THE ISLAMIC CONNECTION John E. Sasser
FOREWORD
The Islamic Connection is historical and immediately contemporary. For, today, Islam is perceived negatively by many in the West. This tension establishes a framework essentially limiting knowledge of Islam. So long as this framework stands, the Islamic culture, as a vitally lived experience for Muslims, cannot be known.
This, unfortunately, is particularly true in the United States.
This is why the author lived in Saudi Arabia and traveled throughout the Middle East during the year he researched and wrote this book. To learn about Islam is to learn about the people and cultures that live within it, speak its language, breathe its air and produce its histories and societies.
By showing the influence Islam has had on the Muslim contribution to mathematics, the author has performed a great service in helping the reader to both understand something of Islam and appreciate the vast and important contribution made by the Arab Muslims to mathematics.
Prof. Dr. Boris Kit
PREFACE
Most people in the United States have a very limited knowledge of Islam, indeed, they have a distorted and negative view. Also, they know little of the debt our mathematics owes Arabian medieval Islam.
There are a few books on the Islamic contribution to Mathematics, particularly A.A. Daffa's, The Muslim Contribution to Mathematics and J.L. Berggren's Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam. I am indebted to both of these authors and especially Professor Daffa and two of his graduate students, Ali Mohammed Al-Farras and Khaled Ahmed Al-Haddi at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia.
Additionally, there are hundreds of excellent books on Islam. Despite this, there exist no book written specifically on the influence Islam has had on the Muslim contribution to mathematics.
It is not the intention of the author to try to add anything new to what has been written on Islam or to do justice to the Muslim contributions to mathematics, but rather to show the influence Islam has had on the Muslim contribution to mathematics.
I have included a map to which I occasionally make reference so the reader may see the locations. I have also included photographs of people, places and architecture germane to my account.
I wish to thank my wife, Heidi, who stayed at home and made it possible for me to live and travel throughout the Middle East researching this book.
INTRODUCTION
This book is concerned with the Muslims, their contributions in mathematics and the accompanying influence of Islam. This Islamic influence not only permeated the Muslims' original thinking and research but also the translations they made during the course of several centuries. These translations transmitted knowledge to medieval Europe and are no less essential than original works, for had the research of mathematicians such as Aristotle, Euclid, Pythagoras, and Ptolemy been lost to posterity, the world would have been as poor as if they had never been produced.
What is unknown about Islam and the Muslims is much greater than what is known. There is as much misinformation as a lack of information concerning Muslims and Islam, especially among those of us born, reared and educated in the United States. Other peoples and countries, on a level approaching the Muslims in historical interest and importance, have received much greater consideration and study in modern times than have they.
From the cradle of the Semitic family, the Arabian peninsula, these people, who were to become the first Muslims, later migrated into the Fertile Crescent and became the Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians and the Hebrews of history. The deserts of the peninsula is where the element of Islam, Judaism and consequently of Christianity began.
In the sixth century of the common era [CE], Arabia gave birth to a people who conquered the civilized world and to Islam which claims nearly one billion people representing all races. Every fifth person in our world today is a follower of Islam. Islam - the religion, philosophy and culture of the Arabians - permeates all aspects of their lives. It is a living force and way of life to its adherents. Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, is the product of a spiritual life, the Semitic life. Within a century after the birth of Islam this empire and culture extended from the Atlantic Ocean to China, an empire greater than that of the Roman Empire at its zenith. They coupled their own civilization of the Babylonians with the Egyptians and the Greeks and acted as a medium for transmitting to Europe those intellectual influences which resulted in the Renaissance. No people in the Middle Ages contributed to human progress so much as did the Arabic speaking people. For over five centuries (700 CE - 1100 CE) during the Middle Ages more works were produced in philosophy, medicine, history, religion, science and mathematics through the medium of Arabic, than through any other language. The reader should keep in mind that within this book "Arabian" refers to an inhabitant of the geological peninsula [See map] and "Arab" for any Arabic-speaking person.
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Islam permeates every aspect of the Muslim's life and the Quran is the declaration of Allah to show the right path. Thus, once one understands some things the Quran teaches, then one sees how the influence of Islam cannot be divorced from the Arabs contributions in Mathematics.
From the 7th through the 11th centuries, significant contributions were made to mathematics by the Arabic speaking people because of Islam.
Unlike the thinking of most adherents of Christianity and the Bible, there is no contradiction between the doctrines of the intellect and the revelation of the Quran. While Europe remained in mathematical darkness [Dark Ages] because the Christians thought the Bible contained the answers to science, Islam made significant advancements in their own original thinking and translations of earlier original works in mathematics because the Quran unambiguously encourages intellectual involvement with nature.
The remaining part of this book will describe selected principal contributions to mathematics and the accompanying influence Islam had on these contributions.
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