List of inventions in the medieval Islamic world
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A number of inventions were made in the medieval Islamic world, a geopolitical region that has at various times extended from Spain and Africa in the west to the Indian subcontinent in the east.[1] The inventions listed here were developed during the medieval Islamic world, which covers the period from the early Caliphate to the later Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires.[2] In particular, the majority of inventions here date back to the Islamic Golden Age, which is traditionally dated from the 8th to the 13th centuries.[3][4]
Chemistry
- Acetic acid: Jābir ibn Hayyān isolated acetic acid from vinegar.[5]
- Citric acid Jābir ibn Hayyān is also credited with the discovery and isolation of citric acid, the sour component of lemons and other unripe fruits.[5]
- Nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and hydrochloric acid: The mineral acids nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and hydrochloric acid were first isolated by Jābir ibn Hayyān. He originally referred to sulfuric acid as the oil of vitriol.[6]
- Tartaric acid: Jābir ibn Hayyān isolated tartaric acid from wine-making residues.[5]
Civil engineering
Architecture
- Arabesque: An elaborative application of repeating geometric forms often found decorating the walls of mosques.
- Minaret: The minaret is a distinctive architectural feature of Islamic architecture, especially mosques, dating back to the early centuries of Islam. Minarets are generally tall spires with onion-shaped crowns, usually either free standing or much taller than any surrounding support structure. The tallest minaret in pre-modern times was the Qutub Minar, which was 72.5 meters (237.9 ft) tall and was built in the 12th century, and it remains the tallest brick and stone minaret in the world.
- Prefabricated home and movable structure: The first prefabricated homes and movable structures were invented in 16th century Mughal India by Akbar the Great. These structures were reported by Arif Qandahari in 1579.[7]
Milling
- Bridge mill: The bridge mill was a unique type of watermill that was built as part of the superstructure of a bridge. The earliest record of a bridge mill is from Córdoba, Spain in the 12th century.[8]
- Vertical-axle windmill: A small wind wheel operating an organ is described as early as the 1st century AD by Hero of Alexandria.[9][10] The first vertical-axle windmills were eventually built in Sistan, Persia as described by Muslim geographers. These windmills had long vertical driveshafts with rectangle shaped blades.[11] They may have been constructed as early as the time of the second Rashidun caliph Umar (634-644 AD), though some argue that this account may have been a 10th century amendment.[12] Made of six to twelve sails covered in reed matting or cloth material, these windmills were used to grind corn and draw up water, and used in the gristmilling and sugarcane industries.[13] Horizontal axle windmills of the type generally used today, however, were developed in Northwestern Europe in the 1180s.[9][10]
Military
Pottery
- Albarello: An albarello is a type of maiolica earthenware jar originally designed to hold apothecaries' ointments and dry drugs. The development of this type of pharmacy jar had its roots in the Islamic Middle East.
- Fritware: It refers to a type of pottery which was first developed in the Near East, where production is dated to the late 1st millennium AD through the second millennium AD Frit was a significant ingredient. A recipe for "fritware" dating to c. 1300 AD written by Abu’l Qasim reports that the ratio of quartz to "frit-glass" to white clay is 10:1:1.[15] This type of pottery has also been referred to as "stonepaste" and "faience" among other names.[16] A 9th century corpus of "proto-stonepaste" from Baghdad has "relict glass fragments" in its fabric.[17]
- Hispano-Moresque ware: This was a style of Islamic pottery created in Islamic Spain, after the Moors had introduced two ceramic techniques to Europe: glazing with an opaque white tin-glaze, and painting in metallic lusters. Hispano-Moresque ware was distinguished from the pottery of Christendom by the Islamic character of its decoration.[18]
- Iznik pottery: Produced in Ottoman Turkey as early as the 15th century AD[19] It consists of a body, slip, and glaze, where the body and glaze are "quartz-frit."[20] The "frits" in both cases "are unusual in that they contain lead oxide as well as soda"; the lead oxide would help reduce the thermal expansion coefficient of the ceramic.[21] Microscopic analysis reveals that the material that has been labeled "frit" is "interstitial glass" which serves to connect the quartz particles.[22]
- Lusterware: Lustre glazes were applied to pottery in Mesopotamia in the 9th century; the technique soon became popular in Persia and Syria.[23] Lusterware was later produced in Egypt during the Fatimid caliphate in the 10th-12th centuries. While the production of lusterware continued in the Middle East, it spread to Europe—first to Al-Andalus, notably at Málaga, and then to Italy, where it was used to enhance maiolica.
