Ibn al-Zarqālluh (al-Andalus, d. 1100) introduced a new inequality in the longitudinal motion of the Moon into Ptolemy’s lunar model with the amplitude of 24′, which periodically changes in terms of a sine function with…
How Mathematics Created Civilisation: Bestselling science writer Michael Brooks takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of civilisation, as he explains why maths is fundamental to our understanding of the world.
In Islam, as in no other religion in human history, the performance of various aspects of religious ritual has been assisted by scientific procedures. The organization of the lunar calendar, the regulation of the astronomically…
A. J. Deus has got it all hopelessly wrong: A critique of A. J. Deus, “Monuments of Jihad – The thought process of determining qibla orientations by Turks”, and “Raw Analysis Turkish Mosque Orientations ‘Monuments…
The rise of Islamic Civilization was one of the major events in world history. An important aspect of the medieval Islamic Civilization was the development of a remarkable scientific tradition in a relatively short period…
A video of Prof Salim Al-Hassani's speech about Muslim Civilisation's contribution in optics and cryptology at the Bletchley Park's Digital Light: Code Makers event.
Algorithms: From Al-Khwarizmi to Alan Turing and Beyond
Geometry is one of the main features in the formation of Persian architecture. Research in Persian architecture geometry is impossible without familiarity with geometry. This research tries to demonstrate the relationship between the progress of…
The article analyses the mathematical contents of four texts by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201-1274), one of the most original and prolific scientists of the classical Islamic tradition. These four texts on mathematics are: Al-Tusi's Tahrir…
Taken from the Bletchley Park's Digital Light: Code Makers brochure, a summary of Prof Salim Al-Hassani's speech about Muslim Civilisation's contribution in optics and cryptology.
In Islamic culture, geometric design is everywhere: you can find it in mosques, madrasas, palaces, and private homes. And despite the remarkable complexity of these designs, they can be created with just a compass to…
The scientific cooperation between India and the Arabs dates back to the time of Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad when a number of books on astronomy, mathematics, and medicine were translated from Sanskrit into Arabic. From…
Al-Biruni was so far ahead of his time that his most brilliant discoveries seemed incomprehensible to most of the scholars of his days...
I used the discipline of astronomy as a template to record the transmitted ideas and hoped that other people, who work on other disciplines, would do the same, all in an effort to paint a…
Drawing on Harold Bloom’s model of poetic influence and supersession in his famous book, “The Anxiety of Influence,” and considering several historical cases of cross-cultural reception of the natural sciences from the Middle Ages that…
Under the reign of Eurocentrism, the Western mind imagines that even if Islam came up with all manner of new ideas and technologies – ideas in engineering, art, mathematics and at a big push, science…
Professor Glen Cooper discusses the Golden Age of Muslim Civilisation. During the European Dark Ages, when science, art and literature seemed to flounder for centuries, there actually was a lot of discover in places like…
During the Cheltenham Science Festival from 6 - 11 June 2017, a panel on “The Story of Math” took place. Professors Mona Siddiqui, Mohamed El-Gomati, Marcus du Sautoy and Dr Amira Bennison took part in…
The film is part of a global educational campaign launched by 1001 Inventions in partnership with UNESCO in 2015 that has engaged more than 30 million people around the world.
As the world celebrates World Maths and Pi Day on March 12th and March 14th, April is also Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month. To celebrate these special occasions, the Muslim Heritage website would like to…
Amazing snapshots from Khiva (formally known as Khawarizm) in Uzbekistan. The birth place of the famous mathematician Al-Khawarizmi (780 – 850 CE). A prosperous centre of learning during the Golden Age of Muslim Civilisation. (Source…
Four-part series about the history of mathematics, presented by Oxford professor Marcus du Sautoy...
