| Islam is the primordial religion of man bearing an eternal validity. The word Islam basically means submission to God. As a way of life, it applies to all aspects of man’s existence and performance. No aspect is given precedence over the other and there is a great coordination and coherence, a blending and balance between the material, the rational and the spiritual aspects of man’s quest.
The Holy Quran bears testimony to the supreme values of learning and science. Commenting on the Surat-ul-alaq, Zamakhshari explains the meanings of the Quaranic words: “God taught human beings that which they did not know, and this testifieth to the greatness of His beneficence, for He has given to His servants knowledge of that which they did not know. And He has brought them out of the darkness of the ignorance to the light of knowledge, and made them aware of the inestimable blessings of the knowledge of writing, for great benefits accrue therefrom which God alone compasses; and without the knowledge of writing no other knowledge could be comprehended, nor the sciences placed within bounds, nor the history of the ancients be acquired and their sayings be recorded, nor the revealed books be written; and if that knowledge did not exist, the affairs of religion and the world could not be regulated.” The Holy Prophet often said: “the ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr”; and repeatedly impressed upon his disciples the necessity of seeking knowledge “even unto China”. He further remarked: “He who travels in search of knowledge, walks in the path of God.” And that “One hour’s meditation on the work of the Creator is better than seventy years of prayer.” At another occasion, he said: “To listen to the instructions of science and learning for one hour is more meritorious than standing up in prayer for a thousand martyrs, more meritorious than standing up in prayer for a thousand nights; “To listen to the words of the learned, and to instill into the heart the lessons of science, is better than religious exercises…better than emancipating a hundred slaves. Naturally such directions of the great Master and the Chief of the Disciples gave rise to a liberal policy and stimulated among Muslims a burning desire for learning, knowledge, science and technology, and gave impetus to the great intellectual movement in the Islamic world.
We see that the Muslims under the Ommeyyades seemed to pass through a period of probation; preparing themselves for the great task they were called upon to undertake. Under the Abbasids, however, we find them the repositories and stalwarts of the knowledge of science and philosophy. From every part of the globe students and scholars flocked to Cordova, Baghdad and Cairo to listen to the words of Muslim sages. Even Christians from remote corners of Europe attended Muslim colleges and institutions. Generally the persons who became in their after-life heads of the Christian church, acquired their scholarship from Islamic teachers. At that time the conditions of learning and science in Christendom were miserable. Learning was “branded as magic or punished as treason, and philosophy and science were exterminated. The ecclesiastical hatred against human learning had found expression in the patristic maxim: ‘Ignorance is the mother of devotion’; and Pope Gregory gave effect to this dogma by expelling from Rome all scientific studies, and burning the Palatine Library founded by Augustus Caesar.”
In Spain the same intellectual pursuit was in full swing at Seville, Cordova, Granada, Marcia, Toledo and other places, which were replete with public libraries and colleges in which free instruction in science and letters was given. Of Cordova, Stanley Lane-Poole writes in ‘the Moore in Spain’,
"Beautiful as were the palaces and gardens of Cordova, her famous doctors, and even the nun Hroswitha far away in her Saxon convent of Gaulersheim, when she told of the martyrdom of Eulogius, could not refrain from singing the praises of Cordova, ‘the brightest splendor of the world. Every branch of science was seriously studied there, and medicine received more and greater additions by the discoveries of the doctors and surgeons of Andalusia than it had gained during all the centuries that had elapsed since the days of Galen …… Astronomy, geography, chemistry, natural history, all were studied with ardor at Cordova”.
To these we may add the words of Renan:
“The taste for science and literature had, by the tenth century, established, in this privileged corner of the world, a toleration of which modern times hardly offer us an example. Christians, Jews and Musulmans spoke the same tongue, sang the same songs, participated in the same literary and scientific studies. All the barriers, which separated the various peoples, were effaced; all worked with one accord in the work of a common civilization. The mosques of Cordova, where the students could be counted by thousands, became the active canters of philosophical and scientific studies.”
Unfortunately, due to the pride and prejudice of the West that there are so many discoveries that were long ago made by Muslim Scientists but for which the credit is given to the Westerners. Similarly the Muslim Scholars and Scientists invented many of the basic sciences, but it is not duly acknowledged. Only a few researchers like George Sarton admit the real facts. He correctly states that modern Western medicine did not originate from Europe and that it actually arose from the Islamic orient. It is told that the difficult cubic equations remained unsolved until the 16th century when Niccolo Tartaglia, an Italian mathematician, solved them. It is quite erroneous because as a matter of fact Muslim mathematicians solved Cubic equations as well as numerous equations of even higher degrees as early as the 10th century. Similarly it is taught that Isaac Newton's 17th century study of lenses, light and prisms form the foundation of the modern science of optics. The factual status is that in the 11th century al-Haytham determined virtually everything that Newton advanced regarding optics centuries prior and is regarded by numerous authorities as the "founder of optics". There is little doubt that Newton was influenced by him. Al-Haytham was the most quoted physicist of the Middle Ages. His works were utilized and quoted by a greater number of European scholars during the 16th and 17th centuries than those of Newton and Galileo combined.
Then erroneously it is asserted that in 1614, John Napier invented logarithms and logarithmic tables when actually it was al- Khawarizmi who invented logarithms and produced the logarithmic tables several centuries prior. Such tables were common in the Islamic world as early as the 13th century. Likewise there are numerous things that are quite inaccurately and adamantly attributed to the western scientists whereas actually these originated from or were invented by Muslim scientists. The most remarkable scientists who have made outstanding contribution to science are detailed as below:
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