, Ibn al-Yasamin, Al-Khawam al-Baghdadi, Kamal al-Din al-Farisi, Jamshid al-Kashi, and Baha' al-Din al-'Amili.
In a recent book, Sylvain Gouguenheim has caused a furore in claiming that European culture owes nothing to Arabic culture. The following article by Professor Charles Burnett, an eminent scholar in the intellectual context of the Middle Ages and of the intricacies of the Arabic-Latin transmission, explains the arguments of this debate and sheds light on salient aspects of the transmission of Islamic learning to Latin Europe. Concluding that we must acknowledge both Mont St Michel and Toledo as contributors to European culture, and warning that Gouguenheim's focus on the true roots of ‘Christian Europe' runs the danger of ethnicity, that is of replacing a racial purity of blood with a textual one, he shows how both Greek and Arabic sources enriched the intellectual world of the Middle Ages and in what way Islamic culture contributed to shape Western European civilization.
In the history of Islamic civilization, many hospitals were founded by women, either as wives, daughters or mothers of sultans. All health personnel were male at these hospitals. In the Ottoman period, the female patients were treated either at their homes or at the residences of the medical practitioners until the 19th century. This feature somewhat explains the rich varieties of females practicing medicine both in and outside the Ottoman palace. In this article, Professor Nil Sari, provides information on the various medical practices dedicated to female patients under the Ottomans.
The transmission of medical knowledge can be traced to some of the earliest writings in human history. Yet a particularly fruitful period for advancement in medical science emerged with the rise of Islam. For the most part, Western scholarship belittles the contribution of the physicians of the Islamic world. They are usually perceived as simple purveyors of Greek science to the scholars of the Renaissance. However, as it is argued convincingly in the following article, the facts show otherwise.
The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford has purchased the medieval Arabic manuscript Kitab Gharaib al-funun wa-mulah al-uyun popularised under the title the Book of Curiosities, an exceptionally rich text on cosmography. The treatise is one of the most important recent finds in the history of Islamic cartography in particular, and for the history of pre-modern cartography in general. The manuscript, a highly illustrated treatise on astronomy and geography compiled by an unknown author between 1020 and 1050, contains an important and hitherto unknown series of colourful maps, giving unique insight into Islamic concepts of the world. Portions of the text are preserved in later copies, but the copy owned by the Bodleian library is the only nearly complete coy and the one to have been extensively studied and released in an electronic edition which represents a model for online publishing of Arabic original manuscripts. This high-quality digital reproduction includes interactive displays, through mouse-over techniques, as well as access to a modern Arabic edition and an annotated English translation.
In this article, some aspects of Kitab Nūr hadaqat al-ibsār wa-nūr haqīqat al-anzār (Book of the Light of the Pupil of Vision and the Light of the Truth of the Sights) of the renowned Ottoman astronomer Taqī al-Dīn ibn Ma‘rūf, who lived in Istanbul in the 16th century, is discussed in detail in order to show the high level and quality of the scientific research carried out during the reign of the Ottoman Empire.
This article is a review of the book published recently by Professor Attila Bir (Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Istanbul) on Banu Musa's book of mechanics studied in the framework of modern system and control engineering.
Muslim astronomers and engineers invented a variety of dials for timekeeping and for determining the times of the five daily prayers. In this thorough and technical study, Professor Attila Bir analyses the principle and use of Ottoman sundials. Beginning with the definition of the the day, the hour and the prayer times, he analyses the mathematical formulas of the main two varieties of suncials used by Ottoman astronomers, the horizontal and vertical sundials.
This article describes the appreciation of Arabic science and technology in the Middle Ages through the example of Adelard of Bath, an English scholar of the early 12th century, one of the first scholars that personify Arabic-Latin intercultural transmission that paved the way to the introduction of Arabic learning in premodern Europe.
Al-Azhar is today the most important religious university in the Muslim world with over 90,000 students studying there at any one time. It is arguably the oldest university in the world (disputed only by the Qarrawiyyin Mosque in Fez, Morroco ).
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Snell is credited with the laws of reflection and refraction. However, Ibn Al-Haitham discovered the same phenomena in the 11th century.
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