The demands of Islam to recognize the importance of science and encourage scientists, as contained in the Holy Quran, have proved to be an important means of introducing Muslims to the scientific and cultural achievements of humanity. Many scholars of Muslim community wrote about the importance of acquiring knowledge. One of them was Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali (1058-1111), who during his lifetime won the highest scholarly degree of his time, “Proof of Islam”, cites the many merits of knowledge over the other goods of the world in his 10-volume work The Revival of Religious Sciences.
At the end of the XV century, with the fall of Granada, the last Arabic state of the Old World, the concept of eurocentrism began to take shape throughout Western Europe. Its adherents claim that the origins of the true values of science, culture, philosophy, literature, architecture and art have exclusively European roots. However, many Western scholars recognize the invaluable contribution of brilliant Arab thought to the development of European science.
The term physics is derived from an ancient Greek word meaning nature. Islamic scholars began to study physics in Iraq and Egypt: optics, astronomy and mechanics, including statics, dynamics, kinematics and motion, constituted their field of study. An important achievement was the realization of the need for experimentation and observation to obtain answers about natural phenomena. The scientific approach not only solved the problems of various branches of physics, but also led to inventions unique to the Middle Ages, such as the development of a system for distilling multi-component liquid mixtures.
Muslim scientists were able to develop mechanics to the level of applied science by assimilating the technical achievements of the Hindus, ancient Greeks and Chinese. Since the Islamic religion strictly forbade to burden slaves with exhausting work and hired workers with hard labor, the genius of Islamic engineers invented mechanical means, which gradually replaced some kinds of hard physical labor from people’s daily life.
A fuller realization of the magnitude of the progress made can come from an examination of each individual contribution to the science of physics. Arabic scientist Ibn al-Haytham (965-1040), known in Europe as Alhazen and “the father of modern optics”, wrote the greatest work of the Middle Ages, The Book of Optics, on the properties of light, proving to be the first in the world that ‘vision occurs in the brain, not in the eyes’. According to some versions, the work survived in a Latin edition under the title Treasury of Optics. At the end of the XII century Persian scholar Kamal al-Din al-Farisi made astonishing discoveries about the nature of light in his work The Revision of the Optics of al-Haytham, a critical commentary on the legacy of his predecessor.
Persian scientist Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (973-1050) authored numerous fundamental works in almost all fields of science of his time: mathematics, physics, astronomy, geology, mineralogy and many others. In his work Comprehensive Book on Precious Stones he described various types of precious stones and bodies, and with incredible accuracy found out the specific gravity of some substances. Al-Biruni was the first physicist to determine the viscosity of water and to prove that the speed of light is faster than sound.
Abu Yusuf al Ishaq (801-873), better known in Europe as al-Kindi, was an Arab scientists, physicist, astronomer, optician and chemist from the city of Kufa. During his scientific activity he wrote 256 books, many of which have not survived. Basically, only works translated from Arabic into Latin have survived: On the Cause of the Blue Color of the Sky, On the Stellar Rays, On Incendiary Mirrors, On the Cause of Snow, Hail, Lightning, Thunderstorms and Thunder, On the Efficient Cause of the Flow and Ebd, On Rains, Downpours and Winds and many others.
Abu Barakat Baghdadi (1080-1165) was a Baghdadi philosopher, physicist, physiologist and doctor. He was of Jewish origin who converted to Islam. A supporter of scientific and philosophical teachings and research methods of another medieval scholar, Avicenna, he considered experimentation to be the most important type of evidence. In his work The Book of What Has Been Established by Personal Reflection al-Baghdadi strongly criticized the physics and philosophy of Aristotle, the founder of formal logic, and developed his own concept close to the modern one. In addition, the scientist significantly contributed to the development of the medieval theory of “impetus” – some force invested by an external source in a thrown physical body.
Andalusian philosopher Abu-l-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Qurtubi, known as Ibn Rushd or Averroes, developed new theses about the nature by discussing previous texts, especially Aristotle. He was nicknamed The Commentator and The Father of Rationalism for his philosophical writings with numerous commentaries on Aristotle. He also offered his definition of force as “the rate at which work is done to change the kinetic state of a material body”.
Muslim naturalists achieved great successes. In 880 Andalusian astronomer and inventor Abbas ibn Firnas al-Takuruni first constructed a flying machine, like an aeroplane, out of bird feathers and cloth. He managed to hover in the air for quite a long time and land smoothly. After Abbas ibn Firnas’s flight Islamic inventors continued to conquer the sky - Ismail Jowheri’s (950-1010) attempt at flight ended with his tragic death during landing. Centuries later, Ottoman engineer and inventor Ahmad Çelebi (1609-1640) nicknamed Thousand Knowledge, used eagle wings strapped to his back to jump from the Galata Tower in Istanbul and, flying across the Bosphorus Strait, landed in Doğancılar Square in Üsküdar.
Muslim scientist Ahmed bin Musa (803-878), one of the pioneers of cybernetics, in his work The Book of Ingenious Devices drew schematics of about a thousand devices with automatic adjustment systems. Famous Arab astronomer Ibn Yunus (950-1009) used pendulum clocks long before Galileo Galilei. Jabir ibn Hayyan (721-805), called the father of chemistry, first suggested the idea of the enormous energy hidden inside the atom, and the possibility of its splitting, which would probably produce a force capable of destroying Baghdad. The contribution of Islamic scientists to physics cannot be summarized in one short article, and this amazing process continues today.
Pakistani physicist Muhammad Abdus Salam (1926-1996) headed the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, for almost 30 years. In 1979, Abdus Salam was awarded the Nobel Prize “for his contribution to the unified theory of weak and electromagnetic interactions between elementary particles, including the prediction of the existence of weak neutral currents”. The research in this field of physics was started by Albert Einstein, but due to his death it was left unfinished.
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