SERIES  ARTICLE
Dawn of Science
6.The Arab Legacy
T Padmanabhan
But for the phenomenal rise of the Arab civilisation, the
earlier Greek scientific traditions could have been lost forever.
In its declining years in the third century AD, the Roman empire
was divided into two. Of these, the eastern part flourished and
emerged as the Byzantine Empire in the course of time; but the
western part drifted till it fell to barbarian conquests by the end of
the fifth century. And with that began years of instability and
anarchy in western Europe. The stage was set for the world to lose
forever the earlier scientific contributions of the Greeks. And
indeed, this is what would have happened – but for the phenomenal rise of the Arab civilization.
In the years following the death of Prophet Mohammed in AD
632, the Arabs conquered Asia Minor, Persia, North Africa and
Spain. From the ninth to the eleventh centuries, the Arab
civilisation was the dominant force around the Mediterranean
with Cordoba, Baghdad, Damascus and Samarkhand emerging as
centres of learning and culture. The streets of Cordoba were
paved and lit by lamps – amenities which were not available in
London and Paris for another seven centuries!
The Arabs absorbed every key idea of Greek science and added to
it what they learnt from Persia, India and China. The Caliphs in
Baghdad encouraged translations of every major scientific work
into Arabic. The ‘western’ science of the later centuries originated from the study of these Arabic texts, retranslated into Latin.
This Arabic reservoir of knowledge covered virtually all branches
of science – medicine, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics and
physics.
T Padmanabhan works at
IUCAA, Pune and is
interested in all areas
of theoretical physics,
especially those which
have something to do with
gravity.
Previous parts:
Res onance, Vol.15: p.498;
p.590; p.684; p.774. p.870.
Keywords
Alchemy, paper-making, gunpowder, Almagest, Rhazes ,
Avicenna.
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Figure 1.
WHEN
Figure 2.
WHERE
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In medicine, two names stand out from the Arabic world – Rhazes
(Al-Razi) (850–923) and Avicenna (979–1037). Rhazes was born
near Teheran and studied medicine in Baghdad. In addition to
contributing his share of translation, he also wrote a voluminous
treatise on medicine, Kitab-al-hawi, covering the subject in its
entirety. Rhazes was also an excellent chemist; he was the first
person to produce what we now call ‘plaster of paris’ and used it
for setting broken bones. Avicenna, son of a wealthy tax collector, was a child prodigy who also had the advantage of the best
education money could buy at the time. During his career, he
wrote more than a hundred books, many of which were on
medicine. His works were so authoritative that the Latin translations of these books were used in Europe until as late as 1650!
Figure 3 (left). European depiction of the Persian doctor Al-Razi (Rhazes) .
Courtesy.: Wikipedia
Figure 4 (right). Colophon
of Razi’s Book of Medicine.
Courtesy: Wikipedia
Figure 5. Statue ofAvicenna
in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
Courtesy: Wikipedia
Another important Arabic contribution to medicine was in the
preparation of drugs. Many drugs which we now use are of Arab
origin and so also are processes like distillation and sublimation.
The Arabs, in collaboration with Nestorian Christians (an Eastern
Church which was not affiliated with Constantinople), established a major hospital at Jundi Shahpur (in south-west Persia)
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which combined under one roof treatment of patients, medical
education and translation of medical texts.
The branch of science which we now call chemistry was very
weak in ancient Greece and also in the Arab world. The origins of
this discipline were to be found in the ancient Egyptian science
called khem, which was used to preserve mummies. Very little is
known of the original Greek and Egyptian works on the subject.
Most of the information comes from a 28-volume encyclopaedia
written by the Greek scientist, Zosimus (around AD 300); the
contents of these volumes are unfortunately soaked in deep
mysticism.
Figure 6. An Arabic copy of
Avicenna’s ‘Canon of Medicine’, dated 1593.
Courtesy: Wikipedia
The primary occupation of most of the early and medieval alchemists (al is the Arab word for ‘the’; the word ‘chem’ arises from
Egyptian khem) was to discover a method to convert base metals
into gold. Medieval history is full of
names of scientists who performed valuable experiments and made accurate
observations, but who also wasted a lot
of their time looking for a mysterious
substance, al-iksir, which would transmute base metals into gold (al-iksir
later became ‘elixir’ in Latin). One such
scientist was Geber, aka Abu Musa
Jabir ibn Hayyan (721–815), who successfully produced several chemical
compounds like white lead, ammonium
chloride, nitric acid and acetic acid but
was (probably) really looking for the
al-iksir! Unfortunately, later alchemists
followed Geber’s mistaken theories into
wilder morasses while ignoring his really important contributions.