The 7th to the 13th century was the golden age of Muslim learning. In mathematics they contributed and invented the present arithmetical decimal system and the fundamental operations connected with it addition, subtraction, multiplication, division,…
Muḥammad Abūʾl-Wafāʾ al-Būzjānī (10 June 940–997 or 998) was a distinguished Muslim astronomer and mathematician, who made important contributions to the development of trigonometry. He worked in a private observatory in Baghdad, where he made…
Ulugh Beg was a Timurid ruler as well as an astronomer, mathematician. His primary interest was in the sciences and intellectual matters. He built an observatory at Samarkand. In his observations he discovered a number…
‘Umar al-Khayyam (better known as Omar Khayyam, 1048-1123 CE), was a polymath scholar from Nishapur, Persia. Mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and poet, he also wrote treatises in Arabic on mechanics, geography, music and physics. Because of…
The Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection at the University of Pennsylvania is a private library focusing on late medieval and early modern manuscripts. The collection contains a valuable set of original manuscripts, a great part of…
This article aims to give an overview of the formation and development of mathematical studies and the work of famous mathematician in the Ottoman State over a 600 year period, from the period preceding the…
Ali Al-Qushji was one of the most noteworthy and important scientists in the Islamic world. He wrote valuable works especially on astronomy and mathematics. He was a student and co-worker of the famous statesman and…
The Kerala School of astronomy and mathematics was an Indian school of mathematics and astronomy founded by Madhava of Sangamagrama in Kerala, South India, which included among its members several scientists. The school flourished in…
The works of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi have always attracted the interest of Ottoman scholars as early as the 14th century. Some of his works were translated into Turkish and various annotations or commentaries were written…
[Ibn Sina] flourished as a great physician and philosopher, but was also a distinguished scientist, mathematician, logician, and poet at the same time...
In the following well documented article Dr Muhammad Abdul Jabbar Beg surveys the origins of Islamic science, with a special focus on its interaction with the previous intellectual traditions of the ancient world as well…
Dr Salim Ayduz, researcher at FSTC, presented on Tuesday 9 February 2010 a conference on the Muslim contributions to modern civilisation in the "Islam Awareness Week 2010" organised by Lancaster University's Islamic Society. We present…
The history of the Islamic west offers glorious pages of contribution to world history in various fields. This article presents a survey on some salient aspects of the role played by Morocco in the civilisation…
Amicable number, perfect numbers, deficient numbers, abundant numbers, studying numbers was done by many including Ibn Sina better known for work in medicine.
The complex of disciplines composed of mathematics, architecture and art in Islamic civilisation has been an important field of recent research. The scholars showed the interaction between mathematical reflexion and procedures and their implementation in…
Abu Bakr Muhammed Al-Karaji is a Muslim mathematician and engineer from the late 10th century-early 11th century. Of Persian origin, he spent an important part of his scientific life in Baghdad where he composed ground…
The following article focuses on the cubic measure of the volume of the sphere in Arabic mathematics. After a short presentation of the Greek and Chinese ancient legacies on this topic, the article surveys thoroughly…
Since the middle of the 20th century, the history of Arabic mathematics evolved as a sub-field of history of science and became an area of a special expertise in which intermingled the skills of confirmed…
Aydin Sayilli (1913-1993) was an eminent historian of science whose pioneering work during a 50-year career uncovered many hidden treasures in the history of mathematics, astronomy and medicine, especially in the Islamic tradition. In this…
This article is a biography essay on the life and works of Vidinli Tawfiq Pasha, a 19th-century Ottoman scholar, statesman and general of 19th-century Istanbul, and a noteworthy mathematician who published in 1882 an important…
The following article presents a thorough intellectual biography of the late Aydin Sayili, the well known historian of Islamic science. The second part of the article is a comprehensive list of his works. This bibliography…
The Greek letter pi (symbolized by π) is defined as the ratio of the circumference of the circle to its diameter. It is considered to be a vital element in the calculations of the area…
In this important article, Professor Ahmed Djebbar, the renowned scholar and specialist of the history of Arabic sciences, especially in the Islamic West, presents a general survey on mathematical activities in the Medieval Maghrib since…
This article is a bio-bibliographical essay on the life and works of Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Ma'ruf, a scholar of 16th-century Istanbul, one of the most prolific and original scientists of the Ottoman period of Islamic…
This article by Professor Sevim Tekeli, a leading historian of science in the Ottoman period, deals with an aspect of the work of Taqi al-Din Ibn Ma'ruf in trigonometry, a mathematical discipline which studies the…
Five pumps or water-raising machines are described by al-Jazari in his monumental treatise of mechanics Al-Jami' bayn al-‘ilm wa 'l-‘amal al-nafi' fi sina'at al-hiyal (A Compendium on the Theory and Useful Practice of the Mechanical…
Matrakci Nasuh was a famous Ottoman polymath, writer and knight who produced important books in several fields. He made contributions in the fields of mathematics, geography, history and calligraphy. He also invented a military lawn…
This article gives the the results of a research project studying the acoustical properties of several Ottoman mosques designed by Mimar Sinan in the 16th century. The results of measurements concerning several of these mosques…
This article was a talk given at the 7th Maghrebi Colloque of the History of Arabic Mathematics held from 30 May to 1 June 2002 in Marrakech, Morocco. It presents a new manuscript of the…
Ya'qub b. Ishaq al-Kindi was an early Arab scholar of the 9th century, one of the first great scientists that set the stage for the brilliant Islamic tradition of learning. His works in philosophy, cosmology,…
This article relates the discovery by two American scholars, Paul J. Steinhardt and Peter J. Lu (respectively from the department of physics at Princeton and Harvard universities) that medieval Islamic artists produced intricate decorative patterns…
Mathematics has long been an area of expertise amongst Muslim mathematicians. This article considers the contributions of Al-Tusi and Al-Battani and others in trigonometry, focusing upon the progress their discoveries represented in comparison with the…
Early mathematics was revolutionised by Muslim scholars like Al-Khwarizmi, the founder of Algebra; Al-Kindi, Al-Khazin, Al-Khujandi,Al-Sijzi, Abul Wafa and numerous others.This article reviews some of the important works of these mathematicians.
Muslim contributions in the field of mathematics have been both varied and far reaching. This article by Mahbub Ghani (from the Department of Electronic Engineering at King's College, London University) considers some Muslim contributions in…
Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi is one of the greatest scientific minds of the medieval period and a most important Muslim mathematician who was justly called the 'father of algebra'. Besides his founding the science of…
Abu Ja`far Muhammad ibn Mûsâ al-Khwârazmî is a truly outstanding personality and a foremost representative of the supremacy of the Islamic World during the Middle Ages. Medieval Islam was largely responsible for the shaping of…
The introduction of Arabic numbers into Europe involved more than a way of writing numbers down. It also involved new ways of calculating with pen and paper that were faster and easier and the system…
In today's world what Friedrich Gauss called the queen of mathematics plays a crucial role in providing internet security. Here we look at some of the Muslims who worked on number theory.
In Seville, scholars led the science of astronomy, criticising earlier works on the basis of new observations and poetry was used to help people memorise the principles of algebra.
Harran is a very old town situated in the Jazira province of modern Turkey near the sources of the Balkh River. Badly effected by the Crusades, it nevertheless had its production of scientists that are…
Khwarizm is the city of the birth of algebra, where Al-Biruni corrected and refined the sciences of the past and thought of the earth spinning on its axis many centuries before Copernicus.
Professor Charles Burnett shows that Fibonacci failed to give adequate recognition to other sources of learning which he took from to produce his Liber Abacci. These other sources were translations of Arabic works from Toledo…
Bejaia - a small town on the north coast of Algeria, was once a trading hub of the Mediteranian trading extensively with many places including Pisa. Through this town, a great deal of Mathematics was…
Marrakech became, due to the ambitions and sponsorship of its rulers, the centre of attraction for numerous scholars including Ibn Rushd who served as the Chief Physician and where he pursued many works in science.…
Cryptography paved the way for the development of arguably humanity's greatest achievements yet, Computers, the Internet and the digital world. This article presents Al-Kindi as the originator of the modern method of decipher.
Algebra, algorithm, quadratic equation, sine function... just some of the terms which would not be known to us but for Al-Khawarizmi. An astronomer, geographer and founder of several branches and basic concepts of mathematics.