the sun the moon the planets and stars
have always fired our imaginations and
fueled our mythologies and studying the
heavens astronomy is surely the oldest
scientific discipline there is what's
really unexpected I guess is that
astronomy has repaid our interest in it
over the centuries time after time it's
been the place where new ideas have
emerged and it's often led the rest of
the sciences I'm a professor of physics
at the University of Surrey and the
ideas and theories of the great European
scientists like Galileo Newton and
Einstein lie at the heart of my work but
there's another side to me I'm half
Iraqi and I'm keen to investigate
stories I'd heard as a schoolboy in
Baghdad of great astronomers from the
medieval Islamic world whose work shapes
the discoveries of these later Western
scientists so I'm going on a journey
through Syria and Egypt to the remote
mountains in more than Iran to discover
how the work of these Islamic
astronomers had dramatic and
far-reaching consequences there I'll
discover how they were the first to
attack seemingly unshakable Greek ideas
about how the heavenly bodies move
around the earth it was a shlom that
paved the way for one of the greatest
upheavals in the history of science
this is the University of Padua in
northern Italy i'm here to see
incontrovertible evidence that one of
the greatest breakthroughs in European
science links back to the earlier work
by Islamic scholars it was a news one
that the duct I'm astronomer dr. Louise
epic aati and I are climbing up to the
18th century observatory at the top she
promises to show me one of the most
important books in scientific history so
what do we have here okay is this the
second initial 000 Charlie Copernicus
yes this is de revolutionibus erbium
celestial which was published in 1543 by
the Polish astronomer Nicolaus
Copernicus the significance of this book
is enormous in its Copernicus argues for
the first time since Greek antiquity
that all the planets including the earth
go around the Sun
for thousands of years everyone had
believed a very different view that the
earth is static and everything including
the stars Sun and planets move around it
and here there are all this system ok oh
there we go just sort of this system the
Sun in the middle mmm yes oh yes and
there's yes there's terror we do with
the moon going around it this is an
astonishing book and many historians
credited with starting the European
Scientific Revolution the first crucial
step in a journey that led to modern
physics well i agree but it does seem a
bit odd that one doesn't hear much about
where Copernicus got his ideas and
information the impression is that they
came out of nowhere Nicky me it
certainly is a real revelation to me
that he explicitly mentions a 9th
century Muslim for providing him with a
great deal of observational data an
astronomer who lived in Damascus called
El batani like all the great scientists
of the Islamic empire el batani lived in
a culture without portraiture all we
have are later impressions of what he
might have looked like and here he
mentioned a part of cali pooped on me
and so on and started to mention what he
called mac OS of our offenses and means
al-madani ok and then the second book in
a second book either oh we can look at
the beginning electing the same we can
open Copernicus in fact made extensive
use of El Batali's observations of the
positions of planets the Sun the moon
and stars he worked with Latin
translations similar to this one of the
Syrian astronomers data
qatar busy just slowly so this is
bethany's zg is his physical book of
star charts associate has the arabic yes
look at her because i said yes and the
relative motion that's convenient ah but
he certainly he had the data the
observational data male Mitanni you know
and Copernicus's book is full of clues
that hints at other past sources and
though albertoni is the only islamic
astronomer Copernicus actually names
recent detective work has uncovered
clues that Copernicus based many of his
ideas on the work of other Islamic
scholars the clearest example is
Copernicus's use of a mathematical idea
devised by the 13th century Islamic
astronomer el dulce called the to see
couple
back in England I compared a copy of
Alto sees Teddy fel mill hater with
another edition of Copernicus's
revolutionibus in it there's a diagram
of the to see couple and there's an
almost identical diagram in Copernicus's
book even down to the letters that mark
the points on the circles so in L 2 Z
there's the Arabic Elif which is a
there's the bar which is B team over
here is the g and the dial at the center
d it's a remarkable similarity now this
might just be coincidence but it's
pretty compelling evidence in fact I
truly believe that Copernicus must have
been aware of Altos his work and other
Islamic astronomers further detective
work also shows that Copernicus used
mathematical ideas for planetary motion
that are remarkably similar to ones
developed by another Islamic astronomer
a fourteenth-century Syrian called M
nachattar room for some historians this
cannot be coincidence Copernicus to me i
have no proof i don't have a smoking gun
but to me it looked like and again by
analyzing his own works it looks like he
was working from diagrams somebody gave
him a geometric diagram of what was done
by every shorter to solve the problem of
the moon for example to solve the
problem of the upper planet to solve the
problem of the movement of mercury had
diagram and he was genius enough to be
able to figure out from the diagrams
what was the underlying theory behind
those diagrams
so far from emerging from nowhere it
seems Copernicus's work will be better
described as the culmination of the
preceding 500 years of Islamic astronomy
I wanted to investigate this story find
out more about those astronomers and
their ideas but before that I wanted to
investigate an even deeper question what
actually motivated medieval Islamic
scholars interest in astronomy
Oh
this is the umayyad mosque in the heart
of the Syrian capital Damascus and is
one of the oldest in the world and I'm
here on a kind of treasure hunt well it
says in the books that there is a
sundial on the top of the house minaret
to the bride minnericht over there so
we'll see whether it is there not so
this is dr. reamed Turk Manny an
astrophysicist and medieval astronomy
expert from Imperial College London and
we're looking for one of the most
accurate sundials made in the medieval
world and equally exciting for me is the
fact that it was made by one of the
Islamic astronomers who had so heavily
influenced Copernicus nachattar
officials in the mosque claimed that the
sundial was removed in the 19th century
but reims research suggests that an
exact replica might still exist hi in
one of the minarets hidden from view
it's not quite the Lost Ark of the
Covenant that the idea of discovering a
150 year old artifact is still quite
something would you recognize anything
if you know yeah marking time accurately
is essential to Islam the Quran requires
the faithful to pray five times a day at
five very precise times
at the exact moments of dawn when the
Sun is overhead in the afternoon at
sunset and then again at the moment of
nightfall so for early Islam an accurate
sundial was an extremely important
fixture in many mosques that's it that's
it I found it I look funny yeah it is
neater look just as a ride in the one
who is hidden by there yeah no wonder
they didn't know that it exists here is
covered with the pigeons pigeon crap
yeah oh oh great thank you for Allah now
this pest of three sundials you know the
main big one and there's the north and
one on the south there is a line here
for the south of the her the the midday
prayer and there is one for the
afternoon prayer if nachattar had
calculated the arrangement of these
lines so that the sundial remains
accurate all through the year even
though the length of the days change
yeah very important job he would sit
here watching the shadow exactly and
exactly the precise moment for prayer
he'd signal to the more than to start
the call for prayer okay
ah
Oh
it nachattar sundial accurate to within
minutes really showed me how islam
required its scholars to make
meticulously accurate observations of
heavenly bodies
and I began to understand why Copernicus
was so impressed by the work of his
Islamic predecessors they really brought
standards of accuracy and precision to
astronomy that were unheard of before
they had calculated the size of the
earth to within one percent and created
trigonometric tables accurate to three
decimal places and when I met up with
reem Turk money again on Mount assume
outside Damascus I was to hear about the
Islamic astronomer who personified
accurate observation the man whose
astronomical tables and measurements
Copernicus explicitly makes reference to
Elba Thani born in 858 in southern
Turkey albertoni made accurate
astronomical measurement a personal
obsession and the story goes is that I'd
be kinda used to observe from this
mountain here and that in the sorcerer
over 40 years from 877 both here and in
the town of rocker and baton ease great
project was to work out as accurately as
possible the length of the year this is
a copy of the original manuscript ok so
I'll show you the chapter at which he
explained the length of the year ok the
chapter 27 so he first talked to you by
citing the ancient values of the
Egyptians and the Babylonians right and
he lived a long the view their estimate
of the year was 365 days six hours in
just over 10 minutes to improve on this
albertini used his ingenuity and a
device like this an armillary sphere he
used it to measure how the length of
shadows varied over the course of the
year with this information he was able
to work out the precise day on which
it's both light and dark for exactly the
same time the so-called equinox and who
repented his measurements over the
course of 40 years now here's the clever
bit he examined a Greek
text that was written 700 years earlier
and discovered the precise day on which
its author had also measured the equinox
he now had two vital pieces of data the
number of days between the two
observations and the number of years he
divided the first number by the second
to arrive at an astonishing result a
year is 365 days 5 hours 46 minutes and
24 seconds he gets the new number it was
only two minutes of the modern
observations two minutes two minutes on
the length of a year to election she
came exactly with the one he could close
it what's astonishing about the accuracy
of Albert Arnie's measurements is that
he had no telescope he used an armillary
arm his naked eye and devices like this
an astrolabe so you move the pointer and
you move on this disk with it to a point
towards the North Star then this small
pointers here they will give you the
location of the rest of the stars and
the planets despite this among his many
other observations is an incredibly
accurate figure for the earth's tilt of
just under 24 degrees about half a
degree from the figure we now know it to
be and he didn't stop there he measured
variations in the diameter of the sun to
such accuracy that it led him to an
astonishing conclusion this distance the
farthest point the Sun reaches from the
earth during the year known as the
apogee actually changes from one year to
another
also his tables showing the position of
the Sun on the moon which is what
Copernicus refers to some 600 years
later set a new standard in precision
and accuracy so Albert Arnie and his
fellow Islamic astronomers were clearly
good observers but so what you might ask
well the answer is that their
observations began to suggest to them
that the prevailing Greek theory that
described how everything in the heavens
revolved around the earth had some
serious flaws this Greek tradition which
had been unquestioned for over 700 years
was based primarily on the work of one
of the greatest astronomers of the
ancient world Claudius ptolemaeus
autonomy was a Greek astronomer based in
Alexandria in the second century AD he
wrote one of the greatest texts in
astronomy the Almagest which was
basically a distillation of all Greek
knowledge on the celestial world totally
believed that the Sun the Moon the
planets and the stars all sat on crystal
spheres that rotated around the earth so
the moon sits on the innermost sphere
followed by the Sun and the planets and
finally a patchwork of stars on the
outermost sphere so we human beings sit
at the very center of the universe with
the rest of the universe rotating around
us but as Ptolemy himself realized
there's a problem with trying to
describe the heavens as a place of
mathematically idealized perfect spheres
and that is that the planets don't
really play ball as they move across the
night sky they change speed appear to
get bigger and smaller and even go back
on them
Ptolemy tried to explain this away by
arguing that the planet sat on small
spheres called epicycles which rotated
around a bigger sphere called a
deference this explained why they might
look as though they were changing size
and why they sometimes even changed
direction unfortunately that still
didn't fit all the facts it didn't
easily explain why the planets appear to
speed up and slow down so rather
desperately Ptolemy fudged his model
further by moving the earth away from
the center of the deference and having
the deference rotate around an arbitrary
point in space the equina the works of
astronomers like Albert Arnie started to
strain ptolemies ideas to breaking point
they're careful observations began to
suggest that even with Ptolemies
unwieldy echo in some deference the
actual behavior of the heavens didn't
fit the data so what do you do if you
were an astronomer living in birth dad
and you have all those results on your
table the very first requirements to say
huh this Greek tradition is not as
trustworthy as it is advertised to be
and now of course they begin to say if
the fundamental values of the
astronomical tradition of the Greeks
which we could double-check and we found
them to be an error what else is in
error they began to question the more
basic foundational astrology
astronomical cosmological foundations of
the Greek tradition and question they
did
what's absolutely striking about the
writings of Islamic scholars by the 9th
century is the increasing use of the
word Shikoku which in English means
doubts they showed that it's sometimes
necessary to doubt an idea that everyone
around you believes unquestioningly
Islamic doubting of Greek astronomy
began the slow process of undermining
the notion that the earth is at the
center of the universe to doubt takes
great courage and imagination but if the
great dialogue between Islamic and
European astronomers shows anything it's
that doubt or Shikoku is the engine that
drives science forward one of the first
great shahrukh scientists was called AB
nel haitham he was born in the Iraqi
city of Basra in 965 ad and was among
the first to argue passionately that
scientific ideas are only valid if
they're mathematically consistent and
reflect reality and when he applied his
fierce rigorous intelligence to Greek
astronomy he immediately spotted that
there was a fundamental contradiction at
its heart on the one hand Greek
cosmology argued that everything in the
heavens revolves around the earth on the
other hand ptolemy in his Almagest
argued that if you want to
mathematically predict how the Sun and
planets move you have to pretend that
they go around an arbitrary point in
space the so-called acquaint
this is clearly a contradiction the
heavens can't both go around the earth
and not go around it at the same time
evening haitham hated this nonsensical
contradiction in the early 11th century
he wrote a paper and Shahrukh Allah
bottom use or doubts on Ptolemy in it he
writes with barely contained frustration
Ptolemy assumes an arrangement that
cannot exist nilayam says that is a
total absurdity we cannot accept that
and furthermore he says it's not a slip
of a tongue autonomy knew that it was an
absurdity and he shows us where Paula me
himself was embarrassed by having to
introduce it so he says there is a
fundamental reasoning problem meaning
that the Greeks in you that the paula me
knew that he was making a mistake but he
knew he couldn't do any better and hence
now the challenge is to do one much
better and hints to be able to fix this
as that in my explanation begins to be
the program of research for all
astronomers to come in order to achieve
that project you had to be convinced you
had to be convinced that it was possible
to make high precision mathematical
models of the way in which planets and
stars move that would really capture how
they are in the heavens
if Nell Haitham in effect laid down the
challenge for all astronomers who
followed which was to come up with an
explanation for how the heavens move
that is both mathematically consistent
and agrees with what we observe the
final answer to this would come from far
away Europe with Copernicus and others
but the next and crucial breakthrough
came somewhat closer
the top of this mountain in northern
Iran was the adopted home of the man who
was the next of Copernicus's Islamic
influences nasara deal duty he would
succeed in rewriting ptolemies theory
which would ultimately lead to the
overthrow of the geocentric view of the
universe and so the birth of the modern
scientific age this is the remote castle
of Allah moods Alto she's adopted home
for many years it was the home of a
Muslim sect called the e smileys this a
lovely secluded spot and it was the
center of the smiley movement it's not
surprising that al to Z would find a
home here and it wasn't just him many
other scholars were gathered here and
there seems to have been a library it
was a center for learning as well as a
military stronghold
here this is the main gate northern gate
of the upper castle of Hassan i Sabbah a
new archaeological dig is now revealing
under the castle hewn into the living
rock a warren of rooms and studies a
mosque and living quarters for this
extraordinary community of soldiers and
scientists this is the court of a mosque
or a center of headquarter of castle and
it was within these cramped conditions
that Altos he started his masterwork of
the Shikoku or the doubts the Ted Kira
in it he finds an answer to it mill hey
thumbs first challenge how to eliminate
Ptolemies equant instead of a sphere
rotating around an arbitrary point in
space loc devised a series of two nested
circles which rotate around each other
in such a way that they eliminates the
equina the nested circles became known
as a pussy couple this is the
mathematical system that finds its way
into Copernicus's work some 300 years
later
having found a solution to the equites
problem el dulce now wanted to complete
the task if nil haytham had started 200
years earlier to find a consistent
mathematical description of the movement
of the celestial bodies but to do that
he needed better data which meant bigger
and better equipment than he was ever
going to find here at ala moot and then
something happened which changed Altos
his life forever the Mongols
streaming in from the east an army of
Mongols led by halloo Gahan marched into
Iran crushing everything before them
by 1255 they had reached the foothills
of alamut intense on its destruction
then in a brilliant piece of diplomacy
al duty managed to both save his own
skin and satisfy his scientific ambition
he visited the mongo leader and played
on his deep astrological superstition
convincing him he could tell the future
if only he had new equipment Aldo she
persuaded the h'harn to make him his
head scientist and to build him just a
few hundred miles away perched on a
hilltop where the air was clear the
largest observatory the world had ever
seen
this is all that remains of the moraga
observatory the main instrument is
hidden under this protective dome
aldoses new astronomical Center was
based around a single large building
inside was an enormous metal arc an
