The Golden Age of Islam (750-1350)

The Golden Age of Islam included advances in

• international trade

• manufacturing

• agriculture

• art

• architecture

• literature

• mathematics

• astronomy

• medicine

Islam expands during the Golden Age

• Added North Africa and Spain as well as Western India

• Main cities included Damascus, Syria, Alexandria, Egypt and Cordova, Spain

Great Mosque, Damascus

Period of Wealth

During the Abbasids Abbasids Dynasty (750-900), Dynasty (750-900), Capital of Baghdad (Iraq) exceeded Constantinople in size and wealth

Reasons for Islamic Success

• Islam unified the tribes of Arabia• Religious zeal inspired Arab

armies• Allowed some religious freedom to

Christians and Jews• Honored merchants

More Reasons for Arab Success

• Byzantine and Persian Empires were weak

• Islam was attractive to the conquered– easy to become Muslim– preaches equality (people could move up in

society)

Art

• The golden age of Islamic (and/or Muslim) art lasted from 750 to the 16th century, when ceramics, glass, metalwork, textiles, and woodwork flourished.

• Lusterous glazing became the greatest Islamic contribution to ceramics.

• Calligraphy, an essential aspect of written Arabic, developed in manuscripts and architectural decoration.

Arabic Art

An Arabic manuscript from the 13th century depicting Socrates in discussion with his pupils.

Literature

• The most well known fiction from the Islamic world was The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), which was a compilation of many earlier folk tales.

The character of Aladdin is from this book

Architecture

Architecture – Great Mosques use domes and arches

The Alhambra• The Alhambra (Arabic: ;'Al-Ħamrā = الحمراءliterally "the red") is a palace and fortress, in southern Spain on the south-eastern border of the city of Granada.

• It was the residence of the Muslim kings of Granada and their court, but is currently a museum exhibiting exquisite Islamic architecture.

Science

– Ibn al-Haytham (ca. 965-1039), the so-called "father of optics," explained how human vision takes place

– He used an early form of the scientific method to explain optics

Scientific Method

• The modern scientific method was first developed in the Muslim world, where significant progress in methodology was made, especially in the works of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) in the 11th century,

• The most important development of the scientific method was the use of experimentation and quantification

Scientific Advances• Many other advances were made by Muslim

scientists in biology (botany, evolution, and zoology), mathematics (algebra, arithmetic, calculus, geometry, number theory, and trigonometry), chemistry, the earth sciences (anthropology, cartography, geography, and geology), physics (astrophysics, optics, mechanics, and motion), psychology (experimental psychology, psychiatry, psychophysics, and psychotherapy), and the social sciences (demography, economics, history and historiography, and sociology).

Medicine• Ibn Sina (980-1037),

known in the West as Avicenna, his Canon of Medicine became the most famous medical book in the East or West, translated at least 87 times.

• The great Egyptian physician Ibn al-Nafis (d. 1288), discovered the minor, or pulmonary, circulation of the blood.

Medicine

The Arabs invented the hospital

Math– Muhammad ibn

Musa al-Khwarizmi (ca. 800-ca. 847) principally responsible for the diffusion of the Indian system of numeration (Arabic numerals) in the Islamic lands and the West.

– Introduced algebra

Astronomy

• 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,