Islamic Scientists were the Source of Renaissance- Part I

The main purpose of this topic, which is a series of three entries, is to keep the lines of communications open between the Islam and the West. Islamic civilization, on the whole, is not well-known in the United States. By these entries, I will introduce the general reader to the highlights of Islamic civilization in an objective, scholarly, and other manner.

Dark Ages was a term used for several centuries to describe the Middle Ages. Most scholars believe the age began with the fall of the Roman Empire in 410 A.D. and continued until 1350, or after the European Renaissance 1300–1500, and it was called dark because of the lack of information and scientific resources. During that era the Islamic victories and expansion reached their peak. The two greatest Islamic empires Abbasid Empire 750 – 1258 and Ottoman Empire 1293–1922, have controlled territories from the Far West Morocco in Africa to the Far East India in Asia, and entered the Europe content from the Iberian Peninsula (the southern areas of Europe) and were governed by Muslims during the Andalusian period 711 – 1492. 

This expansion allowed early Muslims to import scientific textbooks from Hellenized people who came under the Islam rule. In fact, Muslims inherited not only sciences from Alexandria but also from Persia and India. The wide range of translation movement had been started by the order of Islamic caliphs to translate thousands of scientific resources from Sanskrit, Syriac, and Pahlavi, as well as Greek to the Arabic Language.

Islamic scientists were renaissance people. They started studying different sciences such as Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Philosophy, Astronomy, Medicine and many other sciences, which are the continuation of Greek tradition. They developed the existing theories and hypotheses by proving and disproving them and established a new source of sciences called Arabic Sciences.

When the European Renaissance began in Italy around 1350 and spread throughout Europe until about 1600, the idea was to expand the level of human knowledge and sciences. Renaissance people in Europe benefitted from the significant source of knowledge which was developed during the golden age of the Islamic empire. Obviously, the history returned itself and the translation movement back to translate Arabic textbooks to Latin. At this point, the Islamic scientists began to find their way into Western Europe.

Dr. Jay E. Gillette is a Professor of Information and Communication Sciences at Ball State University, has defined Analyzing as “Separation a whole into its component parts,” and defined synthesizing as “Put together and add value”. In my next entries, I will prove these definitions and show how Islamic scientists analyzed old sciences and synthesized them to add significant values, which helped the movement of European Renaissance.