Muslim Scientists and Thinkers

MUSLIM SCIENTISTS AND THINKERS Syed Aslam Second edition 2010 Copyright 2010 by Syed Aslam Publisher The Muslim Observer 29004 W. Eight Mile Road Farmington, MI 48336 Cover Statue of Ibn Rushd Cordoba, Spain ISBN 978-1-61584-980-2 Printed in India Lok-Hit Offset Shah-e-Alam Ahmedabad Gujarat ii Dedicated to Ibn Rushd and other Scientists and Thinkers of the Islamic Golden Age iii CONTENTS Acknowledgments ................................................VI Foreword .............................................................VII Introduction ..........................................................1 1 Concept of Knowledge in Islam ............................8 2 Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan..................................25 3 Al-Jahiz abu Uthman Ibn Bahar ...........................31 4 Muhammad Ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi....................35 5 Abu Yaqoub Ibn Ishaq al-Kindi ............................40 6 Muhammad bin Zakaria Razi ...............................45 7 Jabir ibn Sinan al-Batani.......................................51 8 Abu Nasar Mohammad ibn al-Farabi....................55 9 Abu Wafa ibn Ismail al-Buzjani ...........................61 10 Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham .......................66 11 Abu Rayhan ibn al-Biruni ....................................71 12 Ali al-Hussain ibn Sina ........................................77 13 Abu Qasim ibn al-Zahrawi ..................................83 iv 14 Omar Khayyam ...................................................88 15 Abu Hamid al-Ghazali .........................................93 16 Abu Marwan Malik ibn Zuhr .............................101 17 Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Bajjah ......................106 18 Muhammad ibn al-Idrisi ....................................111 19 Abdul Rahman al- Khazini ................................116 20 Abu al-Walid ibn Rushd ....................................121 21 Abu al-Iz ibn al-Jazari .......................................130 22 Ali ibn al-Baitar ................................................ 135 23 Nasir al-Din al-Tusi ...........................................139 24 Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi ............................145 25 Ala al-Din ibn al-Nafis ......................................151 26 Abd al-Rahman ibn Khaldun .............................157 27 Jamshid al-Kashi ...............................................163 28 Taqi al-Din .........................................................168 29 Sir Syed Ahmad Khan .......................................173 30 Dr. Allama Muhammad Iqbal ............................179 Reference ..........................................................185 Index .................................................................191 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS am thankful to Dr. Abdul Rahman Nakadar for his I encouragement and suggestion to write articles for The Muslim Observer on the subject of Muslim Scientists and Thinkers. Writing articles for the paper eventually led to this book. I am obliged to my cousin Dr. Syed Husain Majid for correcting the manuscript. Thanks to Dr. Habib Akhter Zuberi, Mr. Jameel Ahmad and his wife Dr. Ghazala Barni for suggestions and reading the manuscript. Many thanks to Dr. Mohammad Alhaj Hussein of Saudi Arabia for his encouragement and putting the articles published in The Muslim Observer on his web site. I want to thank my sons Faiz, Amir and especially to my daughter Shazia for reading the drafts of this book. I am thankful to my brother-in-law Syed Wasim Sajjad Jafry and Dr. Syed Sabahuddin Taj for encouragement and help. Thanks also to my nephew Rizwan Jafry (Shad) for help and various suggestions. Last, but not the least, I am grateful to my wife Shahnaz Aslam for her encouragement and cooperation. vi FOREWORD eople in the West are led to believe that their P intellectual roots are embedded in Greek and Roman civilizations. After more than a thousand years as the story goes, they suddenly awoke from the deep slumber of Dark Ages to their Greco-Roman roots. They do not remember which civilization gave the blueprint and the intellectual contributions which led to their Renaissance and finally to the Industrial Revolution. Instead, the scientific, philosophical, and intellectual contribution of the Islamic civilization are relegated to mere footnotes, not worth mentioning in the pages of a standard text book on Western Civilization. Syed Aslam's writing reminds the readers how the Muslim scientists and thinkers gave to the Western world new research and ideas in the field of mathematics chemistry, physics, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, geography and technology. The Europeans had lost all the great work of ancient Greece as if it vii never existed, it was the translation of their