MUSLIMS - AND THE KEY TO GLOBAL SUPERIORITY
BORNEO BULLETIN, 16th December 1993
The
superiority of nations is never an empty password. It is always attained by
their hard labour and acquisition of knowledge.
How important is the place of knowledge in the status of
a nation is suggested by the hadith: 'The superiority of any nation is
maintained only through attainment of knowledge and if persons belonging to a
superior nation discard knowledge, they lose their superiority' (Mishkat-2:1).
Nations receive respect on the basis of their contribution to the well-being of
mankind. They excel in knowledge and learning.
There is a desideratum of collective consciousness about
this in the Muslim world today. It is perhaps time for educated people in the
Muslim world to reconstruct the background of their respective disciplines,
which have been enriched by Muslim scholars in the past, and to draw a renewed
confidence from such information. It may be a surprise for the present
generations, but the Muslim contribution had been unique and outstanding in
those disciplines, which have been classified as sciences in modern education.
Unfortunately, we seem to have forgotten that there was a
time when the Muslims were the people of natural sciences and they had
discovered the scientific data which had been unknown before they had
undertaken a systematic study of nature.
Mathematics also, like other disciplines, won the
attention of great Muslim scholars. They made commendable contributions to this
branch of knowledge with the same rigour as in other domains of knowledge
during the formative phases of its tradition.
The tradition of mathematics mastered by the Muslim
scholars was also a continuation of the work done previously in earlier ages.
But as the facts are, the science, before it was adopted by Muslims, was in its
elementary phase and what now goes as modern mathematics was probably non-existent.
In the pre-Islamic civilizations the state of
mathematical science, as it had developed in Athens, Alexandria, Edessa (modern
Urfa I Turkey) and Jundishapur in Sassanid Persia, had the Euclid and the
Almagist (c.150 A.D.) of Ptolemy among its foremost achievement.
The pre-Islamic scholars and been successful in creating
a world map but were unable to solve the problem of detecting the longitude.
The simple basis of number theory had been discovered by Eratosthenes and the
size of the Earth's circumference had also been estimated by him. The Romans
had applied mathematical formulae to city-planning and architectural monuments.
Nevertheless, by the year 590 A.D. the intolerance of the
then rulers completely extinguished free thought which had been so essential
for intellectual activity and thus the great tradition of mathematical studies
came to a dead end by the seventh century.
At this point, mathematics throughout the world had
become unproductive and intellectual activity thrived on past knowledge and
worked almost in an imitative manner.
But with the advent of Islam however, not only a
commonwealth had emerged but a new environment favourable to intellectual
growth had also appeared in the land between Samarkand and Cordova. The Muslims
came in contact with sciences from various sources of pre-Islamic
civilizations.
From 750 A.D. to 1100 A.D., the
period lasting for 350 years, is completely dominated by Muslim scholars.
Throughout the patronage of Baghdad's House of Wisdom (Batul Hikmat) almost the entire literature about mathematics was
translated into Arabic.
As a consequence, mathematics became an important science
in the curriculum of Islamic education. It attracted the full attention of the
Muslims, and the study of mathematics became a popular pursuit among the rising
middle classes of the Muslim world.
There were numerous reasons for this growing interest:
the main reason being that mathematics was regarded as the source of growth of
the human mind. The translation of work of about 200 years, and a systematic
teaching of mathematics, royal patronage, facilities for intellectual growth,
prosperity, freedom from bureaucratic hegemony and freedom to know, had all
created a climate of fresh ideas in the Muslim world which eventually released
the Muslim genius in all walks of life, including the study of mathematics.
The wave of intellectual awakening became very soon a
world phenomenon and the universities of the Muslim Commonwealth attracted not
only Muslims to their campuses but students from Britain, France and Italy also
came to study there.
These included great scholars like Robert of Chester,
Gerard of Cremona, John of Seville, Adelard of Bath, Leonardo di Vinci, Walcher
of Malveru, Michael Scot, Plato of Tivolili, Gerbert French (Pope Sylvester
II), etc.
The proud phase of Muslim intellectual life and its
contribution to the tradition of mathematics from the 8th to 12th
century A.D., was a great phenomenon of success in the knowledge of natural
sciences.
History bears out that there are numerous significant
contributions by Muslim scholars in mathematics. For example, the introduction
of algebra by Khowarzmi as a subject itself is a great achievement. The name
algebra is the word appearing in the title of the famous work by Khowarzmi al-jabr wal muqabalah, the seminal work
of algebra, a branch of mathematics which until that time, had not been the
object of any serious systematic study. The magnitude of influence of Khowarzmi
in history of algebra is undeniable.
History bears out that scientific brilliance is always
accompanied by mathematical efflorescence. When the Muslims dominated the world
of science and philosophy, they were supreme in mathematics.
No nation has
ever achieved scientific greatness without attaining mastery over mathematics.
Nations which have developed the scientific infrastructure for socio-economic
development have done so by realizing the importance of mathematics
Comments
Post a Comment