JESSALYN R.

AMANTE
GE 5 HRM (2407)

SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION (MIDDLE EAST)

The Middle East has a rich history of scientific advancements and discoveries. Some notable
scientific revolutions that took place in the Middle East include:

 The Islamic Golden Age (8th-13th centuries), during which Muslim scholars made significant
contributions to fields such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and chemistry.
 The Persian scholar Avicenna (Ibn Sina) wrote the influential book "The Canon of Medicine,"
which was used as a textbook in universities across Europe and the Islamic world for centuries.
 The Arabic translation movement (8th-10th centuries), during which Arabic translations of
Greek, Roman, and Persian texts were produced, preserving and spreading knowledge from these
cultures.
 The Persian astronomer and mathematician Nasir al-Din al-Tusi made important contributions to
trigonometry and developed a new system for measuring the positions of celestial bodies.
 The Arab polymath Al-Jazari, who lived in the 12th century, made significant contributions to
engineering and technology, including the development of complex water clocks and other
mechanical devices.

 HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING PROVIDING DIFFERENT WATER SYSTEMS

Medieval Muslim scientists often focused on practical matters, particularly hydraulic

engineering, as water was always a precious resource in the arid lands where Islam traditionally
flourished. Engineers designed various kinds of water-raising machines, some powered by
animals, others powered by rivers and streams. The waterwheels along the Orontes River in
Syria were used to irrigate until modern times. Watermills were used to grind corn and other
grains, though in Iran water power was often supplemented or replaced by wind.
Bridges and dams were needed to channel water. In addition to the standard beam, cantilever and
arch bridges, engineers also designed bridges of boats to span rivers. Dams were widely used to
divert rivers into irrigation canals. Perhaps the most ingenious hydraulic technologies were the
distribution networks of canals and qanats, subterranean aqueducts that sometimes carried water
for hundreds of miles. Cisterns and underground ice-houses were used for storage. Various
instruments were used to measure water flow, and the Nilometer built in 861-62 still stands on
Rawda Island in Cairo.
  MEDICINE PHYSICIANS BEGAN TO QUESTION THE MEDICAL TRADITIONS
FROM BOTH EAST AND WEST RESULTING IN A REVOLUTIONIZED
PRACTICE OF MEDICINE
Medieval Muslims revolutionized the science and practice of medicine, as physicians began to
question the medical traditions inherited from both East and West and distinguish one disease
from another. For example, Ibn al-Haytham (ca. 965-1039), the so-called "father of optics,"
explained how human vision takes place by integrating physical, mathematical, experimental,
physiological, and psychological considerations. His treatise had an enormous impact on all later
writers on optics, both in the Muslim world and through a medieval Latin translation in the West.
Similarly, the great Egyptian physician Ibn al-Nafis (d. 1288), discovered the minor, or
pulmonary, circulation of the blood. Ibn Sina (980-1037), known in the West as Avicenna,
synthesized Aristotelian and later Greek theories with his own original views, and his Canon of
Medicine became the most famous medical book in the East or West, translated at least 87 times.

 SHIFTING FROM OIL: THE UAE OFFERS A MODEL FOR BUILDING A

TECHNOLOGY ECOSYSTEM

While many countries in the world are shifting to wind power, electric vehicles and solar
technology, the Middle East remains rooted in the oil industry. Oil has always been a boon for
the region, but the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is looking to take a new path and, potentially,
change the world's perception of the country with it.

 . ALGEBRA AND TRIGONOMETRY CONTRIBUTES TO THE STUALGEBRA

Medieval Muslims made invaluable contributions to the study of mathematics, and their key role
is clear from the many terms derived from Arabic. Perhaps the most famous mathematician was
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (ca. 800-ca. 847), author of several treatises of earth-
shattering importance. His book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals, written about 825,
was principally responsible for the diffusion of the Indian system of numeration (Arabic
numerals) in the Islamic lands and the West.

 ASTRONOMY

As in the other sciences, astronomers in the Muslim lands built upon and greatly expanded
earlier traditions. At the House of Knowledge founded in Baghdad by the Abbasid caliph
Mamun, scientists translated many texts from Sanskrit, Pahlavi or Old Persian, Greek and Syriac
into Arabic, notably the great Sanskrit astronomical tables and Ptolemy's astronomical treatise,
the Almagest. Muslim astronomers accepted the geometrical structure of the universe expounded
by Ptolemy, in which the earth rests motionless near the center of a series of eight spheres, which
encompass it, but then faced the problem of reconciling the theoretical model with Aristotelian
physics and physical realities derived from observation.
Overall, the Middle East has a long history of scientific advancements and discoveries that have
had a significant impact on the world.