How 1,000 years of Arabic scholarship advanced scientific debate – in pictures
From the 9th to the 19th centuries, scholars and scribes used Arabic as a lingua franca to debate scientific ideas. Arabic-speaking scholars translated classical Greek, Persian and even Sanskrit texts on topics such as medicine, mathematics and astronomy. These scholars went far beyond translation and preservation and fostered a unique and vibrant scientific culture within the Arabic-speaking world. The British Library and Qatar Foundation have joined forces to launch a new bilingual online portal, the Qatar Digital Library, providing free access to 25,000 pages of fascinating medieval Arabic manuscript. Here’s a selection of some of the most influential scientific texts in history
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This text was the most influential and enduring astronomical text to have survived from the ancient world. Its Arabic translation had an immense impact on the late antique and medieval world view in both Christian and Islamic lands. The Almagest manuscript was completed in 615.
Photograph: British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership
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The internal workings of a water-clock which features eyes changing colour and balls dropping onto a cymbal from a bird’s head. It’s taken from the Book of Archimedes on the Construction of Water-Clocks, compiled during the 9th century.
Photograph: British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership
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The Arabic version of the Data by the mathematician Euclid of Alexandria in 300 BC. The diagrams are collected on a fold out following the text.
Photograph: British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership
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By Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbus was a physician, botanist and pharmacolgist who practised at Rome and travelled as a surgeon with the imperial army. This page describes the mandrake, both male and female varieties, and says that shepherds who chew its roots fall into a sort of lethargy. This copy was completed at Baghdad in 1334.
Photograph: British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership
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One of only three recorded copies of an influential treatise on the construction and use of astrolabes, a tool used by astronomers to predict the positions of the sun, moon and planets. This illustration shows internal gearing of this device and was the first surviving work to illustrate such miniature technology.
Photograph: British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership
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Commentary on Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine by Ibn al-Nafīs, an Arab physician famous for being the first to describe the process whereby deoxygenated blood flows from the heart to the lungs. The copy was completed in 1497.
Photograph: British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership
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The author provides a comprehensive introduction to the principles of astrology. The text is written in question and answer format and it deals with the sciences needed by the astrologer: geometry, arithmetic and number theory, and judicial astrology. The earliest ownership inscription is dated in 1436.
Photograph: British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership
