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| Read In The Name Of Your Lord Who Created, Created Man From A Clot That Clings, Read! And Your Lord Is The Most Generous, He Who Taught By The Pen, Taught Man That Which He Knew Not. |
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Islam and Natural Sciences
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Allah (God) says in the Quran:
“…Travel through the earth and see how Allah originated creation; so will Allah produce the second creation (of the Afterlife): for Allah has power over all things.” (Quran chapter 29, verse 20)
Muslims in the field of Natural Sciences introduced vast knowledge and understanding of the physical world. Islam facilitated the desire in people to open their minds to learn, progress in life and to marvel at Allah’s creation, thus inspiring them to venture across the known and unknown world, drawing closer to their Creator through observing His signs.
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Within a few decades of the death of Prophet Muhammad  vast numbers of people across the continents of Africa, Asia and Europe had chosen Islam as their way of life. Muslims were natural explorers, since Islam obligated the pilgrimage (Hajj) to Makkah for every able-bodied person at least once in their life time. Thus, huge numbers of pilgrims travelled from the farthest reaches of the Islamic world to Makkah. Dozens of travel guides were written to assist in the journey, charting the best routes. Importantly, the pilgrimage facilitated the exchange of ideas and knowledge as people mingled around the House of Allah  .
Muslims also travelled far and wide to conduct trade and to spread the message of Islam. Travel to the far-reaches of the world enabled scholars to compile large amounts of geographical and climatic data from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Many maps were produced, some of which revealed with considerable accuracy features such as the origin of the Nile, a fact discovered much later in the West. Whilst Islamic geography was primarily a continuation of the Greek and Roman scholarship, which had been lost in Christian Europe, there were some additions to the collective knowledge by Muslim geographers, especially by Ibn-Battuta and Ibn-Khaldun, both of whom are renowned in the West for written accounts of their extensive explorations.
Ibn Battuta was best known as a traveller and explorer, who documented his travels over a period of almost 30 years, covering some 73,000 miles. His journeys took him almost all over the Islamic world - from NW Africa to India, SE Asia to China. He surpassed his predecessor Marco Polo and was the most travelled person of his time.
Al-Khwarizmi worked at the dar-al-Hikmah (House of Wisdom) in Baghdad, under the caliphate of al-Maʾmun. In his book ,’The Image of the Earth’, appears the coordinates of localities in the known world based on those in the Geography of Ptolemy (127–145) but with more precise values for the length of the Mediterranean Sea and the positions of cities in Asia and Africa.
The book details latitudes and longitudes, of cities, mountains, seas, islands, geographical regions and rivers. In particular, it is clear that where more local knowledge was available to al-Khwarizmi, such as the regions of Arabia, Africa and the Far East, his work was considerably more accurate than that of Ptolemy. He also assisted in the construction of a world map commissioned by al-Maʾmun and participated in a project to determine the circumference of the Earth, which had long been known to be spherical, by measuring the length of a degree of a meridian through the plain of Sinjar in Iraq.
It was with the help of Muslim geographers and navigators that Magellan crossed the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean. Columbus set sail from Spain in 1492, with a Muslim Navigator, Arab translator, maps and equipment. His goal was to cross the Atlantic to reach China and India. But he discovered the Americas instead.
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| The vast expanse of the Islamic world enabled the Muslims to develop natural history based not only on the Mediterranean world, as was the case of the Greek natural historians, but also on most of the Eurasian and even African land masses. Knowledge of minerals, plants and animals were assembled from areas as far away as the Malay world. Al-Biruni, in his study of India, turned to the natural history and even geology of the region, describing correctly the sedimentary nature of the Ganges basin. He also discovered that water can change the face of stone by erosion. He noted alluvial material that landed close to mountains was coarse in texture whilst material found further away was finer. He also wrote an outstanding work on mineralogy. | |
| Ibn Doraid Al-Azdi (d. 934), born in Basra , completed many works, but his main work included a book entitled ‘Descriptions of Rain and Clouds’; comprising twenty seven chapters dedicated to observations of aerial events – the first scientific descriptions of rain and clouds. The book dealt with weather forecasting, descriptions of clouds, (their motion, accumulation, thickening and change of form). It also documented the types of rainfall and its effects on soil and ground water resources. |
| Categories: Islam Explained,
| Tags: Natural Sciences,
science,
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The following articles are also linked to this article: | chapter: Can the Quran be translated? The Quran was sent down in the Arabic language from Allah to Muhammad with the angel Jibreel (Gabriel) as the messenger. It is the direct speach of Allah , so it cannot be considered Allah's wor... |
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