Islamic civilisation and science
Islamic Studies · Key Stage 3 · The School
Baghdad and translation
From the 8th century the Abbasid caliphs funded a translation programme in Baghdad, later remembered as the House of Wisdom, which brought Greek, Persian and Indian works into Arabic. Translation was not the end of it: the works were argued with, corrected and extended, which is what turned a library into a research culture.
Named contributions
Al-Khwarizmi (d. c. 850) wrote the book that gives us the word ALGEBRA, and his name gives us ALGORITHM. Ibn al-Haytham (d. c. 1040) established that we see by light entering the eye and insisted on experiment — often called an early statement of scientific method. Ibn Sina's medical Canon was taught in European universities for centuries. Fatima al-Fihri founded al-Qarawiyyin in Fez in 859, among the oldest degree-granting institutions in the world.
How it travelled
Through Muslim Spain (al-Andalus) and Sicily, where translators worked Arabic texts into Latin, and through trade and the Crusades. Arabic numerals, paper-making, optics, medicine and Greek philosophy all reached medieval Europe by these routes. The story is one of transmission and addition, not of one civilisation simply storing another's books.
Ibn al-Haytham, around 1020, tested the Greek idea that the eye emits rays to see. He argued that if you look at the sun your eyes hurt — so something is coming IN, not going out. He built a camera obscura and showed light travelling in straight lines through a hole to form an inverted image. He wrote that the seeker of truth must test what he reads. That is experimental method, six centuries before it is usually dated.