armillary arm ten meters across on its
circumference were marked angles in
degrees and minutes the scientists would
line up the celestial object under study
with a central point on the arc and then
make a reading from the markings on the
arc giving them the definitive accurate
position of the object in the sky the
building was also surrounded by smaller
astronomical equipment libraries offices
and accommodation the observatory even
had its own dedicated Moss
I suppose it is a little disappointing
that there's not that much left of the
place now so you really have to imagine
what it must have been like back in its
heyday I thought what L tools he built
here was nothing less than the world's
greatest Observatory for 300 years and
like any modern day International
Research Institute he brought together
the world's greatest astronomers from as
far away as Morocco and even China I
mean it must have been a really great
buzzing atmosphere to work here
with his new observatory and world-class
team Dorsey was now ready to fulfill it
Nell hey themes dream to try to make
ptolemies model scientifically rigorous
first they attacked the mathematics as
well as the toastie couple they invented
other systems of planetary movement and
with these new systems they were able to
calculate mathematically consistent
models for many of the celestial bodies
Mercury Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn and
the Sun and Moon
l to see and the astronomers he brought
together created what became known as
the Marathi Revolution which was a
complete paradigm shift in astronomy
overthrowing the old Ptolemaic view what
Islamic scholars and astronomers like L
to see do is to organize and make sense
of mathematical astronomy at a level of
unprecedented accuracy using instruments
more precise than had been built before
over longer time scales with predictions
of the positions of planets and stars
that no one had previously reached that
at Moraga or at a la mood we see I think
genuine revolutions in the level scale
and intensity of mathematical astronomy
but there was still a problem the new
models were mathematically coherent and
they dispensed with ptolemies unwieldy
equant but they still firmly placed the
earth at the center of the universe and
that inevitably meant that their
descriptions of the heavens were
intricate and complicated with epicycles
deference and couples it was like some
great cosmic gearbox
it would require a huge leap of
imagination to make the next step in our
story and that next step would take
place 2,000 miles from where i am now
in my view the last phase of the moraga
Revolution took place not in Iran or
anywhere in the Islamic empire but here
in northern Italy based on the work of
Muslim scholars places like the
University of Padua were already
starting a new scientific movement the
Renaissance back in Padua where I began
my journey I now understand why Islamic
astronomers were so important to
Copernicus they gave him his motivation
he's the first European to share it mill
hey thumbs deep aversion to ptolemies
cosmology and that's what makes
Copernicus not the first great
astronomer of a new European tradition
but the last of the Islamic tradition as
we've seen many of the complex
mathematical models Copernicus uses in
his new heliocentric model like the to
see couple are copied from Islamic
astronomers but more importantly it's
Copernicus's deep desire to bring
mathematical consistency to cosmology
that he really owes to his Islamic
predecessors
Copernicus's ideas set in motion a train
of scientific revelations that would
eventually lead to Isaac Newton and the
discovery of gravity in mutants hands it
mill hey thens dream of an astronomy
with rigorous and coherence mathematics
which agrees with experimental
observation finally took place
the this begs two crucial questions why
was the great astronomical project which
Islamic astronomers began completed in
Europe and not in the Middle East and
how did knowledge of Islamic science get
to Europe in the first place
the answers to these questions lie in
one of the most beautiful cities on
earth the queen of the Adriatic Venice
you
you
Venice was founded on a swamp off the
coast of Italy and felt itself separate
from Europe and not bound by its laws
and traditions and as Shakespeare
famously pointed out the two most
important aspects of Venice were its
merchants and its long-standing links
with the Arabs or Moors it was a rich
and complicated relationship sometimes
based on piracy in theft the story goes
that in 828 to Venetian merchants stole
the bones of a famous Christian Saint
from Venice's rival city across the
water Alexandria the bones belonged to
some mark the evangelist and they
brought them back here to some Mark's
Square
but without doubts trade with the East
brought to Venice great wealth and an
exchange of ideas customs and people as
Venice expert Vera costantini showed me
so this is called campo de morir because
as you can see at the corners there are
