Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

Scientific Progress
Politically the Fatimid period marks a new epoch in the history of the land, which for the first time since Pharaonic days had a completely sovereign powerful of vitality and founded on a
Scientific Development under Fatimids
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religious basis. The two preceding dynasties had neither national nor religious footing in the country. Their rise and existence they owed to the military ability of their soldier founders and to the dilapidated condition of the Abbasid state.
Though the golden age in the history of Fatimid of Egypt began with al-Mu’izz and culminated with al-Aziz, yet Egypt in the time of al-Mustansir was still the leading country of Islam. The Persian Ismaili missionary Nasir-i-Khusro, who visited the country in 1046-49, A.D., shortly before the economic and political crash, has left us a description in glowing colours.
Fatimids were the great patrons of science and art. The court of al-Haka’m inspite of his mental aberrations was destined to become famous through the discoveries and researches. Ibn-Kills was the first outstanding patron of learning in Fatimid Egypt. He established an academy and spent on it a thousand dinars per month. During his time flourished the Physician Muhammad al-Tamim, who was born in Jerusalem and moved to Egypt about 970 A.D. He was the great master of Tibb. He introduced many new medicines from the herbs.
Through some of early Fatimid Caliphs were men of learning and culture, their period was one of unproductive of scientists and writers of special merit like other Caliphs in Baghdad and Spain, al-Aziz was himself a poet and lover of learning. It was he who made the Azhar Mosque an academy His reign saw many architectural and engineering triumph at Cairo, such as the Golden Palace, the pear Pavilion, his mother’s mosque in the Kerafa Cemetery.
The Fatimid period is one of the best documented period in Islamic history and is represented the ’golden age’ of Isma’ilism, during which the Fatimids achieved a prosperous state of their own and Isma’ili thought and literature reached their summit, as attested by numerous treatises produced by the Fatimids Dais and authors and scholars of the period, notably, Numan bin Muhammad better known as al-Qazi al-Numan, Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani Hamid al-Din al-Karmani, al-Muayyad Din al-Shirazi and Nasir Kluisro. At the same time, the Fatimids, after consolidating their position, began to

772 Political and Cultiiml History of Islam

considerable attention to cultural and economic activities as well as Islamic sciences in general.1
Scientific learning was revived and developed with the advent of Islam. The Muslim period in history left the world a legacy in science and knowledge that has been compared with that left by great Greek civilization. Islamic culture flourished and this led to a great flowering of intellectual activity of all kinds not seen in the Roman days or in European Dark ages. In this period all branches of science developed and cultivated under the Fatimids. These were two main centres of learning, besides Baghdad viz. Cairo and Cordova. Over in Egypt, the seat of another Muslim Caliphate, the Fatimids, the rise of Cairo into another Muslim city of international learning and repute under the Muizz, added a spirit of rivalry to the patronage of learning by the Abbasid Caliphate.
Muizz was the Mamun of the West in Muslim Africa which then embraced the whole of the continent from the eastern confines of Egypt to the shores of the Atlantic and the borders of Sahara. During the reign of Muizz and his first three successors, the art and sciences flourished under the special and loving protection of the soveieigns and Cairo became a new intellectual and scientific centre. It \\fls Mui/z who established AI-Azhar, the oldest still functioning mmusity in the world. It was in Muslim Cairo that the richest libh i ics of Islam were established. The library at Cairo, directed by a mnihier of the Caliph Muizz, consisted of 40 store-rooms containing book, on all branches of science, 18,000 of which dealt with the sck ccs of the ancients.
Rich libraries were also founded under the reign of Aziz and Hakim, but the library that surpassed all others was the Dar-alHikma (Hall of Wisdom) founded by the latter Caliph in 1005 A.D., which contained a reading-room, halls of courses of study and an observatory. Efficient service was secured by means of paid librarian and the scholars were given pensions to enable them to pursue their studies. All the sciences were represented there. This institution which lasted from 1005 to the end of Fatimid regime (1171 A.D.),
Farhad Daftary, The Isma’ilis. P 144.
Scientific Development under Fatimids 773
might be considered the second Muslim academy of science, the first being founded by Mamun at Baghdad almost two centuries earlier. Dar-al-Hikma (Hall of Wisdom)
Hakam was the great literary figure in Fatimid of Egypt. His most original foundation, however was the Hall of Science, erected in 1005, chiefly for the propagation of Shia theology and every sort of heterodoxy, but also for the promotion of learning in general
i) Astronomy ii) Lexicology
in) Grammar iv) Poetry
v) Criticism vi) Law
vii) Medicine \in) Physics
ix) Chemistry x) Mathematics
It was a luxurious fitted establishment, with the magnificent library, largely supplied from the royal palaces, open to every one, and supplied with all necessaries of study. All the men of Cairo and many visitors from a far used to meet there, and once they were invited in a body to the palace and to their surprise returned clothed with the robes of honour instead of losing their heads. According to the History of the Arabs. ”One of the most remarkable foundations of the Fatimids was the Dar-al- Hikma for the propagation of Shia doctrines.” Astrology
Astrology is the science of stars and the other heavenly bodies and their effects on the human destiny. Under the M-oizz, Kafur built an astrological laboratory. A square about 1200 yards each way, was pegged out with poles’ and the Maghrabi astrologers, in whom Moizz reposed extravagant faith, consulted together to determine the suspicious moment for the opening ceremony Bells were hung on ropes from pole to pole and at the signal of the sages their ringing was to announce the precise moment when the labourers were to turn the first sod.”