‘Golden Age of Islam thrived during the Dark Ages of West’

Professor who brought out best-selling history book says many inventions should be credited to Muslims

Adrian Murphy
News Reporter

The time in history known as the “Dark Ages” should be renamed the “Muslim Age” according to a leading academic.
           
Professor Salim Al Hassani, founder of the Foundation for Science Technology and Civilisation, said the wealth of inventions from the Muslim world during a time when the West was supposed to be sleeping was a natural progression
           
“People have said there are 1,000 years missing, but it is just amnesia. In Europe, the United States and in most English-speaking countries, we are told that nothing happened after the Greek and Roman civilizations: It was a dark age. But I say it was the Muslim Age,” he said.
           
Went into we accept that the people world fell asleep and out this history and this project is all about bringing Muslim history to the forefront.”
           
The Muslim world once spanned an area from China to southern Spain, and during the period between AD600 and AD 1600, some of the most important discoveries and inventions were made.
           
Al Hassani, the Chief Editor of 1001 Inventions: Muslim Heritage in Our World, which was published earlier this year, has said that this has been widely overlooked in world history.
           
He founded the Foundation for Science Technology and Civilisation to popularize Muslim works, and said the whole organization came about when he was challenged to find the missing history in Arabic manuscripts in 1993.
           
Since then, alongside a team of experts from many fields, he has helped to produce one of the most talked about exhibition and history books in the world.
           
The exhibition is currently in Manchester, England – attracting 80,000 visitors since March. It will next be in Cardiff, Wales, and then has 140 other cities around the world on the waiting list.
           
Al Hassani said that after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, there was a rush from people to learn more about the Muslim world, which, in an indirect way, had aided him.
           
“The reason this has become so successful is because people want to learn about Muslim history,” said Al Hassani.
           
“This has not happened by some advertising campaign, but by word of mouth. This is a huge movement and can bring peace in our world with its information.” Some of the most important discoveries were in medicine: Ibn Al Nafis had found the blood circulation system in 1210.
           
However, Briton William Harvey, who lived some 300 years later, is credited with the discovery.
           
Abu Al Qasim Al Zahrawi discovered that catgut was the only natural substance capable of being used for internal stitches because the body accepted it.
           
There were more discoveries in many other subjects, from finance to mathematics, astronomy to architecture. In the 15th century, the architect Sinan built some 477 buildings for the Ottoman Empire. His designs for domes and have been used by the likes of London architect Sir Christopher Wren.
           
Much o Europe’s leading minds learnt to speak Arabic, such as Oxford scholar Roger Bacon, but much of what they discovered was hidden because of political and religious reasons, so the Muslim names were never well known.
           
Al Hassani, who teaches at the University of Manchester’s School of Language, Linguistics and Cultures, said the information about Muslim scientists and inventions was mostly in Arabic documents stored in libraries, but was not popularized.
           
He said this was why it was so important to change this perception and hoped the younger generation would embrace the project. “This is the most strategic project of our time – as Muslims we have tried religion and we have tried politics to make ourselves heard, but this is the best way.”
           
The book was published in March and 20,000 first edition copies sold out.
In November, 40,000 second edition copies will be on sale, and can be bought online through the website 1000Inventions.com and bookstores in the UAE.

Inventions Inspired by Islam

Roger Bacon (1214 to 1292), the originator of the experimental method, spoke Arabic and quotes Ibn Al Haitham in his optics section of Opus Malus.
           
Bacon was inspired by Muslim scholars for his flying machine, studies on gunpowder, chemistry and medicine, and used many Arabic works.
           
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 to 1519) drew The Vitruvian Man perfect proportions, and said a man’s center was not at his navel but lower.
           
However, five centuries earlier, scholars Ikhwan Al Safa, or the Brothers of Purity, from the 10th century had come up with the same idea.
           
Nicholas Copernicus (1473 to 1543) from Poland is thought to be the founder of modern astronomy, but many of his theories were based on those of Nasir Al Din Al Tusi and Ibn Al Shatir. Ibn Al Shatir’s planetary theory and models are mathematically identical to those prepared by Copernicus more than a century later.

The Dark Ages

The Dark Ages and Middle Ages were terms coined to describe periods after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
           
In historiography, the term Dark Ages or Dark Age most commonly refers to the European Early Middle Ages, the period encompassing (roughly) 476AD to 1000AD.
           
The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional division of European history into three ages the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Modern Times.
           
The Middle Ages of Western Europe are commonly dated from the fifth century division of the Roman Empire until the 16th century division of Christianity during the Protestant Reformation.
           
These various changes all mark the beginning of the Early Modern period that preceded the industrial Revolution.
           
In Britain and the United States, the phrase Dark Ages has occasionally been used as simply meaning the relative lack of written record, “silent” as much as “dark”. (Wikipedia)