statues of what were called Moore's yeah
oh there's another yeah there's another
one with a turban the beard was
recommended to venetian merchants even
when they went to the east there was
there were manuals a recent war for
Venetian merchants had to blend in how
to yes you know how to be respected in
the yeah as Venetians traded more and
more with their Muslim neighbors the
influence of Islam was more strongly
felt Arabic coffee culture became hugely
popular as did Islamic styles of
architecture with their characteristic
arches and decorations so the next thing
i want to show you is the palace of the
common when Venetians traded in the east
the unity of measurement of a lord that
could be loaded on a dramedy was called
a car decor and it was the exactly same
unity of measurement they had in the
east and it was called uke so it's not
coincidence that they know it's not they
already imported that unity yeah Oh
measurement yeah I wait
and with the Arabic trade came the
Arabic books the great 9th century
Arabic text on algebra appeared in Latin
in the 12th century the same century saw
the arrival of Arabic astronomical
tables and in the 15th century the
famous canon of medicine was first
published in the West
and this influx of learning seems to
coincide with a great historical shift
the engine of science begins to move
west from the Islamic world to Europe
that's where the great breakthroughs
from the fifteen hundreds would mainly
take place
I encountered an astonishing and very
tangible symbol of this shift and a
really surprising clue as to why it
happened thanks to Professor Angelo
nuovo from the University of udun a
20 years ago in this library on one of
the islands of Venice Angela discovered
the only surviving version of a 500 year
old book and what did it feel like I
mean this is this is a big ah yes
discovery yes it was a great emotion i
remember it was July very hot like today
even hotter and I felt cold wow that
moment yes and yes it was a great
emotion what she found was the very
first printed copy of Islam's holy book
that were on this is the first time
she's seen her Quran since she
discovered it 20 years ago but it struck
me as strange that the world's first
printed Quran was produced in Venice and
not in the Islamic world and it's
obvious at first glance that it was
printed by people who didn't speak
Arabic very well mahna mahna hang
hundred I had a banana me know how I him
Miley Chioma Dean yeah I cannot believe
it at this time yes yeah i mean what
strikes me is that it's it's written in
in what i would regard as almost
childlike handwriting it's clumsy yeah
yeah well it's the first attempt to
reproduce the handwriting in movable
types and as you know the language has
an enormous amount of swords different
sorts as of course every letter changes
according to ligatures and the position
of cool analyze the the word dal occur
which means for that the dash should be
underneath the l here that is above it
so sir saying valley curses darle occur
which is which is wrong probably they
are not people really of mother language
in the press so there were some errors
of the mistakes in the tax which are of
course all those things yes of course I
mean is
as the Quran for every Muslim believes
it's this young Word of God you God of
charge so when you change it it's a sin
it's yes how was it first received do
you think when it was published well yes
the idea is that tea pot diseases and I
think it's true that it was an enormous
failure from really the business point
of view as the Muslim didn't accept the
printing press for centuries and
probably the whole copies of this book
were destroyed so we don't have any
other copy the only probably the only
one that remained in the Western world
is this book I felt that the failure of
this printed Quran to catch on in the
Islamic world spoke volumes
800 years earlier one reason for Islamic
science as success had been the
precision of the Arabic language with
over 70 different ways of writing its
letters and many extra symbols to define
pronunciation and meaning it allowed
scholars of many different lands to
communicate in a single common language
now with the arrival of the printing
press scientific ideas should have been
able to travel even more freely in the
West books printed in Latin accelerated
its scientific Renaissance but because
of its symbols and extra letters Arabic
was much harder to set into type than
Latin and so a similar acceleration in
the Islamic world failed to materialize
I believe this rejection of the new
technology the printing press marked the
moment in history when Arabic science
undergoes a seismic shift Europe has
embraced Greek in Arabic knowledge and
the new technology and Galileo and his
ilk are poised at the cusp of the
Renaissance it has been a turning point
both in the history of the Venetian
printing press who used to be extremely
powerful I mean it's the limit of
expansion let's say and in the history
of the relationship the cultural and
