What discoveries were made in the early Islamic civilisation?

The Golden Age of Islam

Divriği Hospital and Mosque. — Image caption,
Mosque and hospital of Divriği in modern day Turkey. It was built in the 13th century and you can still visit its remains today.

During the Abbasid Caliphate (AD750 -1258), Baghdad became the centre for science, medicine, maths and more!

This early Islamic period is sometimes called the Golden Age of Islam because there were so many inventions in science and the arts at this time.

Why was the early Islamic civilisation a centre of inventions?

The Abbasid caliphs (leaders) wanted people to learn.
The city of Baghdad was home to a number of libraries, universities, hospitals and schools.

What was the House of Wisdom?

The House of Wisdom was a huge academy where people studied. It was created by Caliph Harun Al-Rashid (ruled AD754 -775) and his son Al-Ma'mun (ruled AD813 - 833).

It had a big library and even an observatory where people could look at the night sky. Lots of important books were kept in the House of Wisdom.

People translated ancient Roman and Greek texts into Arabic so more people could read them.

The Book of Ingenious Devices was about mechanical devices. — Image caption,
The Book of Ingenious Devices published in AD850. It is believed to be written by three brothers working at the House of Wisdom.

Astronomy

Islamic astronomers improved the astrolabe which was a device that allowed travellers to find their way, a bit like a compass.

An astrolabe, used to find the direction of Mecca and navigate using the stars. — Image caption,
An astrolabe.

People used the astrolabe to identify the position of the sun and stars and plan their routes. Muslims could also use it to find the direction of Mecca for prayer.

Maths and science

Today, we use the Hindu Arabic number system which was founded in India. This is the ten symbols of 0, 1 ,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Mathematicians in the early Islamic world like Al-Khwarizmi introduced the system to Europe. It was much simpler to use than Roman numbers.

Al-Khwarizmi also wrote a lot about algebra which was new to the European world! Algebra is used in Maths when we do not know the exact number(s) in a calculation. In algebra we use letters to represent unknown values or values that can change.

A statue of Al-Khwarizmi. — Image caption,
A statue of Al-Khwarizmi

Ibn al-Haytham was a scientist who carried out experiments. He studied how the human eye worked even invented an early type of camera that helped explain how the eye sees.

Medicine

Image caption,
Early Islamic medical book about the human eye. It is a 12th century copy of a book written in the 9th century.

Hospitals were built in cities like Baghdad, Isfahan and Cairo in the early Islamic centuries. They were some of the first in the world and treated rich and poor people.

Records or written notes were kept about what was happening in the hospitals. They also had special hospitals for teaching.

Doctors studied the body and how to treat it for different diseases. They wanted to find out more about organs like the heart and how they worked.

Look at the table below to find out more about important figures in early Islamic medicine.

Name	What did they study and write about?
Al-Razi	Studied diseases in children and how the brain worked.
Ibn Sina	Wrote an encyclopedia looking at lots of areas of medicine. It was used in universities.
Al-Zahrawi	Wrote a textbook about surgery and described how to use different medical tools.
Ibn Nafis	Studied how the heart worked and how blood moved round the body.

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