The
Golden Age
Some
of the Islamic principles that were core elements
in bringing about the Islamic "Golden Age,"
8th through 15th century are:
In
803 AD, it was Caliph Mamoun el Rashid's zest for
knowledge that lead to the opining of a special
academy in Baghdad, the "House of Wisdom"
to translate the Greek documents into Arabic.
He
appointed the Nestorian Christian Hunayn Ibn Ishaq
as the head of the academy.
Islam's
outstanding principles were directly responsible
for the creation of the old world trade route from
China to Spain, thereby connecting world nations,
and combining world civilizations and trade.
Islam,
with its considerable wealth of goodness for humanity,
easily grew to cover one half of the old world in
less than one century, and established the greatest
intellectual revolution in history that made the
renaissance a reality.
Past
President Richard Nixon, in his resignation speech
said: "We have made a friendship
with the Arabs so that the cradle of this civilization
would not be its grave."
The
Golden Age was a period of unrivaled intellectual
activity in all fields: science, technology, and
(as a result of intensive study of the Islamic faith)
literature - particularly biography, history, and
linguistics.
Scholars,
for example, in collecting and reexamining the hadith,
or "traditions" - the sayings and actions
of the Prophet - compiled immense biographical detail
about the Prophet and other information, historic
and linguistic, about the Prophet's era. This led
to such memorable works as Sirat Rasul Allah, the
"Life of the Messenger of God," by Ibn
Ishaq, later revised by Ibn Hisham; one of the earliest
Arabic historical works, it was a key source of
information about the Prophet's life and also a
model for other important works of history such
as al-Tabari's Annals of the Apostles and the Kings
and his massive commentary on the Quran.
During
the Golden Age Muslim scholars also made important
and original contributions to mathematics, astronomy,
medicine, and chemistry. They collected and corrected
previous astronomical data, built the world's first
observatory, and developed the astrolabe, an instrument
that was once called "a mathematical jewel."
In medicine they experimented with diet, drugs,
surgery, and anatomy, and in chemistry, an outgrowth
of alchemy, isolated and studied a wide variety
of minerals and compounds.
Important
advances in agriculture were also made in the Golden
Age. The 'Abbasids preserved and improved the ancient
network of wells, underground canals, and waterwheels,
introduced new breeds of livestock, hastened the
spread of cotton, and, from the Chinese, learned
the art of making paper, a key to the revival of
learning in Europe in the Middle Ages.
The
Golden Age also, little by little, transformed the
diet of medieval Europe by introducing such plants
as plums, artichokes, apricots, cauliflower, celery,
fennel, squash, pumpkins, and eggplant, as well
as rice, sorghum, new strains of wheat, the date
palm, and sugarcane.
Astrolabe
Windmill
from the 7th Century- During the rule of the Second
Caliph, Umar Ibn Al Khttab, 634-644
CE
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