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Monthly Archives: September 2007

Ahmed ibn Yusuf – An Arab Mathematics Scientist

11-Sep-07

Ahmed ibn Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Tammam al-siddiq Al-Baghdadi also known as Ahmed ibn Yusuf al-misri (835 – 912) was an Arab mathematician, like his father Yusuf ibn Ibrahim (Arabic يوسف بن ابراهيم الصدَيق البغدادي ).


Life

Ahmed ibn Yusuf was born in Baghdad (today in Iraq) and moved with his father to Damascus in 839. He later moved to Cairo, but the exact date is unknown: since he was also known as al-Misri, which means the Egyptian, this probably happened at an early age. Eventually, he also died in Cairo. He probably grew up in a strongly intellectual environment: his father worked on Mathematics, Astronomy and Medicine, produced astronomical tables and was a member of a group of scholars. He achieved an important role in Egypt, which was caused by Egypt’s relative independence from the Abbasid Caliph.


Work

For some of the work attributed to Ahmed, it is not exactly clear whether he

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Ahmed Bin Majid – The Sea’s Lion

11-Sep-07

Ahmed Bin Majid (Arabic:أحمد بن ماجد) (c.1432 – ?), was an Arab navigator and cartographer born in 1421 in Julphar, which is now known as Ras Al Khaimah. This city makes up one of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates. He was raised with a family famous for seafaring; at the age of 17 he was able to navigate ships. He was so famous that he was known as the first Arab seaman. He was born at Julfar in northern Ras al-Khaimah in present Oman, and probably died at 1500. He became famous in the West as the navigator who has been associated with helping Vasco da Gama find his way from Africa to India . He was the author of nearly 40 works of poetry and prose.


Works

His most important work was Kitab al-Fawa’id fi Usul ‘Ilm al-Bahr wa ‘l-Qawa’id (Book of Useful Information on the Principles and Rules of Navigation), written in 1490. It is a navigation encyclopedia, describing the history and basic principles of navigation, lunar mansions, rhumb lines, the difference between coastal and open-sea sailing, the locations of ports from East Africa to Indonesia, star positions, accounts of the monsoon and other seasonal winds, typhoons and other topics for professional navigators. He drew from his own experience and that of his father, also a famous navigator, and the lore of generations of Indian Ocean sailors.

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Ahmad ibn Fadlan – Geographics Scientist

11-Sep-07

Ahmad ibn Fadlan ibn al-Abbas ibn Rašid ibn Hammad (أحمد إبن فضلان إبن ألعباس إبن رشيد إبن حماد) was a 10th century Muslim writer and traveler who wrote an account of his travels as a member of an embassy of the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad to the king of the Volga Bulgars, the Kitab ila Malik al-Saqaliba كتاب إلى ملك الصقالبة.

Manuscript tradition

For a long time, only an incomplete version of the account was known, as transmitted in the geographical dictionary of Yaqut (under the headings Atil, Bashgird, Bulghar, Khazar, Khwarizm, Rus), published in 1823 by Fraehn. Only in 1923 was a manuscript discovered by the Turkish scholar of Bashkir origin Zeki Validi Togan in the library of the Iranian city of Mashhad. The manuscript MS 5229 dates from the 13th century (7th cent. Hijra) and consists of 420 pages (210 folia). Besides other geographical treatises, it contains a fuller version of Ibn Fadlan’s text (pp. 390-420). Additional passages not preserved in MS 5229 are quoted in the work of the 16th century Persian geographer Amin Razi called Haft Iqlim “Seven Climes”.

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Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi – The Father of Modern Surgery

11-Sep-07

Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas Al-Zahrawi (936 – 1013), (Arabic: أبو القاسم بن خلف بن العباس الزهراوي) also known in the West as Abulcasis, was an Andalusian-Arab physician, surgeon, and scientist. He is considered the father of modern surgery, and as Islam’s greatest medieval surgeon, whose comprehensive medical texts, combining Islamic medicine and Greco-Roman teachings, shaped both Islamic and European surgical procedures up until the Renaissance. His greatest contribution to history is the Kitab al-Tasrif, a thirty-volume encyclopedia of medical practices.

Biography

abu al-qasim al-zahrawiAbu al-Qasim was born in the city of El Zahra, six miles northwest of Cordoba, Spain. He was descended from the Ansar Arab tribe who settled earlier in Spain. Few details remain regarding his life, aside from his published work, due to the destruction of El-Zahra during later Spanish-Moorish conflicts. His name first appears in the writings of Abu Muhammad bin Hazm (993 – 1064), who listed him among the greatest physicians of Moorish Spain. But we have the first detailed biography of El-Zahrawi from al-Humaydi’s Jadhwat al-Muqtabis (On Andalusian Savants), completed six decades after El-Zahrawi’s death.

In El-Zahra, he lived most of his life. It is also where he studied, taught and practised medicine and surgery until shortly before his death in about 1013, two years after the sacking of El-Zahra.

Works

Abu al-Qasim was a court physician to the Andalusian caliph Al-Hakam II. He devoted his entire life and genius to the advancement of medicine as a whole and surgery in particular. His best work was the Kitab al-Tasrif. It is a medical encyclopaedia spanning 30 volumes which included sections on surgery, medicine, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, pharmacology, nutrition etc.

In the 14th century,

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Ibn Tufail (Abubacer)

11-Sep-07

Ibn Tufail (c. 1105, Gaudix, Spain – 1185) full name: Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusi أبو بكر محمد بن عبد الملك بن محمد بن طفيل القيسي الأندلسي (Latinised form: Abubacer). Andalusian Arab Muslim philosopher, physician, and court official.

Life

Born in Guadix near Granada, he was educated by Ibn Bajjah (Avempace). He served as a secretary for the ruler of Granada, and later as vizier and physician for Abu Yaqub Yusuf, the Almohad ruler of Al-Andalus, to whom he recommended Averroës as his own successor when he retired in 1182. He died in Morocco.

Ibn Tufail was the author of Ḥayy bin Yaqẓan, حي بن يقظان (“Alive son of Awake”): a philosophical romance and allegorical tale of a man who lives alone on an island and who, without contact with other human beings, discovers ultimate truth through a systematic process of reasoned inquiry. Hayy ultimately comes into contact with civilization and religion when he meets Absal. He determines that the trappings of religion, namely imagery and dependence on material goods, are necessary for the multitude in order that they might have decent lives. However, imagery and material goods are distractions from the truth and ought to be abandoned by those whose reason recognizes that they are distractions.

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