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

Political and Cultural History oflfslnin
methods of calculation were perfected ; the doctrines of the properties of, and the relations between, the equal and the unequal and prime numbers, squares and cubes, was elaborated; algebra was enriched by the solution of the third and fourth degrees, with the help of geometry and so on. About the >ear 820 A..D. the Mathematician al-Khawarzimi wrote a text-book of algebra in examples, and this elementary treatise translated into Latin was used by Western scholars down to the sixteenth century”.
”Besides an important treatise on astronomy, al- Khawarzimi also wrote a book in Indian (Hindi) method of calculation and another on algebra. The first was translated into Latin by Adelard of Bath, the two otheis by Gerard of Cremona, the treatise on astronomy and that on arithmetic are known only from these Latin translations”
The Muslim contributions in the field of Chemistry and Physics are also of far-reaching importance. Joseph Hell has paid genuine tributes : ”The oldest chemists, as a body, were alchemists. This notwithstanding, in their writings we find items of chemical knowledge which cannot be shown to have existed anterior to their times. The) describe the methods of melting and solution of filteiing, crystallizing, sublimating. They knew alum, salt petre, salammonia. alkali prepared from tarter and salt petre ; and among ihem we first notice the knowledge of mineral acids. The increase in the number of artificially prepared substances ; the perfection of methods handed down from the Greeks; the application of these methods to most diverse materials, are the striking achievements of the Arabs in the domain of chemistry. If, in this diicction, the\ advanced considerably beyond the Greeks, it was due to the fact that in the place of hazy, mystical speculations they introduced objective experiments into the study of nature”.
The later phxsicians succeeded in displacing the works of Galen and Hippocrates for several centuries and substituting their own at the universities, of this class of original writers the oldest is Muhammad ibn Zakariyyah al- Razi (865-925). According to Prof. E.G. Browne, ”Al-Razi was the greatest and most original of all the Muslim physicians and one of the most prolific as an author”. His erudition was all-embracing and his scientific output rematkable, amounting to more than 200 works, half of which are medical. He also wrote a monumental work ”Kitabul Mansuri” in ten volumes of which a Latin translation appeared in Milan in the eighties of the
Muslims Contribution in the European Renaissance 733
fifteenth century. Parts of it have been recently rendered into German and French. One of the most celebrated of his monographs is that on ’’Smallpox and Measles” (al-Judari-wal-Hasbah). it was first translated into Latin in 1565 and later into several European languages, including English, and went into fort} editions between

1498-1866. According to Prof. P. K. Hitti, author of History of the Arabs, this treatise served to establish al-Razi’s reputation as one of the keenest original thinkers and greats clinician not only of Islam but of the Middle Ages”. The most important medical work of alRazi was ”al-Hawi” (the comprehensive book), an encyclopedia in the annals of medical information. It was translated into Latin under the auspices of Charles I of Anjou by the Sicilian Jewish physician, Faraj ibn Salim (Farragut) in 1279 and was repeatedly printed from

1486 onwards. These works of Razi exercised a remarkable influence on European medicine.
The most outstanding and illustrious personality in the domain of medical science after al-Razi is that of Ibn Sina, universally known to the West as Avicena (980-1037) and called by the Arabs a!-Shaykh-al-Rais. Among his scientific works the leading two are ”Kitab-al-Shifa” (Book of Healing) and ”ai-Qanun fit Tibb” (the canons of medicine). This book is the culmination and masterpiece Of Arabic systematization. This medical encyclopedia deals with general medicines, simple drugs, diseases affecting all parts of the body from the head to the foot, specially pathology and pharmacopoeia. The ”Qanun” was published in Arabic in Rome in

1593. It was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the twelfth century.

It became the text-book for medical education in the schools of Europe. ”The demand for it may be gleaned from the fact that in the last thirty years of the fifteenth century it was issued sixteen times-fifteen editions being in Latin and one in Hebrew, and that it was re-issued more than twenty times during the sixteenth century”. In 1930 Cameron Gruner partly translated this book into English, called a treatise on the Canons of Medicine of Avicena. From the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries the ”Qanun” served as the chief guide to medical science in the West. Dr. William Osier, author of The Evolution of Modern Science, has rightly remarked, ”The Qanun has remained a medical Bible for a longer period than any other work.”

734 Political mid Cultural History of Islam

Optics was developed to its highest degree by Ibn alHaitham (Alhazen) of Basra (965 A.D). His main work is ”On Optics,” the original Arabic is lost, but the book survives in Latin. He opposes the theory of Euclid and Ptolemy that the eye sends out visual rays to the object of vision. He discusses the propagation of light and colours, optic illusions and reflection. Alhazen examines also the refraction of light rays through transparent mediums (air, water). In detailing his experiments with spherical segments (glass vessels filled with water), he comes very near to the theoretical discovery of magnifying lenses which was made practically in Italy three centuries later, whilst more than six centuries were to pass before the law of sines was established by Snell and Descartes. Roger Bacon (thirteenth century) and all medieval Western writers on optics-notably the Pole Witelo or Vitellio-base their optical works largely on Alhazen’s ”Opticae Thesaurus.” His work also influenced Leonardo da Vinci and Johann Kepler.
In the field of geography, too, the Muslims made a great headway. Under, Caliph Mamun (813-833) the government appointed a committee under Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khawarzimi to make a survey of the globe. Seventy great minds worked to explore the field and ultimately they were able to produce the first map of the globe in 830. A.D. This activity of the Arabs heralded the dawn of a new adventure in the rough seas, guided by this scientific data, Columbus was inspired to hazard out in the seas five centuries later, believing that the earth was a globe, and not a flat saucer. Thus in search of Indian condiments. Columbus, who had been taught this knowledge of geography by one Arab, found the American Continent. ”When Vasco de Gama, after his circumnavigation of the African Continent in 1498 A.D., had reached Malindi on the east coast of Africa, it was an Arab pilot, Ahmed ibn Majid who showed him they way to India. According to Portuguese sources this pilot \\as in possession of a very good sea map and of other maritime instruments. The same pilot is also known as the writer of a sailingmanual for the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the South China Sea and the East Indian Archipelago’’.
Briffault in his book, The Making of Humanity, had honestly expressed the indebtedness of Europe to the Arabs : ”It was under the influence of the Arabs and the Moorish revival of culture and not in the 15th century, that a real Renaissance took place. Spain, not Italy, was the cradle of the re-birth of Europe. After steadily sinking