What, Exactly, are the Great Achievements of the Islamic World?

moi

[ml/nj]

Today in the WSJ, Karen Elliot House reviews a new book from Bernard Lewis entitled What Went Wrong. She begins this way:

How has it come to pass that a civilization that for centuries led the world in science, medicine, and the arts ...

Does anyone know what contribution the Islamic world made to science besides giving us our number system (admittedly a biggie) and naming a bunch of stars (less big)? Algebra may have Arabic roots linguistically, but I cannot think of a single concept or theorem that we credit to the Arabs. The Greeks are all over geometry. The Arabs supposedly preserved this and passed it along, but did they contribute? I don't know. I'm asking.

Ditto for medicine. What did they do? (Stop the bleeding when they chopped off someones hand?)

And if House just said "Art," maybe, but Arts? The Islamic architecture should certainly be considered "leading," but is there any philosophy or literature that anyone pays attention to along the lines of Maimonades or Aquinas?

ML/NJ

[Styria]

Were all of those men Muslims, or are there some whose names were simply converted to Arabic? And how were they treated by the Islamic culture of the time?

[Non-Sequitur]

They were all Muslims and, as far as I know, they were all respected.

[boltfromblue]

Do you honestly think that your brand of religion affects your skills? The Pharoah's dictatorship surely didn't theirs. Is not Egypt part of the Islamic world and are we not crediting them as a people? We are not asking what their creativity wrought in terms of religion, although they did contribute their architectural creativity to such as the Rose window in the Chartres cathedral, the nave through the Greeks,etc.

[koba]

One of the great achievements of the Islamic world is that they are able to reproduce their people. For all the advances of western Christianity, it is no longer able to self-replicate. If Western Christianity keeps up these low birthrates Western Europeans will be extinct in 300-500 years. In that time Islam and its follwers will not only exist, they would have multiplied many times over. The Muslims will probably claim credit for all of the achievements of Western Civilazation then because there will be no Western European to answer back. Th first function of any civilaztion/religion is to reproduce, in that respect Islan has succeeded admirably while European Christianity has failed.

[rbmillerjr]

hummus

[jwh_Denver]

"Thread over."

Well why didn't it stop? Maybe we ought to start what they've SUBTRACTED?

Too long?

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[drANN!]

There is linguistic evidence that scientific and mathematical concepts unknown to Europeans found their way into Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, and English through Arabic-speaking people. While the Christians and Moslems were at war in Spain (for about 800 years starting in the 8th century AD) there was much cultural assimilation and new words came into the language to fill the cultural vacuum. More than 4000 modern Spanish words have Arabic roots, and almost all of these deal with technology (medicine, astronomy, algebra, and other sciences.) Most English words starting with "al" are of Arabic origin, too. Examples include alchemy, alcohol, algebra, algorithm, alkali, and almanac, to name a few. Regardless of whether one likes or dislikes the influence, pretending that it doesn't exist is counterproductive at best, or as the saying goes, it is better to walk forward through history with at least one eye open *smile*

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That was Then, this is Now!

[RJS1950]

1. They did not necessarily lead the world in all of those areas.

2. The "great" discoveries and things like the numbering system came about long before the pathetic scam of Islam came about.

3. Therefore, these were not Islamic concepts or discoveries.

It's a myth, like the one about black egyptians with wings flying around the pyramids.

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bump for newbies to peruse and think about!

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bump for the newbies and veterans to see!

[Paul Ross]

You failed to date any of these scholars. Furthermore, you should be aware that many of them were not Islamics. They were conquered peoples. The Islamics typically renamed people giving them an Arabic name.

[Non-Sequitur]

How the heck did you come across this old post? Whatever, all the scholars mentioned lived between 800 and 1500 AD. And I'm sure you're right, they are all probably Belgians, Australians, Japanese and the like.

[ApplegateRanch]

Sorry; Al Gore did not invent the zero; his parents did.

And he is it.

He did, however, discover it the first time he looked in a mirror.

[Cronos]

The Mathematical concept of "Zero" can be attributed to the Islamic World. Prior to that numbering systems worked similar to the familiar "Roman" numbering system. MMII isn't that tough for 2002, but try MCMLXXXXIX for 1999. . . . Zero made positional notation, and modern mathematic possible

The zero is an Indian invention along with algebra and the basics of calculus