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Home , Golden Age

CHAPTER 25

ISLAMIC AND BEYOND

THE STORY

The gods were lazing around , complaining that they got no respect anymore from beings, who once feared them so much they went out of their way to appease the immortals. “It’s all your fault,” says to her husband , king of the gods. “If you hadn’t given that silly jar to that female human and tempted her to open it and let out all the evils of humanity.” “I remember her she was a lovely woman, the first female I had created out of the mud. That was a great trick. It was meant to be a punishment to the for accepting fire from , who got his comeuppance when I had the fire thief chained to a rock, where his liver was eaten daily by an eagle. That was meant to be eternal punishment, but that rascal Greek hero Hercules slew the eagle and freed my captive from his torment.” , goddess of wisdom spoke up, “It’s all the fault of that guy Thales. He didn’t include us when explaining natural phenomena.” “And those guys who followed him, Aristotle, Hipparchus, and the worst of the bunch, Ptolemy, only made us more insignificant,” piped in , god of the . “Well, I got even with them by causing them to propose an inaccurate model of the universe,” said , god of war. , the god of the sea, noted, “All their work was almost forgotten. The Romans tended to ignore the sciences that they did not like and did not understand. Conquer, conquer was all they carried for. I have to admire them for that.” “It’s a shame that guys like Cicero, Pliny, and Seneca couldn’t leave well enough alone. No, they had to ensure that Greek ideas survived”, interjected the messenger god, . “Well, at least during the dark ages of astronomy was almost nil,” said gleefully , god of ice. “That was only in Europe. During the medieval , the Arabs translated the Greek works and made improvements, without any reference to us”, said , goddess of the hunt. “Oh, get over yourself,” , goddess of love scolded, “Rather than sitting around feeling sorry for yourselves, eating and drinking till you can’t stand up, make yourself relevant again by helping humans find the answers they seek about the universe and their place in it.” “Maybe,” said Zeus, adding a word that sounded to very like “Mañana.” During the medieval period, the interval between Ptolemy (2nd century C.E.) and the 16th century, the major developments in observational and theoretical astronomy took place from North Africa to Central Asia.1 The Arabic world saved as much Greek knowledge as they could, and expanded on it.2 They refined knowledge on planetary movement and used these celestial measurements for religious,

393 CHAPTER 25 traditional, and time-keeping purposes. They used the stars to determine latitude and longitude so that they could accurately pray to Mecca.3 They attempted to create a clear picture of the universe in its physical sense. The is traditionally dated from the mid-7th century to the mid-13th century at which Muslim rulers established one of the largest empires in history. During this period, artists, engineers, scholars, poets, philosophers, geographers and traders in the Islamic world contributed to agriculture, the arts, economics, industry, law, literature, navigation, philosophy, sciences, sociology, and technology, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding inventions and innovations of their own. Also at that time the Muslim world became a major intellectual center for science, philosophy, medicine and education.4

THE PROBLEM

Suppose you’re an astronomer in the Muslim Caliphate of the Abbāsids, during the reigns of al-Man ūr, Hārūn ar-Rashīd, and his son al- mūn. You work and study at Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom), an important intellectual center based in Baghdad.5 Caliph al-Ma’mūnṣ brought you and many other brilliantʾ scholars and students both Muslim and non-Muslim, from all part of the world to share information and ideas, as well as translating books into Arabic and preserving them. “Many classic works of antiquity that would otherwise have been forgotten were translated into Arabic and later in turn translated into Turkish, Sindhi, Persian, Hebrew and Latin. Knowledge was synthesized from works originating in ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Rome, China, India, Persia, Ancient Egypt, North Africa, Ancient Greece and Byzantine civilizations.”6 “Muslim dynasties such as the Fatimids of Egypt and the Umayyads of al-Andalus were also major intellectual centres with cities such as Cairo and Córdoba rivaling Baghdad.”7 You and your colleagues built on and tested the knowledge of the greatest ancient scholars, developing the scientific method of observation and experimentation. Your observations are at variance with those in the Greek astronomer Ptolemy. You note that the seasons have changed slightly in length from the values recorded by Ptolemy. Could it be that more of his findings are wrong? The evidence of your observations seems to indicate so. You wondered “if it were possible to think of celestial spheres moving in ways different from the way in which a physical sphere in the sublunar region would move. The Greek astronomers assumed the existence of rigid celestial spheres. While attempting to predict the positions of planets carried by these spheres, however, could mathematical models be proposed that depicted the motions of those spheres in terms that violated their very physical properties? For instance, Ptolemy proposed that all planetary motions be accounted for by rigid spheres moving uniformly in place. But he could not then, in his depiction of those spheres, propose that any of them could perform such a

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