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To: EveningStar
"Around the same time as universities were popping up all over Europe, the Crusades were bringing Europeans into contact with advanced Muslim ideas of science and technology. Ideas like the compass and the astrolabe came to the West via Muslim Spain and came in handy during the later Age of Exploration. Italian merchants came back from trading in North Africa and gave us another innovation: Arabic numerals."

Arabs had nothing to do with the invention of the modern place-value based, base-10 numerals which replaced the cumbersome and impractical Roman numerals. Guess the original source of that invention...

2 posted on 01/13/2013 12:44:20 PM PST by James C. Bennett (An Australian.)
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To: James C. Bennett

India?


3 posted on 01/13/2013 12:46:17 PM PST by Jack Hydrazine (It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine!)
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To: James C. Bennett

From what I’ve read there were a few scientists in Muslim countries. However most of them were killed.


4 posted on 01/13/2013 12:46:46 PM PST by driftdiver (I could eat it raw, but why do that when I have a fire.)
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To: James C. Bennett; driftdiver

The role Muslim dominated Spain had in the renaissance of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages has been way overblown. And Driftdriver is right. Many of the early Muslim scientists were not Arabs. They were Assyrians who already were experts in science before the Arab Muslims showed up. Muslims later turned against much of the scientific development they themselves had helped foster. The Muslim world gradually became a backwater - and remained one until now. The Jordanian Minister of Education (maybe it was Culture?) admited a few years ago that the entire Arab Muslim world translated fewer books into Arabic over its entire history (1400 years) than Spain translates into Spanish in a single year. BACKWATER!


19 posted on 01/13/2013 1:03:30 PM PST by vladimir998
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To: James C. Bennett; oldplayer; All
My disclaimer in the initial post can apply to all too many Cracked articles. :(
20 posted on 01/13/2013 1:05:04 PM PST by EveningStar
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To: James C. Bennett; driftdiver

The role Muslim dominated Spain had in the renaissance of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages has been way overblown. And Driftdriver is right. Many of the early Muslim scientists were not Arabs. They were Assyrians who already were experts in science before the Arab Muslims showed up. Muslims later turned against much of the scientific development they themselves had helped foster. The Muslim world gradually became a backwater - and remained one until now. The Jordanian Minister of Education (maybe it was Culture?) admited a few years ago that the entire Arab Muslim world translated fewer books into Arabic over its entire history (1400 years) than Spain translates into Spanish in a single year. BACKWATER!


25 posted on 01/13/2013 1:35:43 PM PST by vladimir998
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To: James C. Bennett

And the compass was invented in China.


26 posted on 01/13/2013 1:40:34 PM PST by rfp1234 (Arguing with a liberal is like playing chess with a pigeon.)
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To: James C. Bennett

And the compass was invented in China.


27 posted on 01/13/2013 1:41:19 PM PST by rfp1234 (Arguing with a liberal is like playing chess with a pigeon.)
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To: James C. Bennett
No, pre- Muslim Arabs were advanced. Islam killed research and innovation.
28 posted on 01/13/2013 1:43:52 PM PST by jmacusa (Political correctness is cultural Marxism. I'm not a Marxist.)
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