- Stonepaste ceramic: Invented in 9th-century Iraq,[24] it was a vitreous or semivitreous ceramic ware of fine texture, made primarily from non-refactory fire clay.[25]
- Tin-glazing: The tin-glazing of ceramics was invented by Muslim potters in 8th-century Basra, Iraq. The first examples of this technique can be found as blue-painted ware in 8th-century Basra.[26] The oldest fragments found to-date were excavated from the palace of Samarra about fifty miles north of Baghdad.[27]
Other
- Attempt at gliding: According to the 17th century historian Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari, Abbas Ibn Firnas of Islamic Spain made in 875 the first − unsuccessful − attempt at a heavier-than-air glider flight in aviation history.[28][29] It may have inspired the attempt by Eilmer of Malmesbury between 1000 and 1010 in England, recorded by the medieval historian William of Malmesbury in about 1125, although there is no evidence that the earlier recorded event in Anglo-Saxon England took place with foreign stimulus.[29]
- Coffee: The earliest credible evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree appears in the middle of the 15th century, in the Sufi monasteries of the Yemen in southern Arabia.[30][31] It was in Yemen that coffee beans were first roasted and brewed as they are today. From Mocha, coffee spread to Egypt and North Africa,[32] and by the 16th century, it had reached the rest of the Middle East, Persia and Turkey. From the Muslim world, coffee drinking spread to Italy, then to the rest of Europe, and coffee plants were transported by the Dutch to the East Indies and to the Americas.[33]
- Madrasah: The earliest mosque schools were the Madrasa of Al-Karaouine in Fez, Morocco, (founded 859) and the Al-Azhar in Cairo, Egypt (founded around 970).[34]
See also
Notes
- ^ Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong:
"There have been many civilizations in human history, almost all of which were local, in the sense that they were defined by a region and an ethnic group. This applied to all the ancient civilizations of the Middle East—Ancient Egypt, Babylon, Persia; to the great civilizations of Asia—India, China; and to the civilizations of
Pre-Columbian America. There are two exceptions:
Christianity and
Islam. These are two civilizations defined by religion, in which religion is the primary defining force, not, as in India or China, a secondary aspect among others of an essentially regional and ethnically defined civilization. Here, again, another word of explanation is necessary."
- ^ Danny Yee. "Islam: The Straight Path, John L. Esposito, Oxford University Press 1998". Danny Yee's Book Reviews. http://dannyreviews.com/h/Islam.html. Retrieved 2009-10-10.
- ^ p. 45, Islamic & European expansion: the forging of a global order, Michael Adas, ed., Temple University Press, 1993, ISBN 1-56639-068-0.
- ^ Max Weber & Islam, Toby E. Huff and Wolfgang Schluchter, eds., Transaction Publishers, 1999, ISBN 1-56000-400-2, p. 53
- ^ a b c Derewenda, Zygmunt S. (2007), "On wine, chirality and crystallography", Acta Crystallographica Section A: Foundations of Crystallography 64 (Pt 1): 246–258 [247], doi:10.1107/S0108767307054293, PMID 18156689
- ^ Khairallah, Amin A. (1946), Outline of Arabic Contributions to Medicine, chapter 10, Beirut
- ^ Habib Irfan (1992), "Akbar and Technology", Social Scientist 20 (9-10): 3–15 [3–4], doi:10.2307/3517712, http://jstor.org/stable/3517712.
- ^ Lucas, Adam (2006), Wind, Water, Work: Ancient and Medieval Milling Technology, Brill Publishers, pp. 62 & 64, ISBN 9004146490
- ^ a b Drachmann A.G. (1961), "Heron's Windmill", Centaurus 7: 145–151.
