was talking to my mom about how white people ignore the contributions of poc to academia and I found myself saying the words "I bet those idiots think Louis Pasteur was the first to discover germ theory"
which admittedly sounded pretentious as fuck but I'm just so angry that so few people know about the academic advancements during the golden age of Islam.
Islamic doctors were washing their hands and equipment when Europeans were still shoving dirty ass hands into bullet wounds. ancient Indians were describing tiny organisms worsening illness that could travel from person to person before Greece and Rome even started theorizing that some illnesses could be transmitted
also, not related to germ theory, but during the golden age of Islam, they developed an early version of surgery on the cornea. as in the fucking eye. and they were successful
and what have white people contributed exactly?
please go research the golden age of Islamic academia. so many of us wouldn't be alive today if not for their discoveries
people ask sometimes how I can be proud to be Muslim. this is just one of many reasons
some sources to get you started:
The Islamic Golden Age, spanning the 8th to the 15th Centuries, saw many great advances in science, as Islamic scholars gathered knowledge f
but keep in mind, it wasn't just science and medicine! we contributed to literature and philosophy and mathematics and political theory and more!
maybe show us some damn respect
I'd like to give a few examples.
🧪The man known as the father of chemistry (or alchemy, our teacher said both are used for him), Jabir ibn Hayyan. He wrote a book named Kitab al-Kimya, "kimya" means chemistry, and the word chemistry originated from that as well. He invented aqua regia, he had the first chemistry lab, discovered the methods of refining and crystallizing nitric acid, hydrogen chloride and sulfuric acid, and discovered diethyl ether, citric acid, acetic acid and tartaric acid. He developed the "retort" and literally introduced the concept of "base" to chemistry.
📐The father/ founder of algebra, Al-Khwarizmi. He wrote a book called Al-Jabr and the word "algebra" comes from "jabr". He presented the first systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations. One of his achievements in algebra was his demonstration of how to solve quadratic equations by completing the square, for which he provided geometric justifications. He introduced the methods of "reduction" and "balancing". The word "algorithm" literally comes from his name. He also produced the first table of tangents.
📐Biruni, who proposed that the radius be accepted as a unit in trigonometric functions and added secant, cosecant and cotangent functions to it. He made many contributions to astronomy that are too detailed for me to write here because this is long enough already, but for medicine, he managed to make a woman give birth by C section. He wrote Kitabu's Saydane which describes the benefits of around 3000 plants and how they are used.
🩺The father of early polymeric medicine, Ibn Sina. His books, The Law of Medicine and The Book of Healing were taught as the basic works in medical science in various European universities until the mid-17th century. He discovered that the eye was made up of six sections and that the retina was important for vision, performed cataract surgery. He performed kidney surgery, diagnosed diabetes by analyzing urine, identified tumors, and worked on diseases such as facial paralysis, ulcers, and jaundice. He used "anesthesia" in surgeries, invented instruments such as forceps and scalpels to remove catheters and tumors. He was the first physician in history to mention the existence of microbes, at a time when there was no microscope. He made contributions to so many fields: astronomy, physics, chemistry, psychology (he suggested treating patients with music).
🩺Al-Zahrawi wrote Kitab al-Tasrif, a thirty-volume encyclopedia of medical practices. The surgery chapter of this work became the standard textbook in Europe for the next five hundred years. He pioneered the use of catgut for internal stitches, and his surgical instruments are still used today to treat people. He did so much work in surgery that I can't write them all here. The first clinical description of an operative procedure for hydrocephalus was given by him, he clearly described the evacuation of superficial intracranial fluid in hydrocephalic children. He was also the first physician to identify the hereditary nature of haemophilia and describe an abdominal pregnancy, a subtype of ectopic pregnancy that in those days was a fatal affliction, and was first to discover the root cause of paralysis.
✈️Abbas ibn Firnas devised a means of manufacturing colorless glass, invented various planispheres, made corrective lenses, devised an apparatus consisting of a chain of objects that could be used to simulate the motions of the planets and stars, designed a water clock, and a prototype for a kind of metronome. He also attempted to FLY, and he did fly a respectable distance but forgot to add a tail to his wings and didn't stick the landing.
Women also became scholars in the Islamic society. An example would be Maryam al-Ijliyya, who was an astronomer and an astrolabe maker, who measured the altitude of celestial bodies with the astrolabes she made. Another example would be Fatima al-Fihri, who founded the oldest university in the world, the University of Qarawiyyin.
Baghdad was the dream place anyone in academia now would want to go, it was a peaceful place of inclusivity and research. So many scholars advanced so many fields of study. Ibn al-Haytham invented camera obscura (and pinhole camera), Ibn al-Nafis was the first to describe the pulmonary circulation of blood, father of robotics Ismail al-Jazari invented the elephant clock and his list of contributions to engineering are so long that I can't write them here...
These are just a few examples, of course. I hope this encourages people to do research on this topic more. I even added some emojis to make this more fun to read.💁🏻♀️
Vaccination in the form of inoculation was introduced to the anglosphere and from there into published scientific literature by an enslaved African man named Onesimus in the 1700s.
I wanted to find a source from someone who was a bit politically engaged with the topic, here’s a sort of starter (although they do assume you have heard of Onesimus.)
New York University PhD student Elise A. Mitchell talks about her project ‘Smallpox and Slavery: Morbidity, Medical Intervention, and Enslav
I remember freshman year of college, in my history class, the professor talking about the Islamic Golden Age and how the researchers of the day viewed their study as a form of worship, that there was predictability and math and reason and purpose to everything. That essentially, the Laws of Physics and the Laws of Nature were also a form of divine scripture.
And while I'm a lifelong agnostic raised in the SE US, that really really changed my worldview for the better. It's still so freaking profound to me.
babes this is the fault of christianity.
Actually? No. Christians in the Middle Ages weren't nearly as *good* at science, but they did value it, and they were bringing in and translating Arab scholars' works as early as the 1200s, if I remember correctly. (I seem to remember Al-Jabr in particular. Arabic numerals and the concept of zero revolutionized navigation.)
The real destruction of scientific thought in the West came with the "Enlightenment" beginning in the 1600s -- when white male scholars began systematically rejecting all previous knowledge, both religious and secular, and "rediscovering" it from scratch.
In other words, I'm afraid this is actually the fault of (smug, superior, white) atheism.
Atheism in the 1600s? Who?!
I think it would be more fair to say that scientists of the 1600s built on the work of their predecessors, who were largely Europeans in the 1400s and 1500s. There was indeed a large influx of knowledge into Europe from Islamic scholars (via Al-Andalus, Venice and the Byzantines) in the high Middle Ages and Rennaissance, but a few centuries later it had either trickled off (end of the Islamic Golden Age in 1258 or a bit later depending on how you define it) or the European scientific community was doing more and better work. Look at the names listed above -- none of them lived later than the 13th century*.
Take astronomy for example. Ptolemny (Greco-Roman in 2nd century AD Alexandria) created the pinnacle system for modeling and predicting the motions of the planets (including the sun and moon, as "planets" were understood back then) which was the foundation of Astronomy everywhere west of India for over a millenium. Parts of his work were lost in Western Europe that were preserved in the Greek tradition; Islamic translators and scientists maintained, re-evaluated, and improved upon Ptolemy's work. That's actually why we call Ptolemy's book the Almagest, from it's Arabic title (rather than the original Greek name "Mathēmatikḕ Sýntaxis") -- translations were made from Arabic to Latin in the 12th century and had a huge impact on European science.
Then, in 15th century, newer translations with better commentary were made from the original Greek. Peuerbach and Regiomontanus' work was the foundation that 16th century astronomers like Copernicus, Michael Maestlin, and Peter Apian built upon. Tycho Brahe, too, who also built a giant observatory** in Denmark that made the most accurate naked-eye observations ever recorded. And then in 1609 the telescope completely revolutionized astronomy. So in the 1600s (century), relying on Arabic astronomers would be like relying on Darwin for evolutionary biology -- he's absolutely foundational, but we've done some work since then and you probably want to cite that instead.
Like sure, Regiomontanus probably incorporated the mathematics of ali Qushiji in his (R's) translation of the Almagest (uncredited, so we aren't sure); Copernicus may have gotten the Tusi couple from Latin or Greek translations of al-Tusi's work instead of deriving it himself. But by 1630 none of [Regiomontanus nor al-Tusi nor ali Qushiji nor Copernicus] were the best source -- you want Kepler's publications of Tycho Brahe's data. In fact it was largely Kepler's work that cemented the acceptance of Heliocentrism by most astronomers by the 1660s (more here). And none of this has anything to do with atheism; everyone I've name-checked believed in God.
*Jabir ibn Hayyan (8th century); Biruni (10-11th century); Al-Khwarizmi (7-8th century); Maryam al-Ijliyya (10th century); Ibn al-Haytham (11th century -- also he didn't invent the camera obscura, we have Chinese writings about them from 1000 BC. Aristotle wrote about them); Ibn Sina (11th century); Al-Zahrawi (10th century); Abbas ibn Firnas (9th century); Fatima al-Fihri (9th century); Ibn al-Nafis (13th century); Ismail al-Jazari (12th century). From my astronomy research I'd like to add Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (13th century) and Ali Qushji (15th century) whose works may have been key to Copernicus developing his heliocentric model, but despite looking for a while I can't find any relevant Islamic 16th or 17th century astronomers.
**incidentally, Taqi ad-Din built a large observatory in Istanbul almost at the same time as Brahe was building Uraniborg....but it was destroyed before it could make any observations. I've seen claims that ad-Din was still able to make observations that rivaled Kepler's in accuracy, but then there was no Kepler-equivalent to synthesize his data into something as revolutionary and useful as the Rudolphine Tables.
I do agree with the general thrust of the OP that it's worth learning more about the scientific history of places outside of Europe, this is hardly a white people vs. POC or religious vs. atheist thing. You can find POC saying just as silly ahistorical stuff, like Hindu nationalists who claim that Indo-European languages originated in India. And if you look places like r/AskHistorians you'll find a ton of people interested in studying and sharing history of science from around the world. Atheists online have a reputation for Bad History (the infamous chart, Library of Alexandria myths) but that's mostly downstream of awful pop history; atheists who actually study and care about history like Tim O'Neill and Thony Christie are enthusiastic about sharing and discussing the accomplishments of scholars in China, India, the Islamic World and elsewhere.
Part of the problem is that it's hard to talk about scientific developments in a pithy and exciting way, and we see this in action in this very tumblr post. zynp-krdg's credits the camera obscura to Ibn al-Haytham and completing the square to Al-Khwarizmi, but camera obscuras are discussed in 1st-millenium BC Chinese and Greek texts, and completing the squares goes back to the Babylonians in the early 2nd millenium BC. Which is not to say that these two scholars didn't make important contributions to optics and mathematics on these specific subjects, they very much did! It just takes more than a single sentence to accurately explain their contributions.
(I also think that the previous reblogs' discussion is weaker for completely ignoring the contributions of Indian mathematics and astronomy to Islamic Golden Age developments. E.g. Al-Khwarizmi's explanation of quadratic solutions owes much to 7th century Indian astronomer-and-mathematician Brahmagupta.)
Someone else already corrected that Ibn al-Haytham didn't invent camera obscura but he was the first to understand the principle behind it and explain it. They even shared a link. He IS known as the father of modern optics. Sorry I made that one mistake and it was too late to edit when I noticed it. I mentioned it in the comment I made, you could find the person who corrected me from that comment and reach the link. And about Al-Khwarizmi, he did demonstrate completing the square to solve quadratic equations. Even the wikipedia page for "completing the square" specifically points him out.
I did my best to try and summarize these as best as I could and picked figures I thought would be the most interesting to read for people. I had to skip some scholars that I wanted to talk about and many things the scholars I mentioned did, to keep it simple and short.
And yeah, every civilization has its start, its peak, and its end. The Golden Age of Islam is no exception to that. There were great Muslim scholars who came after the Golden Age too (in the Ottoman Empire and other places), but not as many, because a place like Baghdad never came after that. It was one of the most populous cities, and when the Mongol Empire invaded, they slaughtered more than a million people. Libraries were burned, they tortured scholars to death. They demolished the dams on the Tigris and the Euphrates that the Abbasids had built up over a period of five centuries, depressing agriculture and slowing population and economic recovery for many centuries. Like obviously they couldn't just recover and keep doing maths. I think the loss of those libraries and that knowledge is one of the saddest losses in history.
There was also Al-Andalus alongside Baghdad, another incredible (almost unrivaled, Al-Andalus is genuinely fascinating) civilization. (711-1492) And when you consider how Europe built its riches by exploiting and occupying other countries, you gain another perspective on how it might've been more luxurious and comfortable for them without having to work as hard, in the simplest words.
And yes, Muslim polymaths were inspired by not only India but also Greece, Persia, Egypt, they translated many of their works too. Muslim scholars properly credited their predecessors and built upon what was already discovered, unlike Europe, which advanced thanks to the knowledge they got from Muslim scholars, yet a big majority of people don't know now. Some people in a subreddit might know these things but in general education/academia, they are not talked about. Many people genuinely don't know and they can't know if no one teaches them, and this is a good opportunity to do so.
Thanks for the additional information, this was fun. I quite like this post because of the information everyone has been sharing.