general relationship between the East
and the West as acceptation of printing
would have meant the acceptation of the
first important technology so you know
the two histories started to differ very
much as you know
this initial rejection of printing was
one of the many reasons that caused
science in the Islamic world to fall
behind the West it coincided with a host
of global changes all of which affected
the way science developed
the first and most obvious reason for
the slowdown in Islamic science is that
the Islamic empire itself falls into
decline from the mid 1200 s one reason
for this is that it's under attack from
all sides from the east other mongols in
1258 they invaded the capital Baghdad
and it said that the waters of the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers ran black
for days with the ink of the books they
destroyed but trouble was also brewing
in the Far West of the Empire
Islamic Spain already fragmented into
separate city-states now face the new
friends are united and determined
onslaught from the Christian North the
real conquest as it was called raged for
hundreds of years but culminated in the
15th century when ferdinand the second
and isabella led an army which forced
the last of the muslims in granada to
surrender in 1492 the Christians were
intent on removing every last vestige of
Islamic civilization and culture from
Spain in 1499 they ordered the burning
in this square in Granada of all arabic
text from grenada's libraries except for
a small number of medical tests within
about a hundred years every Muslim in
Spain had either been put to the sword
burnt at the stake or banished and
Christians from the east of Europe were
intent on reclaiming the Holy Land the
Crusades bent on carving out a holy
Christian lavon's and claiming the holy
city of Jerusalem the Crusaders launched
a massive attack on northern Syria they
quickly captured this castle and turned
it into one of their strongholds then
with ruthless and missionary zeal they
marched on Jerusalem and as the Empire
fought with its neighbors it collapsed
into warring fiefdom the Mamluks slaves
who originally belonged to the state of
Egypt became its leaders
the Bourbon almohads ruled Morocco and
Spain in the 13th century and the north
of Syria and Iraq splitted into a series
of city-states but for many historians
of science the biggest single reason for
the decline in Islamic science was a
rather famous event that took place in
1492 that year the entire political
geography of the world changed
dramatically when a certain Christopher
Columbus arrived in the Americas I
explained it with the phenomena of the
discovery of the new world in 1492 the
immediate result is that you got immense
amount of gold and silver coming to the
royal houses of Europe at the time and
all the adventurers and empires and
royal houses of the timer were setting
colonies all over do it and science
always follows the money as the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries came
and went that money power and hence
scientific will move through Spain and
Italy and on to Britain by the
seventeenth century England sitting at
the center of the lucrative Atlantic
trade route could afford big science and
that ultimately explains why the
greatest book in World Science Sir Isaac
Newton's Principia Mathematica the book
that ultimately explains the motion of
the Sun the moon and the planets was not
published in Baghdad but in London it
was necessary for him to have data of
astonishing accuracy gathered from
across the world global inventories of
numbers observations positions the
heights of tides the positions of comets
and planets are the rate at which
pendulums beat it's a global project
it's big science and many of those
observations many of those mathematical
models were of course models initially
developed by Islamic astronomers in
Egypt
and the Near East and Central Asia but
there's a final twist in the tale
as the wealth of the Islamic nations
subsided through war political and
religious entrenchment and the loss of
its lucrative trade so it's science
declined but what this doesn't explain
is why their scientific achievements
have been so forgotten and that's partly
because as Europeans colonize greats
ways of the Middle East and Asia they
actively encouraged the idea that the
civilizations they encountered were
moribund and in decline it seems the
English and the French were
uncomfortable with subjugating people
whose knowledge and science may have
been as sophisticated as their own so it
became important to portray the Islamic
world in a very specific way namely that
yes they once were very sophisticated
and they had great scientists and
philosophers but of course now they've
fallen into decay somehow this point of
view made the whole colonial enterprise
seem much more palatable one of the most
fascinating developments I think in the
history of the encounter between Western
Europeans and other cultures is a kind
of shift which has got fundamental and