For all that, and amusingly, the Arabs
excelled in practical ‘everyday’ chemistry. They were, for example, pioneers
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in making perfumes. In fact, perfume-making was a household art
in upper class Arab families.
Figure 7. Paper making in
ancient China.
Courtesy:
The Arabs were also instrumental in transmitting two major
innovations in chemical technology from the East to the West –
the act of making paper and gunpowder. Paper was known in
China as early as first century AD (see Part 4 of this series). The
Arabs captured some of the Chinese craftsmen in the battle of
Samarkhand (AD 751), and learnt the art from them. In another 50
years, the first Arab paper-makers had started their trade in
Baghdad.
http://www. islamicspain.tv/
Islamic-Spain/Making_Paper.
gif and
http://www.chinatourphoto.com/
archives/4
The penetration of paper making into Europe was a slow process
taking another four centuries. The case of gunpowder is more
unclear. Invented by the Chinese, it was primarily used for
ornamental fireworks. Arabs learnt this technique probably as
early as AD 800, but full-scale use of gun powder in European
weaponry probably started only in the 13th century.
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Figure 8. Earliest known
written formula for gunpowder, from the Chinese
Wujing Zongyao of 1044
AD.
Courtesy: Wikipedia
Figure 9. Plotemy’s universe.
The Arabs also succeeded in preserving and refining earlier
Greek works in astronomy, especially that of Ptolemy (AD 127–
151). Ptolemy drew extensively on the work of the previous
Greek astronomer, Hipparchus (190–120 BC), and developed –
what we now call – the Ptolemaic system of the universe. This
scheme has the Earth at the centre of the universe with the Moon,
Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn revolving around
it. Ptolemy had improved on the original rules laid down by
Hipparchus (‘epicycles’) and could compute the position of
celestial objects with reasonable accuracy. (Ptolemy also made
interesting contributions to trigonometry
which we will discuss later.) Ptolemy wrote
a detailed book, admiringly called by others,
Megiste Mathematike Syntaxis (‘Great Mathematical Compositions’). The Arabs translated this as Almagest. This work, re-translated into Latin in 1175, dominated European astronomy throughout the Renaissance.
One of the Arabian astronomers to study
Ptolemy in detail was Albategnius (850–929).
He could also improve Ptolemy’s work on a
few points. He noticed, for instance that the
location at which the Sun appeared the smallest – when the Earth is farthest from the Sun
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Box 1. Greek Fire
Though chemistry was never a strong point of the Greeks, they did show remarkable ingenuity in this field in
times of need. One such invention was the chemical mixture called ‘Greek fire’, attributed to the 7th century
alchemist Callinicus of Greek origin. He is supposed to have fled Syria to Constantinople ahead of conquering
Arabian armies, and here he invented the Greek fire to fight the Arabs. This mixture (probably) consisted of
some inflammable petroleum compound, potassium nitrate to supply oxygen, and quick lime to supply further
heat on reaction with water. It burned vigorously on water and hence could be used to destroy ships made mainly
of wood. The Greeks of the Byzantine Empire used this in AD 673 to repel the Arab naval onslaught on
Constantinople. It is possible that, but for this ‘surprise’ weapon, the Arabs would have taken Constantinople;
and history would have been radically different.
Figure A. Depiction of Greek Fire in the Madrid Skylitzes manuscript.
Courtesy: http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Medieval/GreekFire.html
– is not fixed but moved slowly. He could also obtain more
accurate values for the length of the year, the precise time of the
equinox and the inclination of the Earth’s axis to the plane of
revolution. It was the figure obtained by him for the length of the
year which was used in the Gregorian reform of the Julian
calendar seven centuries later. In the next issue, we will look at
the Arab world’s contribution to the transmission and preservation of mathematics.
Address for Correspondence
T Padmanabhan
IUCAA, Post Bag 4
Suggested Reading
Pune University Campus
Ganeshkhind
[1]
Howard Eves, Great Moments in Mathematics before 1650 (Dolciani
Mathematical Expositions No.5) Mathematical Association of America,
1983.
[2]
Isaac Asimov, Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Tech-
Pune 411 007 India.
Email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
nology, Doubleday, 1982.
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