Medieval Islamic Ignorance

It also states that in Document 5, Muslim advancements have benefited other countries. It states, “Ibn Sina’s five-volume encyclopedia guided doctors of Europe and Southwest Asia for six centuries. For nearly 500 years, al-Qasim’s work, the Method, which contained original drawings of some 200 medical tools, was the foremost textbook on surgery in Europe.” The advancements made in the Islamic Golden Age was expansion in knowledge of medicine, and that improved technology, which lead to power. The expansion of knowledge leads to greater detailed studies, creating technology that helps future problems in medicine.

The authors conveys how the spread of Islam led to advances in education and sciences,

19. The growth of cross cultural trade spread scientific and technological traditions influencing Greek philosophy and science throughout Europe, Greek and Indian math on Muslim followers, Eastern Asia’s gunpowder and printing technologies throughout Islam and Western

For centuries in the Muslim land the harsh and dry conditions made it hard to collect store and transport water. Most of the progress made in technology and engineering. As said in the quote "Muslim engineers also perfected the waterwheel and built underground water channels some fifty feet underground. The underground channels had manholes (openings from the street) so that they could be cleaned and repaired."(document 7) They created these inventions to help keep water and keep it clean so that they would be able to survive and thrive in where they were staying. As for astronomy most of their work was based off Hellenistic and Indian writing. This could show they were in a golden age because they took the time and effort to figure out what would work and what wouldn’t work and try and fix it. Under one of the early caliphates most Muslim scholars started learning from these writings. As said in this quote "The astrolabe, pictured, allowed people to find their precise latitude by using the position of the stars. The astrolabe was later modified to be used on ships. This innovation allowed Europeans to begin exploring the seas more safely. This lead to the Europeans finding faster trade routes to Asia by sea and Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of the New World."(Document 6) It talks about the creation and perfection of the astrolabe and how it helped people find their exact latitude using the positions of the stars. This didn’t just help throughout the Muslim time but helped other generations of people after. It helped the Europeans find trade routes faster and help Christopher Columbus “discover” the new world. Not only that but it helped people navigate through the seas more

Islamic societies also fail their people educationally. Islamic institutions inadequately fund education, or provide inadequate education. None of the 1800 universities in Muslim countries are named as one of the top 500 world universities.² In science and technology, the Islamic world lags significantly. Twenty Muslim countries combined contributed only 0.55% of recent scientific literature, while smaller Israel produced 0.89%.³ Korea recently generated 16,328 patents and the United States generated 1,145,914, while the top nine Muslim countries generated 370, many by foreigners.⁴

The Islamic people had a very powerful culture. Muslims mastered many crafts and trade which helped them grow and prosper. Modern cultures have used and built onto many ideas that the Islamic people had implemented into their own lives. The Islamic people strived in science, philosophy, astronomy, geography, mathematics, and medicine. This DBQ will talk about his topic.

The Islamic Golen Age was a tiem of knowlegable prosparity, and intellectual gain. People from

One condition needed for the spread of math and science in the Islamic Empire was their way of education. “The Muslims were encouraged by the Prophet Muhammad to ‘seek learning even as far as China.” (Doc A). This means, that no matter where the muslims were, they were challenged to learn all the way to China, which was a big step for early learning. The Prophet Muhammad also proposed a more scientific way of education. To try and help for cures to diseases, as Muhammad once said… “For every disease, Allah has given a cure”. This shows that seeing the Muslims knew that they all had cures, but they had to find them… which is what a lot of them did. This attitude towards education shaped Islam, and led them further into education. This was one of the conditions that helped develop and spread mathematical and scientific ideas in the Golden Age of Islam.

In the translation of the Islamic medical book, World History: Patterns of Interaction, the excerpt provided displays the large extent to which Muslims knew of medical procedures and diseases. “European medical schools gained access to vital reference sources such as al-Razi’s Comprehensive Book and Ibn Sina’s The Canon of Medicine. Ibn Sina’s five-volume encyclopedia guided doctors of Europe and Southwest Asia for six centuries” (Doc 3). This quote explains the large amount of credible sources Muslims utilized in order to obtain their medical knowledge. Unfortunately, other cultures did not have these resources, making Muslim contributions some of the best in the world. As mentioned in the first example, World History: Patterns of Interaction, includes numerical data pertaining to medical tools and procedures. “For nearly 500 years, al Qasim’s work, The Method, which contained original drawings of some 200 medical tools, was the foremost textbook on surgery in Europe” (Doc 3). With all the knowledge of medical procedures and tools, the Islamic culture by default was the most medically advanced in the world. Also, Islam’s contributions to world culture caused western civilization to advance in medicine while simultaneously increasing the average life

Islam and Medieval Christianity have had a combative attitude towards each other. Islam considers Jesus as a continuation of the line of the Prophets, while Christians consider Jesus as the Son of God who came to redeem the world from its fallen nature. These two religions are one two of the largest religions across the world and impact billions of people. Some individuals in both religions view each other as infidels and the only recourse is to remove them from the society at large. The warring nature of these two Abrahamic religions allowed for them to develop in differing ways in Western and Eastern Europe. The growth of Islamic during the 600s to the 1500s made changes to Christianity by making the Pope a powerful

Different methodologies are used between Carl Ernst and Fred Donner as one uses a non-fundamentalist view and textual evidence to describe a broad view of Islamic civilization, which speaks to non-Muslims and explains the concept of Islam better, while the other uses archeological and religious texts to explain a specific time period of the Believers’ movement and how it was solely a religious movement, regardless of what others may say. Fundamentalists are those who believe literally in religious text. Therefore, when Ernst says that he is going to use a non-fundamentalist view he means that he will not be biased while talking about the Muslims and the Islamic civilization. Donner is trying to cancel out the ideas of those who say the Believer’s movement was hardly a religious one. One thought is “the movement that grew into what we know as Islam ‘was produced almost without religious faith’” (Fred Donner, xi). Donner is trying to prove this statement by Ernest Renan wrong with his archeological evidence and religious texts. However, interpretations and materials available to them can all be used to form their arguments. Their interpretations and methodologies show how they portray things of the same topic using different bases to frame their arguments.

The book that we have chosen to review is titled “Lost History, the Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers and Artists”. The author of the book is Michael Hamilton Morgan. The book was published in the year 2007 and also holds the same copyright date. The book is a non-fiction. The main subject matter of the book is the history of the Islamic civilization from the birth of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)

Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (d. 1048) was one of the great polymaths of the pre-modern Muslim world. A scholar trained in multiple disciplines, Biruni benefited from royal patronage to pursue his research and writing. He belonged to a scientific community that shared his values and shaped his outlook. He forged a method for comparative inquiry and analysis based in Islamic epistemology but not limited by it. Biruni was a research scientist and more: a self-conscious and self-critical comparativist. For Biruni, comparison provided a distinctive heuristic purpose: to eradicate common misconceptions, in this case, misconceptions about Hinduism among Muslims, and in its place to promote a better acquaintanceship between two religious

During the Golden age of Islam, achievements in mathematics, medicines and astronomy and many other topics were remarkable and significantly changed Wester Europe and later society. For Muslim, studying science provided knowledge to follow proper path in life and serve God’s purpose. Now, their discovered or created systems create our basic life and develop advanced technologies and strategies such as building bridges, sky towers, computing variety calculation for global economy, and doing pharmaceutical research. We have to appreciate what they have done, and their contribution on our current

The Muslim people made many exceptional achievements and great contributions that spread to and affected the entire world, particularly Europe. Several factors encouraged them to pursue experimentations and developments in different fields.