terrible consequences amongst Western
Europeans when they start to reflect on
why they are superior doesn't often
cross Western Europeans minds that they
might not be superior to everybody else
for a very long time after all Western
Europeans in general the British for
example suppose their superiority lay in
their religion but then I think around
the 1700s we begin to see a shift and
the shift is from claiming that the
reason for european superiority is its
religion to the reason for european
superiority is its science and
technology eventually it ends up with
the famous phrase we have the Gatling
gun and they do not Europeans in that
period were quite prepared
knowledge but in ancient times Islam for
example had achieved great things in the
sciences but they weren't doing so now
so even recent Islamic and Sanskrit
astronomy was imagined to be very old
because if it was very old it meant that
the culture the British were conquering
was declining and for the British that
was clearly good news and some experts
believe that the effect of this on
Islamic scientific history is still felt
in the Islamic world today the Islamic
pipe and the hair apart have not yet
discovered their history because their
history was obliterated intentionally by
the colonization people and
unfortunately when they rediscover it
now the rediscovering it in bits and
pieces so today for many different
reasons the Great observatories of the
medieval Islamic world are ruined husks
and it's true to say that most of the
great scientific breakthroughs of the
last four centuries have taken place in
the West but that's not to say that
science has completely ground to a halt
in the Islamic world now in the 21st
century there are many examples of
cutting-edge research being carried out
while I've arrived at the Royal
Institute here in Tehran where they
carry out stem cell research infertility
treatment and cloning research
I was surprised to learn that here in
Iran an Islamic state potentially
controversial science like genetic
modification and cloning is condoned
even funded by a theocratic government
one of the uses is when a small part of
the heart stops working which is finally
gonna lead to heart failure right so the
cells from that part of the heart are
actually replaced with my cells that
have been cloned another use of learning
and therapeutics is actually creating an
animal which has the medicine in their
milk for example so when we drink the
milk we actually actually receive the
medicine we need considering genetic
research has many vociferous opponents
in Christian communities always
intrigued to see that here in Tehran
they have their own in-house Imam to
offer support and advice on this
sometimes quite controversial research
my that committee after oviposition we
have got this Medical Ethics Committee
here in royal institute and every
project which is proposed is
investigated in this committee and we
see different aspects of it and they
have got to justify the project for us
I'm not enough of an expert in genetics
to truly assess the quality of the work
here but one thing I can say is how at
home I felt whatever cultural and
political differences we have with the
Iranian state inside the walls of the
lab it was remarkably easy to find
common ground with fellow scientists
nature's rules are refreshingly free of
human prejudice that's something the
scientists of the medieval Islamic world
understood and articulated so well
in the 9th century I'll Huaraz me
synthesized Greek and Indian ideas to
create a new kind of mathematics algebra
the polymath eben Cena brought together
the world's traditions of healthcare
into one book contributing to the
creation of the subject of Medicine in
remote Iranian mountains astronomers
like L Dorsey paved the way for
scientists working hundreds of years
later in Western Europe these scientists
quest for truth wherever it came from
was summed up by the 9th century
philosopher al Kindi who said it is
fitting for us not to be ashamed of
acknowledging truth and to assimilate it
from whatever source it comes to us
there is nothing of higher value than
truth itself it never cheapens or a
basis he who seeks
one moral emerges from this epic tale of
the rise and fall of science in the
Islamic world between the ninth and
fifteenth centuries and that is that
science is the universal language of the
human race decimal numbers are just as
useful in India as they are in Spain
star charts drawn up in Iran speak
volumes astronomers in Northern Europe
and Newton's Principia is just as true
in Arabic as it is in Latin or English
what medieval Islamic scientists
realized and articulated so brilliantly
is that science is the common language
of the human race man-made laws may vary
from place to place but nature's laws
are true for all of us
the science writer s on Massoud weaves
the story of Science in Islam in this
new book to accompany the series next
tonight Jerry Robinson meets another
money maker
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