work in Arabic and rich commentary by the Muslim thinkers, and philosophers brought it to life again. Without the help of these works the European Renaissance would not have been possible. He also traces history why the Islamic civilization lost its dominance in these fields and became weak, poor and illiterate nation. Syed Aslam starts his book with the chapter title “Concept of Knowledge in Islam” in which he has tried to emphasize through Qur'an and Hadith the importance of both secular and religious education. He then selected thirty prominent Muslim scientists and thinkers whose contributions became the source of enlightenment for the humanity. Their achievements and a short account appeared as articles in The Muslim Observer which received enthusiastic and encouraging responses from readers. I hope our young students will get inspiration from the contributions of these great men and become the leading torch bearer of the modern science to usher in the true Islamic Renaissance. I am pleased and honored to write a foreword for Syed Aslam's book 'Muslim Scientists and Thinkers' . Dr. Abdul Rahman Nakadar CEO and Publisher: The Muslim Observer viii INTRODUCTION n the year 2006 CE Pope Benedict XVI delivered a I speech in Germany in which he quoted a fourteenth century Christian emperor: ‘show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and that you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached’. It is certain that the Pope believed what he quoted in his speech. I can understand the emperor’s frustration, who was losing his land and kingdom to the Muslims . But how could a modern Pope, a man of the most enlightened age of the Western world, har- bor such a notion? If the Pope had turned a few pages of the medieval history, he would have received the correct answer to his inquiry. Trace the history of Catholic Church and you will find that they tolerated no rival. Church issued a decree that anybody caught concealing the book propagating rival teaching other than what was preached by the Catholic Church would be declared a heretic and put to death and indeed they did it by the thousands.1 The great 1 work of ancient Greece were condemned as pagan and their temples, and revered oracles silenced forever. The scholars of classical Greek and Nestorius Christians were forced into exile and with them European society lost all the great work of philosophy, mathematics and science as if they never existed.2 Thanks to Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and his Islamic civilization which preserved it, translated it into Arabic, added their own and delivered it to the Europeans through Arabic translation to Latin at the beginning of Renaissance. The Catholic Church in its relentless effort to maintain absolute power over the destiny of common man of Europe controlled even the secular knowledge. Education and learning became the domain of clergy and the Church tightly controlled every aspect of the society. In 479 CE, when the Catholic Church became the sole authority after the fall of Western Roman Em- pire, the office of Papacy instituted the most oppressive and irrational system the human civilization had ever seen.3 As a result of this, the Christian world hardly produced any philosophers, thinkers or scientists for more than a thousand years and plunged Eu- rope into the Dark Ages. The oppressive policy of the Church continued well into the 17th century in some parts of Europe especially Italy, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church. The execution of Giordano Bruno, a famous Italian philosopher and astronomer, by burn- ing him alive on the stake for propagating the 2 heliocentric theory of earth ( Earth rotating around the sun) and the Inquisition and house arrest of Galileo are glaring examples of intolerance of the institution of Papacy. It is due to this reason that the Jews were persecuted in Europe for centuries and hundreds of thousands of Muslims, Jews and even Arab Christians were butchered after the fall of Jerusalem during the Crusade. Probably it was a remnant of the same intolerance which raised its ugly head during the second world war and led to the genocide of six millions Jews. While Europe was plunged into Dark Ages of religious intolerance and narrow-mindedness, the Islamic civilization was flourishing and acted as a beacon of light for the human civilization. After the death of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in 632 CE Islam spread throughout the Middle East and elsewhere like a wild fire and in a matter of fifty years it stretched from Morocco to the border of China. You simply cannot convert such a vast population by means of sword rather than by the noble principles such as justice, tolerance and freedom of speech. Though we had some despotic rulers, but by and large they followed the path showed by Prophet Muhammad and embarked

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