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| Dr William Draper said, in History of the intellectual Development of Europe:
“During the period of the Caliphs the learned men of the Christians and the Jews were not only held in great esteem but were appointed to posts of great responsibility , and were promoted to the high-ranking job in the government ... He (Caliph Haroon Rasheed) never considered to which country a learned person belonged nor his Faith and belief, but only his excellence in the field of learning.” |
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Islam and Astronomy
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Islam invites man to reflect upon life and to study the Universe. The Arab society before Islam was in a state of complete decline and ignorance. They were a people who, despite many good qualities of generosity, hospitality, bravery and protecting guests, had been made rougher by a harsh nomadic life. As generations passed their lives become consumed with making profit and worldly gain. They had taken to practices, such as the slaying of their own baby daughters within moments of having gasped their first breaths. Such were their concerns, that they had very little interest in intellectual matters, let alone having a scientific outlook towards the laws that govern the universe.
But upon the revelation of the Quran to the final Messenger of Allah (God), Prophet Muhammad  , the gift of humanity and civilisation was laid before all of mankind, bringing an end to the age of ignorance.
Through the teachings of the Quran, the once ignorant and superstitious tribes of the Arabs began to follow the path of reason. As a result, one of the most astonishing developments in world history took place. Within a few decades Islam’s emergence from the small town of Makkah, it spread like wild fire, reaching West Africa and Central Asia. The Arabs, previously incapable of ruling a single city in harmony, came to be rulers of a unified world state.
One of the most important facets of this state was that it provided the stage for scientific development previously unmatched in history. At a time when Europe was living through the Dark Ages, the Islamic world created the greatest legacy of scientific knowledge seen in history to that date. The sciences of medicine , geometry, algebra, sociology and astronomy were developed systematically for the first time.
An understanding of the discipline of astronomy is essential for the appreciation of the religion of Islam, as Muslims rely heavily on the knowledge of the motion of the moon and sun for time keeping and calendars. Allah  created this tremendous universe in which we live. He invited us to reflect upon and understand it, so that we may be able to practice our religion with conviction and sound reasoning.
"And it is He who ordained the stars for you that you may be guided thereby in the darkness of the land and the sea." (Quran chapter 6, verse 97)
And so the impetus for the flourishing of astronomy under Islam came from religious observances. The moon and the sun are of vital importance in the daily life of every Muslim. Using the moon, Muslims determine the beginning and the end of the months in their lunar calendar – important for knowing when to Fast , when to make pilgrimage and when to pay the zakat charity that Muslims pay annually. By the movement of the sun, they calculate the times for prayer and breaking of the Fast . It is also by means of astronomy that Muslims could historically determine the precise direction for prayer (called the Qiblah) in order to face the Kabah in Makkah during prayer and while travelling for pilgrimage. Through Muslim scientists cosmological theories were developed, mathematical models for planetary motion improved, and accurate observations were taken. Muslims perfected the Astrolabe, used to help find the beginning of the month, the hours of prayer, and the direction of Makkah.
In astronomy, the works of Egyptian/Greek astronomer Ptolemy, and the Indian work of Brahmagupta, were significantly refined over the years by Muslim astronomers. In the 11th century, Muslim astronomers began questioning the Ptolemaic system, beginning with Ibn al-Haytham. They were the first to conduct elaborate experiments related to astronomical phenomena, beginning with Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni's introduction of the experimental method into astronomy. Many of them made changes and corrections to the Ptolemaic model and proposed alternative models.
Predicting just when the crescent moon would become visible was a special challenge to Islamic mathematical astronomers. Although Ptolemy's theory of the complex lunar motion was tolerably accurate near the time of the new moon, it specified the moon's path only with respect to the ecliptic. To predict the first visibility of the moon, it was necessary to describe its motion with respect to the horizon, and this problem demands fairly sophisticated spherical geometry. Finding the direction of Makkah and the time of prayer are the reasons which led to Muslims developing spherical geometry. Solving any of these problems involves finding the unknown sides or angles of a triangle on the celestial sphere from the known sides and angles.
Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya (d.1350), in his Miftah Dar al-Sajadah, used empirical arguments in astronomy in order to refute the practice of astrology and divination. He recognized that the stars are much larger than the planets, and thus argued:
"And if you astrologers answer that it is precisely because of this distance and smallness that their influences are negligible, then why is it that you claim a great influence for the smallest heavenly body, Mercury? Why is it that you have given an influence to al-Ra's and al-Dhanab, which are two imaginary points [ascending and descending nodes]?" [1]
Al-Jawziyya also recognized the Milky Way galaxy as "a myriad of tiny stars packed together in the sphere of the fixed stars" and thus argued that "it is certainly impossible to have knowledge of their influences."
Other contributions from Muslim astronomers include the development of a planetary model without any epicycles by Ibn Bajjah (Avempace) (d.1138),[2] the development of universal astrolabes [3], the invention of numerous other astronomical instruments, Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa ibn Shakir's (d.873) discovery that the heavenly bodies and celestial spheres are subject to the same physical laws as Earth [4], the discovery that the celestial spheres are not solid and that the heavens are less dense than the air by Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (d.1039) [5], and the first empirical observational evidence of the Earth's rotation by al-Tusi (d.1274) and al-Qushji (d.1474) [6].
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| [1] Livingston, John W. (1971), "Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah: A Fourteenth Century Defense against Astrological Divination and Alchemical Transmutation", Journal of the American Oriental Society 91 (1): 96–103 [99],
[2] Bernard R. Goldstein (March 1972). "Theory and Observation in Medieval Astronomy", Isis 63 (1), p. 39-47 [40-41].
[3] Krebs, Robert E. (2004). Groundbreaking Scientific Experiments, Inventions, and Discoveries of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Greenwood Press. pp. 196. ISBN 0-3133-2433-6.
[4] George Saliba (1994). "Early Arabic Critique of Ptolemaic Cosmology: A Ninth-Century Text on the Motion of the Celestial Spheres", Journal for the History of Astronomy 25, p. 115-141 [116].
[5] Edward Rosen (1985), "The Dissolution of the Solid Celestial Spheres", Journal of the History of Ideas 46 (1), p. 13-31 [19-20, 21].
[6] F. Jamil Ragep (2001), "Tusi and Copernicus: The Earth's Motion in Context", Science in Context 14 (1-2), p. 145–163. Cambridge University Press.
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_astronomy
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| Categories: Islam Explained,
| Tags: astronomy,
science,
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