- ^ a b Dietrich Lohrmann, "Von der östlichen zur westlichen Windmühle", Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, Vol. 77, Issue 1 (1995), pp.1-30 (10f.)
- ^ Ahmad Y Hassan, Donald Routledge Hill (1986). Islamic Technology: An illustrated history, p. 54. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-42239-6.
- ^ Dietrich Lohrmann (1995). "Von der östlichen zur westlichen Windmühle", Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 77 (1), p. 1-30 (8).
- ^ Donald Routledge Hill, "Mechanical Engineering in the Medieval Near East", Scientific American, May 1991, pp. 64-9 (cf. Donald Routledge Hill, Mechanical Engineering)
- ^ Bowles, Edmund A. (2006), "The impact of Turkish military bands on European court festivals in the 17th and 18th centuries", Early Music (Oxford University Press) 34 (4): 533–60, doi:10.1093/em/cal103
- ^ Bernsted A.K. (2003), "Early Islamic Pottery: Materials and Techniques, London: Archetype Publications Ltd., 25; R.B. Mason and M.S. Tite 1994, The Beginnings of Islamic Stonepaste Technology", Archaeometry 36 (1): 77.
- ^ Mason and Tite 1994, 77.
- ^ Mason and Tite 1994, 79-80.
- ^ Caiger-Smith, 1973, p.65
- ^ Tite M.S. (1989), "Iznik Pottery: An Investigation of the Methods of Production", Archaeometry 31 (2): 115.
- ^ Tite 1989, 120.
- ^ Tite 1989, 129.
- ^ Tite 1989, 120, 123.
- ^ Ten thousand years of pottery, Emmanuel Cooper, University of Pennsylvania Press, 4th ed., 2000, ISBN 0-8122-3554-1, pp. 86–88.
- ^ Mason, Robert B. (1995), "New Looks at Old Pots: Results of Recent Multidisciplinary Studies of Glazed Ceramics from the Islamic World", Muqarnas: Annual on Islamic Art and Architecture (Brill Academic Publishers) XII: 5, ISBN 90-04-10314-7.
- ^ Standard Terminology Of Ceramic Whiteware and Related Products. ASTM Standard C242.
- ^ Mason, Robert B. (1995), "New Looks at Old Pots: Results of Recent Multidisciplinary Studies of Glazed Ceramics from the Islamic World", Muqarnas: Annual on Islamic Art and Architecture (Brill Academic Publishers) XII: 1, ISBN 90-04-10314-7.
- ^ Caiger-Smith, 1973, p.23
- ^ Harding, John (2006), Flying's strangest moments: extraordinary but true stories from over one thousand years of aviation history, Robson, pp. 1–2, ISBN 1861059345
- ^ a b Lynn Townsend White, Jr. (Spring, 1961). "Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition", Technology and Culture 2 (2), p. 97-111 [100f.]
- ^ Weinberg, Bennett Alan; Bennett Alan Weinberg, Bonnie K. Bealer (2001), The world of caffeine, Routledge, pp. Page 3–4, ISBN 9780415927239, http://books.google.com/?id=Qyz5CnOaH9oC&pg=PA3&dq=coffee+goat+ethiopia+Kaldi
- ^ Ireland, Corydon. "Of the bean I sing". Harvard Gazette. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/?p=86444&utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=07_21_11%2520%281%29&utm_content. Retrieved 21 July 2011.
- ^ John K. Francis. "Coffea arabica L. RUBIACEAE". Factsheet of U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. http://www.fs.fed.us/global/iitf/pdf/shrubs/Coffea%20arabica.pdf#search=%22%22Coffea%20Arabica%22%20native%22. Retrieved 2007-07-27.
- ^ Meyers, Hannah (2005-03-07). ""Suave Molecules of Mocha" -- Coffee, Chemistry, and Civilization". http://www.newpartisan.com/home/suave-molecules-of-mocha-coffee-chemistry-and-civilization.html. Retrieved 2007-02-03.
- ^ Peter Barrett (2004), Science and Theology Since Copernicus: The Search for Understanding, p. 18, Continuum International Publishing Group, ISBN 0-567-08969-X
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