How Arabs Shaped The World With Achievements In Science And Outstanding Inventions!

[TheLoFather]

Think of the origins of that staple of modern life, the cup of coffee, and Italy often springs to mind.
But in fact, Yemen is where the ubiquitous brew has its true origins.
Along with the first university, and even the toothbrush, it is among surprising Arab inventions that have shaped the world we live in today.
The origins of these fundamental ideas and objects -- the basis of everything from the bicycle to musical scales -- are the focus of "1001 Inventions," a book celebrating "the forgotten" history of 1,000 years of Arab heritage.
"There's a hole in our knowledge, we leap frog from the Renaissance to the Greeks," professor Salim al-Hassani, Chairman of the Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation, and editor of the book told CNN.
"1001 Inventions" is now an exhibition at London's Science Museum. Hassani hopes the exhibition will highlight the contributions of non-Western cultures -- like the Muslim empire that once covered Spain and Portugal, Southern Italy and stretched as far as parts of China -- to present day civilization.
Hospitals as we know them today, with wards and teaching centers, come from 9th century Egypt
--professor Salim al-Hassani
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Middle East
World History
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Here Hassani shares his top 10 outstanding Arab inventions:

1. Surgery
Around the year 1,000, the celebrated doctor Al Zahrawi published a 1,500 page illustrated encyclopedia of surgery that was used in Europe as a medical reference for the next 500 years. Among his many inventions, Zahrawi discovered the use of dissolving cat gut to stitch wounds -- beforehand a second surgery had to be performed to remove sutures. He also reportedly performed the first caesarean operation and created the first pair of forceps.

2. Coffee

Now the Western world's drink du jour, coffee was first brewed in Yemen around the 9th century. In its earliest days, coffee helped Sufis stay up during late nights of devotion. Later brought to Cairo by a group of students, the coffee buzz soon caught on around the empire. By the 13th century it reached Turkey, but not until the 16th century did the beans start boiling in Europe, brought to Italy by a Venetian trader.

3. Flying machine

"Abbas ibn Firnas was the first person to make a real attempt to construct a flying machine and fly," said Hassani. In the 9th century he designed a winged apparatus, roughly resembling a bird costume. In his most famous trial near Cordoba in Spain, Firnas flew upward for a few moments, before falling to the ground and partially breaking his back. His designs would undoubtedly have been an inspiration for famed Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci's hundreds of years later, said Hassani.

4. University

In 859 a young princess named Fatima al-Firhi founded the first degree-granting university in Fez, Morocco. Her sister Miriam founded an adjacent mosque and together the complex became the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and University. Still operating almost 1,200 years later, Hassani says he hopes the center will remind people that learning is at the core of the Islamic tradition and that the story of the al-Firhi sisters will inspire young Muslim women around the world today.

5. Algebra

The word algebra comes from the title of a Persian mathematician's famous 9th century treatise "Kitab al-Jabr Wa l-Mugabala" which translates roughly as "The Book of Reasoning and Balancing." Built on the roots of Greek and Hindu systems, the new algebraic order was a unifying system for rational numbers, irrational numbers and geometrical magnitudes. The same mathematician, Al-Khwarizmi, was also the first to introduce the concept of raising a number to a power.

6. Optics

"Many of the most important advances in the study of optics come from the Muslim world," says Hassani. Around the year 1000 Ibn al-Haitham proved that humans see objects by light reflecting off of them and entering the eye, dismissing Euclid and Ptolemy's theories that light was emitted from the eye itself. This great Muslim physicist also discovered the camera obscura phenomenon, which explains how the eye sees images upright due to the connection between the optic nerve and the brain.

7. Music

Muslim musicians have had a profound impact on Europe, dating back to Charlemagne tried to compete with the music of Baghdad and Cordoba, according to Hassani. Among many instruments that arrived in Europe through the Middle East are the lute and the rahab, an ancestor of the violin. Modern musical scales are also said to derive from the Arabic alphabet.

8. Toothbrush

According to Hassani, the Prophet Mohammed popularized the use of the first toothbrush in around 600. Using a twig from the Meswak tree, he cleaned his teeth and freshened his breath. Substances similar to Meswak are used in modern toothpaste.

9. The crank

Many of the basics of modern automatics were first put to use in the Muslim world, including the revolutionary crank-connecting rod system. By converting rotary motion to linear motion, the crank enables the lifting of heavy objects with relative ease. This technology, discovered by Al-Jazari in the 12th century, exploded across the globe, leading to everything from the bicycle to the internal combustion engine.

10. Hospitals

"Hospitals as we know them today, with wards and teaching centers, come from 9th century Egypt," explained Hassani. The first such medical center was the Ahmad ibn Tulun Hospital, founded in 872 in Cairo. Tulun hospital provided free care for anyone who needed it -- a policy based on the Muslim tradition of caring for all who are sick. From Cairo, such hospitals spread around the Muslim world.
For more information on muslim inventions go to: muslimheritage.com. For more information about the exhibition at London's Science Museum go to: science museum.org.uk

[Shirib]

Several of those on the list are not Arab. It's more like how the Muslims shaped Shaped The World With Achievements In Science And Outstanding Inventions!

Al Zahrawi is a Moor, Al-Khwarizmi is Persian, Al Jazari is a Turk.

[Hyperactive]

Several of those on the list are not Arab. It's more like how the Muslims shaped Shaped The World With Achievements In Science And Outstanding Inventions!

Al Zahrawi is a Moor, Al-Khwarizmi is Persian, Al Jazari is a Turk.

exactly! they were muslims. hadaba arab wah ha noqdan! Arabs without islamic identity not better than any somali or african.

[LiquidHYDROGEN]

95% of the greatest Muslim scholars, faqiihs, mathmaticians, philosophers, scientists, astronomers, poets and thinkers were cajam e.g. Persians, Berbers, Egyptians etc. But don't let facts get in the way of your arab-worshipping.

[TheLoFather]

Much like America today, the Arab world of the seventh to the thirteenth centuries was a great cosmopolitan civilization. It was an enormous unifying enterprise, one which joined the peoples of Spain and North Africa in the west with the peoples of the ancient lands of Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia in the east.
It was the rapid expansion of Islam that initially brought this empire together. Alliances were made, trade routes were opened, lands and peoples were welded into a new force. Islam provided the dynamism, but it was the Arabic language, which provided the bond that held it together.
Islam spread to lands more distant than North Africa and the Fertile Crescent, but it was in this area that a common Arab culture emerged.
To be Arab, then as now, was not to come from a particular race or lineage. To be Arab, like American, was (and is) a civilization and a cultural trait rather than a racial mark. To be Arab meant to be from the Arabic-speaking world — a world of common traditions, customs and value — shaped by a single and unifying language.

[mahoka]

yes more reason to worship al arab my fellow cabiid big, pink lipped nigger

may the holy arab spirit be with you my fellow worshipper of the sand kings

[gegiroor]

LoDoon, with the piece you posted, the Arab hating crew has suffered a huge blow

Many don't know Arabs have established the greatest empire the world has ever seen: The Islamic empire. From the Caucasus to Morocco, from Islamic Maghrib to Indonesia to all the way to China , it was indeed Arabs who established it on the back of a donkey, on a horse, and on a small boat.

Arabs are descendants of Prophet Abraham & Prophet Ismail (Peace be upon them all), and are overwhelmingly Muslims.

Arabs settle the most important region in the world: the Arab Middle East. A land that has been chosen by Allah to be the most holly of all, a land that has both the Holly Land and Al-Haramein.

In the final battle between good and evil, Arabs are in the center of it. Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) has prophesied to the Muslims that you will capture the Arabian Peninsula, the Sassanid Persian Empire, the Byzantium empire, and finally the Dajjal empire. The first three has already been achieved by Arab Muslims. And the Dajjal empire will be defeated by the Arab Muslims, aided by Muslims from Khurassan.

Indeed an Arab hate is a Muslim hate!

[X.Playa]

Coffee is an Ethiopian invention not Arabs. The rest of the piece conveniently uses Arabs and Muslim as a synonymous a deceptive Arab propaganda.

[TheFuturist]

Indeed an Arab hate is a Muslim hate!

You cant seriously believe that, surely

[X.Playa]

Lool inventing toothbrush, the Somalis been using the Caday tree for centuries, can we even call it invention? How about combs, most humans on earth used some version of toothbrush and combs.

[jalaaludin5]

Indeed an Arab hate is a Muslim hate!

You cant seriously believe that, surely

Just like, reer hebel hate is a Somali hate.
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[jalaaludin5]

95% of the greatest Muslim scholars, faqiihs, mathmaticians, philosophers, scientists, astronomers, poets and thinkers were cajam e.g. Persians, Berbers, Egyptians etc. But don't let facts get in the way of your arab-worshipping.

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